How does a world slumber?
Such a strange thought. Was the world ever awake for it to be capable of sleep? Does it lull in the endlessness of dreams before waking to the futility of reality?
How does a world slumber... when even its life was not its own to live?
To thrive or to die was all in the hands of those it fed and raised. It never had a say. It can only endure the lasting suffering dealt upon its body, ravaged like a helpless plant by petulant children unwilling to understand and accept their place.
They were no masters. They were mere pests renting shelter from the storm that raged far beyond the confines of their perception. The unknown that always frightened them could not impose itself so easily upon their sanctuary. And so the willful children rise in jubilee, claiming ownership of that which owns them instead.
How could the land be theirs when it provided for them?
How could they enslave it when it raised them?
How could they kill it when it gave birth to them?
The treachery of creation knows no bounds. Is that why the world would rather sleep? To escape from the venomous reality of poisoned chalices clinking amidst the bleeding of the earth. How vain and putrid this life is. To be forced to live through it is no lesser torment than the infernal tortures conjured by these same pitiful creatures.
How does a world slumber?
Does it lay down to rest upon the mattress of space?
Does it stop its playful movements and surrender to the embrace of quiet?
But the Sun cares not for its needs or wants. Its only purpose was to burn a fierce light that crossed the expanse of emptiness. Can the world sleep amidst such flare? Or is that why it turns constantly, evading the light and its heat?
Such a strange thought indeed.
But Adam would definitely have wanted an answer for it because he himself did not know.
Does the world even sleep?
Did it ever need such trivialities of mortal life?
He can never know because he was never awake... until now.
Adam stood in a valley. The towering mountains of light that flanked his sides were like walls the size of galaxies. He was just a measly speck of dust floating haplessly in between, unaware of what lay before him.
There was no behind.
As he turned to look back, he only saw an abrupt end of something, a severance in the reality being portrayed. And yet it did not seem reason to cause the place to tremble and crumble. There was no dissonance that struck him despite the lucidity that the discovery brought him.
A dream... how did it even begin?
When had he fallen asleep?
Where was he when he succumbed to the comfort of quiet?
No thoughts came to mind. The answers eluded him, but he felt calm. The soothing comfort of the emptiness made him forget what burdened his mind. All fears and paranoia were erased if only for the moment. And he reveled in this unique freedom.
Emptiness, such a fickle word. He could not decide whether it was for good or for bad. Its nature was as capricious as the flickering shadows who cannot decide on the forms they wished to take. Would it be the despair of apocalypse? Or would it be the silence of desolation? Adam much preferred the latter, but then a thought struck him.
To face apocalypse and desolation, one needed to exist. One needed to be filled. Therefore, emptiness cannot be what leads to them. Emptiness is only the end. It is the quietus that awaits, the shore to which he swims relentlessly.
The tides and currents push him back as the waves threaten to drown him, but he cannot stop. His eyes once more turned to his back where there was just nothing. And he realised he really had no choice to begin with.
In the valley of light, Adam stepped forward. His figure was made of utter darkness quite unlike the light that his core embodied. The walls that trapped him loomed menacingly in derision. They mocked his blackness, his tragic fate that could only ever lead to emptiness.
He trudged onward, intent on finding the way out as the nothingness gnawed on everything behind him, racing toward him with an even greater voracity than a starving beast.
Adam ran and ran, taking one shadowy foot forward after the other. He could practically hear the light's laughter echoing. The twists and turns in this labyrinth blinded him from a truth he could no longer recall.
He was now running aimless. His only intent was to stay ahead of the gnawing black that wished for a taste of him. The eternal light did not even seem to care about its own plight as it echoed out a manic laughter in vicious mockery.
They were a poison that reminded Adam of his own suffering. It reminded him of why he was running. And it made him feel weak. His core trembled as once more he turned to look back. There, in the depths of nothingness, he found a small grain of something too small to be recognisable.
But he yearned for it. Adam realised the futility of his situation. He wanted so desperately to return, but there was no way back. In this labyrinth of lights, there was only the unending madness and hopelessness.
If he jumped into that nothingness, would he even have an existence with which to reach that which he had lost? He did not even dare to find out. This dream may be only that, but the things within it were as absolute as the authorities of the Universe. This nothingness was a finality that he did not wish to take.
And in his desperate escape farther away from the longing of his being, he screamed until everything felt numb. And once more, he fell into the monotony.
The cycle seemed to calm and settle. The nothingness chased after him as the labyrinth of lights stretched eternally, tricking him into a false sense of progress. The twists and turns came and came again. The twists and turns, they turned and turned again the cogs that guided the unknown.
The shore, he saw it once more. But why was it an emptiness that waited serenely beyond the torrential waters? Why was it a prize for those who braved and survived the tortures of the journey How was it any better than the nothingness that threatened to devour him? The abyss of nothingness was as eternal as the labyrinth of light. How then does the shore of quietus sever their constancy?
Or rather, why did he see it as the prize?
Had he not been running from an end? Why then was he running toward another?
And why does the light seem unfazed by its inevitable demise?
Why did it cheer when he found his way and laughed when he fell into a daze?
The cycle was reaching a new apex. It clicked as the waters churned all around. The darkness that filled the valley seemed to draw ever closer, clinging onto Adam like tangling snakes and slithering vines.
The light blared furiously, its brightness going far beyond that of anything he had ever heard. It sprinkled a heat to scorch his tenebrous form, but it tasted like the foul and rotten blood of the ancient undeath. They had lingered for long past their time.
Is that why they welcomed the end?
Were they dragging him with them?
Was this a story? A lesson imparted by an elder to a child who was only now just learning how to walk?
Their light was eternal, and so was his. But there can be no such eternity without the madness of existence. They have been worn down, reduced to dregs and husks. And now they wanted to drown Adam in the revolting endlessness of eternity so he does not join them too.
The end awaited all those who accept it. It was only those who chose to be free of it that suffered the vicissitudes of unending existence. And live long enough to see too much of something, one would find the madness and disorder within. And they would yearn for the comfort of nothing.
Adam had a choice.
Does he halt his steps now and accept the end? Or does march onward to the depths of the unknown, wading through the treacherous waters of reality? One was immediate while the other promised a possibility.
And while he yearned for what lay in the depths of nothingness, Adam wished to choose his end. He would not fall to a nothingness where he might fail to even exist. His suffering must be worth something, at least to himself.
And so he decided.
If he could not escape the inevitable end, then he would choose to lay in the comfort of silence.
He would choose the Quietus.
So... how does a world slumber?