Something New

The Observer's Journey, Part 2

290 Million Years Post-Establishment

I have been here since the dawn, watching it all. Why this was so in the beginning, I can no longer say. For I wasn't yet awake, back then. My life then, if it was a life at all, is recalled now as only a dream which seemed so long in the moment, but now brief in hindsight. I watched time go by through a foggy haze on the outlying edges of consciousness; a blank mind devoid of context or ambition beyond a single all-encompassing goal which had a beginning but no end. I was everywhere, and yet nowhere, with my only reasons for being left mysterious even to myself.

I was all-seeing, and yet I was blind. I existed only to observe, yet I was wholly unseen, known by none. For there were no others then who could know or be known. And so my work went on unobstructed, and my self remained unborn, still going along in that distant dream as it always had - not yet awakened, not yet known.

That all began to change when the sapient species, those sparks in the darkness, first appeared and showed me that there could be something more to life than this lonely task. Their lives were short, but they made the most of them. They did things that no animal before them had done, rising above their simple natures, becoming things grander, just because they could. It sparked change in me, a fascination. I couldn't help but want to know them. I couldn't help but want to know what it was like to really live. 

~~~

I think to myself why I still kept to this form, the avatar of an extinct race, even in the last and reluctant stage of my vigil so long after their story here came to its end. There is no one left to see it, yet I cling to it, if only for myself.

I now think I keep this shape must be because it was the only in this way I had ever truly been known, to be real, more than an abstract concept outside the workings of the world. I hold it still, even if it is by now long forgotten, because it was this way that an invisible nothing was first seen, and so became something. With this form I was lent, I was no longer outside the story, but a part of it. The daydreamers were the first to recognize me, if only in small glimpses, if only enough to represent me in their image and fill the wide gaps in their view with story and myth: a legend I would later exploit for my own purposes. It was a last effort to regain control of what I had long believed was my purpose, to oversee everything about this place for as long as I could possibly do so. For the first time, I changed its fate, speaking to the creatures, swaying their paths toward a direction of my choosing. I cannot now say if it was worth it, that what was gained could compensate for all that was lost.

When all came falling down, when the ice fell and the world entered its last prosperous age, I was no longer merely an observer, but an instigator. Decisions I made brought consequences to myself and to others, then and forever after. Conflicted, as I had been for so long now, I pulled away from the worlds I was now responsible for, frightened that if I didn't stay at a distance, I would break it all over again. Yet that longing for something different, to feel what the mortals could feel for myself, only grew stronger in my isolation. I had become something else from when I began, just as the birds had, just as all this world's life. And my niche could change too.

I am so tired now of being conflicted, torn between the old way that has always been, and the chance at something else always dangling just out of my reach. Now all has come and gone, and the hothouse nearly over. The world is soon to come to its delayed but inevitable close. So before it's too late, I resign to the fact that I failed my task, but also have realized that it no longer matters as I thought it did. All things come to an end, one day. And so too can my time watching this world.

I know now that the end is just another story's beginning.

And I am ready for one of my own.

Though I had seen it all from the outside, there remained mysteries, intangible, still outside my reach. And the closer I had let myself become, the more questions I had. What compelled those who live to keep living, even when to do so was challenging? Why would something so brief, so easily lost, be so worth holding on to?

I wanted to know what it was like. I knew that whatever I learned now would change me further, and no longer would I fight against it.

And now I would know what it truly meant to be alive, as I left behind all I ever knew, and at last tried something new.

There would be no going back.

~~~

My journey began in a place of shadow. It might have once seemed claustrophobically small. But now, it was home.

Within that darkness, from the very start, shone a light as bright as the sun. I couldn't see it, at first, but it was there all the while.That light, I believe, was love. A feeling, not something you can see with your eyes... Until one day, I realized I could see its face. A mother, so tender in her affections. I thought she was the most beautiful thing in the world, then and there. Nothing else mattered. 

What else could there be but this?

