A Cry in the Dark

You can hear it, as you walk along the evening sands, keeping your mind to yourself. You can hear a silent, wordless cry, a bolt of pain without origin. The desert is a harsh and unforgiving land, one where the penalty for making mistakes can mean your life. With that being the case, the rest of the world is no different. One where mistakes come easy and forgiveness most times never comes at all.

The echoes ring out almost as silent as the movement in the stars, and as you walk on, you start to feel their presence more vividly. The sun sets in the desert, drawing the fire and heat out of the sky simply to be replaced with empty pinpoints of life, so far away and so many that their laughter and joy sounds only in pitiless mockery of the living's plight.

You follow the horrible sounds of pain that you somehow can't make out. Are they too far away? Is something standing above them, blocking the sounds from reaching out? They tell stories of fear and pain, and urge you forward. Come to it, find the brooding source. look into the face of anguish, know how low one can sink and fall in the darkness.

There is a cave ahead, a small cropping of rock, with a tunnel one might find entrance to beneath the sunbaked surface of the bleak and terrifying wilderness around them. You press on, not sure now whether it's the subzero chill of the air or the otherworldly echo making you shiver. The noises grow stronger, and the chill in your spine twists and cringes as you enter the shadows. Weeping, you realize. low and forlorn, the sound you've followed in from the desert was the weeping of another person.

This is no cave of riddles, nor is it a cave of wonders, but one of sorrow, on of solitude. Before your eyes have adjusted in the dark you've already come to realize the enormity of the cavern, and the presence of something alive. For but a second, hot orange splashes against the walls around you, A percussion line of scraping and tapping joins in with the chorus of moans. "Who's there?" you call meekly, the pace of your heart quickening. the noises stop, altogether, and are followed by another flare of orange light and the strange scraping.

You turn the corner to a large cavern of smooth rock, echoes of water dripping makes it seem ever larger. Perhaps tunnels would lead further, deep and dark enough that you'd never make it back to the surface. A small hole in the ceiling lets in precious little light, but from what's there, an image of horror is cast.

Dark rings encircled hollow white eyes, on a face too pale to be a man's. deep furrows led down his face, where you could see that the weeping of the creature had been constant, for how long you're unsure. Wild hair, in knots and mats, tangled all about the thing, and seemed to be all that held back the cut of the night air. Dirty, twisted fingers gripped tightly about a small cylinder, a tuft of smoke gently rising from the uncovered end.

The stone surrounding the pitiful thing mimicked it, faces appearing in shadows upon the walls in the flickering of the orange light, long and morose. faces wreathed in anguish rose and fell in time with the thing's ragged breathing, shadows leaping about as the fire in the things hand danced. After a long while with but the raspy sound between you and it, it speaks.

"Y-you shouldn't be here," the creature stutters, taking it's time to form words in a mouth long since made less suited for the task. "This is m-my Sanctuary. T-his is m-my home," on the last words it chokes, spitting something up with far less of a fluid consistency than the spittle one would have expected. seconds, perhaps minutes more, linger uninterupted. "Speak d-damn ye, or get ye away from my medicine," it said, blank eyes staring about the cavern, searching for sights they've long since been able to see.

But for the twisted squat creature in the corner and the tall leafy plants within the cave you'd seen in the orange glow, you couldn't see anything this being would refer to as medicine. "L-leave me alone to my herb, leave me alone like everyone else did, all that time ago," the creature's words fall together a bit more easily now. "Where is everyone else?" you ask. you had searched for days, but this is the first sign of life you'd seen yet. "Where are the life forms that inhabit this planet?"

The corners of the twisted thing's mouth turned up as it's lips spread, revealing a gruesome visage, a smile more insane than of joy. "A long time ago, i was one of them. I was at the bottom, and i stayed in my proper place. I did everything I was told, everything t-that was expected of me. I felt pain. I f-felt sorrow. I felt the beatings, and the stings of their insults as i hung in chains and behind glass, everywhere I could never strike back."

For the first time, the creatures eyes meet yours. as white and grim as they are, two, tiny black pinholes pierced the centers', and stared straight forward at you.

"I was starved of food and water by 'my' kind. I was deprived the human connection by 'my' kind. i was denied my very life by 'my' kind, because I chose the medicine that could save my mind, and not the body that they placed their values upon." It held the cylinder in it's hand up to the fire in his other, and pulled air through the two. For but a split second strain showed across the things face, hard lines pulled taught across what leathery hide was left unburdened my the thick mass of hair. And when it exhaled, the vapours emitted coiled lazily skyward, pale and grey as the creature who bore it from its lungs. "They are no more here than I," it said. A horrid retching sound forced it's way from inside the creature. "they forgot that there is more meaning than the singular, and that they are limited moreso by their personal greed, stupidity and corruption than my having having chosen exile ever could." Tears welled in the creature's eyes.

"The world was consumed in the fires of man's design because he would not, and by design could not, accept anything less than the submission of all his kin."

You stood, unsure now of what to think. the creature before you tells of the human race, the prevalent species as if they were lesser than the rock that birthed them. this squat, ugly being, says it survived his own kind by rejecting them for a plant. "Every man dies alone in his heart, knowing no solace in another. But for a man who was alone from the start, who never truly felt what it was to know another and be together for a day in eternity, he will be without death. Without life, there is no death..." It's sentence trailed off, and it's gaze listed from you. No more sound came from the creature. It sat in silence, still as the stone surrounding it.

The sun was barely lighting the sky as you stepped forth from the cave. In your mind, you felt as if a glimpse of something greater, something higher than all you knew had been revealed. Certainly the others would never listen. They had called you mad for wishing to explore this barren planet in the first place. What could possibly be gained from the melted ruins of human civilization?