Zaphara Cirin Vendt's blog: "Story"

I soon drifted off to sleep. Maybe it was the beauty of the sky that was the resource to the dream I was about to dream. Maybe deep into my subconscious was the reason for my dream-- or perhaps it is simply my passion for the universe that sparked it. Whatever it is, it was by far my most vivid dream to date.

Recaptured back into my child hood home, I felt a sense of uneasy feeling. I was surrounded by family. My observances took me to a time of night, where darkness was just a few hours old but the light still needed invention. I looked out the living room window and caught a glimpse of the moon. It appeared to be descending from the sky hours earlier than its supposed to. I shot looks at my family who were completely oblivious to the strange phenomenon and quickly brushed it off when I brought it to their attention. They simply convinced themselves this was something normal. I, on the other hand, knew for a fact, it was anything but.

Letting my anxiety get the best of me, I explained to them at two in the morning, the moon does not descend that fast in our skies, nor does it set in a completely different corner. For as long as there has been a natural satellite, the moon has never been in the norther part of our skies, it rises in the East and sets in the West, but this particular night, it had risen in the north and was setting in the south. It was after this my sisters shard the exact same anxiety and confusion I had. Our parents, who have not woken up from their slumber, despite the noise of panic that filled every space in the house, I looked to the opposite wall and out our window, just in time to see a lot of our neighbors congregate to the yard outside our house. There was a dozen faces, yet they all looked the same, all but one. One little girl that had taken up residence in our tree in our front yard looked very different and she acted almost insane at times and she was very persistent in getting into our house. I thought that locking all the windows and doors would keep this child out, but, I thought wrong, very wrong. As the moons descent from our skies was shortly coming to a halt, her skin became more translucent and liquid-like. I stared into her emerald green eyes and while I was so fixated, I was slow to see her hand reaching out to me and I was then startled back into reality when her hand and part of her arm had come into the house through the wall and grabbed onto mine.

It was a blood curdling scream that woke my parents just as they saw me walk through their bedroom wall. I could not find the right words to explain to them what exactly was happening. I was only able to get out the words, "its happening" before everything I ever saw blackened out of view, everything I had ever heard, deafened and everything I ever felt left the memory of my skin. I had almost given up on seeing something other than darkness, when a metal object came into sight. As it drew closer, I noticed it was in the shape of a small cross. It looked very old, it was tarnished and weary and looks as if it had sprung to life after being deeply ground into dirt and rock of centuries long ago. It had a small dab of blood just on the tip of it. It touched my eyes and each of my ears, my sight was slowing coming back to me while a rush of beats filled my ears, I was listening to the sound of my own heart in this calm solitude.

I lived in darkness for what seemed like an eternity. Constantly thinking to myself--feeling a sense of loneliness. I felt like a drifter, what was going on? I began having dreams of a place I had been, I couldn't remember everything, and I spent most of this time in darkness thinking, or, maybe dreaming of what I had been. I wanted so much to remember everything. It was so beautiful for so long, but its beauty would change and eventually begin to fade away. Never again to regain that beauty it once beheld.

By the end, their was so much death and destruction, it became harder to remember all the beautiful scenery, I was desperately trying to hold onto. I remember these flesh bodies, covered up. All shapes and all sizes. These flesh creatures were not all the same color. Long flowing manes on some that blew backward as the wind passed between each strand. I could hear laughter spill out from their mouths. See tears drip from their eyes. These creatures talked in all different languages. There was a sudden burst of energy and in a flash I was back there. Covered in flesh veiled by clothing. This sense of confusion and chaos that surrounded me. Suddenly, none had laughter spilling out of their mouths. They were replaced by screams and tears in panic and desperation. Trying to hold onto our breaths, a sudden jolt shocked the ground with such a force it sent many of us face down in the dirt. It was just the jolt that I needed that made me completely aware of what was happening. Giant balls of hot gas, rock and ice were falling from the sky.