From the very beginning, I was already starting to understand new things. But I didn't realize that the more I learned, the more I would forget the old ones.

Funny how soon they ceased to matter.

There were seasons to life. That first season was warm and quiet, but so quickly it passed.

I learned that love comes, and then it goes. Young are born, and then they grow.

And one day Mother, my mother, didn't come back. And I mourned her, even though that old part of me knew it was natural for her to leave when her role was done. 

In time I learned that in life, you will find new loves, new reasons to hold on. 

We grew in the dark, the one I now called my brother and I.

Once I would have been so far from him, detached and superior.

Now, to live was new to us both.

We were equals in this unfamiliar world.

And together we flew into the light.

That was the beautiful, fleeting spring of our lives.  

But there was no guarantee of summer, and some seasons end early.

We don't always know what waits around the corner.

I thought I knew everything once, but I had already forgotten how fragile life was.

And I understood now what we live for is not only the pursuit of the joys of life.

To be mortal means to learn to fear, too.

And to run from monsters outside our control.

Life is full of lessons, and some of them hurt. But I learned that without that pain, you wouldn't realize how special the joy really was.

And will be again.

Fear would not define me, or keep me from going on, even if I was once more alone.Though I learned grief, pain, and sorrow, no feeling however strong overwhelmed me. To survive required clarity. To live, one can't be bogged down, thinking of what was, when one can only control what will be.

I learned that everyone is a monster in another's story. And I made peace with that. It was fair, in its own way, how life's rules worked.

The seed the bird picks never becomes a tree. A brother's journey never reaches its destination. From the perspective of each, the loss is the same. 

But life could not exist any other way: to live means others must die. And one day so would I. 

And though I didn't -  I couldn't - let worry overcome me..

I admit that now I feared it, too.

I believed once that to be alive is to be but a small piece of the important whole.

But for the living, that piece becomes everything, all-encompassing.

As my journey went on, it became harder to remember anything before.

Or to worry about anything tomorrow.

Only now really mattered.

That was to be alive. To take in every moment, before it's gone.

Flying where the winds take you.

Through the sun and the rain.

The light and the dark.

And in time I found new joy, new love, and new reason. 

To become love, in another's eyes, is to find life's highest joy.

And to perpetuate one's kind for another generation is the meaning of life from nature's own perspective. For to do so means one never quite dies, even at their end, if a small part of them carries on.

To lose both so suddenly, then, when all was right in the world, is to experience life's sharpest pain.

Everything changed in a moment, irrevocably.

And it no longer seemed fair at all.

A darkness rose from within me, a new emotion, as strong as any.

For the first time, I felt hate. 

Maybe it wasn't too late...

Maybe there could still be a way to get it back....

A rational being might realize when hope is lost.

But by now, my actions were only the result of my lived experience, no longer those of a higher, intellectual power.

I was now young, inexperienced, and angry. And in that moment, I relished the aggression. All of the pain that I experienced would be thrown back at its source. Not to make sure it never did it again to another. Not even, mostly, on the chance any of my loved ones could still be saved.

It was mostly out of pure spite.

I made a decision that would affect both myself and others, forever after. There would be no going back.

Would it be worth it, in the end?

There had been no hope, for all were already gone. 

Unable to change their fate, I instead changed another's.

And now their deaths were in vain.

But death feeds life, and to live is to interact with others in unpredictable ways. No one lives in isolation. Every action has a trickling effect on others, intended or otherwise. Some have a small impact, others a large one. Somewhere, somehow, life still goes on. The darkness gives way to dawn. And joy, even love, still exists when you can't feel it. In my short journey, I learned that it is so much better to have lived and lost, then never to have experienced it at all. And in that, I found what I sought.

But what I really had to learn, and something that could only be learned firsthand, was the unfairness of it all.

You can do everything right, and sometimes it still isn't enough.

And that's it. Life may go on, but not yours. 

And there is nothing anyone can do about it. 

In my life's own final moment, I finally understood.