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Chapter 30
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When you see the stars, the infinite nothingness proclaims the identity of an unidentifiable watcher, but benevolent in design, spying down on the unknowing observer to be a presence, a hope.
And when you see the Earth, the massive circle with millions of dotted lights shining out through the darkness, proclaiming to the whole empty universe that here, here there is hope - here there is light, laughter, love, and life with purpose beyond the mundane, the trudging through the muck and mire of death, waiting for long days and longer years to pass and grant death most coveted by those who live for nothing, that valued respite from the weary pain and punishment of thought and caring - the very notion of that most popular opinion, that life is a series of pains and prolonged agony until, at last, a violent end is a justified finisher to this wretched trail, seems like the foolish errand that it is.
What is life, if not the pain? If not the agony of every breath, if not the tears and dreams? If not the sight of the smallest lily cracking through that impenetrable steel, all by its own power, then what else could life be?
The smothered sound of rain in thunder, the sight of calloused skin, the touch of glass in delicate form, the physically transcending sense of a heartbeat felt through the skin - this is love, life in its purest form. For to sacrifice life for years and years, to wear your body down on the quest to give all that you have for the benefit of someone else, is the purest form of life.
And yet, that more expedient sacrifice is all the more costly. For while it is easy to throw yourself to the dangers that threaten, that harass and torment, to lose your hold on life so another may continue - it is hardest of all to rip yourself from that happiness for someone you do not even know.
Or do - and hate. To know your place in the universe, and to know you are lower than your antithesis, that a chance at some continuance of this joy is worth the loss, even if nothing changes - even if your dreams are the cost.
When I see the earth, as I do even now, I see not a million points of light. I see a billion points of life. For every light there are tens of thousand lives, touched by the influence of its glow, quelling the darkness if only for a moment in great concentrations. To them, life is a state of being, a joy which all the world participates in, not knowing that such an abundance requires the constant death of those big enough to see the world from afar, and small enough to know it needs death to maintain.
The glow of my eyes matches the lights above, orange and piercing. They do not watch the lights, the people in between, or even the city I journeyed from. They watch a speeding dot, far off, carrying my own personal expression of life and the value thereof. A sacrifice I would be willing to make over and over again, if I would only have the life to offer up. But now I have died twice - and in a way, I die even now.
Far above, my son travels. To never-ending destinations, to experience wildly unimaginable, to people and all the pains they will introduce. To spare him from this thing would be to hate him beyond comprehension; why would I deny him the greatest joy of all?
To find yourself taller than them all, and bring yourself low - to cut the legs off the giant and show him what life is like to the little man, to the child and the dreamer. To hurt, to love, and to toil away for the one gift worth all of life itself: the chance to take this treasure most precious, and to chip and chisel, until at the end of your life is a jewel impossibly complex, resplendent, formed from the compression of agony and heartbeats under the pressure of care into a shining star so bright the universe in all its totality cannot compare.
And to give this gem, this precious creation, to the stranger, the monster, the blackguard and beggar, the sinner and the son. That I could tell my son to give this up would be a hatred so abominably cruel I would find it more merciful to burn the world in anger, causeless in its purpose and feeding only my wickedness and disgust at my own existence.
And yet, that is an existence which may not last much longer. Even now a sparking gap in my chest proclaims the void wherein was a knife most peculiar, a part of someone else from away off, whose business here seemed intertwined with my own plans and plotting. That stony soldier of my son was most reliable in his retrieval of it.
With it gone, however, I do not know how much longer I have to last. It provided an excellent conductor, and the now exposed wiring had previously been flowing quite sufficiently. But most of it is lost, arcing across the emptiness and providing no warmth to my cold form. My body fading out may result in me just continuing on, like Eilrach has done, or I may simply fade into a sleep until such time as someone sees fit to reawaken me.
Or I may die again.
Now on the edge of the crater I watch, not into the pit below but through the darkness above, to where that small speck travels, to where not even my eyes can zoom far enough to observe as I have done before. For the Earth is turning, the sun is creeping around the edge of that circle, and soon it will be dawn for my son, his friends, and the most unlucky group of chowderheads I have ever known.
Unlucky, of course, because they had to put up with me for more than five minutes. And even moreso, because as I held up my hands to sever the legs of that giant, they had to steady my aim lest I lose heart and refuse to bring myself low.
For most of the world, the concept of Ghid is an odious one, a story of a monster so irredeemable that any indication of his presence must be eradicated with the swiftest of strikes. I played into this notion, escalated it, until the hatred of me grew into a thick cloud which I could easily skirt through undetected. And for what purpose was all this preparation done?
I told you already of that jewel. Mine is muddled with imperfections, chips, scratches, chunks of stone, and is so illogically small that its value is more akin to polished paste than a gem. But I hope there is enough light shining through the rough edges to inspire him to take up the chisel, and craft his own legacy. To chip and hack at himself until all that is left is life itself - is a sacrifice invaluable.
And I know I, too, am being watched. An unidentifiable watcher, who calmly and gently asks me to die, to craft my life into a jewel so delicate only death can appraise it.
My eyes watch the lone speck until the light from the sun hides him from view. I know that, before too long, he will reappear once night falls again, along with all those whose lives I have almost destroyed. If any good comes from my influence, I will ensure the credit goes elsewhere, to whom is most deserving of it.
Now I am alone, the light of the sun blanketing the frigid surface of the moon. The darkness around it seems less and less familiar to me, something I found such solace in before. A respite from all that I feared, all that I dreaded most.
And what lies in the dark? What unforeseeable sight and unknowable entities hide in that harrowing gloom, that silken cloth cast across the lights of the horizon, casting an impenetrable blanket across the imagination, so stifling the wonders and woes of the silent observer?
Tears, dreams, the cold impenetrable logic of the universe, and the fiery ramblings of the living, with no purpose to the words other than that expression of awe at the pain which makes it all worthwhile.
And the knowledge that, in the darkness of space, lies not an infinite void of emptiness, but stars simply too far to see, the edge of the universe doing the best that it can to run from observation so that the imagination can simply go on forever.
Well, my time draws to a close. I sit in silent contemplation, waiting for the day that all those to whom I was repulsive decide, on their own terms, that I am worth being with again.
If that day ever comes, I will share with them all the conversations I have had from afar, all the memories I formed watching them live, explore, flourish, and touch the lives of others. Their pain, their hardships, all of it will craft a story so complex it cannot be illustrated by prose or by the longest story ever told.
But by tears.
By dreams.
By all that makes us human.
And, hardly least of all, by that slow, uncompromising appraiser, in whose hands we are all accountable. By whose transactions we all find value.
Every story begins with a hero, someone to sympathize with, to understand, to possibly imagine yourself as. Illustrations, animations, visual media enhances this perception, and each medium and concept exists in its own vein, but the original script - written words on a white canvas illustrated only by the fantasy of the reader - remains an entirely unique source of storytelling and crafting of tales.
And every person, whether young or old, living or dead, has adamantly stuck to being the hero of their own personal story; the one they write every day and illustrate with their unique actions and personality.
However, my destiny seemed to defy that constant. In order to find in myself the hero, I had to behead that terrible giant after bringing him low.
I was the villain of my own story.
And as for the hero?
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