Rising Sun

While the others lay sleeping, he sat up, gazing out into the eternal darkness, the empty starless night surrounding them, their heaven and their hell, their north and south, their east to west; no place to turn to for light; no place but each other. Each of them was a mere shadow, an outlined memory of what was, with a burning center, a flaming heart breaking the monotonous night. They all slept together in this utter vacuum, this black void, this nothingness, clumping together like twigs and bramble caught up in the swirls of an eddy. It was peaceful sleep, yet when they woke, there was no peace.

Their sun-wanting days were all the same: The first waking words uttered would be some accusation, and before an hour the screaming would start. And the screaming would go on, and they would all start screaming, and they would surround him and beat him. It was his fault, apparently. What was his fault, he couldn’t remember. And they would go on screaming at him, circling him, striking at him, until they tired of it all, finally falling to the ground asleep as they were now. And he would be left to wonder why.

He arose, and took his first step out into that tireless night away from the haunting furies. There was no ground for him to step out onto, just the realization that he was falling, always falling, falling without that final, terrible ground—he was falling into nothing. And twisting and turning in that darkness, he looked up to see his companions’ dimly fading light.

As he fell, the darkness was pierced by a melody, and he heard the soft whispers of harmony invading his sore ears. The language was unknown to him, if indeed it was language. He was unsure. The music overwhelmed, bringing him into painful ecstasy, as if his whole body were burning with pleasure. He could not stand it; he could feel the weight of that glory destroying him, and yet he would not, for all the world, have moved away from it, indeed he wished he could fall faster towards it.

And he burned in the darkness, burned brighter with every moment, rising into the sky to usher in the long-forgotten day, a comet, a star, a planet, a sun shining in the heavens.