Ocean spread before him. Time will be the name of it.
Perspective: Keeper of Memory
Tic…
Round red mechanical clock on the locker, hands showing 4:13 (pm).
…Toc…
Some are annoyed by this ticking sound. But think about how many things the transparent eye of this clock has seen…
…Tic…
Birth of a child…
…Toc…
Punishment of the child for bad grades…
…Tic…
A writing-book with hand-written Character of Raskolnikov in "Crime and Punishment" . Pen’s rod touching the paper a line below the title, embraced by thin fingers with roughly cut nails.
…Toc…
Someone rings the doorbell. Young man puts down the pen, barely finishing writing a letter "F". He comes to the on-door speakerphone hanging on the wall beside a double bed (a small hall behind that wall). Young man presses the button on the speakerphone that turns on the camera outside the apartment, but the camera does not see anyone.
…Tic…
He is returning to his room, when he hears the doorbell ring again. Speakerphone does not show a soul, so…
…Toc…
…he comes up to the door and looks into the peephole – no one. He thinks for less than a second and reaches the handle, to…
…Tic…
Time has stopped.
No more tic, no more toc. I can do anything I want with him right now. I mean both the time and this young man. But I hold back for the time being. Powers so tremendous are starting their moves right here, right now, that the last tic can be considered a crucial one. But no one knows it. Only me. But I will tell you this story. Maybe, even show you if you use enough of your imagination. It’s a long story with love, betrayal, inner conflicts and world-scale paradoxes, adventures, investigations, and glorious battles. We do have some Time, so I will start from the very beginning. Because…
Toc…
My darkness stretches its tentacles snuggling the tree of light in a feverish hug as if fungus penetrating cells. But it’s not decomposing the tree, not pulling it down trying to drown the tree in itself. It supports it so it won’t fall, reinforces it, so that even the mightiest of axe won’t be able to cut it, gives structure for the tree to grow even closer to the endless sky. Tree’s roots may be chopped to nothingness, forgotten in the mouths of earthworms, but pieces remain to suck the earth dry and empower the trunk.
There are other trees out there, snapping under windy weight, dry branches scarring the soil on fall. Burning to ashes, smoldering like tiny bugs on the sun, becoming food for their kindred. Some just dim, as if they were never there. Some are overpowered by the killing kindness darkness provides. Life turns to death, death turns to life, life turns to death... All of them die for me. To feed my darkness, chewing my light. Its hunger diminishes, it spits out pieces of light: acorns to give birth to some new life.
The light grows stronger; the darkness gets tight; what next from the acorns will dare to arise?
It’s a bit sad, when you think back to how it all started. How pitch-black it all was. How… Empty in its eternity of nothingness. But something changed: eternity got fractured, quantified, and gave birth to Time. How, why? I doubt anyone knows it now or even remembers the fact.
The Darkness eternal had to find its end, thus dot of Light its growth began. It grew and grew, feeding from Dark, tormenting it wildly to brighten own spark. Searching for form it turned into liquid and soon a tree from the Darkness was lifted. Light danced with the tree, giving it strength, so fruit it would bear (so sweet) in the end. Light slipped into fruit, so empty inside, and started to fill it with own divine. Oceans of water, valleys of green; no sight of danger forever seen.
But Darkness felt hurt, betrayed, and crippled: jealousy rose, the Light to belittle. How could that be, that something it bore was out-the-way better in all of its form. When Light was asleep as cotton of peace, the Darkness got close to fulfill its caprice. The sun was clouded and witnessed the night when Darkness began its treacherous fight.
It hovered above the Light unapprised, wishing only to start the demise. Gusts of the Dark forced against skin, forming the belly, filling with sin. Tentacles tightening around Light’s throat, her innocent chest starting to bloat. Cotton is stretched to all four of runs, making it look like the legs and the arms. Darkness is skewing the Light to be bound: it’s barely able to draw breath though its mouth.
Light is scared, she is in pain, Darkness is filing her up to the veins. When Darkness is laughing, she screams for some help, her voice is as tiny as that of a whelp. Creatures of different stature and heed swarmed to the weak, led by their creed. They bit the Dark and gnawed at its bones, got thirsty on blood, filling their throats. It was overpowered, the Darkness, it fled, to the roots of the tree it had to be thread.
But that was not all: the changes went on; the aftermath was too soon to be told. Creatures that helped by protecting the Light, grew tired of waiting: they wanted to fight! They tasted the sweetness, the bitter of blood and now all they wanted – to hurt, to corrupt. But loyalty sworn they dared not break and thus they made their final escape.
They came to Darkness in search of a fight and that lonely fact filled him with delight. He promised to give them most endless of wars, as long as the night they would have adored. He trained them and nourished, he made them his slaves, preparing an army only him to obey. He has not forgotten, his hatred remained, how the child of his own dared to betray.
Meanwhile, the Light, under greatest of pains was bleeding from wounds, on her that remained. Gray liquid was pouring from all of her holes: from eyes and her mouth and pores on her soles. Lightheaded and weak, regaining her wits, she sat against green tree, her hand with a spritz. She asked all the animals to go on patrol: she will stop the Darkness no matter the toll.
Millennia went in fighting eternal, with numerous fruit being bread and then fallen. The tree of the Light entwined in the Dark bore fruits of the world for the years to be passed. Darkness corrupted them, Darkness destroyed, sucked out their lives to feel its own void. While Darkness and Light divert their gaze, another creature has started its way.
The liquid that left Light after fight with the Dark was mixture of both and it was so stark. It was a witness of perilous wars, and it knew from the start that it was a bore. It gained all its strength from the blood that they spilled, it yelled at them: "Stop!" And stop they will. The tree with its fruits and Dark as its soil blew up to the pieces, as if never been born. The world was destroyed to be created anew, to live by the rules the Gray only knew.
At least that was true for the billions of years and for billions of worlds, until someone new discovered them all, the secrets of Gray before never told.
