Princeps

7. Freedom is not a Given, it is Earned

The calm summer night took a different guise on the other side of the estate bringing to Atef a confusing stream of overlapping images, playing tricks on the boy who already made an immutable decision that he must find an exit and that there is no time to wait. In a crazed dance of his psyche, he still desperately struggled to understand this outside world.

Every act of kindness he was bestowed with since the moment he woke in this accursed place was calculated, every caring word and expression of understanding nothing but lie. Is he really utterly unique, can't they find out on their own? Let them even bring him back to the mine, he will show them on his own, only if they don't take away the sole thing he has in life, his existence! Although it was terrifying in the depths, although he didn't know of anything else in the world apart a small piece of land around the pit and it itself, still his innate child's optimism yearned for life. He considered how the return to the depths would satisfy his jailors, whether he would find the path again; the curls he wiggled around and cracks he crawled through. Would they be satisfied when he finally reaches the place where, in their opinion, he became what is not possible. But he can't trust them anymore, they would only smile and execute him as soon as they get hold of the knowledge from that damn pit. The whisper went silent.

- Mother, Dina, Rola, gods help! Take me on the road, hold me I'm broken, give strength, I don' wanna join you lot yet, not yet! - Repeating his prayer quietly; sobbing finally exhausted him to sleep.

He floated through the ether of the underground, it clung to his every pore, pervading from everywhere. He screamed in fear and the slimy, fatty liquid besieged him gushing down his throat. He didn't drown, rather became one with the environs, though his only want was to expel from himself the poisonously bitter resin. The blackness gradually grew into dim fluorescent colours, which smouldered threateningly. The ether whispered to him, imbuing him, revealing its secrets, reminding him. The dim colours intensified, an inexplicable light coalesced into a streaming flash in the distance hurtling towards him, the threatening ray with the backdrop of screaming infinity. The whisper faded overcame by the uproar in his ears, he curled up in pain shutting his eyes. An intense explosion of light transpired tearing the protection of his eyelids. Atef, stupefied, found himself in a brilliant chamber, formed by nature in past immemorial and tucked away from the growing gaze of the world. An experienced diver from the island of Lit'veh would compare the minerals of glittering colours and the tricksy dancing of light to the beauty of its coral reefs, but Atef was obsessed with a different resemblance. Suddenly everything became familiar; purple see-through crystals, blindingly light and yet cold-blue colour hidden and brooding in deep cracks, unfathomable grey metallic rhomboids, a dense yellow shroud akin to a living grassy valley and an endless run of other colours and their erratic mixes painted fantastic shapes with spikes, lumps, magmatic creases, and other figures that nature spawned in this world. The reborn whisper turned into a giggle, enlivening him, proving that another in the string of nightmares is not in store tonight.

He remembered his wading into deep, deeper than ever before in his life, in search of a new vein in the porous pit walls. He should have given up a while ago, but some inexplicable ember deep within his stomach impelled him to peek just a bit deeper, to explore just the next chamber in hope that the lamp will shine upon a metallic glow. Sudden drop, faintingly strong whiplash, painful strain of the rope which wailed threatening to snap, his lamp lost inviting in the terror of endless darkness. He haplessly screamed and jerked around trying to send out a signal of his dire straits, a plea for someone to pull him back. Recognizing that he is left to himself, he forced his sinewy muscles up the rope hoping not to give in before reaching an overhang or ridge which could provide respite. The painful progress was taken away by a deep growl of the abyss paired with a ferocious flash of light. Arms gave in... no return.