Chapter 31: The Beginning of One

Maleki:

Where…am I? My eyes open into blackness. I’m not sure what direction is up or down, but the blood isn’t rushing into my head, so that’s a good sign. I can’t see anything around me, but I know for sure that I’m awake and that my eyes are open, almost like I’m underwater in a deep, dark cave. This fluid, though, is denser than water. I shift through the darkness with slow and gentle movements. My ears fill with a humming sound, similar to being underwater while downstream from a waterfall. Quiet thumping echoed externally that followed the hum rhythmically. I could feel the sound in my eyes as it aligned with my heartbeat. The thumping grew louder. I was alive—or at least something in between.

I could not speak or see, but I could think and feel. Although dazed, my equilibrium was returning. My thoughts were less blurry — is that the right word? My mind shifted from thoughts as if I had looked at one thing, closed my eyes, and then looked at another. Bringing things together was difficult, and combining my emotions and interactions was even more challenging. I could barely focus on one thing at a time, much less think and move, or feel and hear. Every action took desire and focus. I floated in a seemingly endless black void with no concept of my surroundings. I tried to push with my legs, but there was nothing to push off of. There wasn’t anything to even push to, for that matter.

I closed my eyes and relaxed my face. Sight wasn’t important if I was bound in darkness, so if I were to understand more, I would need to concentrate on what was useful. With this understanding, I sank into myself and closed my conscious self off from the world around me. What other senses do I no longer require? My nose was useless, and my voice was empty. I brought my lips to a line and let the tenseness in my face disappear. With my arms out to my side and my legs floating underneath me, I reached down through my nerves to feel my surroundings at each layer of my body until it coalesced at my fingertips. Then, I let go of that sense and removed it like the others I no longer needed.

My body was still, almost lifeless. I floated in this open abyss.

Further

A soft and twisting voice trickled through my body and mind like a cold shiver. Was that voice my own? Did I think that? No, this voice wasn’t like any I had ever heard before.

The shock of the new voice forced me out of concentration and awakened all my senses. I focused on the contents of the words that were spoken and attempted their beckoning statement by pushing my thoughts into dormancy and closing myself off from my senses. Darkness was all that existed in this formless place as I lay still. I was closed off from everything. Every sense was forfeited by my consciousness until all that remained were the ideas and thoughts that consumed my waking mind.

I thought of nothing to combat the thought of thinking.

Nothing.

Nothing.

Nothing.

Another layer of darkness shimmered around me as I slipped further out of reality and into the blank blackness.

Void.

The words echoed inside my mind, but I did not resist, keeping my focus on this near-unconscious state.

I floated in…the void. That word was eerily accurate for this place. In this darkness, thousands of white, glimmering dots began to appear, sparkling like stars until all of the black was consumed by the star-like dots. The void became white, and a great swirling motion blurred the black like a smear of paint. The swirling was slow but aggressive — it pulled at me, but I did not resist. The white colours came to life, forming a living light, and the black between everything remained, shaping itself into something even darker. I moved in this wheel of motion for hours, or was it days? I floated ambiguously in the open void around a center point that grew ever closer with each rotation. The center itself was a dark black mass that was starkly different from its surroundings.

It felt inevitable. The center was strong, everlasting. The first thing, and the last. It pulled me in, beckoning me, but I did not fight it and let myself glide closer to its center. How could something be so dark? No, that wasn’t dark — the void was dark…. This was something more pure, an unfiltered black.

Nothing.

This was nothing. And Everything. Yet, more.

Empty.

The voice within me said without tone. It was not a voice, and it did not come from a place, yet it spoke within me, and I understood it. It was less a voice and more a feeling. I felt the words like one feels goosebumps on their arm.

The black circular mass consumed all light that neared it, sucking in the fabrics of reality in one fell swoop. I drifted further in until the center was only a few rotations away. I felt the heaviness of worlds on my entire body. That feeling was comfortable now; the weight of others was nothing.

One last rotation.

I fought against forces that pressed down against me. They pushed me down, and despite my state of floating, I felt like I was on my knees, fighting with everything in my bones to stay upright. Slowly and steadily, I outstretched my fingers first, and then my wrist, and then my entire arm until it punctured the black mass of void.

My soul felt like it was being dragged across a thousand miles in an instant. In that same instant, I was somewhere different, with colours that vibrated in the same humming rhythm I had heard earlier. A thudding heartbeat resounded every second, and a static, growing pulse grew in between. The colours exploded, and a new place formed before my eyes. I floated above a world that was unfathomably large and filled with bright greens, yellows, and blues. The planet before me was encircled by four, in their own right, large moons. Each flickered with a unique dull colour. I recognized each of them, as well as the tilted world before me — my world, that is. Aster. The ringed one. The world stood still, but its astral ring turned ever so slightly.

