Dreaming in the Dark

28

The Lord of the Wood took the form of a man with the horns of a stag. He sojourned across the land under the sun during the day, and died every evening. This was a walkabout that had occurred with little variation for a thousand years, so he was surprised with the dark haired girl with striking violet eyes appeared beside him halfway through his daily trek.

"How do you like being immortal?" She asked him.

"It is a great burden." He said, "and also an honor, to be entrusted with the hearts of so many."

"So are you happy?"

The horned man shook his head. "I don't consider happiness, I consider duty. It is my place in the order of things to live as I do, not to question it."

"I'm gonna check that down as a no." Dez said.

"Happiness is a temporary state," the horned man felt the need to explain, being unaccustomed to such casual questioning. "Rather I seek satisfaction in the journey, in the labor itself. If we can forget ourselves in our duty, that is a form of happiness."

"Or slavery." Dez frowned. "So there's never any change here? The fairies do the ritual every morning, and you're whole life is this walk in the shadow of the sun thing?"

"I am also the Night Walker."

"So you get to go both ways, great." Dez continued pacing the god, but stopped paying attention to him. "It's a resource problem again. This version works because it's a closed system. They get to live forever, but they can't ever grow."

Then what is your solution? The Maker asked.

"Let's see."

The wood vanished, and Dez was left with an empty chamber the size of a small country.

"It's not that I haven't been thinking." Dez said. "It doesn't matter how we dress it up, the problem is the same. The demon, death. We feed on death. It's how we survive." She floated in the black space. "You ran from it, you didn't beat it. You ran, and now you're just dreaming in the dark."

"I think we're backwards." Jo said. "We're trying to make a perfect world, and we don't know how because we're not perfect."

Perfect for what? The Maker asked.

"For living, I guess. For anything, really."

"I'm not good enough to fix this." Dez said.

"Try something." Jo said ."Anything."

Earth before Eternity. There is loss, but there is also growth. There is despair, and there is also joy.

"I want to see the world where you didn't run." Dez said. "I want to see the world where I'm not broken."

There isn't such a world.

"We're imagining."

Everyone dies on this earth. The Maker said.

"But first they lived."

Is that all you have for me? A platitude? It doesn't take the pain away. It doesn't close the wound.

"But you didn't either. You didn't stop it. You're still broken, aren't you? That's why I exist. Because you can't fill the hole in your heart, I have one in mine."

Change the scene. I don't like to remember earth.

"You were afraid to lose it, so you cut it all away. You killed yourself because you were afraid of dying."

I wasn't afraid of anything.

"You're afraid of us. That's why you try to kill us. You're afraid of what we made you feel."