Many creatures lie still while others try to cling onto dear life, gasping and gurgling for one last breath. I had one though come to me-- people, humans dying. Everyone around me were human beings. And we all clung to this planet. We lived on it. We breathed on it. We hunted and gathered and with each passing era, we became more modern. More modern with our world. Warfare, to fight our enemies. Satellites to take pictures in space. We were able to connect and communicate with other humans that inhabited our planet that were thousands of miles away. Just by the tapping our fingers on keyboards. We were of the technology age. We had come to the point where we relied so heavily on our technology that we were completely unaware of the dangers it was doing to our race, the human race. The very technology we used to keep inhabiting this planet, was, in fact the death and destruction that was now being force upon ourselves. And I couldn't help thinking-- we were getting what we deserve. We were people from many nations that took great pride in all out technology created.

We became lazy and selfish. Unhealthy beings. We created violence to stop all violence. A concept that I could never grasp onto. We had great leaders just as we had bad leaders. No one trusted the "men" in power and we became paranoid at the very thought of big brother spying on us. Corruption eventually took over the world. We were divided unto religion and politics. At some point we stopped caring about the lives of others and became selfish and only cared about ourselves. Wat color of people would survive longer than the rest. Who at the end of all violence would be left standing. We were once children who had an innocent view of the world, but, as we grew older, we had the harsh reality that the innocents were gone. For only a brief period in our lives it existed. We couldn't ever place the blame on a single person or a group of people, we had to point the blame at ourselves.

While pondering over my latest revelation, I heard the most deafening sound, followed by more screaming and men, women and children running in complete chaos trying to hide from whatever was happening. I looked up the skies upon my observing many pointing towards the sky. The moon had broken through all the layers of the atmosphere and the fist moment it had, caught it on fire and sent out the blackest of smoke. There was silence for a moment and every living thing stood still. The entire skies filled with this smoke. Still in shock, black raindrops began to fall. The thick cloud of smoke began to dissolve and the rain had stopped. And before too long, the clouds that once overpowered the skies were gone. The moon was nowhere in sight. Upon impact, the fire quickly burned one corner to the other,the moon and the black rain drops we felt and saw with our own eyes, was the remnants of the moon when it exploded in the sky.

A gigantic, monstrous wind roared to life just above our heads. Many scattered to find shelter. The utter chaos led to many disputes as people fought over shelter after shelter they made claim to. During a time such as this, where people needed to help people, turned into an every man, woman and child to themselves. Everyone was running any direction. Some, like myself, had their plan of action, to find shelter without getting all caught up in the hectic traffic of the aftermath of the moon disintegrating into thin air. For the first time amidst the chaos, I notice the whirling wind above us pick up speed. Cars and tops of buildings were being ripped off and apart and sent out into oblivion. I quickly found myself shelter. I was desperately trying to make it home to my family when I decided I had t take cover quickly, the fear of myself being sucked up and hurled out into oblivion was out of my head and if my family wanted to see me alive, I had to sacrifice an unknown amount of time until whatever was whirling overhead would die down or evaporate altogether.

Just as the wind picked up speed again, something grabbed my arm and pulled me into shelter. They grabbed me so wildly, I though my arm had been taken off. He was an elderly man, not quite 5 feet tall, dressed in winter clothing, although it was summertime. The entire time I was down in this dark, molding room, he said not a work to me. Watching him scurry around in the dark with only a candle lighting his pathway grabbing and pulling things from off almost bare shelves, he stopped dead in his tracks and for the first time since grabbing me, he made himself aware that I was in the room. I tried to speak, but he put his palm out with one and and did the universal sign for quiet, one finger to the mouth without making a single sound. I closed my moth and retracted, He grabbed a metal object, I couldn't tell what it was until I saw him jab it into his fingers and extracting his blood into a small vile. I had no idea what it was that he was doing. Yet I was still so fascinated it was hard for me to look away.

