Him and i - Dreams of trauma

"Next, comes a fascinating story, received just this morning on email. It seems like someone got up early in the morning or was so eager to send the story that didn't even sleep. Because let me tell you, 4 AM it's not an hour you write and send stories. So, for all this, let's make the story heard. I hope you'll like it. We are very curious who could've created such a story, but sadly the author remains anonymous because they either forgot or didn't want to sign their name, or the title of the story. We know at least the mail address, [email protected] seems to be our author. Uuuuh, very conspicuous. And very serious with their anonymity, they even used a temporary email address.

I don't know what kind of person wrote this story, we really hope they'll call our station at: 360 360 to have a live talk, but I got to say, I really love the story, it got me. The way it's written, like an autobiography, but no more spoilers, I leave it for you to experience it. To not go any longer, as I already held you too much in suspense, it's time to start."

A nice, relaxing, kind of like an elevator music signals the starting of the story. The song stops suddenly. Odd noises come from the radio, and then a high pitch. So loud that it's deafening. My sight becomes murky, I feel my eyeballs shaking in my head from the noise, and my sight with them. I try to keep the car straight and slow down gently to not loose control of the car. I hope I'll be able to come to a dead stop before I cause an accident. The sound wheel is not working, I'm rotating it without any effect. The noise becomes painfully distracting, I can't. I hit the brakes hard.

The car stops. Everything stops.

"Let me drive a little, don't listen to this, story. Just go to sleep and dream whatever you want."

A black stream goes across my field of view, from left to right, quick enough to not make anything from it. I start hearing honks from behind, and a blaring one from a truck on the right. I look to the right, where the stream ended, it's the same car from this morning. Car from the security company my father works for. If I hadn't stopped like I did, it would've hit me. It was intentionally. It's the same car…I look again but it's gone, again. No sign of the car ever being here.

The honks from behind keep blaring, I get on going, but I drive slowly this time. I'm still shocked from what happened. And the radio saved me again. I'm trying to remember, or to figure how the driver of that car looked like, but I can't. No figure or face comes to mind, like there was no one in that car. And the voice…I look around my car, but I find no one. But I could've sworn that someone spoke to me, close. The voice…

The voice said to go to sleep, and let it drive. What's happening? I'd like to stop the car, take a pause, but I need to find George first, I can't stop until I do. I don't have time to try and figure out what…

I keep on driving towards Brasov. There's still much road ahead of me. The silence is once again interrupted by the radio that saved me. This time it's all real, I feel it. The elevator song comes back. It stops and then starts a man's voice, narrating so beautifully. Black.

 *

Darkness. Loneliness. Sadness. I'm welcomed by these feelings at birth. I barely just got brought to life, but alone, in this nothingness, passed maybe an infinity already. I'm so alone. I don't want to be alone anymore. Why am I alone? Am I really alone? Is there anyone? Anyone. Anything. I don't want to be alone anymore. Help! I can't see anything. I'm lighting up. I think I see something. I see darkness, but it's outlined, its edge formed by mine. We occupy all. Light here, darkness there. We are separated by an invisible border. Now that I finally made light and can finally see I'm not alone, I have to communicate with the other. Does it know I'm here? Why am I feeling lonely again?

"I can see you."

Nothing. I don't hear, don't feel anything. I'm still alone.

"Speak!"

"My, my, but you're a lousy one. Enough, I'm awake, I'm awake."

"You are darkness."

"I see, and you are light."

I'm not alone, but I still can't touch Darkness. We are separated. Even if I'm not alone anymore, I still feel lonely.

"I want to…"

"Come."

I get closer. I try to shine towards her, not too much, I'm afraid that I'd light everything. A single ray of light it's enough. We are one. Merged. It's incredible. It's light and darkness into the same space. Into the same time. The matter dance is beautiful, it tickles me. The loneliness from earlier was replaced by the opposite. I feel the warm and maternal protection of Darkness. I feel that everything she wants is to care for me. It's the first thing that I saw, or I'm the first thing she saw. Anyway, we already felt the same.

"I love you!"

"I love you!"

Time passes, and we…even if we were in love, one more than the other…we begin to feel lonely once more. Even our pure, infinite, maternal -or paternal- love, wasn't enough to show what we feel one for the other. Instantly, aeons passed, and aeons pass for each moment. Time is too short for us, and too long, in this sea of nothing. We must do something.

She proposed to make another. No, said I. And thus, our first rule came into being. We are not allowed to make another one like us, from us. Reason being, when three equal forces exist, two will be stronger than one. And also, jealousy would come between us. And we are not to make then more than one either. For this is how sides come into being. I didn't have to explain much, she understood and agreed immediately.

