Aarvo clenched his frozen core. Why had his life become so unbearable? It hadn’t always been so bad. Once, he had never been alone: his mother moon had talked to him and kept him company all the time. By then she was already gray and covered in thick dust, but he really didn't mind. He loved to listen to her faint silvern voice as she taught him the mother tongue of stone, how everything was called, and what it was. Thus, he learned that prairies were called eeskr; that grass was riss, the ocean voarr and clouds limliss; that his mother had always liked to be called Lissa (which meant adorned with light); and that, when she was still young and green, she had nurtured and grown in her embrace innumerable creatures of all shapes and sizes: bombastrss (elephants) and grokris (spiders); crippletrss (squirrels) and omugass (whales); and of course many trcritrss (children of the stone).
The first time he heard about others like him, he asked what had happened to them, but his mother replied confusedly that they had all fallen asleep in her embrace, that she was now too old, and she couldn't bear children anymore.
At that strange answer, he remembered he had frowned and asked: “What about me? Wasn't I born of you?”
“Of course you were. You emerged from the depths of my very womb, and rock from rock, you came to life.”
“But didn't you say you couldn't bear children anymore?”
At that, his mother had become more and more confused, until she fell into one of those deep slumbers that by then came over her more and more often.
He hated when she fell asleep like that, because then he'd suddenly found himself alone, surrounded only by dust and the emptiness of space. It was during those long waits, when all he could do to pass the time was exploring the boundless lunar expanses in search of relics of the past, and drawing in the dust, that he turned his eyes up to Eera and marveled at all that life. At that sight, he also started wondering what was happening to his mother moon. His dreams became filled by ghostly sights, and tainted with a loneliness more chilling than the void of space. A dreadful worry clutched him in his grasp, and soon he had to ask the question that had dug a nest in his chest.
“Are you dying too, mom?”
Lissa hesitated, then, “Yes, I am, like all things do.”
“Where do you go then when you die?”
“I don’t know. Far away, I guess.”
“Can I come with you?”
Hi mother laughed a tender and melancholy laugh. “No, my little pebble, I’d much rather you live on and be happy."
Aarvo remembered he had felt puzzled by her reply, but was never able to explain his thoughts to her, because soon afterwards, her voice grew thinner, her lapses longer, until one day she went to sleep and never woke up again.
Aarvo stood up in the glaring sun, trying to shake off those awful memories that never left him in peace. He remembered too well how bitter and resentful he had felt when he realized his mother moon would never talk to him again. Why had she abandoned him like that? What had he done to deserve such punishment and pain? Why did he have to be alone? Even now, he missed her so very, very much.
The old sorrow settled again in his heart, and Aarvo felt a heaviness far more powerful than gravity crushing him to the ground. Exhausted, all he wished was to rest and sleep, but terror seized him at the thought: he didn’t want to close his eyes and not wake up again as his mother moon had done. Yet, if he fell asleep, he might perhaps meet her in his dreams. Wouldn’t it feel like home to hear her silvern voice again? What if he died though? What if he closed his eyes and died? Would he still dream of her? Could one dream when he was dead?
Aarvo shook himself. He was sure that if he sat down now, he'd never manage to get up again. So, he turned around and started walking South toward his h'kka, his Cave of Treasures, where he kept all of his most prized possessions. He had carved the hole in the bare rock with his own two hands in order to keep safe all the things he had found in his excursions. In the back of the cave, he stored all the duplicates, the broken pieces, the things he didn’t like best but at the same time didn’t want to throw away. Near the entrance instead, he kept all the gems of his collection: a faded and scratched street sign, the skull of what he hoped had been an iwo (a dog,) the air picture of a small liptriff (a bird), a memory crystal of the voarr (the ocean) and the shard of an old mirror.
When he arrived, his eyes skimmed over the incomprehensible symbols of the street sign, and the frozen features of the skull. He didn’t look in the mirror. What he needed wasn’t a reminder of his misery, but of life. He craved to feel something alive outside of himself, so he picked up the memory crystal.
His fingers brushed the carvings on the hard transparent bar, running along the stylized shapes of waves and fishing boats, then he squeezed it in his hand, and suddenly wave after wave broke all around him. A gigantic mass of water heaved under him with an immense sigh and then exhaled in floods that smashed against each other, rolled over each other with foaming steel blue mouths, then bit into the roaring darkness underneath. He was in the middle of the ocean, on an old fishing boat, pitching and rolling through the storm. His name was Norak now, he was a sailor, and he could taste the salty sprays of the waves in his mouth, could smell the wet air fizzing all around him as if he had actually been there, as if he had ever had the concept of these things, when in fact he had only ever seen water frozen solid in the reservoirs of perpetual night. But this was Norak’s memory, and in it were embedded the concepts and feelings of the moment that had been stored, allowing him to relieve them in full detail, to be immersed in them as if they were his own.
Aarvo traveled through this crystallized moment of the past braving the storm that seemed it would never end; breathing in every instant together with this long dead stranger; feeling through him the vast and dangerous presence of the raging ocean; laughing in unison with him at the sheer thrill of being alive; until suddenly the memory cut off, and Aarvo found himself thrown back inside the cave.
He startled and groaned at the abrupt transition, trying as best as he could to hold on to the fading images and sensations. Soon though, he was left once again with nothing else but his barren inescapable present.
Trying to forget himself, he ran out of the cave and raised his eyes at Eera. Why couldn't he just get up there!?
As he stared unblinkingly at the blue planet spinning in the sky, a thought slowly took hold of him: Eera was right there in front of him... Perhaps, if he called out.. Maybe.. Maybe she’d reply. At once, he cupped his hands and called out with all the voice he had, “Eera, hey, up there, Eera can you hear me? Hey, hello, please answer me, I just want to talk. Please, I’m all alone, I’d like to be your friend!”
He called and called till he was hoarse, but not the faintest sign of a reply came back. Embittered, he picked up some moonstones and hurled them up at Eera, hoping to at least wring out an angry grunt from her, when suddenly a thought shook him: nothing bound him anymore to this world. His mother was dead, and he was free to go and live up on Eera, if he so chose. Now, he could finally have the life he desperately wanted without betraying his mother. And if a stone could leave the moon...
He picked up another moonstone and threw it with all his might. The bullet shot up aflame, soared to the farthest reaches of the sky, then slipped out of the clutch of the moon and sailed straight toward Eera. The blinding light of hope lit up like a supernova inside Aarvo’s mind like: If a stone could leave the moon... Then so could he! If he could fling a stone so hard it shot right into space, then he must be strong enough to fling himself straight to Eera in one leap!
*******
Have you ever had a loss in your life so big that it paralyzed you?
Were you ever caught by an idea so bright that it changed the course of your life or made you do things you didn't know you were capable of?
Let me know.
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