Deluge of Desolation | l. ackerman

Symbiotic Relations to Craven Downfalls

(chapter twenty)

I often walked on the bustling thoroughfares of Liberio. It was the one place where every Eldian within their containment could gather without fear of being harassed. It was a place where I could sit and watch people go about their lives in the passing hours of the day; where I would let myself revel in the simplicity of living in present society.

One man in particular helped me ground myself to the Earth and the connections every being has to it. He was always stationed on the by-street with his tattered blanket and old acoustic guitar, playing away as his fingers filtered up and down the frets in a smooth sequence of notes. He wore a red-stained coat paired with black glasses that gave me the impression he was blind. The cane that laid next to him only secured that thought.

Among his red coat and serene tunes, I found myself enjoying his presence, even if I failed to catch his name. I always wondered what he did with his life, if he lived on the streets and how he stays alive and out of trouble with the patrolling Marleyan soldiers, but I never asked, too afraid of potentially driving him away.

His coat, polished in a way that had me questioning whether the man was native to these parts, stood out the most. Never before had I ever seen such a vibrant red. The hue made all of his surroundings seem a vestige gray as they paled in comparison to the rich vermillion fabric.

I believe that is what made me infatuated with the man; in ways no one else seemed to realize. There was something special about his essence, not just because he was blind to the pain that smothered every poor soul of these accursed internment zones, but because he played light tunes that broke the palpable sorrow around him. But no one else seemed to notice.

Seeing him harmoniously sway his head with each beat and smile at no one in particular was like a contrivance that I didn't know I needed until I first saw him. When he was around, all issues and plight were nonexistent— a realm in which nothing but the continuous melody that he constructed with only a few steel strings and his own bare hands mattered.

"What is the point in all of this strife that so many innocent people die for?" I would ask myself as I left the thoroughfare. So many lives lost for a grandiose masquerade; And the unimaginable proportions of hate that these nations foster within their people is only the incubator for the future that awaits us.

That man, though, no matter what he was, who he shared blood with or his personal ideologies, he represented the truth of this world; that being we are all the same. We are all humans living in this node of the universe that, as far as we know, is the only planet that inhabits cognizant life. Sure, we are all individuals leading separate lives than the person next to us, but that doesn't negate the fact that we are in an intimate, symbiotic relationship with one another, as well; being created from the very same substance as everything else in our universe; star matter. The human species is a function of the universe just the same as a blood cell is a function of our circulatory system.

And on a more modest scale, humans are a function of this silly man-made concept called society. We all have our parts to play in the grand scheme of life, aiding something to the future generations and paths our successors will take. Yet most people fail to realize this, and they subject people to their baseless values of ancestors and wars that were coerced upon us in a proxy. Some think they are better than others just because of the situations they were granted, or the people they knew, only to then take the liberty of passing judgment on those same poor souls who shoulder the immense hate of others. The cycle thus continues.

After not two weeks of continuously watching the man in the red coat, I decided that I wanted a guitar. I wanted to breed the same tranquility in others that he bred for me; I wanted to follow in that man's stead and express the simplicities of life to those who seem stuck in the turmoil that rages within their minds. It wasn't my initial goal of life and it most definitely didn't stick for long, but the thought of helping another needy person, like I, with whatever they required aided me through the times in which silence was my only friend.