a death, a birth, a riddle
DESCRIPTION
A fictional short story about the journey of a strange character names Solan.TRANSCRIPT
A Death, A Birth, A Riddle
By Timothy Lee
It felt like death, like he was being pressed into the sky. Everything was going
white. Solan thought himself at the end of his journey. A cliff loomed ahead of him, and
the sky above enlarged like some huge monster threatening to swallow him up. The
wind beat him against the cliff, and suddenly up and up he went. He was warm and dull,
but an excitement was building quickly within him. He saw his shadow against the sunlit
ground slowly begin to fade as the warm tension increased. A wave of excruciating pain
washed over him, as though a grater had sliced him neatly into a hundred pieces, and
then it was over.
The dazzling light blinded him as he floated above the earth. Gradually, his eyes
adjusted to the brightness, and the white faded to an azure blue. He felt cool now, as
though the very idea of warmth had been left far below him.
Solan looked down at the world shrouded in darkness beneath him. He saw
many people going about their lives, ebbing and flowing in a gentle rhythm, unaware of
the crystal soul floating in the sunlit land above them.
But then the wind came again with a force. Wild and icy, and possessed with
some purpose beyond imagining, it wafted him quickly away from the darkness and up,
up, up, away to meet the sun. Finally, beyond the thought of anything but light and blue,
he fell into a quiet sleep.
Hours passed. Solan awoke to find that the light had gone. He had now lost all
sense of gravity. His vision was shrouded in gray. Above and below, the same dim
grayness pervaded. Even he was gray.
The wind blew against him fiercely, swirling the haze in which Solan found
himself. Suddenly, a beam of light rushed past him. For an instant, the beam cast a cold
glow on the world around him, and in that moment, Solan understood the nature of the
grayness around him: millions of souls like his made up this darkness, so many that
together they blocked out the sun. These myriads of spirits rushed with his, hurried
along by the purposeful wind.
Tossed now like a boat in a hurricane, he felt himself becoming heavy. It was
slow at first, and his newfound weight anchored him in the raging sea, but he kept
getting heavier. Like a cord drawn tight and stretched until, in the blink of an eye, it
breaks, he tumbled out of the sea of souls. Before he knew what was happening, Solan
slammed into the earth and remembered nothing more.
When Solan's battered essence found its way back to consciousness, he felt as
though he was being crushed under the weight of a hundred small boulders. The
surface of his body was covered in a dark, muddy substance that could have been
blood.
Solan struggled to free himself, but his effort was to no avail. It was only when he
had given up in utter disgust that he realized he was not alone. In the quiet of his terror,
he heard what sounded like breathing coming from behind him.
Before Solan had time to react with so much as a scream, this dark being began
to make its presence felt more forcefully. Some unseen power knocked the wind out of
him as the being pulled Solan toward itself. He was crushed against the rocks that
surrounded him, and yet the force continued to grow. Just when Solan thought he must
burst under the pressure of this monstrous thing, a crack opened in the earth. Like a
pebble leaving the grip of a slingshot, Solan's body rushed through the gap and into a
waiting mouth of the beast.
He had no sense of up or down now, only of movement, of a slippery race along
the creature's inner tubes. He was suspended in some sort of gelatinous goo which he
took for a mixture of digestive enzymes. Slowly as he travelled, a sickly, green glow
came to illuminate his surroundings. Terror struck him when he saw many other souls
suspended, racing along with his.
Minutes passed, the longest minutes he had ever known, and he gradually
resigned himself to his fate. “This, then, is the final destiny of the soul, to be whisked
away by some infernal wind as the sacrifice to appease a voracious monster” he
thought grimly.
But the green light kept on growing, from the sickly pallor to a shade that Solan
found pleasant and almost invigorating. Suddenly, looking ahead with nervous
anticipation, he saw a light at the end of the tunnel, and around him the souls of his
fellow travellers being bound up into new bodies, bodies of light, and graceful form.
Yet Solan kept moving down the tunnel. He was warm again now, warm like he
had not been since the day he died. He smelled fresh air greeting him at the exit of the
tunnel. The force behind him slowed as he neared the edge, and he took a few timid
steps forward to look out.
Before him stood a peaceful, green meadow. The sun beamed down, filling the
air with warmth and a gentle breeze full of the scents of wildflowers. As he beheld this
vision, his heart was filled with joy. A voice spoke in his mind, “Go in peace.” With
courage, he stepped out into the sun.
Now for the riddle, if you haven’t already guessed it: what was Solan? The
answer: a drop of water.