For my whole life, everything was known to me. I always knew what I was to do. The elders in the clay huts told me it in their holy chants: I was the light-bringer, and I would bring the sun to the poor men of Earth. This was my goal and my one dream, and I never questioned it.
As a youth, I looked around me and would see what I was supposed to see. When I looked up, I would see them, and they would say, "Chase the Sun! He is that golden angel in the sky that will save us all. It is your divine destiny. It is what you were meant to do. You shall be courageous, you shall be valorous, and you shall be brave. There will not be a single flaw found within you: otherwise you will never reach the Sun. When you bring the Sun to the Earth, you will slay the shadows that we cannot see in the unknown night, so that we shall know the night forever!"
They were strict, and they kept me away from the shadows that they feared would darken me. I never met any shadows. I was bathed in the lamp-light, and it was my fate that I had always known. Everyone knew it, and they praised my dream. They trained me hard, and to ignore heat and pain. They told me I was divine, and always protected me from corrupting darkness, and I grew the perfect body and the perfect mind so that I could fulfill my duty to slay the evil night.
Then came my eighteenth birthday. My mother, queen of Uruk came to me. She said, "Son, today is your day. Your training is over. Your journey has begun. Your body has been strengthened to the utmost by the forces of good and light, and your mind has been made keen by the teachings of the elders, untouched by the corrupting shadow and grown in the light so that you may fulfill your destiny to bring the Sun to Earth and slay the darkness forever!"
It was a holy day. It was a day that I would begin that which was the only thing I had ever known, which was the only thing that mattered, to bring the Sun to the Earth! And I could not disappoint my people. I loved nothing more than them and their dream that was mine.
I thanked the the town of Uruk, which had always supported my dream. I thanked the elders, who gave me my dream. I thanked my mother, because she had sent me to the elders on my ordained quest, and had taught me everything I had known and nothing I was not supposed to know. I left them and set off in the Great Desert to the Kingdom of Heaven above the Earth, wherein lay the divine Sun.
The Sun was in the sky, and I had read that it moved from East to West. I journeyed westward and followed the Sun. It had been hours, and I felt my tongue dry and my legs weaken. My stomach sagged and growled loudly. What was that? The Sun began to set, and a black figure grew behind me.
It was a demon! It was a shadow! I screamed. I had become tired, and thus it had appeared. If I did not feel tired, it would not be there. Why did I feel tired? I only felt that way because my mind was weak. I remembered my training: I was not hungry, and nor was I tired! The demons of the night had tried to possess me to feel that way. I was strong. I marched on. I was strong. I refused to feel.
The Sun was gone. It was night. It was my first night. I had never been in the night before. Nothing could be seen. The Sun was gone, so how could I follow the Sun?
The dark crept around me. Light was gone. What was I to do now? I was alone -- no, I was not alone. I remembered the teachings of my mother -- I was never to feel. If I cowered, then I would be a coward! I would be shamed by them and abandoned, and I would not be abandoned. I could not be abandoned.I felt nothing. I refused to feel anything. There was no darkness. In the darkness, I was alone!
The night devoured me! The cold froze my skin as I shook and knelt into the sand as sharp things rasped my bones and I lay tired, unable to move from the pain, feeling weary and hungry and weak. My body had failed. I would yell it at before, but I could not. My screams were me and weak, and I feared in the dark. I knew nothing. I was weak. What great plainness was the day, and I missed it so thoroughly! All that was gone in the terror of the unknown!
