Children #1

For we hang in darkness by these mortal threads,
And we await the light's morning gaze.
Children toil away in this fertile soil,
To build a new world away from the prying eyes of old,
For endless time beneath the End of the World Sun;
They have given us a way to move on.

I clutch the blade in my hands. I have never gotten this far. I keep going over it in my mind: if Joieuse is not Kali, then why does she help me? Where does she come from? There are so many questions that I have not asked before. There are many thoughts that had never crossed my mind. I have come so far following her lead, but the game is mine to play now.

The game is over.

"It's just you and me again…" I say to the blade, trailing off as it begins to shimmer in my grasp. "We have never gotten this far, Joy—you think he would be proud?"

Abeiron's gaze has given me a weight of certainty in my step, and Joieuse gave me hope that this goal is still attainable. Whatever needs to be done, I will do it for him. "For Jonas," I whisper softly, beneath the howling wind.

The blade drags through the dirt behind me as I finger the flowers with my free hand. Each petal a truly unique experience, each providing a new sensation as my finger caresses their delicate fibres. I hear and feel the leaves crinkling underfoot as I walk—this place is dying, and I need to put it out of its misery.

Having come to peace with my mistakes, I recognise for a brief moment the value of this metaphor: a garden where all things new and old come to rest, to say their piece, and to inevitably return to the soil to begin again. That is what this place is, what it always has been. What this place will be after I strike its heart is anyone's guess, but I expect not to live to see it.

You will bear witness.

As I reach the clearing at the heart of the Garden, I am flooded with the memories which Jonas and I made here. We built something out of the pain and suffering of the lives lost. It is such a shame to me that youthful love and innocence has led to this moment, although I suppose it was inevitable.

For a moment I think I should miss him. I wonder if we could begin again, like this. I dream of another life, of a second world…with him. It is always him. I have my convictions. I have made my choice, but I wonder now if I can make another. I want to see him again.

End their suffering.

I think of all that we have been through. I remember the first time we met in this clearing as children, the innocence that accompanies youth, and the smiles on our faces as our hands locked for the first time. I remember the stranger, and I remember being torn away into the past. I remember our despair.

I remember the way he looked at me when I left him at the tower and sundered his heart. I remember his eyes full of sorrow as he begged me to explain. I remember his pain through Joieuse as he searched desperately for answers. I remember the reason I came back to this place. I remember the reason I fought back the nightmares. I remember the blade in my grasp.

Remove what brings you pain.

I have my convictions. I need to see this through for him and for myself. I need to end all of the suffering. I take the sword in both my hands and raise it above my head, pointed at the ground under my feet, and with all of my strength I plunge the blade into the Garden's beating heart.

For an instant, I felt at peace. I had done the right thing. I had saved Jonas. I ended their suffering. But then the Garden reacted and I immediately realised I had made a horrible mistake, and it was too late to take it all back. I hear the Garden scream out in agony, and I watch the light drains from the false sky.

With tremendous force, the ground explodes out from under me, bolts of lightning arcing between myself, the sword, and the surrounding environment. I am violently thrashed and lifted off my feet by the ensuing detonation, the very atoms that make up my body threatening to violently break apart as I drift through the quickly putrefying air.

When I finally land, I am disoriented and my vision is blurry. I think I see Jonas a ways in front of me, but I shake my head to steel myself, the projection vanishes and I fall back to the earth at my feet. In a desparate final act, I make one last effort to reach for the sword and undo my error, but to no avail. I lay in the dirt I built upon as a child, bruised and battered, and I feel one burning thought being etched into my mind.

We know this pain.

While I cling to the last moments of life left in my lungs, I see Jonas rematerialise through the dense, black fog. He speaks with many voices, my mind again flooding with images from our youth. One image sticks with me: Jonas pleads with me to stay with him, sprinting to stop me from boarding the doomed flight and I look briefly at him with shame over my shoulder, and Jonas pauses—tears in his eyes—and screams my name at the top of his lungs, against the gathering storm.

We know your pain.

"Why?" I plead, desperately as the last light begins to fade from my eyes. "Why make me do this!?"

