Often I wonder what use there is in
telling this story. It is ridden with bad thoughts and hopeless
loves. The end is known all too well. What surprise might await the
reader? I suppose the surprise has long been dead within me. I
suppose these entries are really just for me to reflect upon so that
I might have a way to fill the eternity I have been given as
punishment. I will be honest now. The conflict between Mili and
Marie-Lynn was short-lived. The night-eyed girl's statement that “the
innocent cannot survive much longer” may have been true, but
Marie-Lynn had lost her innocence long before then. Such separate
lives these two girls led. They were only connected by me. I created
the horror of their conflict. I built their hatreds higher and higher
until even I could not climb it. This entertained me a little, I
think. But alas, reality was bound to come find me soon again. In
this case, the reality was that their contact was limited. It was so
limited that they nearly forgot about each other completely once a
larger distance was created. Marie-Lynn was leaving.
I asked her to stay but she told me that
it was out of her control. We were still teenagers back then, so it
seemed quite probable. The night following her departure, I found
myself within my own world once more. This time it was not as
colorful as it had been once. It was made of stone, or so it seemed.
Everything seemed solid and as unmoving as could be. The trees were
made of jade in their entirety. The grass did not exist any more. I
wandered about this hard and unforgiving world for some time,
pondering about its meaning. I climbed mountains and walked over
oceans, as they were made of sapphire. It took me some time to come
across that which had saved me before. There in front of me it raged
like the great Achilles. It was bound to nothing and never ceased to
move. Its very presence seemed to contradict the world around it. I
stumbled toward it, recognizing it instantly. I tried to place my
hand upon it, but it would not sit still. This caused for a smile to
break across my face. I followed the flame's movements as it danced
across the stone world. I wondered where it might stop but then
realized that it never would. There was a certain bliss in knowing
its constant nature. As time wore on in my world, I slowly found
myself dancing within the flame. I felt it engulf me happily. Once I
was fully emerged in it, the world suddenly changed. It all became
black for a moment. Then it burst into life. The trees became like
those in reality and the water turned back into a liquid. A warm
breeze blew from the south. The world had reawakened. The fire then
disappeared, having served its purpose. The clouds began to form in
the clear summer skies. I saw words in them, but for some reason
could not read them. It only took a moment for them to be spoken to
me instead.
“I have to go.” Marie-Lynn's voice
said from behind me. I spun around and found myself face to face with
her. She appeared saddened by her own words. I placed a hand on her
shoulder and nodded.
“If nothing ever changed, everything
would be set in stone forever. We would have never met.” I replied
knowingly. She smiled in return and quickly vanished. I reached out
into the air where she once stood. I felt nothing but empty space.
The Marie-Lynn I saw in that dream was fabricated by my own mind. I
was familiar with the manner in which it creates people and
recognized it right away. I smiled with a broken hope and turned back
around. The sun was setting on the horizon. The times were changing.
I opened my hand behind me and created a comfortable chair out of
nothing. I then promptly sat down in it. A snake slithered up to me.
It was carrying an apple with it.
“Where did she go?” It hissed in the
most friendly manner that it could muster. I pointed in a random
direction and sent it on its way. It would never find Eve.
It was then that I realized that there
was a distance between Marie-Lynn and I that I could not traverse in
the real world. It was a distance in the heart, I suppose. But I
would rather argue that it was a distance due to my world. We had
become so comfortable spending years together apart from all else
that we had forgotten what it meant to be alive in reality. It was
never as pleasant as we made it seem while we were dreaming. But that
is all we were doing. It all amounted to nothing in the end. Well
that is not entirely true. It led to her death. Even now as I wander
the broken land of men, I find myself thinking that the real downfall
of our relationship was not in what we called reality, but rather in
where we spent most of our time. We were subjected to the dream world
for far too long to understand what it meant to have a love like ours
in a world like that. It would not last. It did not last.
I awoke the next morning with tears in
my eyes. I wiped them away quickly and got ready to leave the house.
I refused to remain there. I wanted to wander about the world. One
could say I was looking for Marie-Lynn. But I knew where she was. Not
exactly, but I had an idea. She told me the name of the town she was
going to. She assured me it wasn't large, but that it was far away. I
recognized the name and knew she was telling the truth. Maybe I might
have walked there if I had hope for the future, but I had grown
hopeless after a long night. So I wandered the streets of the town
that we had shared for a time. I had nothing else to do with my time.
I revisited the spot where Mili and Marie-Lynn had clashed so
strongly. I visited where she once lived. But I could not visit where
she did live. The walk was too long for someone so broken down. The
world did not seem quite the same as it was the day before. It was
empty. People who walked by me had blank expressions. They seemed
emotionless. The beauty in the world was sucked from it violently, as
I no longer smiled when I saw the squirrels of the area chasing after
each other. I had always found it to seem quite playful in nature and
took pleasure in watching them run about. But after Marie-Lynn left,
I saw their chases for what they really were. They were battling over
food, dominance, and territory. There was nothing pleasurable in
their chasing for anyone anymore. The sun shined too bright that day
as well. It did not take me long to return home. I locked myself up
in my room and blocked out all the light I could.
I just wanted to be left alone in the
darkness forever.
-Zero
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