Lamp?

The dark air was chilly, but not so cold as to make me sleep. In addition, my thick insulating fur coat protected me as I rested upon the gnarled surface of a fallen log.

What a beautiful night it was, I tasted the air and then gave a small sigh. The air was fresh, the scent of flowers and decaying things swirled with the spice of broken pine and freshly disturbed earth. But there were no others of my own kind about. Surely I couldn't be alone out here?

I thought back to just the other day. The forest had been wet, the rains had stopped only the day before as I crawled from my entrapping cocoon and first surveyed the world through my new eyes. The ineffable pillars of the trees around me had looked like vertical cliffs that supported the very heavens above. The undergrowth of the forest floor as thick as a jungle and filled with many terrors. But I hadn’t felt despair, for high above me that great golden orb glowed brightly. Too bright to look at comfortably, but I somehow had understood that it was safety.

Then my first night had fallen, the golden glow of the sun had fallen behind the dark trees and my heart had fallen with it. There were things in that dark, leathery wings and sharp stabbing teeth that glinted wickedly. I had clung to a nearby tree in fear, my body shivering but not from the cold.

I had wanted so badly for the great warmth of the sun to shine upon the land once more, to banish these horrors to the shadow realms they must once have come from. And to my surprise it did come, the sun’s rays like a burst of pure radiant happiness through the foreboding trees.

That was when I realised the purpose of the light. It wasn't to see or warm the earth, but the sun existed as a symbol of all that was good and pure in this world. It drove out the evil and lit the dark places with inescapable light that showed the world what it really was.

Yes. The sun was life, and the darkness was death.

I prayed that it wouldn't be my death.

I tasted the air again, still nothing. Was I really alone?

I must be, for neither did I detect the sound of the great dark beasts around me. I took a risk and jumped from the log. My wings unfurled and carried me aloft, the slight updrafts from warmer objects below carried me into the air as easily as a feather. I barely had to work to stay airborne.

I moved slowly through the forest around me, I had never strayed far from my own birthplace. I had never before seen the need. I looked around, the darkness clouding my vision, obscuring the world around me in ways that were at one exhilarating and horrifying. I wouldn't let this test of faith break me though, I knew the sun would soon rise to bathe this tenebrous land in welcome warming light.

I stopped to rest after a time. My wings were sore from use and my legs scrabbled for purchase on the strange object I had chosen to alight on. I extended my sensory receptors and took a closer look. It was tall and straight like unto the trees that still surrounded me, but its surface was dead. The bare wood exposed without any of the rougher covering I had come to associate with free standing trees. I looked up and paused, the top was adorned in strange strings. Or maybe they were vines.

Without a spare glance I took flight once more. I didn’t like the aura that the strange vined tower emitted. When I was nearby it my very body seemed to tingle, as if it wished to escape my body and the foreboding presence of the strange monolith of death.

I kept moving, slowly wending my way between the trees. Making sure to keep above the dark undergrowth that spread like the depths of hell below me. I knew that those dingy branches held other dread creatures that would love nothing more than to get better acquainted with my flesh.

My inane wanderings took me farther and farther away from the flowered field where I had been hatched. Far from the open meadows and tumbling streams I was familiar with and into a new realm of tormented sharp edged shapes.

As I moved along the trees themselves seemed to diminish in fear. Their once great boles shrinking till they were no more than the bushes that had once surrounded them. The sparsity of the undergrowth grew at once too till the land beneath me was as destitute as a stone and nearly the same in color.

It was then that I saw something else. The sun, it winked at me from a great distance, but it was then that I realised something was terribly wrong indeed.

Instead of the great golden warmth I had grown to know, this light was cold, harsh. It seemed to stab out of the darkness violently. Not pushing back the night’s dread but instead cutting through it like some manner of deranged fiend made to mimic the purity of the dawn’s morning light.

I tried to flee, my wings beating like never before as the light seemed to grow. Faster and faster it grew, hungry in its intensity as a great roar began to build. This sound accompanying the light as it seemed to grow ever closer, that was wrong. This whole situation was terribly, horribly wrong!

I would have shouted in fear if I were able, but as the lights seemed to come upon me I felt a terrible wind. The strength of it nearly tearing my body asunder as the vicious lights passed below my tumbling form.

I beat my wings, the fear spurring me to ever increasing feats of strength. I eventually got my bearings again and panted, the sides of my body pulsing in time with the rapid beating of my hearts. The cruel cold light was gone, as was that loathsome gale that had accompanied it.

Not for the first time I lamented my choice to leave the cool quiet safety of my home. Why had I set out in search of others? I should have just kept myself put.

Another thought crossed my mind, no. If I had stayed I may have lived in relative harmony, but at what cost? Was a long life lived alone in utter destitution really a life lived at all? No, I had to find the other’s. I must, and I would.

The renewal of this invigorating idea buoyed me up and lent additional strength to my flagging muscles. Enough to cross that great dead expanse. I began to notice more of those strange dead trees, the ones with the dark vines that stretched from one to the next.

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Despite the fear that gripped my aching muscles I pressed on. These strange poles would be my guid in this strange new land, I had the sinking feeling that by following them I was heading to my own doom. But there were no other options better in my immediate vicinity, such was the barren nature of the land I was now in.

I continued on this way for a long time. My eyes scanned the area and saw naught but that great expanse of low grass. No bushes or trees remained, and the stranger thing were the long white lines that seemed to crisscross the place under me. I almost drove myself into a tizzy wondering as to their nature.

