IF THERE BE THORNS
By Maggie Griffin
CHAPTER 9: And Then There Was Chaos
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It was strange. One would think that with the oncoming of death, darkness would descend and remain everlasting. Where limbo would be forever, or heaven, or hell. Whatever one could choose to believe in.
Yet, there was light.
An endless, empty, never-ending light.
So it was strange. To not know if one was facing front, or backwards, or to the side. To be an entity in this light. Alone, yet knowing there were hundred-thousands-around them. All alone.
The lone entity floated about, lost and sad.
~I don't know this place....where am I....~
It floated place to place, the scenery around it never changing, never meeting another one like it. It never grew hungry, or tired. Never thought of past times because it could not remember what times had come before the light had wakened it here.
~It was like waking up, wasn't it? Like everything before was a dream, and this is all that ever has been...ever will be?~
Though it remembered nothing, the little entity knew that there had once been a time before the great light. Before the endless wandering.
Thoughts floated through and around it, and yet although the entity registered these thoughts, they made so little sense.
~What am I?~
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One Year Later....
Sadira hardly ever left her temple anymore. This being not the case of not being able to, so much as not wanting to. Aladdin and Jasmine had tried to bring her out of the depression Aini's death had caused, but their efforts had been met with a solid wall, impenetrable and thick. At first, they had let the time pass as one of mourning, convinced Sadira would eventually let Ai's memory rest.
Of course, she would never truly be forgotten. Not by anyone who had been present at her final day, one year before.
For her part, Jasmine had gone through special means to keep Ai's spirit alive through her own means. In her menagerie, underneath the shade of a beautiful tree, a single grave lay. Although no body resided beneath that earth, flowers were placed ceremonially there each week, keeping them fresh.
Although Aini's true resting place would never be accessible to any human again, the commemorative grave site was seen as her second resting place, near the palace Ai had made her first-although temporary-home.
Yet, weeks turned to months, which stretched to endless blazing desert days, and Sadira remained as she had been since the smoke had cleared and Ai had vanished from their lives. Her sorrow had eaten her away.
In a way, a part of her had died with her friend.
"You must stop this Sadira....your killing yourself down here!" Jasmine had once tried to reason with her. One look at Sadira had confirmed her fears. The young woman had paled considerably, her lack of sunlight seeming to nearly zap her strength. Her scrolls had collected dust and cobwebs, lying unused around the dark temple.
Only a year had gone by, yet Sadira had aged. At least on the inside.
With hopes that Aladdin would be able to knock her out of her stupor, Jasmine had sent him to try and persuade Sadira to come to the palace.
He had returned a half hour later, the fact that Sadira had not been with him not striking anyone as too surprising. His charms on her seemed to have wore off completely.
So, a single soul of Agrabah continued her lonely mourning.
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The gates to the garden were rusted, the vines that had once stretched so tightly against the bars worn to a fine breaking point. Yet they still continued to hold. No doubt forever.
Sunlight had become scarce, hitting only small areas of the once brightly-lit garden, and pitch-dark once nightfall descended in the evenings. Although not completely neglected, the plant life of the Garden had gained a strange brown tone, as though indicating an approaching Fall season, though none ever came.
No. The brown tinges found in some plants and flowers were traces of events long past. Traces of death in what should have been a place of life.
The flowers no longer laughed. The streams no longer whispered. If they did, it was songs of sorrow and loss. If they did, they never stopped. There was no one to hear them anyway. No life had entered the Garden since the locking of the gates.
Through the shrubbery, that had grown dense and endless, a frame was outlined in the coming moonlight. In the single place where the moonlight could fully hit the ground, unseparated by the shadows of trees and their branches. To bounce off the water that padded softly against a bank of thinned grass.
In the year past, the frame seemed to have shrunk considerably. Though still possessing its towering height, the slump of shoulders seemed to take away the rigorous posture that had once been associated with the shadowy figure.
Arbutus had lost himself.
