How did our world become? Was it a bang? Was it The Word? What if… maybe… there is a greater world, one similar to ours but more evolved… Where as we plant gardens, they plants worlds. Where beings of mystery and might are tasked with the duty to carry seeds and walk across vast plains to find the right place where a new world will sprout and bloom. What if our world was just another seed, which bloomed into all that is beautiful and ugly, into all that bleeds and all that laughs in pure glee. What if…
The muscles on his back stretched taut, glimmering, casting a golden sheen on the smooth, ebony surface of the globe which he carried. He screamed as he pushed off the ground. The sound that came out of his open mouth was female, yet it sounded right, it belonged. The weight threatened to crush him against the sandy ground, against the jagged, sun bleached sea shells in the desert sand of the dead, old world.
When he took a step forward, he was elegant to
behold, legs slender and smooth. The sweat rolled out in clear beads from his
scalp, running into his eyes and rolling down his chest to collect under his
rounded breasts.
He walked towards the prophesied edifice, at the center of which he must
relieve his burden. He was told that the hitarkha
– the seed of a new world which he carried, will lead itself home. So he
walked, not knowing where he went, but certain his burden guided his feet.
While he sought, suns burnt out and worlds crumbled, floods dried out and new
worlds flourished.
Other uwkhara – the seed carriers;
beings with a similar burden but of different form, walked the dry sands as he
did, looking for the place to plant the seed they carried. The closest to him
had a face of pale blue marble, the milky white eyes gazed dead ahead –
unblinking. Their labored breath, their grunts and occasional cries unify into
a melody in the space above them. The melody – a new element which was to be a
part of the worlds on the brink of birth, hovered, waiting to immerse.
And then the wailing began from afar, getting shriller as it got closer. It
fell upon his ears like daggers on living flesh, sending excruciating spasms
through his body such that he could not carry the burden any longer. With a
piercing cry, he flung it to his feet. As the shimmering dark globe hit the
ground, the wailing stopped and a silence deeper than a hundred deaths came
over everything. Perhaps it only came over him, for the other uwkhara walked on. If they had heard the
wailing or the bottomless silence, they showed no signs of it. It was the sign.
He had found the place they spoke of. It was no edifice, but it was the right
place. His journey had ended.
On the floor of the desert of the old world, a new world sat, thin red veins
ran across its surface, throbbing steadily under his gaze. He reached out
warily and touched it with a beautiful, long nailed finger. A full, ecstatic
warmth ran through his entire body and seemed to gather in depths of his
abdomen – in his womb; his center, gripping him in trance. As the tip of his
finger lay on the surface, he saw gigantic, long necked mammals feeding off the
branches of very tall trees. The image flew past and another came, of two male
buffalo fighting to catch the attention of a female. Then he saw the mammals
from the first image sprawled on the earth, dead. Shrouded by a cloud of dust.
He flayed his arms to fend off the image, it became a cloud and drifted off.
Then came the image of a singing woman, brown-skinned and full lipped, painting
images of queer shaped animals of various color against the wall of a tomb. The
image drifted off and in rolled the picture of a battlefield. Men dead and
dying lay sprawled as far as the eyes could see. A nearby river ran red. Next
was an image of a meadow, lush and green, the air filled with the sweetest
scents and the subtle hum of bees feeding from the flowers. Then came an image
of what remained of a forest. Through the dark smoke which hovered thickly over
the remains, he saw charred stumps and animal carcasses. The earth was red
where it had once been a fertile brown. Like the pages of a book being whizzed
through, the images went past, stirring a rainbow of feelings.
He drew back his hand, heart full to bursting at the thought that it is by his
sweat that this new world will unfurl and become. This beautiful-ugly world. It
made him want to destroy it and at once to caress it. But he let it be. The
balance will be struck, in the end.
His duty done. His soul at ease. He spread his arms open and lifted his face to
the above. And piece by piece, he floated apart, becoming a reddish matter that
sunk into the sand, turning the silty earth moist and potent – a cushion and a
home for the world that was birthed.