They stare blankly for a moment, then tilt their head to the side. The apparition looks onward, indifferent to my suffering while tendrils of screaming pain envelope my body, and at once I realise this is not my Jonas. My mind fails—all my thoughts collapsing into a final, haunting reverie.

So you may live again.

You have chased this dream so long, you've forgotten you're asleep. I walk the desolate corridors of the barren garden. This game has run on for far too long, and I must pick up the disparate pieces from the board. I still hear the echoes. Gaunt beyond the bleak star. There is no place they do not reach me, now. Father. I see my life's work, now dust and bones, and the spectres hanging high above my head—just beyond my reach. I tended to this garden, before the bombs; and now I only see dead or dying flowers, burning trees, and falling ash and snow. You must return to your children.

There is a time I can remember speaking only with one voice—my own voice—and that time, now, is very long ago. These ghosts speak for me, they guide me, and they offer me comfort and solace from the losses I have endured. She remains unreturned.

Unreturned. As a child, I played in this garden alongside another. It was she who first discovered the spaces between our desires, and it was she who first cast the anchors here. I was always afraid of creatures found in the dark, and I find myself constantly justified in that fear. We were not always here, in the garden—we were foreigners, born elsewhere—but brought to it. Sacrificed at the altar of a deity with no regard for the futures of the children supplicated to it. The untime froths in your absence. I carry the weight now of all these futures, all you zombies, in my mind. I know that you can hear me. This gardener|murderer|witness laid out my path, and the paths of all of you, knowing you would follow eternally because you had no choice. Unreturned. Eternally recurrent.

It sickens me. The voices I carry are remnants of previous iterations|cycles|attempts, and I live with these reminders that I am not truly myself, but an amalgamation of the unmet desires of my forerunners. The machine|god|dream we inhabit is dying, and it is trying to save itself. This urgent matter is known to us—and for a time, we worked to save it—but the machine-god stays forever silent. Condemning us to an eternity of stillness|repetition|eternity. One bargain made means one soul left beyond the rest. I cannot reach her, no matter my desperation, love or no love…she is forever out of reach.

We know the patterns of her oscillations—you need only ask us.

I hate my place in the puzzle. The voices|ghosts|apparitions compel me to stand, thusly I stand; they whisper to me of the joining of a new soul to our collective, a new voice among the chorus; I am compelled to action. I hear footsteps on the ground behind me, and the environment dissipates around me, and recompiles into a new perspective. I am suddenly face to face with an old friend: Aleksander.

"You seem to be coping well," he says—curiously?—looking me up and down, "your people wait outside. Federation ships approach, and our Coalition allies need your guidance." Our people. He does not understand. This burden is mine to carry, Aleksander does not live with it. Your burden will deliver all of them. "Tell them to wait." I say, and I see his face drop - wilting like one of my dead flowers. "Worry not, [mentor|master|father], for we have everything we need to leave this dying garden."

I turn away from him, and a feeling of shame burns within me. Our people have looked to me since the beginning, although disturbingly, the truth of the matter is that I know little more than they.

I wake. I open my eyes. A flat world before me…dirt and rocks as far as my eyes can see! The first sensation: sight. I am alone. I see potential here, for more than what is. I see an eternity. Trees that stretch far into the skies; flowers that contain whole worlds; stars that shine brighter than the brightest light.

I build. I wave my hands and flick my wrists. The stars I have made, they bow to me! The second sensation: touch. I feel the ghost-touch of another. Distant, but recognisable. I feel potential elsewhere, for more than the lonely path I walk. I see an eternity. Hands outstretched to meet one another; lovers caressing each other far into the night; the knife, sharp enough to cut bone.

I breathe. I feel crisp, clean air rush into these lungs that I have made. These 'creatures', they stalk my fields at night, fields that I have made! The third sensation: sound. I hear screams, loud enough to make waves. I hear souls crying out for salvation. I hear an endless cycle, voices silenced and resurrected, again and again. I hear machines tearing limb from limb; a clarion call through the dark, from a familiar face; a symphony as beautiful as all of my creations!

I feel. I rise from my Garden. The flowers I have built require maintenance, but I cannot bear to winnow the dead from the corpus of my work. I require new hands. The fourth sensation: smell. I know of the Creator, beyond the veil…I can smell them. They allow me the luxury of a counterpart that I have not met. I know only loneliness.