He took this blood from the vile and put it on the end of a small cross, just the tip of it. It looked very old, it was tarnished and weary and looked as if it had been sprung to life after being deeply ground into the dirt and rock of centuries of long ago. He slowly walked over to me, his eyes were dark almost black with only a tiny hint of sparkle behind his retina's. He was weeping, I could see the tracks of his tears run from the outer and inner corners of his eyes that dripped far past his nose and lips before taking resident on the tiny hairs of his chin before plummeting to the dirt floor beneath us. He took one hand and placed it over my eyes and touched the cross to each one. Flecks of green found solace underneath my eyelids. I began to weep. He touched my ears next, first the right, then the left. Until there wasn't any sound other than the beating of my own heart. I felt a rush of energy fill my body and after the rush of it was over, the green flecks of light behind my eyelids faded away, the beating of my own heart became silent and my body fell beneath me. It only lasted a second I could see the rush of colors from behind my eyes and I could hear the beating of my heart and a rush of air filled my lungs. The elderly man was gone and so was everything he had taken off the shelves, there wasn't any sign of anything that had just occurred and was in a state of confusion because I thought it was all a dream. I pulled myself up off the dirt floor and walked slowly over to the door and upon opening it, the loud screams, the whirling high winds were still very much still there. Something was different about me and I couldn't place my finger on it. I put it in the back of my mind until I could reach the front door of my home all I could think now was to get to them, to hug them to hold onto them and kiss each of their faces. I began to observe my surroundings.

I couldn't see the panic on their faces, but I could hear their cries out in desperation. The sky had turned every shade of the color spectrum. I saw something far in the sky and I would've believed it to be the Moon, had it not already been destroyed, that sent rocks the size of mansions hurling at the planet I called home for many years of my life. There were not many people still alive and I couldn't help thinking that I wished I hadn't been one of them. I was literally walking among the dead bodies, overwhelmed by the smells of rotting, burning flesh of people missing parts of their bodies, there was so much blood, the dead lay in a pool of it marinating in it till a gust of wind so powerful sucked them out of it and hurling them out to oblivion.

I looked out to the sky and saw an object in the far distance that I was unable to make out its characteristics. It was rotating at such great speed, I knew it was the cause of the death and destruction of almost everything within its path. As the object got nearer and closer in the sky, I realized that this object was a planet, one from our own solar system. I started to make out its characteristics. The bands of orange between the bands of white and the swirling clouds of red that resemble a hurricane. I watched on while it rolled in the sky above me. Parts of the planet were in a blaze where it entered the atmosphere that drew a tail of smoke and made a line across the sky.

I ran inside to find my family. They were huddling in the basement of the house we were living in. I was one of the many to cry out in desperation and although I could not see my panic-filled face, I was almost certain that it was there. My son confirmed my suspicion and although only five years old, he immediately broke into tears. I could not tell him-- no I could not bring myself to tell him of the horrible suffering that would soon consume us. All, I could do was hold him close.

Outside, we could hear the high winds but a new sound began to take over. The ripping sound of the ground as this planet, which was Jupiter was pulling it within its pull.

Dry land was becoming oceans and oceans were becoming dry land just before it was ripped apart. And just before our faces were forced into the water, I told my son I loved him and that it wouldn't be the end, it was only the beginning of our forever. Our eternity...

Through all my creating, which brought me happiness, amazement and amusement, I couldn't help but feel alone.I really wasn't alone but my beautiful creations were a part of me. They were only given the necessities to exist, and have a purpose. I wanted to see if I could create another, I don't know what I am or how I came to be, but, our qualities could be the same. And I quickly thought of what I would look like if I had form. That just for a short period of time, without all this power, I wondered what I would look like. I started t the beginning. And recalled the look of my first star. It was green. I took two green stars and put them together, side by side and wept until the two green stars wept with me. Then I thought about my first question. I could think, so, whatever we were, needed to think too. I could hear so I had to make my creation hear as well. I gathered several of my beautiful stars, some green, some blue, some red and some yellow. I needed to give my creation the ability to hear as well. I needed to give my creation thought, so I arranged the stars to circle just above the two green stars. I sat the stars on a perpendicular plane. One moment they still and there wasn't any beat. I spun the stars much like I had done when I divided the solid from the liquid. And upon doing so, the stars began to orbit just above the two stars. And as I did, I could hear the beat of every start, it was that moment I had started the cycle for this dark form to think. The last two stars I sent down to the solid, rotating creation I had mad and took components of my favorite yellow star. And with the force it made behind them and the pull that it had, they landed in the liquid with an enormous splash that sent waves as high as the longest solid peak. The liquid rejected the two stars that they violently regurgitated and sent it back to the place they once were. And at this moment, I knew that whoever we were could hear, and we wept.  I sent another tail from my favorite yellow star and heaved it with all my power at the rotating, colorful stars just above the green, beating stars that were staring back me and gave these stars and their long tails of the yellow stars fury and gave whatever we were the ability to create more just like I can Out among the stars, surrounded by darkness were many more of us and I was happy because I could now name them.