And then she came with another idea. To start making, just creating, out of us, inanimate matter. I didn't like this either, but it could solve our biggest problems, boredom, and Darkness' desire to create. I didn't want for her to find something to replace me so easily, I hadn't said yes yet. But those weren't the reasons, not at all. My trust and love for Darkness was immense, so those were just things to fool myself with. I just, hadn't done this before, I was afraid, it was my first time, and I was feeling a little forced. But no, I was simply scared, of not being able to give everything to her, everything she wants, to please her beyond measure…I wasn't ready yet but…

Time passed, and we concluded that it was necessary, for this relationship to go further, to evolve. Darkness was much delighted. We had to do it, to show our love for each other, so we started creating. We hugged, and pressed our matter to each other, and condensed until we became infinitesimal smaller than we knew we can become, and we held it as much as we could, but we couldn't any longer, so we exploded.

And together, we gave birth to the universe. It was wonderful. So many pieces of light and so many patches of darkness, spread everywhere. Time finally got form, and we weren't prisoners into the same moment anymore. Space came into being, and we weren't prisoners into the same spot anymore. Unable to move. No. We could finally move, but that meant we could create space between us… And space was created…

Our very own creation. It was incredible, how we explode and scattered, and created our own sandbox, boundless, in which we started to give form to our ideas. Even if I thought that this transformation, will diminish our love for the other…it wasn't so. Our love evolved. We were more in love than ever before. We were creating planets, stars, galaxies, the entire universe, together. We were creating for each other. Our love was now infinite. It couldn't ever end anymore. We were building our love, together, creating new planets, comet trajectories, entire stars and planets and their movements. We orchestrated the entire movement and expansion of the universe. We were playing, competing in our own creations. But…

As no thing lasts forever, our own good thing wasn't above all, and its end was close. But we didn't know, who ever does…?

I was creating things in a simpler way, using my feelings, my emotions, and anything complicated that had to fulfil some requirements before working, I would simply force it to be as I wanted.

Darkness created differently, diligently. She was using her mind, making complicated rules and laws that held everything, even my things, together, in a perfect, calculated, harmony. Absolutely every creation of her, even the first, are tied together, work together, and follow a plan. If one thing didn't go according the plan, everything would collapse. But that didn't ever happen. It felt limited for me, to have so many boundaries imposed on her creative process. But she never, ever, touched my creations. She would modify, for as long as it was needed, and as much as it was needed, her creations, so my own would fit in her plan, and her orchestrated universe. She would destroy everything she'd created, and build again, if just one of my creations, could not fit her plan otherwise.

That was love. I loved it. But our work, got us separated, by space only, but it was enough. We built too much space between us. Our thoughts, our own selves, were interconnected since we met. Everything one felt, or thought, the other knew. But with this space, an emptiness came between us. An emptiness that got bigger and bigger, until we disconnected. We were for the first time functioning independently, one from the other.

We didn't know anymore, what the other is doing, feeling, thinking. Our love became impure. It was a risk we took, hoping the other felt the same. Love. We didn't know anymore, we hoped.

We both started to put too much of ourselves into our creations, until we stopped creating to show our love for each other. It wasn't a competition anymore, a game, everything became serious. But her more than me. She loved what she was doing, and this thing took over her. We weren't like in the beginning anymore. And we couldn't turn back now.

Darkness loved to play with the universe, to create. We had one rule. From ourselves, we don't make another. Blinded by my jealousy and fear. I broke our only rule, the only thing we could use to measure our trust. Even if my love for Darkness was still infinite, my jealousy for her creations was in equal measure.

I got to hate the way we were showing our affection as it wasn't about us anymore. So, I left, got to a quiet, private place. Not too far from her, so we could still see each other, or feel…some fragments, of each other. While Darkness continued to create her universe, I was creating my new thing to draw my love towards.

I built a beautiful planet, shaped as I pleased, I made all kinds of forms and models in the planet's terrain and landscape. And worked on its relief until it got an artistic form, beautiful. But it still wasn't enough. It was missing something, and I gave it that something. I…took a part of me, and placed it on that planet. Even if that part was unaltered, unmodified, infinitesimal. Even if I hadn't created something out of it, gave it form or purpose. I didn't do anything with that cell, but to leave it there and watch it evolve.

But was enough to break the rule, to break our trust. I betrayed.

Darkness had no idea what I've done. I wasn't anymore in her area of focus, so I wasn't afraid. We haven't communicated in eternities. I was happy with my creation, I finally felt that I was doing something I love.

My planet was far from perfect though. All the other planets were built so perfectly, by the Darkness's guidelines to fit part of her plan. Careful put in motion, so they could all move synchronized, so they could all exist in this perfect harmony. My planet was the complete opposite of what she did. Of what I even did until now, using her guidelines. But I didn't look to achieve perfection. My planet, the only flat planet in the universe. No inner core, or gravitational field, or any other force other than my will. It was forced to stay anchored in the same place in space, from which the planet didn't move or rotate. My planet was working simply because of my powerful will.

