The Monochrome Shadows

Chapter 1: Born Into Darkness

The warmth of a dark, black, womb, something nothing can recreate, children born from it can never return no matter how much the body may want to at times. You can open your eyes but never see a thing but the small blinks of light and muffled sounds, just the feeling of comfort and protection, but when it's time for you to come out of that protective darkness your born screaming, gasping for air as your feeble weak body adapts to the bright lights and new sensations that you would experience.

But in this instance, in this voice of darkness, these small bodies of monochrome cannot leave the comfort, but can still be woken up with a dire gasp for breath. The screams of these children of darkness are silenced with a calm touch, their dark mother could only keep them quiet until their awakening many months later.

This moment is when the child would finally open its eyes, the small pin prink spheres being so sensitive to any light they would cry and scream once again. Their mother would try to shush them, surrounding and swaddling them in a soft and warm blanket of darkness to attempt keep them silent as the others stirred from the noise. She would take them to the surface of the dark pool of shadows, allowing them to break out of the connective dark film that would keep them in the deep pool, finally breaking out of the collective womb. She would help the weaker ones, she wasn't barbaric like the few that would come after her and the ones that came before her. She didn't want to see the ones she cared for just be smothered by the new darkness they would inhabit. The small area was monitored by the few helpers the Mother called The Acolytes. They would be scooping the children up and helping form their bodies by looking into the future of their memories. They knew what would happen, by seeing from their point of view. The memories would be from their past lives, to the present, and then into the future. They would use the images and words they heard and saw to shape limbs and senses.

No child would be perfect, they'd retain their pitch black monochrome skin, the pin prink eyes, but some wouldn't have certain parts or other strange deformities. The nose not existing, the ears being slits, a mouth replaced by a zipper, the list was endless and senseless enough, but not for the Acolytes, they understood it perfectly. They would smile with bright, almost glowing jagged teeth as they dressed the children up in their future clothing, happily humming to keep them distracted by the new sound or vibrations if they couldn't hear, the clothing would be big but the new shadows loved the feeling, being reminded of the place they left just a few minutes ago.

It would be on one day that multiple small cries would be heard it wasn't the most that was heard but still enough, the mother would wake from her slumber, her soft yellow eyes would be the first light the children would see, she wrapped each one up, her clawed fingers delicately weaving a blanket from the shadows. She smiled, placing the first one on the edge, a common male shadow child, pushing him lightly as she cut and scrapped at the grey film that had covered him. She patted his small end lightly, getting him to tumble out of the film. She watched as he was picked up, going off to help his new siblings, grabbing the second crier from deep in the pool, another male as she expected. She shushed him silently, cradling him in her arms as she placed him up on the surface, waiting as he managed to get out of his own film, she was glad for that. She listened for the next cry, it coming from a part of the pool she would have to always keep particular care of, due to the children that were spawned from that part of the gene pool.

She found the child, one she had called Watchman since she had found him. It was rare for the Mother to name the children, but this little one he had four eyes, not from the helpers, but he had the extra set of eyes from a small mutation. She swooped to his slightly younger brother, holding the little Watchman in the cleft of her arm, grabbing the other shadow, before placing the two on the shore as a female Acolyte chuckled weakly seeing that it was going to be a busy day. They picked them up as they hugged each other in fear, shaking before looking at their older brothers with a tilted lightly misshapen heads. Their mother sunk back into the black tar like pool, looking around as she sunk lower, grabbing a little but thicker shadow, he was napping as he curled up quietly, making muffed "coos". She smiled happily, placing him on the shore, where he was quickly picked up.