They are glorious, beautiful and divine. I loved each and every one of them. They were all made with two green stars. They see their beauty I had given them. They were beautiful but scared and had many of the same questions I had and I could not wait to tell them that I was their creator and that I loved them because they were truly perfect. What would I call them? In the midst of my thoughts, I kept thinking about the names of my stars. It was such an easy name to call them. I wanted my newest creations to be called something to describe what they were. My favorite yellow star that allowed me too see without interruption of darkness. I wanted to give them each the ability to be seen in the darkness. I took several flames from my beautiful yellow star to give them an illuminating glow. One on either side. I changed their heat until it glowed a bright white. I gave these flames a flicker. And gave them the ability to move around in the darkness, the flickering flames began to slow and looked more like a flutter. And  watched on as they moved about until they found the one they created. I started the cycle of their creation, but I called them my divine angels. My angels were beautiful and perfect and I started to weep. They accepted their name and who they were and wept along with me. I cast a tiny spark from their flickering flames and put it in between the two fluttering flames and gave them the feeling of love. The ability to love me and feel my love in return.they were all mine, descendants of me, but could feel the love from the one they created and could feel the love from their creation. A love so strong it was impossible to weaken. One by one I saw them become still and an aura of peace filled in around them. And I sprinkled some of my beautiful stars onto the group of stars that sat in a circle as each one continued to revolve and gave them thoughts of how everything I had created including themselves.

I reminded them of all that was beautiful and as long as they helped it to stay beautiful, they always had a place in the darkness with me. I said once I created a division of light and dark, I always had the ability to watch over everything under my creation. I never forget a star or their name. I never forget the order I created them in or where I placed them in the darkness. I told them I had the ability to cast them out of the darkness but I would always love them, because they were a part of me. After filling their thoughts with answers to their questions, they fluttered across the darkness to discuss with others the visions and explanations of how everything I created came to be. And they accepted me and I began to weep. Their sparks began to blink, exactly as my stars do when I first created them and then begin to beat.  I began to hear its rhythm. Unlike my stars whose beat was silent. As long as I heard the beat of their spark, I knew they still accepted me as their creator and loved me just as much as I loved them. I told them all their beauty and we all wept together. One beat, the loudest one was for me, the fainter beat, the second beat, was for the one they created. My angels are my guardians of light and stars.

I watched on as they rearranged my stars in the darkness. They learned a new way of communicating with pictures. I made my presence known to my angels and asked each of them at the same time,

"what do I look like?"

They thought no words and made no picture with the stars they guarded. My youngest angel swiftly moved closer. While weeping my angel thought,

"we know what we look like and what everything you created looks like, but we cannot see you. Your presence flames the sparks within us." "You gave us the knowledge that you have. You fill us with visions when we are dormant and still in the darkness. We are guardians of light and we've been cast among the stars to protect them." "we are your messengers."

"If you are my messengers, then why is it you never have anything to think to me?" I thought.

My youngest angel responded. "You already know. You fill us with thoughts when we are blinded by darkness. You have made us with all that you know, how can we be messengers for you, if you have not created anything to be messengers of?"