I just wanted a break, from all the science that she imposed. I wanted to let things go with the flow. And me, to be just a simple spectator. So, I took form of a star, something from what she created, it felt, better to have a little of her in all this but in my planet. And I placed myself to watch over the planet. The planet being my garden, I was watching my cells evolving alone, like a gardener watching his flowers growing.

My cells were weak, small, and lacking initiative or direction, but they still evolved, and transformed into something better. More complex.

Nature formed well. Rivers and seas formed in front of my eyes. Living beings appeared as vegetation, atmosphere formed with rains, snows, thunders and lightnings. All these modified and transformed my terrain and the scenery was evolving beautifully under the star. Under me. My only role was to light the surface of the planet, and to warm the surface of the planet.

And so, time was passing so differently now, for I had nothing to do. The changes suffered by the planet happened in millions of years, and this led to changing my perception of time. Everything happened so fast, like a stone, covered in snow, rolling down the side of a hill, covered in snow. It's growing, in speed and size, without stop until it reaches the end. But time has no end. But it has turning points. And so, the evolution of my cells arrived at one of these turning points, and that led to the birth of something wonderful. The most beautiful thing I had ever witnessed. The apparition of animals.

And finally, the excessive speed at which nothing was happening as the time was passing by, for me, slowed down noticeable. From terrain that moved and transformed under my sight, to the animals running down the hills, playing with each other, eating each other, and mating each other. It was wonderful to watch all these animals evolving in different species, in new species. How so many different creatures come to live, creatures that even I couldn't have the imagination to create. I could've never built such a beautiful garden, and neither could she.

I was witness to the first steps of some species, and the last of others, to the way each species adapted to the environment, and the interaction with predators. I witnessed how they learned how to protect and survive from such a variety of threats. How they multiply and take care of each other. Some species, so different, worked so perfect together. So peaceful. And some couldn't coexist in the same place at all.

It was a spectacle for me to enjoy and love for so many millennia from now on, at a very, very slow pace.

But not even a millennium passed, and Darkness saw what I was doing. She came to see what kept me so preoccupied that she hadn't seen me creating anything lately. Why weren't we staying together anymore…was the question I wanted to hear from her. But didn't. She looked at my planet and liked it, genuinely. Even if it was the opposite of all her creations, her guidelines, her rules. It wasn't perfect by her science, or by any science. Here was the only place, small otherwise, in which chaos reigned. And she shockingly liked it.

She was very happy at seeing my planet, but also very curious to know how I created those animals. What rules have I made so they would do actions so randomly looking. She didn't want the answer though, she loved a good challenge, so she came near me and watched over the planet with me. She followed and noticed how there wasn't a single repetition in the actions of all the living beings on the planet. No pattern. Like they are each, not species, but individuals, each individual is so independent in thought and action. And then she had questions no more. She probably figured out everything she needed to. She most likely knew, and that thought was not available for me to know, and so we grew even more apart, on that account. On my mistake. No. On my betrayal.

And she wasn't angry! She wasn't angry at me at all, for what I've done. And we didn't discuss this rule again, the violation of it, and to what extent can we exploit it, as I've done…and so she's free to do now… No. Darkness was just happy to stay with me, and watch Earth, she picked the name. And I was happy. And she grew bored, again. Watching that even though the actions of each living being, were unpredictable, they were though too simple and repetitive at the imagination level.

Nothing original was coming to get these animals out of their routine. Routine that only Darkness was able to see. And she didn't like to stay and watch a show completely out of control and so monotone, she didn't like to be just a spectator. She proposed to leave earth and keep creating, together. I didn't want. She was mad that we weren't together anymore, so she didn't leave, but she stayed with me, and she started creating on my planet.

I had nothing against it. My only condition was to not change anything, radically, and to not play with my living beings. At first, I didn't know what she wanted to do, she went away for a little time. But I saw what she did when she came back to put her creation on earth. They were animals still, but different. The new animals were more resistant, more intelligent, more adaptive, more…like us. I immediately knew that she put a part of her in what she created, and I couldn't say a thing. I broke the same rule. I betrayed, she didn't, she…didn't.

I could've felt that she put a little more of her in those animals, than I put in my cells at the beginning.

"You like? They are people."

"Yes. They are more evolved."

And I really liked these, people. They were unpredictable like animals, maybe even more. It was a beautiful spectacle to watch. So, we stood once again, near each other, watching the earth, and enjoying ourselves. People were more intelligent than animals. They had the same basic instincts, but they learned things quicker, and were able to keep more of what they learned. With time, people started cohabiting, coexisting. They were hunting together, sharing the food equally, living and sleeping together and helping each other.

People had the best qualities taken from each animal. All people managed in time, and going through many experiences, to gather up and build a habitat together. From how they were in the beginning, when they first met each other, now they learned how to let their guard down in front of whom they resemble.

