DUSKLIGHT ODYSSEY

Chapter 15

Naim felt as light as a feather as she moved and danced across the world, though she appeared to be nowhere at all. Yet in that sense of nowhere there was a profound feeling of being everywhere, and at every time. An empty-fullness, a fulfilled-disparity. The pain she felt was gone, as were her worries. Though joy, too, was muted silent. She did not consider the state she was in, neither did she care much to try and consider it. All was masked in a blurred, hastened haze. Naim was content to move and not to move, to see and not to see, to be and not to be. In this new world of plain oddity, she thought she could make out the image of a young man weeping over the body of a young woman, though she did not wonder who they were, nor did it feel as though she watched them, though she watched them intently. All was, and nothing was not. The world lacked nothing, and yearned for nothing, and was nothing, and was everything. And it all was.

Naim saw other things, too. Faces of what must have been people were with her in that everywhere and nowhere. Naim knew none of them, but she knew that she knew some of them. Was it an old man and his smiling face? She didn't know if she wanted to know. Was it an older woman and her gentle eyes? Naim thought she might know, but the feeling passed. Everyone was with her, and everything was in her, and outside of her, and around her, beneath her, and through her, but nothing was nowhere. Nothing was with her, too.

The young man seemed to do something, as people often do, but Naim did not know what, nor did Naim not know everything. A little moon he plopped atop the girl, but Naim didn't see her, and didn't know what a moon was. But whatever it was, and if it happened, though it did, it seemed significant, or perhaps not insignificant, a tad magnificent, though boring as could be. It was all a bit boring, but Naim was unfamiliar with the sensation of boredom, so she felt nothing instead.

But then she felt something, a certain something, peculiar in its apartness from the everything and the nothing. Was it a warmth? Was it painful? Was it comforting? Naim couldn't decide, but she decided that it was something. That something continued, and then it grew. Naim was fascinated by its growth, because it did not shrink. Growing and shrinking were both somethings. Why did the something not both shrink and grow? But grow it did. It grew brighter, and not dimmer. Warmer, and not colder. Bigger, and not smaller. It grew, and grew, and grew; until Naim saw something—the world was filled with something. Not somethings, but just the one, all-encompassing something. It was a color, and the color was white. Naim found herself interested in the white, and found it increasingly difficult to discern the nothing. A new something seemed to emerge from the white. There it was, right afront her—a something! A something that was big, and beautiful, and was most assuredly not everything! Or was it big? Naim didn't know the difference between big and small. The something was big in the sense of... what was the word... importance. But it fit inside the palm of her hand, with plenty of room to spare. In fact, it would have fit on the tip of her pinky finger, perhaps several of the somethings would have. But there were no more of them, just the one she felt in her hand.

Naim didn't know what to think of the something, nor what she should do with it. Should. That was a word that Naim felt surprised to recall. The something was white, and round, and tiny, but imperative. Imperative for what? 'Imperative?' The word reminded her of 'should.'

Suddenly the something did something without Naim doing anything at all. It sprouted something else... or were they connected? Was the something sprouting from the something really just part of the same something? It sprouted nonetheless, right in the palm of her hand. Naim watched the thing, and maybe understood it. It was not white, like the somethings before it, but green. It grew longer and thicker and bigger, till only the tips were green, and the rest was brown. It kept growing—taller and taller, thicker and thicker—till it was too heavy for Naim to hold. She dropped the something and watched it continue to grow. More somethings sprouted from the other, and further somethings sprouted from them. Until it finally clicked.

Oh! thought Naim. It must be a tree. A tree, a something that Naim must have known, and she thought she knew. The tree was large now. Larger than Naim, at least. It was still far smaller than the world. And yet, the tree was a world unto itself. Something grew on the tree. Could it be a fruit? Naim knew the word fruit, but not what it meant. Even so, another white, round object grew on the tree. It grew bigger, too, though there was just the one. Nothing sprouted from it. Naim thought she should hold it, that maybe she should love it forever and ever. From the branch, she plucked the thing. The thing was an egg. It was hard, but warm, and it radiated life. Hardness, warmth, and life were things that Naim remembered that she knew now that she held the egg. She looked it over. It was simple, as straightforward as it was smooth. But what about inside? Naim tried to see what might be within, but she couldn't, as the shell was opaque. So Naim guessed, and guessing was as good as knowing. Life was in the egg. The moon was in the egg. Everything was in the egg. God was in the egg.

Naim liked the egg, and decided she'd take it with her. But to where? Naim remembered that she was nowhere, and remembered how to want, and remembered to want to be somewhere. Naim then remembered how to be sad, and wished she knew how to be somewhere again, because she knew that she had been somewhere before.

Naim held the egg in her arms, and she loved the egg. She remembered loving other things, too. She loved the sunlight, and the cool taste of water, and the stories her grandfather would tell, and another thing. Another something... another egg. Vio.

Vio?!

Vio?!?!

VIO?!?!

"VIO?!?!"

Naim was awake, though she wasn't asleep. She was dead, but now she was alive. Contradictions of all sorts swirled within her brain. Vio was in her arms, covered in snow. She was covered in snow, too. The snow was cold. Naim shook her head and watched it all fall to the floor. Vio was neither hot nor cold, but pleasantly warm. Her arms were wrapped in bandages, and she wondered why, until she felt the pain. Her arms stung badly as she grasped Vio, and so she let him go, though the stinging persisted. Where was she, again? The church. She looked around. The snow still fell, and she could only barely make out the shapes of all the church housed in the faintest of moonlight which pierced the clouds above. She saw the shape of someone, the shape of Ion, staring back at her from the shadows, motionless and silent.

Naim's messy hair, wet from the falling snow, obscured her vision. She swept it back, but as she did, she thought she saw more snow in the locks that she brushed. She took hold of her hair and held it afront her face to see it clearly. There was no great amount of snow, though her hair was now just as white, indistinguishable in color from the few flakes fallen upon it.