His eyes rested on the gentle waves of the water. Once so bright and brimming with some unearthly power, the dark eyes now remained just that. Dark. Empty. As if some passing phantom had come and robbed him of the light that had once resided behind them.
His strange walk, once a mystical flow over the earth, was somewhat slowed. His sight constantly on the earth. Something had battered him down.
It lay at his feet then. Beneath the deep earth, buried for a year in lonely darkness.
But he still came every nightfall, and stood there. Watching.
If he could have, he would have rooted himself to that spot for the rest of eternity. But there was no reason to add to the death.
So when the sun had just began to rise over the horizon, he would look into the water, through the waterfall.
"I miss you my little one....," his voice no longer shook with the gentle morning farewell, but it still possessed the sadness that had become a part of him.
And so it was. Every night, until every dawn.
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The entity stopped its travelling, drawn to a strange blue shape in the distance.
~What's that?~
It was a dot. So small it would have normally gone completely un noticed. Yet, here in this endless white, even a drop of colour was an obvious miracle.
So the little entity made its way towards it, and as it drew closer, so the dot began to take a more distinguished shape. Features appeared in the mould, until the floating thing was before the blue, and could see it clearly.
"Well....what a sad little think you've become!"
The voice was different then the voice the little entity associated to itself. This one was slightly deeper, yet held a coolness too it, as though the voice was sure of every single word that left it. As though it were pre-planned.
~What are you?~ The entity asked as best it could. Though it had no mouth. Though it had no body.
"I'm Chaos!" The thing was strange. Had the entity known what it was looking at, it would have described it as a blue cat with wings. And a grin that would have shamed a clown. Yet the entity was oblivious to the memories of life before the light, so it knew not what it was looking at.
~Are you wandering too?~
The thing called Chaos rumbled, parts of it shaking in laughter, though the little entity did not understand this.
"No! Looking for you actually! Looking for you...Aini!"
The entity swirled around Chaos, examining the strange creature. Though it had no eyes. Though it had no body.
~Aini? What is an Aini?~
"You!" Chaos remarked simply, his grin never wavering.
~And what am I?~ The entity inquired, its curiosity peaked.
"You are Aini!" He responded back, never giving a straight answer.
Yet his riddle-like conversation didn't disturb the little entity. Indeed, it had been alone for so long, it had lost the realization of what a straight answer was.
"You don't remember yourself, do you?" Chaos asked, his own blue form floating in the white, flowing around the entity. He was never behind it. Or in front of it. The entity was a whole, it didn't matter which way Chaos floated. It would see him either way.
~Remember? Remember what?~
Chaos smirked. "You also ask too many questions, which all have boring, simple answers. Now if you asked me something interesting like say...how you died?"
~Died?~
Chaos nodded happily.
~What is died?~
The blue cat took a deep breath, and shook its head in mild frustration.
"I can see having a logical conversation with you won't be simple...how droll!" He rolled his eyes. "I had watched you when you were alive..."
~What is alive?~ The entity interrupted.
"When....you were alive...," Chaos continued, shooting the little entity a glare, "...I watched you get dumped in one of the most stereotypical ways. But I kept watching. So you met the Sand Witch. You caused....chaos!" Chaos rumbled with another laugh. ".....and you fell in love!"
Her flew around the entity, and a darkness suddenly came from beneath.
And the entity knew what beneath was. For the above was still white, and the below was filling with blackness, wrapping around it slowly. Giving it...feeling.
"So I watched you die...and I thought to myself, 'what a waste that is!'" Chaos continued. "Of course...I could not send you back in the state you left in...," Chaos winced visibly. "Beyond saving, that body. So we turn back the clock on you by say....oh....two years?"
The darkness had surrounded the last bit of light, and trapped the little entity inside its shell. It could no longer float off where it wanted.
"The time will be present, but you will be two years younger. Adds a bit of confusion I think....how delectable!" Chaos crooned.
Soon, his eyes were all the little entity could see behind the shield of black. They glowed a frightening blue. Searing through the darkness.
~What is love?~
The darkness took it away.
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Next, life returns from death, but the welcomes may be to painful to stand....