When they first met, they attacked each other, killed each other, and ran from each other. They were reticent to everything that moves, even their own species. They started even lower than animals in intelligence, survivability, and adaptivity, but surpassed all of the other animals in short time. Their problem was that they had more from us than the animals had, so they also felt more than the animals. Fear, love, hate, and many other feelings, were incredibly advanced in people, and they fought to get rid of them, until they finally got. They got into a comfort zone and didn't want to get out of there anymore. Now, their actions weren't based on sentiments anymore. They got rid of sentiments.

They didn't know love or hate, egoism or fear. They weren't lacking these sentiments, but simply weren't experiencing them. They fought to forget, and now don't know they exist, and won't stumble upon them anymore. Their minds weren't even open to all the sentiments they can experience, and I didn't think they would ever open their minds. The only sentiment I saw in them was friendship, or…I think it was more altruism, or even belonging. I don't know how to describe it. It wasn't even a sentiment or maybe it was just a part of a sentiment. It was more a necessity, or a strategy acquired through experience. The strategy of living together to survive. Or no, the strategy of living together to be more efficient and live easier. It was lethargic.

People didn't have a language or a way of communicating like some of the animals. They had one, but they evolved into a convenience to not need it, and forgot it. They thought independently. They made their intentions known, simply by action. When one of them got hungry, he decided to go hunting, and others followed to help. Everything happened in the moment. The others saw that, and some were going to gather fruits and vegetables, and others were going to get water. Some were just waiting for food to come. There wasn't love, fellowship, or even friendship between them.

I don't think the life of one or all the other was worth for any one of them more than of his own. They just wanted to survive, and it had to be done together. They had the most evolved survival instinct from all the animals that can be found on earth. But the survival of the species instinct was missing entirely. They weren't mating, at all.

People were at the peak of evolution. They couldn't evolve more than that, they needed nothing more. They discovered fire but weren't using it, they caught it though with a branch, and bound it to the ground with sticks and stones. And they've placed the fire in the middle of their habitat, and they fed the fire with branches and bushes, and they were feeding it every time they saw it beginning to dim. They took care that it doesn't die.

I don't know why, maybe because of the sound it made, maybe because of the flame dance or just because they saw it so many times and couldn't catch, and now they caught it and didn't want to lose. Or maybe they thought it was a living being, and they liked it and didn't want it to die. I don't know. Even if they never used the fire, it was important for each of them. I liked to think that it was the warmth, but I was giving them constantly all the warmth they ever needed. It wasn't that either.

People didn't have the idea of advancing, of being better, and why would they? They had everything, and never lacked something. Never wanted something else, more. Cold, darkness, death, they never encountered these events, other than death, at the beginning. And they long forgot about its existence. Death was no longer an option for them, and they didn't even know what they were missing. They were safe. They didn't have the notion of want. They were hungry, they'd hunt, they were tired, they'd sleep, they had to shit, they'd do it, on spot, wherever they were. They wanted nothing from no one. This was their life, and they didn't want a single thing to change. They couldn't conceive that any other way of living was possible.

People had no religion and didn't thought of something bigger than themselves. There wasn't anything bigger than themselves. Not even they were bigger. Just the surviving instinct was bigger, even if they couldn't die naturally, they could be killed. But rarely ever happened for a predator to roam so far out of their own habitat and enter in the people's habitat. And even then, people managed to kill it, or ward it off. Since the moment they gathered and adapted into their perfect, lacking of predators, environment, people were the only living beings on the planet that didn't die.

It can be seen that it was the only animal created by Darkness. Everything they did was exactly the same. A perfect routine that you find in no other animal, even in nature itself. Until I saw the contrary. When one of them got hungry he went hunting, and normally others followed, others went to gather fruits and vegetables, and others went to gather water, and others just waited. People were used to go only in groups, because predators were afraid of people when they came in numbers.

But it happens so that one of the people to pay attention to something else, when all of them where focused on food. That single creature, simply forgot about food, and went towards the jungle. By the walk it was obvious that the human had a purpose, a direction. That human goes close to a denser vegetation area and then goes deep in the jungle. Dangerous area that people stay away from, and only go in groups if they must.

This one gets close to an apple tree, reaches out to get an apple, takes it, bites it, and doesn't get to enjoy the taste, as a snake suddenly pops out and jumps on the human. The snake bites and chokes its prey to death. After, the snake unravels and enters through the mouth, entirely, inside the dead human. This is such a huge event, I want to tell Darkness about it, I want to share it with her, she's going to be amazed.

People finished their jobs, ate, shat, and slept, and then waited again for someone to get hungry and start it over again. Nobody observed in all this time the missing of the cohabitant or found the body. And many other cycles passed on, and at some point, the gatherers journey towards were the dead one went. They entered the jungle after food, and found the dead one, on the ground, decomposing. They saw, and they went on. The finding didn't affect the gatherers at all. They continued gathering fruits and vegetables and returned to the habitat to eat.