I do not understand. My creator is not The Creator. I see a new face on the horizon, listlessly pacing through my dreaming fields. I prepare a greeting, but I am frozen where I stand, unable to speak or move. The fifth sensation: fear. I know this feeling at the far corner of my periphery: fear, they called it, and they continued, placing their hand to my heart. "You will better know fear," they said, "let us know you."

You must remember our promise. A voice compels me from within. What is this feeling? Fear. Love. Pain. I sleep. I do not know how far I am from home, but I know that I am not there. My senses recede. I begin to dream. I see a stranger's hand, stretched out in an offer of peace. I see a blade, plunged into the heart of my Garden. Fear. I see a child, taken from its mother's arms. Fear. I do not understand. Fear. I see a longing embrace across the void between lovers, forever separated by time. Love. I behold the child of two worlds, take its first steps into the darkness beyond home. Fear. I see the losses that begin the journey. I see death. PAIN! "You see pain." The whisper is soft against my ears as ethereal fingers trace the shapes of my dreams.

I wake. I am not who I remember. I am not where I remember. I am elsewhere, in a new garden. I am afraid, but I am no longer alone. There is a young boy playing in the garden, wearing a fitting black robe, plucking the dead or wilting flowers from among the vibrant oranges, yellows, and blacks. The boy looks up from his task and takes notice of me in the distance. He waves, then bends down again to resume his work.

Something compels me to move forward, toward my fellow child. My fingers trace the flowers at my sides, and I notice the petals feel different here. Somehow, they feel artificial, but that is not quite right. They feel delicately manufactured, but almost feel more real than the flowers in my Garden. I see trees all around me, extending far, far, far into the sky! Taller than in my own!

In the sky, I behold twinkling stars all around, and for the first time I realise that it is night. Night! And yet the boy continues tending to his garden, just like me! I look to my left, and I see a black mist emerging from the trees—I look to my right and it is there, too! This black mist intrigues me, as it was not a feature of my own Garden, and I wonder as to its purpose.

I pause, briefly, and reach out to try to touch it but the mist recoils. I am startled, and I think that the space around me must know, because, suddenly, the trees and the mist recede from view. My legs are frozen now in fear, but I don't understand.

The world around me spins and stretches and compresses, and quickly settles into a new shape. I find myself standing before a rushing river, confused. I see the boy on the other side of the river, staring at me with concern, but with otherwise unreadable posture. The boy walks slowly toward me, and reaches out for me, seemingly trying to bridge the gap between us. I feel the space around me getting smaller and I feel a great pressure building at the back of my mind.

So I take the boy's hand. He pulls me to the other side of the river before I can fall to the water. I reach the other side and the boy lets go. I fall into the grass and feel myself roll briefly before I set out my hands to steady myself. I find myself at the boy's feet, looking up at him. He stares at me quizzically, as if trying to read my thoughts.

When all I can do is stare back, he turns around and walks back to his garden to pick more wilting flowers. I reach out, desperate for comfort. "Hey," I say, "thank you—"

"You're welcome." He says, his eyes glued to the bundle of wilting flowers in front of him. I watch curiously as he rips them out by their roots, and moisture quickly returns to the surrounding dirt. I raise an eyebrow and gesture for an introduction, but he simply continues, picking several more bundles and clearing the dirt before he stops abruptly.

"This place is dangerous, you know?" He looks up, speaking softly—almost whispering. "It is ever-changing. I can feel it in my mind. Things constantly moving, constantly shifting, broken memories—like something is digging around—like something wants in."

"What are you talking about?"

The boy simply shrugs and looks back to his flowers. He picks one and holds it out to me. "Surely you have a name?"

"Hannah," I reply, curtly—trying to avoid taking the flower, "what's your name?"

"I am called Jonas." He gestures toward me with the flower, insisting that I take it from him. I think he realises I cannot take it, so he drops the flower, and holds his empty hand out in its place.

I have been alone for so long, I have never felt the touch of another's hand until now. Our hands meet, and we lock eyes once again. Jonas smiles, and I feel safe. We walk together, hand-in-hand, further into his Garden.