Moonlight Sonata

•15 - Truth•

Truth: the quality or state of being true.

•She•

Everything in front of me was clear.

But there was no green grass. There was no blue sky. There were no birds, no flowers, no joys to live by. There were no trees - just skeleton branches. No streams - just muddy green slime.

Everything I had seen and felt, till date, had only been in my mind. Not a reflection of reality, not a resonance of truth, but a figment of mere imagination, a conjecture of my own view.

Tears rushed to my eyes, as I felt immeasurably lost. And so, leaving Him alone on the porch, I ran towards the woods on my own.

Everything I'd learned had turned upside down, and only the contrasts remained profound. The summers I'd known were lined with frost, winters for me brought birds and bees. Spring lay despondent, lonely on its own, and autumn was filled with lush green trees.

Red was blue, and pink was white. Night was day, and day was night.

How many times had I looked up, and tried to count the stars around a sun? How many times had I conversed with flowers, mistaking the mental echo of my own sound? How many times had I imagined a rainbow, getting every single colour wrong? How many times had I believed blood to be able to make me strong?

Oh! Blood. Oh! My stranger. Oh! The wonderful garden of my dreams. Were not a mirror, but wishful thinking - a fancy of my whims.

I sat down now, before a stone - a place I'd visited so often before. Crickets fluttered all around, like magical balls of buzzing sound. And I stared in fascination, into the face of a fear long gone, but shuddered as in the distance, an ugly crow cawed on.

Oh! How differently I'd imagined them to be - these dreadful, ugly, frightening beasts. Their cry - so pitiful before, only made me shy away now. But the crickets drew my attention again, and among them I saw a vague form.

"Are you a soul?" I asked nervously.

She nodded silently, in return.

"Welcome back, my friend," she said. "It's been ages since you've come."

"But I've come almost every day," I cried.

"No," they said. "Not like this. Ages ago, you came here one night, you named Him Leron - 'the song is mine.' Just like He brought you, a few days back, and pronounced you Aderyn - 'the eagle of the dark'. You were losing everything you had, just like He did right in front of you. You look so distressed, I see, but honey, please be calm. For you were exactly what He is now, you were in his shoes, too."

"I know it's all destined, all of it, but what happened to my beliefs? Why have I been thus fooled? You souls lurk here all the time, but when in need, where were you?"

"We were always here, child. But you felt too much, and saw too little. You dreamed vividly, but your hearing was faint. You lived so much, yet lived so less."

"But I liked the way I lived," I said.

"And that's exactly why, I'm afraid, you were yanked right out of it. Hell is not a pot of fire, dear, or a volcano erupting every day. Hell is not screams and nightmares, hell is not cauldrons of blood. Hell is a cycle of gain and loss, Hell is shattering dreams apart. Hell is delusion, Hell is perfection, Hell is ethereal joy. And Hell is losing those, over and over - Hell is broken toys.

"You protest for being deluded, but only think this: why? For all He did was explain His view, and you painted your own picture, without review. Your stranger, too -a part of your mind - did try to bring you in line, and yet your wild imagination - a part of your mind as well - avoided every sensible thing your stranger had to tell. How can you protest against something, which you have created on your own?

"And when you'll go back, you'll do the same, which He did to you. With all your heart, you will explain, ask Him to imagine, ask Him to feel. You'll become His very own personal shield. You'll be His cage, you'll be his clouds, and yet He'll bless you, for all His self-concocted thoughts.

"He'll see you as prettier than you are, taller than you stand, higher than you soar. He'll run wild with his imagination, no matter how accurately you describe, and insist that reality is, in fact, reflected in his mind.

"And one day He'll regain His eyes, and having lived in fantasy so long, will be as disappointed as you are right now, but by then you will again be gone.

For as I say, a cycle this is: the simple cycle of Hell. You create heaven here, and then, with your own hands, you ring its knell."

Silence took over, and the soul took her leave, saying that it was time. And I was left alone, staring at the joint gravestone; it said:

'The song of the Eagle is mine.'

-----------------------THE END---------------------