Nobody else from the habitat found of the existence of that body, and the ones that found it, soon forgot about it. After this event, I saw other cases of people dying. And always, the others had the same reaction. They didn't care at all. It was so rare, that when it happened it wasn't perceived as a threat to their lives. They even left the bodies where they dropped. Nothing was ever felt for the dead ones. Hurt, compassion, sadness. They didn't have the notion of death, or what happens after.

Death meant nothing for them. They saw nature feeding from the bodies, and it was normal. People, besides their natural cycle, had no other interest. The only thing that they were interested in, in their free time, was the sun, the star, their source of light and warm, me. Some people were laying on the ground, watching at the sun until their eyes hurt. They didn't have the notion of love, but if they did, it could be said that they loved me. They were even happy at the warmth I was spreading. But happiness being fundamentally, the absence of sadness, sentiment they hadn't learned yet, you couldn't say that they felt love for me, they hadn't found hate yet.

Darkness was still missing. Since she put them on earth, she hadn't come over. And it took a while, until I thought of looking for her. And I searched the universe for her, without any luck. She wasn't. I had no idea where she could be, so I got scared, and called her, yelled, begged for her to come. And she came. And I was scared no more.

"I very much like the new addition you brought to the planet. People distracted me greatly."

"Thank you."

"But why haven't you stayed along me, alongside your creation? To watch their lives."

"It was boring. I already knew they were going to get on a routine and from there, just repeating cycles. And moreover, they are immortal, they are even more boring to watch than the animals."

"Not quite, they do die, if they are killed, and just not too long ago it happened so that one of them died because they got in a situation in which they shouldn't have been. It was new. The human in question was going towards the jungle, alone and without any r…"

"I was occupied with a new project. I evolved the time and space that you knew. I took it to a new level. Wanna see?"

"Sure."

She was completely bored by my planet, and whatever was related to it, but I wasn't annoyed by that, or by the fact that she interrupted me. I was just happy that I was with her again, and because I learned the reason of her absence.

"You have to connect to me again, so you could follow me where I'm about to go."

I became one with her and then I understood everything she did until now. I saw how she multiplied every point of space, with the size of the universe. Our universe, the first one. And so, she created an infinity of parallel universes. Having all the points in space of our infinite universe, copied in an empty new space, and all were tied somehow in-between.

They weren't perfect. The copies. They couldn't be. But, from small differences of the first point copied, it expanded to universes complete different from the original. Not even time was the same. In each universe it was a little different, from speed, to the point in time each universe was at. So, we choose space and time from our universe, the original, as units of measure to compare and calculate the differences between the universes.

At first, I was amazed by what Darkness had done, but after a while, I started seeing the price. Such beauty, infinite possibilities to give birth to impossible to even understand beauties, but at a huge cost. That she was playing with space and time had effects even devastating for an infinity of universes. She showed me and took me through a ton of universes and through her favourites. I saw so many variations of people, animals, plants. And just the smallest change in this space-time continuum, led to a genocide at enormous, infinite scale.

Just our movement from a universe to another, produced both devastating effects. She didn't care at all that behind her, universes changed rules between themselves and that led to their crumbling or destruction, or their union, either way having a devastating effect for the population of each. Then she showed me how she created and modified universes focusing only on my planet and the people on it as constant variable.

She was extremely interested in playing with this creature she created. She showed me at the cost of billions of lives, how she can play with the people, and how funny it is to watch them in different situations she put them in. She showed me species that evolved incredibly, almost to our level, and she erased them in front of my eyes because they came to close to our level.

She showed me possible futures and alternatives of my planet. Horrible things, that in no way I wanted to see. Then, in that moment, I brought her back to our universe and told her, and when she didn't accept, begged her, and when she didn't want, forced her, to never do this again. And then three more rules came into being.

One, we are not allowed to ever touch the space-time continuum, or the space, or the time, of our universe.

Two, we are not allowed to ever leave our universe, by any way. I don't want us to be so distanced one from the other. This distance led to our cold relationship, and this led to the frenzy state Darkness got into. She didn't think like this before, she wasn't so bored. Boredom got her away from me, and then the lack of love for me, and of my love for her, made her try to fill that emptiness, through creation.

I don't think she'll ever stop from this search for something new, or for whatever is she searching. That's why I feel her existence represents a threat to my creation. Thing that led to the third one.

Three, in no way she is to touch my creation in a dangerous way, to destroy it, or to play with it without caring for the repercussions and effects her actions will have on the living beings of my planet.

She understood. She was disappointed by the rules, even though she knew that some were for her own good. But she was completely for it and she firmly expressed her wish to never loose me. She still loved me, of course she loved me, with me she discovered this feeling, together we brought it into existence. Love started with us, and she will never cease to love me, but there will be moments when other things will be of more importance.

And she accepted these rules with one condition. She has to get free hand to bring out improvements to my creation. She wants to modify my planet and my living beings. I accepted with the condition that I must be of accord with those changes. So, I got back in my star, to watch over the earth, and she sat alongside me. And she started to modify, paying attention to my reactions, if I'm fine with it or not.