In disgust, I moved with such magnitude and speed, I broke through the fiery barrier of the creation I made that separated the solid green surface from the liquid blue. I moved over each surface with an accelerating speed. I left my stars and angels in their darkness. And they began to weep. Darkness soon came and I noticed the liquid mirrored the stars. For a moment, I thought my beautiful stars had followed me. I realized that they hadn't disobeyed my orders to remain in the darkness. I continued my journey all across the two surfaces. The liquid was still and the solid was dry. I broke through the barrier once more and traveled to the side that my angels could not see. With great speed, I broke through the barrier and wit great force, I pushed through the solid surface with such ease, sending a giant portion up through the barrier making it hang in the darkness. With a tug at its center it began to rotate, much like my other creations. The loud noise it made, my angels looked down upon it and gathered above it and began to weep.

Their sparks that flickered and flamed where each beat wept to me. Their weeping brought down liquid that landed upon the hard sphere that now resided within the darkness. Their weeping liquid took in my yellow favorite star, illuminating light and ruled the light that shown upon the liquid and solid surface that was used to create it. My yellow star would rule the light. My angels weeping liquid made my new creation mirror my yellow favorite star. And so I assigned my angels to guard my stars by light. And also guard my new creation to be seen in the darkness. I made my angels weep for me, but they were not me. I knew my angels were a part of me, but they were not all of me and knowing that, I knew I could be betrayed again. I began to prepare a place for my angels when the great betrayal happened. I love my angels, but those who could betray me after the knowledge I filled in their thoughts, would not live in the darkness at my side. I would cast down to be in existence for all eternity and only be able to look up in the darkness at the place they once had and to never return to it again. Those who betrayed me would convince my other angels to betray me and after they would be cast down, I would fill their thoughts with knowledge of suffering and constant unhappiness, in hopes they would not betray me or speak falsely of me. I taught my angles to be patient. When I created something for them to be messengers of, I would create it. I would do it in time, my time, not theirs.

Out of the darkness appeared a microscopic green glow. I was so fixated on this small dot that clung to nothing. What seemed like seconds, but in reality, multiple eons it would change in color from green hues, to blue and with each hue change its glow began to expand almost an instantaneous effect like it was blinking at me. Through this constant cycle, I only had one question attached to the random, yet fascinating beauty was, what was I witnessing? As it grew the blinking turned more like a beat and with each beat it sent an arm, one that was invisible, but I could see expansion, because a dot of green would glow in that place of darkness. And before too long, there were millions-- no, billions of glowing colors and growing glows beamed brightly and before too long they surrounded me. I could see and I could think, but I had an invisible form. Where was I? What was I? And what was I witnessing? Pretty soon I had so many questions that couldn't be answered. Questions that extended far past the boundaries of the tiniest, greenest and farthest glow that was once blinded in darkness. The glowing began to blur together and eventually became dark and I was unhappy, yet at peace, although many questions were still unanswered.

The darkness began to come into light and while I had been blinded by its darkness, the glowing and growing colors began to show and they had expanded even father out in that split second that I could not see, yet I could count how many there were and new which one was made first all the way up to the one that had been made last. I had in fact, remembered their cycle and quickly realized it was me that made them all and put the never-ending, always-expanding cycle in motion. And it gave me a sense of pride because of my power. Now my question that I had not answered was, what was the limitation to my power. If I had made these glows, I could certainly name them. And one by one I did. but as a whole, I named them all stars. And I experimented with their colors and their sizes. I have many a purpose and I loved each and every one of them. And some stayed in the darkness for eons, depending on the color and its heat. And it always made me sad to see one disappear into darkness, but I always extended the beat of one star to make another on to take its place.

Some times blue, or green, red, or yellow.. I always thought my stars were beautiful and perfect, although I always favored the yellow. Its size and heat were perfect to me. I could control their size and color of each of my beautiful stars. And one of them I grew to a size that out glowed, out sized and made its components more potent than any star I had ever made and I kept it in the same place in the darkness for its beauty out-shown the rest. And I watched my stars in amazement and amusement, but my power longed to create things, in this darkness, that carried the same beauty as I beheld in my stars. One thing different, the blur never came and neither did my blindness and so I could constantly watch my beautiful stars expand and become different colors and continue to name them and remember them in the order in which they appeared to me. Everything was right and good and most beautiful.

