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- 03/16/2013
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Note: While authors are asked to place warnings on their stories for some moderated content, everyone has different thresholds, and it is your responsibility as a reader to avoid stories or stop reading if something bothers you.
Crossing the Horizon - 1. Chapter 1
Eternity. Forever.
That’s how long I’d been alive, the length of time I’ve spent in this depthless realm. Truth be told, I don’t recall being born. The first memory engraved in my mind is aimless wandering, attempting to escape from a large fountain, only to turn right around and find myself at its edge.
I live by this fountain. It’s my home. Not once in the last forever have I strayed from it. It’s always here when I turn around, regardless of how far I’ve moved away—it’s cool, clear water jetting out of the white, marble floor into a circular pool two feet deep and a dozen across. This fountain marks the center of this lonely place: my world.
Over time, I learned how not to be alone. I don’t recall when—time is impossible to track here—but, at one point, I wondered why everything was so bright. At that moment, when I imagined darkness, it manifested. The world I lived in changed from a perpetual white, cloudy dream to a darkness tinted with a dreary blue. Night.
That experiment led to another, of course, each growing in extent and complexity. I decorated the night with distant stars, and the day with pink clouds. I gave form to the emptiness around me, spawning wide, green plains, or hilly forests—even a cool midnight beach. Whatever I imagined became.
I got lonely, though, and wished for someone to share my kingdom with. Immediately, it became so. Unfortunately, rather than friend I had expected, I merely got myself… an empty, soulless copy of myself. It didn’t speak, it didn’t think. It only obeyed.
I hated it.
I hated him.
I hated me.
So, I hid his face and body with armor and called him my knight, my protector. I could make an infinite number of him, and each would be just as dull and lifeless.
Time passed, as it is wont to do. Day in and day out, I sat here, on the fountain stone, watching the sky change at my demand, listening to the forest sounds of my own fabrication, and being waited on by lifeless dolls of myself clad to faux polymers.
I wanted freedom.
Yet, it was another false fabrication, another thing I imagined for myself.
Despite this, I wished for it—my greatest whim, the freedom from all I want.
Again, my wish became.
For the first time in my life, I felt sleepy and as my eyes drooped close, darkness engulfed my vision…
A moment later, I opened them. Another pair—a soft, deep blue—stared back at me. I didn’t recognize the face, and that fact alone brought a smile to my face. The stranger returned it instantly, and leaned in closer to meet my lips with his own.
A kiss? Yes, a kiss. My first kiss.
“What are you smiling about?” he asked me softly, happiness ripe in his voice.
Why am I smiling? I felt myself question.
“Because you’re here,” I heard my voice answer.
Then, I realized; I wasn’t controlling myself. Or rather, I wasn’t controlling the body. It wasn’t mine.
The other boy giggled, oblivious to my bewilderment, and kissed me again. “Cute.”
My hands, subconsciously, wrapped around the boy and pulled him closer, pressing his warmth to mine. Soon, this body was snugly within his.
A hug. So that’s what a real hug felt like. Warmth, security, affection. Happiness.
I heard a sniffle. It took a moment to realize my body had made it. The boy before me pulled back quickly, to meet my eyes again.
With a confused look on his face, he questioned, “Why are you crying, Babe?”
“I, I don’t know,” I heard the body answer.
Somehow, I could tell it really didn’t. I’d influenced it to cry. Maybe I wasn’t so powerless after all.
“Don’t cry,” the boy whispered to me. “I hate it when you cry.” Again, his arms surrounded me and held tightly.
Sweet warmth.
A tear rolled down my cheek. The saltiness took me by surprise, as did the cool stream it left behind on my cheek.
Tears. They felt good. I liked them.
The boy held me until the tears stopped flowing. At that point, he brushed my cheeks dry planted upon them a loving kiss each. I giggled, the body giggled, the other entity giggled.
The other entity. At last, I noticed the true holder of this body: a boy, standing beside me.
“Who are you?” I asked it.
“I’m me,” he answered, contently.
“Who is Me?”
He smiled, replying, “You are you.”
I cringed with confusion. “What??”
He turned, then, and pointed into the darkness that lay behind us, away from the visions fed to us by the physical body. “You’re him.”
I turned and stared into the darkness. It was only a short moment before I noticed, in a massive array of visions, my real body floating easily on the fountain water.
“Where is this?” I asked.
“This is me,” the boy shrugged, pointing back to the image of the other boy. He was still beside us, holding us firmly.
“How’d I get here?”
He smiled again. “You cried out, I answered, you came.”
I realized, then, that this boy was me. A different me, from a different world… my yearning for freedom linked him to me, allowed me access.
“Are we the only ones?” I whispered.
“No,” he returned, after a moment of staring into the darkness. “At least, I doubt we are. I mean, existence is a big place… Why’d you come?”
“I looked back towards my own world, saw my body floating, peacefully asleep, through the eyes of my knights. “My world’s a prison.”
He nodded passively, shrugged again. “It can feel that way.” Silence stood between us, we stared at my world. It had reverted to its natural dead state, my control over it diminished.
“Gonna stay?” I heard him ask.
“Can I?”
“I don’t know,” he giggled. “If you want. I don’t mind your presence.”
We looked back into the world through his eyes—where the other boy had fallen asleep against us, his rhythmic breath against our ear the only sign of our lives.
Seeing him, for the first time in my life, I felt intimacy—a link to another entity far deeper than I’d ever felt before.
It felt amazing—a feeling you don’t easily forget. Love, perhaps?
“Yes,” the boy beside me said. “That’s love.”
I looked at him, questioned, “You can hear my thoughts?”
“Can’t you hear mine?”
I listened. Ecstasy, happiness, completeness—all of it flowed into my heart. What strange emotions.
“Indeed; we really strange creatures.”
I looked at him, then, and, for the first time ever, I saw myself.
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2
Note: While authors are asked to place warnings on their stories for some moderated content, everyone has different thresholds, and it is your responsibility as a reader to avoid stories or stop reading if something bothers you.
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