Being driven by her will for everything to be in perfect harmony, she took my flat earth and made it an oblate ellipsoid like most of the other planets. She started the planet's movement around me, with the people's habitat being near the axis and so, more than half of the planet was covered in darkness. Less the area under me. So, a day now, would then take a year. More precisely, six months was day, six months, night. That meant that for six months I would not be able to see my people at all.

A big part of my earth wasn't getting sun, warmth, and so almost all the living beings from the vegetation to animals, were dying. I didn't like this change, and when I asked her why did she chose this, she said from boredom. Darkness had disappeared again, but I kept the changes, as they were her changes. And Darkness didn't leave the universe, so that gave me a peace of mind. And people weren't affected by these changes, they were still safe, and that was the only thing that mattered.

It didn't last long this safety. People observed that I wasn't in the same position on the sky, in approximately 20 cycles of sleep. Taking into consideration that they slept each time after they ate, and hunted each time before they ate. At first, they didn't have any reaction. But, once with my setting, after two months (our times), they started to get agitated. I was less than 30 degrees from the horizon. I wasn't lighting as much as before, I changed my colour for them. Shadows started to grow and accentuate. And it was colder.

People didn't know what was happening. And then I saw them how they developed their first real sentiment. Fear. They were filled with it, panicked that they didn't know what they were feeling, they didn't know what to do. They started to want. They wanted their sun back, some trying to reach for me. Others started running towards me. For the first time since they came on being, survival wasn't the most important thing anymore. I was. And the more I was setting, the more crazy their actions were.

I saw them all trying to run towards me. Leaving everything behind, their canopies made from animal skins, the river that was giving them clean water, and the little fire they so long kept alive. Some ran faster, other slower, some could run for longer distances, other for less. And so, most of them got spread out, separated during this crazy endeavour, and got left alone, prey for the predators.

I saw many people dying then. From various reasons, hundreds of them died in such a short time, each death for me to witness as I was still shining, weakly, over them. Eaten alive, dehydrated, of hunger, of sleep deprivation, and the ugliest of them all… Some people just ran until they fell dead. And they didn't stop, seeing their own species going extinct in front of them, seeing death so much around them. Their survival instinct was at the highest compared to any animal, but the fear of loosing me was even higher.

They couldn't keep up with me. I didn't want to go anymore, but I did want to keep my word in front of her. The last thing I saw, as the people's habitat went out of sight, was the end of the fear on their faces. Changed with despair and terror.

I saw the faces of powerless creatures, that had absolutely no control on what was happening to them. The terror that someone has when something that they can't comprehend happens, something never met before. They wanted to understand, they wanted to not be scared anymore, they wanted more. They wanted me. I was that someone, that something, bigger than them, and they recognized it. They were for the first time, alone. Until then it was known only day, light, and the warming and protecting sun.

And darkness befell onto them, and they were to meet the night. A six months long night. A 183 days long night. A 549 cycles of eating and 549 cycles of sleeping, long, night. And they can't see anything of what is happening around them, all this time. And I want so much to see my kids, to help them, protect them, and light and warm them. I hate how I left them, and I can't think of something else but this. And I can't do anything about this.

I don't want to get involved anymore, I don't want to change the planet again, I just want to relax and spectate. I've decided to not get involved anymore on whatever happens to the planet. And even if I were to break my word, and go back to my people, I would've messed everything Darkness has done to the planet, and people would still not understand anything anyway. So, I'll stay on my cycle set up by Darkness, and hope people will get used to this.

And if I leave the sun, just to go and check…I know I won't be indifferent then and I would change things. I can't play like this with my people. I'd break my own rule, and I promised Darkness I will not change her modifications brought to the planet. I don't want to betray her trust, again.

So, I did nothing. I waited, and passed over the almost frozen planet, thinking only about them and about what might be happening there. I didn't enjoy the view, or the rest of the planet, the animals that survived the changes, that transformed, evolved, adapted, the environments that changed, the planet that changed. I couldn't enjoy my own planet. Time passed almost instantly though, even if there wasn't a thing to distract me, and I was worried the whole time. I'm used with the relative time passing, I've been since aeons. Six months passed in a second, but with my thoughts on them, every second took six months.

I finished my cycle and I'm about to see the people's populated area, my favourite habitat. I finally arrive in a position from which I can see it, but instead of being welcomed by the people, I only see bodies. Dead bodies of people scattered everywhere, alone, forgotten. People that got lost or that continued to run after me. People that found their deaths alone. Cadavers, cadavers everywhere, touched by nature or animals, cadavers decomposed in different stages.

The big majority were just skeletons covered in places by what used to be their skins. I couldn't've thought such a macabre view can exist. But closer to their habitat, I see that even more macabre views can exist. The jungle is burnt, almost completely. People are terrified at my sight just because they know I'll just disappear once again. There are…there are just a few hundred of them still alive. There were more bodies than people alive, much more. Most of the bodies were scattered around the habitat. Burnt. Burning was the leading cause of death, in places where the forest was burnt down, and in places were the forest was still burning, along with the bodies.