I looked at the moons, searching for my favourite one. Titan was furthest away, but its blue tint was so easy to spot in the darkness that surrounded it.

Was this what our planet looked like? Was this what space was like? I knew it was far, even if it looked so close sometimes, but this- this distance is too much for the word ‘far.’ The gap between celestial objects overwhelmed me with a sense of dread — a cosmic dread. Every argument, no, every conflict, becomes meaningless on a scale this vast. Yet, it did matter: the arguments, the people, everything else that we familiarized ourselves with. I turned away from the moons and set my eyes on the vast sea of nothingness that lay beyond. Besides the Sun, there was a void of nothing. The distance between the moons and Aster was incomparable compared to the distance between our Sun and Aster. How long is the distance between our Sun and the next star? That question sent shivers of fear throughout my body. How vast was the void? I could see it before me, and the next twinkling star was barely more than a grain of sand. After the fear that made me seem incalculably small, I felt comfort.

Realizing it returned everything to me. My grandfather's words broke through the veil: “Control what you can. Worry not about what you cannot.” I began to remember it all, where I was before, what I was doing. The state of me. The planet sped away from my view, or I from it, until it stood so far in the distance that all I could make out was a golden blue circle that twitched with light. To complete my promise, I had died…

Alive

The voice whispered in a mellowed hum.

I tried to deny the voice’s statement, but it echoed inside of me, bouncing off the outer layers of my skin. The voice turned into a burning demand. Aster shook violently, and the darkness I had slipped into within my mind was gone. Again, I floated in the original abyss that was outside of myself. The bliss I once held was gone with the worlds I had visited.

I reached deep and screamed into the black liquid. I writhed as my lungs deflated from the guttural yell that was trapped in the dense, dark substance.

“MIKO!” I yelled violently. Silence shook the void until even the humming was gone.

Gravity

The voice slithered through my mind.

“Who are you?” I desperately yelled.

I felt anger. I was lost. I shook vigorously, my body a tremor in the surrounding choking liquid.

What the hell is ‘gravity’? I pleaded inside my mind. I searched for definitions or explanations that I might have buried.

Feel

The voice wandered within me.

You want me to feel? I thought solemnly.

Feel? I questioned.

I flushed my anger, and the tempest within drained to the outside of my skin. I breathed a deep breath, the deepest my lungs had ever reached. What did I feel? What anger did I have left? I brought Miko to the end. I did what I promised. I have no anger, no broken promises, no wanton desires. I fulfilled it all, didn’t I? It wasn’t enough. I need confirmation. Miko still needs me. He’s not strong enough yet. My anger turned to passion, and I felt something.

Weight

The voice almost sounded excited.

I shook even more violently, like an earthquake ripping through the ground and spiking massive cracks throughout its path. Each of my fists clenched, and the weight of everything around me lessened. The dense fluid softened, and I slipped through it like feet on ice. The thumping grew more audible as I neared something. My eyes had been closed, but the warmth of something brighter forced my eyelids open out of curiosity. The humming filled the entirety of my mind; it grew into an audible reverberation that forced my palms to my head as I fought the agonizing sound. The red hue shifted into a blistering bright white. I forced my eyelids closed, straining to hide them from the light.

Wake

The voice said with finality and actual tone.

My tremor increased as I clenched my entire back and fought the pain that attacked my senses. I felt it all. Everything — Nothing. Then I fell, not far, but hard. With a resounding thud, I hit something solid, and I gasped. Air filled my lungs, and I coughed in a pounding fit as fluid exited them. The pain slipped away as quickly as it arrived, and I felt oxygen fill my lungs as I leaned over with my palms digging into the ground. Soft, clover-like grass was clutched within each of my hands. I waited, letting my mind relax into this new state of living. I had found myself on the other side of some dark space, but I had returned. My eyelids batted, blinking quickly to combat the bright light that tried to enter. After a few moments, I wiped at my eyes, pulling the welled-up teardrops away to the edges of my face.

In front of me stood two silhouettes. I blinked harder, trying to intercept their being through flashes of light. Colours began to filter through the bright white. Browns, greens, and yellows filled the surroundings of the two figures. They were equal in height, with features almost similar in this half-blind state. I focused hard, and with one last blink, my vision returned entirely.

Miko stood before me. He was taller than I remembered him. His features were less scrawny; he was still a child, but older, and still my brother. He cracked his knuckles into his palm with a smile.

“Done sleeping?” Miko said with a cocked brow.

“H…How?” I murmured.

“You’re slowing down, brother. I’m done getting lapped. For once in my life, I’m ahead of you.”