I named the light from the darkness, and although I never became blinded, I knew darkness would come for my stars, for they only had part of my power to see and not all of my power to see. They were only a part of me, not all of me. I picked a star closest to my giant yellow star and brought it toward me to see my beautiful star creation. Why did it glow, how did it glow? As it neared, I realized it was just as big as my giant yellow star but it was blue. A perfect shade of blue. I concentrated on it and the star began to beat and I watched in awe as the once blinking effect turned into a ripple. I began to count its mark in time. And on the seventh mark, the ripple would permanently sever itself from my beautiful star and the circle stayed close but lived entirely disconnected from my beautiful blue star. I pulled the circle that resembled a perfect ring, when it disconnected from its center of the star, it grew cold and frozen but never changed its color. I played around with its size. I traced around the blue ring only set it ablaze-- a ring of fire. And withing moments my ring went from a solid to a liquid state, but the fire still continued till my ring became solid and hard. It changed color right before me. I thought that my star had died and I began to wipe away its color, only realizing that my ring had gone flat, but, it twas still very much there. Its components had changed but a light blue hue still laid around it. I looked down upon it and wept. What was this liquid landing on this flat surface. I realized once it went though the light blue ring this liquid that resembled my stars, became flat as soon as it touched the flat surface. Where the color was gone, the liquid changed the surface color. I wanted to see this creation from from all its corners at once, as a flat surface, it was hard to see where it began and the the light blue ended. I knew in order for me to see it all at once, I had to spin it at a very rapid pace. I concentrated on this flat surface and let my powers extend as far as they could. The surface began to spin and the faster it did, the flat surface began to take shape and resemble my beautiful stars and the liquid that poured from me taking in these beautiful colors and scattering them about with heat with such a high degree that my star had been petrified to a hot, ashy surface that sent a chain reaction that made its temperature rise until at its center a red glow so hot it spun in the opposite direction that never became a hard surface, yet wasn't made like my beautiful stars were, but resembled the liquid I made that touched its surface only it was translucent and it was a lot thicker. The heated glow began to ascend to the surface it didn't grow instead it scattered in all different directions. It would stream upward and break off into branches, much like my powers did when my powers did when my beautiful stars were born.

I quickly realized this was happening, because my powers were letting it happen. This cycled continued until my creation had so many shapes and sizes. A rippling effect so strong and so forceful, sent this red, thick liquid bursting through, sending the liquid miles and miles past the colorful ring and they cooled instantly in my darkness, but a force so mighty started to pull these objects back down to its surface, landing in one area, while the giant-sized holes surrounded it. As my creations hit its surface, it created such a vociferous rumbling noise so great, I realized then, I could have sound. The noise was so beautiful as I looked upon this surface from above it. The liquid came and descended to the surface, filling only the massive holes my star liquid made during its forceful fury. I used my power and brought to me a green and blue star. I could see my creations beauty, but they looked the same. I wanted to see these things separately, so I crushed the green star and sent it sprinkling down to cover the surface that was solid. And crusted the blue star and scattered it to color the liquid. I successfully divided them. I knew what my power could do, but I still didn't know what my powers limited to. I looked on in amazement. I had divided the light from the darkness for my stars, divided a solid surface from a liquid, all by changing their colors. My beauties were complex, but creating them was simple. I realized that this creation was also a part of me and that part of me would power this chain reaction that would consistently change its surface.  And whatever it needed to make this powerful reaction would let it happen. I knew what beauty I wanted it to have and in order for it to create that, I sent this chain reaction into motion and watched from above it as it spun and hung on darkness so I could watch from above it and be happy and proud. Weeping every so often to keep the liquid plentiful, because the contrast from the green and blue was much more vibrant next to each other. I loved my creations and would do anything in my power to keep them beautiful and creating. and I watched and heard everything and it was all so beautiful.