People were caught by the fire while running in the jungle and couldn't escape anymore. Not even the ones still alive were doing so well. People now weren't eating or sleeping, they were doing one thing only. The fire they captured and kept alive was now huge, probably the very source of the forest burnings. And people kept bringing leaves, bushes, branches, whatever they could to keep the fire well fed and growing. They wanted to make it even bigger, they wanted to make the fire so big it would be impossible to die, or to leave them. They were just preparing for the next night.

Survival instinct was gone. Something else took its place. Fear. People were weak, hurt, and tired. I don't think Darkness did something in my absence, but what I'm seeing now, seems unreal. Whatever were people doing, at some moments they'd just stop to look at me, to check how much I've moved. They were terrified by my movement, I wasn't representing safety and warmth for them anymore, because they knew that after I'm gone, darkness and cold are coming back.

I was scaring them. They were watching me like they were begging to not go down. Then I was witness to the birth of a religion. Having at the centre of their belief, me, the sun. People were thinking of something bigger than them, something they couldn't ever control. People wished for me to not set down. People were praying.

I think that was the idea of the fire, they made it as bigger as they could, to make me stay, to show me that they are worthy of my presence. It was their first offering to me. Fire. Day was almost finished, the six months passed, faster than the previous ones. I was setting down. And people got more and more terrified. They prepared six months for this moment, but were still scared of what was to happen. Some tried running again after me, trying to catch me, but this time they were less.

The rest of them stayed near the fire to feed it. They needed it's light and warmth. The fire was exaggeratedly high, around him people could see as perfect as day, and were not freezing at all, and no predator would dare come close. Fire took my role when I couldn't be above them. Fire protected them. In the last moments before going, I saw that people were coming closer to the fire. They were worshipping it.

And night came. And I kept my thoughts on my people, still. Beautiful paintings of nature passed by while I didn't give them a single moment of attention. I couldn't enjoy animals, landscape, my garden. I just wanted to get over my habitat faster. They must've got used already with this cycle. It couldn't be worse than the first night.

With the first ray of sun, I saw the habitat. It was way worse than after the first night.

People were laying on the ground, scared, in a state of shock and unwilling to move. From their eyes I could've seen that they won't ever come back to normality. Most of them were laying near the fire, from where they wouldn't want to leave. Population reduced significantly. There were even more burnt bodies. People gazed at me, begged me with their tears, for me to not leave.

They started making rituals, dancing around the fire. Before, people only used their time with survival stuff, sleeping, eating, defecating, and nothing more that didn't have anything to do with their survival. Now they started maiming themselves with fire.

Night was to come once again, and I was setting down the sky. I see them igniting the fire and feeding it constantly. They are preparing for the arrival of darkness.

After all, this is the nature now. We made these rules and said that we won't get involved anymore. I have trust that Darkness won't break our rules, and I have trust that the people will adapt. I just have to remind myself each time, that I'm just a spectator. I should enjoy the spectacle that nature offers me. People will survive. They must, it's in their cells and they got those from us.

Change leads to adapting which leads to evolution. They were comfortable until now, had everything in their reach, wanted nothing more. They weren't evolving. People didn't discover natural death. Diseases and ageing didn't exist. Food was everywhere. And all these with the lack of sentiments and will of knowing, led to the stagnation of evolution.

Now people are facing change and discovering sentiments. There isn't more time until they discover the will to grow, to know. I start finally to enjoy again the nature. Relaxed. I reconciled with myself. Cycles will pass. I've observed that people started to get older, to discover natural death. I think, I saw some swollen bellies, but didn't checked to be sure. They'll start evolving, communicating, building themselves things. Even though, I made peace with my decision to not get involved, I still was impatient to get faster over the habitat.

Another cycle passes. Another rotation around the earth. And another time I get over my habitat. But this time, everything is different. This time, I see something that I wouldn't have expected in 2000 cycles to happen. It's the first time I'm genuinely surprised by what I see. All these cycles led from bad to worse to…this…to almost perfect. People are completely different, they communicate different, walk different, act different, eat different. They are completely different…

They are communicating through complex sounds, with rules. They have a different posture, they are dressed. Before, they wouldn't wear a thing on them, but now, all of them are covered in animal skins and knitted plants. Their comportment wasn't as direct as before, focused on survival. They don't just coexist anymore, they live together, civilized, and following some kind of rules set by them. Food is now cooked.

The change is so sudden that it looks like I made a time salt, to the future, the far-off future. I don't see any bodies on the ground, around, nowhere, but I see graves. Fire is gone, only the scar that the land bears tells that once there was a great fire there. People didn't even notice me when I rose. They didn't look at me. They didn't pay attention. They changed. Evolved so much in just one cycle. In just six months.

All the sentiments were already discovered, they were desiring knowledge. Building huts together, making different models and colours of clothes together. They weren't divided anymore, but united under one leader. I don't know who it was, but it can be seen where the leader stays. Everybody revolved around one cabin from where they entered and leaved constantly. Their habitat became a society with rules and ruler.

People started mating, I see them going in their huts where they sleep and where they're going to grow their families. I saw more pregnant women, this time for sure, but I haven't seen a cub yet. It was a sudden evolution, but I didn't like where it was heading. People were shy, they were hiding, they were self-centred, egocentrics and almost wicked.

In front of my eyes, cabins were built and different houses, personalized, separated. They weren't leaving together. People started distancing. Each had its own place, they lived no more than two in a house, except when they were a family. A civilization developed but divided. Everything is different.

The end of day comes nearer, and nobody is affected by it. All day long I just saw a few people looking after me, and not for more than moments. As it got dimmer, people started lighting torches in front of their homes and at trail crossings, and were continuing calmly their work.

All fear was gone, and its place was taken by control. Discipline. Self-discipline. Safety. Another cycle ends. Light is off, and with my last ray, I see nobody is running after me. I'm somehow at peace with this. At least nothing ugly happens anymore. It's good.

Another cycle goes by. This time I enjoyed nature without any worry. My thoughts weren't on the habitat anymore. Or not all the time at least. I can't believe I say this, but it became a little boring to watch them. It felt like watching myself, no surprises at any step.

I arrive once again over the patch of people. I almost didn't recognize the place. Dozens of houses built, places designed for gatherings. New construction technologies, water piping system to bring water into each house. Everything advanced constantly, but in a rhythm much too accelerated. Communication was more evolved, people didn't talk only when it was necessary, they started interacting, connecting with each other, socializing.

The place was too much civilized. They weren't animals anymore. They had special spaces for instructing, food deposits, gardens to grow vegetables, trees, animals. The animals were domesticated and used for their benefits, as tools. People weren't hunting just with sticks and empty hands. They built weapons from wood and stone and different metals. Spears, bows, axes, setting traps and using baits.

People started killing in excess. They gathered more food than they needed and deposited it in different places than the meat. They didn't just killed animals when they were hungry, which led to waste, and the destruction of the environment, the habitat around them. Animals hunted and killed for nothing. Forests taken down, for wood stacking, and building more stacks out of wood to stack wood on them.

They had too much of everything, more than they used, more than they needed. People started consuming the nature around them. People weren't animals anymore, they stopped being in communion with nature. For them, nature, animals, everything they saw around them was just resource, thought to be infinite. But it wasn't. And they'll see this. The place around them already looks dead. Consumed.

They thought themselves bigger than everything. Nothing was done randomly anymore, just for surviving. Everything was after a plan. There were lots of rules, people weren't doing what they wanted anymore, they were limited. Not all were happy. Not all were equal. Hierarchy came into being, egoism, indifference, individualism.

Everything that happened was tied to the crowded cabin. There started the plan. There was the one that controlled everything. I just wanted so much to see who that is, who corrupted the minds of the people and destroyed this habitat. Who raised this civilization so high, just to get it lower than when it started? Who managed to poison this society, NO, this group of harmless people? Animals before, monsters now.

But I didn't get to see who that person from the cabin was. Dozens of people entered and exited the cabin, but never that one. Never got out. If there was a gathering, it took place there, in an area near the cabin, where a big patch of land is covered, but just from above, just for me to not see. Not from the son, from me. I was to not see! I think I'm becoming too paranoid.

I must find out immediately who that leader is, but I won't break the rules to do this. I'm not going to intervene. I'll wait. My setting became like a signal for the people. Routine started. Lighting up torches, everybody came back to the village, some entered their huts, others were finishing their work. But most of them were heading towards the cabin. Gathering there, and waiting, waiting until… I can't see.

I want to know what's happening at night, I need to see. I need to find out who poisoned my people, and infected their habitat, mine. It's enough. I can't break the rules, but I have to find a way to be able to see. On the other side, besides fire, they lack light completely. I know how to help them, and me too.

I'll build from me another source of light. A low light, enough for people to be able to see, but without filling the darkness completely. But not to produce light itself, I have to see through it. It will be my light's reflection. So, I'll be able to see through that planet whatever it sees. Just how Darkness created me and took care of me, I'll do the same with her too.

Moon, will be my own creation, it will be born from me, as I was from Darkness. And together, with her, we'll watch over the earth. And I start creating and now we are three. Second time I break our rule, but it was long time ago created, and we both already broke it before. I hope it won't have repercussions.

I place Moon on her orbit, and look through her to see what is happening on earth in my little patch of people. I can see what's happening in the habitat. I can finally see what's happening at night and wh… No. No. No more I want to see! It can't be possible, must be a dream. I have to wake up, I really must wake up. Wake up!

  *

I'm awake.