Instead of worrying myself I continued on before a low moaning took me by surprise. It was a stiff breeze. I fought against it but without anything to block this tempest it ripped me from my present course and carried me along tracts unknown. The breeze that had at once accompanied me now deposited me on the side of some huge blue expanse.

It clung to it in desperation as the wind tore at my furry coat. After another few moments it seemed to calm once more and I took the opportunity to look at my new surroundings. My heart beating like a drum in my body as I crawled slowly along the strange surface. It was similar to the dead poles in texture, but the color was unnatural. Far too vibrant to be believed, it looked as if a chunk of the very sky itself had fallen to the earth. The soft blue of it at once calming me and making me think once more of the sun.

As I crawled along the solid sky I thought at once that I saw another light, but this one was not the cold harsh light of the earlier terror. No, this was soft, soft like the very sky itself and warm in color like honey. I was drawn towards it, I needed to see if it was indeed the end of this dreadful night.

Closer and closer I crept till all at once I could see it. It was close, far closer than I had ever seen it and somehow softer and less harsh. The sun stripped of all its aloofness, down on the ground inside this patch of sky and close enough for me to touch. But what would happen to me if I were to fly that close to this solar fragment.

I found that I didn’t care about the potential consequences. In fact I didn’t care about anything else but that glowing golden light. It called to me, beckoned to me as a lover or mate. I wanted to go to it, but soon found that I could not.

I was standing upon.. well.. nothing. Nothing I could see anyways, I was suspended in the air and yet my wings remained firmly folded across my back. I tested the space with my front legs and found that they seemed to make contact with a solid surface where I could see only empty space. What was this?

I was completely perplexed, I pushed against it violently to no avail. I crawled and looked for a path through, my anger mounting as my wings began to beat against the invisible force that held me back. That separated me from my destiny.

I began to beat myself against the surface, trying to smash my way through. I hit it again and again, the solid contact of our mutual union cluttering my mind with a haze of delirium. After another moment of this I thought I saw through blurred vision a mighty moving figure. But then it was gone and I was through the barrier.

The first thing my partially addled mind noticed was the temperature. It was warm inside, warm and dry. It also had a certain smell, slightly bitter and a little musty. As if the inside of a rotten log had been sprinkled with some manner of exotic fruit and left in an animal’s den. Was this some manner of lair, maybe it was the home of the great sky beasts.

I nearly fell from the air at the thought. No! Not the sky, nor the sun. They were creatures that abhorred the light and goodness of the sun, they would not make their den so close to its fragment.

As if the thought of it conjured it into being I saw it again. That great golden light, that holy bliss that filled my soul as it grew brighter and closer. I soon began to feel its warmth on my body, the tiny dewdrops that had accumulated on my fur coat evaporated away as I reached the light.

It was a small sphere, the light emanating from it as if by some manner of mystic arts the likes of which I had never seen nor heard of. I fluttered around this orb, fully transfixed by the radiant energy it emitted. It was as if a part of my mind had taken control of my very body, my senses subsumed into this new imperative that was to remain near the light

I couldn't help myself, I reached out for the light, and touched it.

OUCH!

I fell back, wings singed as if by fire. My feet tingled from the heat that had curled more than a few of my shorter belly hairs. I spiraled down and down, out of control as the pain made me think of nearly anything else.

I lay there stunned for a moment before I heard a noise. It was low, slow and soothing in its melodic tones. I looked and saw a huge creature looming over me, they were frightening at first and I tried to flee. But my pain caused me to flail without much recourse.

The monstrous titan reached out towards me and entrapped me in a cage of strange smooth flesh. The cage was inescapable as I beat against the walls of this prison ineffectually. I cried out as my wings and body were subjected to the stifling heat, the small encompassing my entire being.

And then just as suddenly as I had been captured I was set free. I shivered in place, stunned to be alive. The cool air of the night once more washed over me and I looked back the way I had come. The titan had carried me outside the strange transparent barrier and had set me back upon that great blue expanse that was without. Again that slow soothing sound washed over me, over and through me.

I was at once elated and disappointed. On the one mark I was back outside, the cool air invigorating my singed body. But I was away from the light, I turned back around and crawled up that invisible barrier. The light shone from beyond it, enticing me in a manner that I found quite hard to resist.

I watched the light, the dark figure walking across it to some unknown point. I needed to find a way to get back in there, to the light. I didn’t understand where this need was coming from, but I felt that unmitigated drive all the same.

I needed to go into the light. The light was my life now, and all that I had been before was forgotten in lieu of its perfect golden lustre.

**********

The young boy walked into the living room and stopped as he felt a chill wind. He looked around and spotted that one of the large sliding windows had been left opened again.

He turned and shouted farther into the house, “Darcy, stop leaving the window open! You are letting bugs in.”

As if to illustrate his point he saw the fluttering form of a moth as it circled the table lamp set at the end of the couch. He walked towards it, thinking of the best way to entrap the small creature. Before he had yet made up his mind he watched as the dumb bug slammed into the light bulb and went spiraling away and down onto the table’s surface. It fluttered weakly and for a moment he was afraid it had perished. But it seemed to regain its facilities and he reached out and cupped the insect in his palms.

He spoke quietly as he grabbed it, “Oh, it’s okay little buddy. Ima put you outside where you belong.”

He could feel it beating itself against the warm skin of his hands, likely terrified out of its tiny little bug mind. He smiled as he cracked open the window and released it back outside. “There you go little bug.” he whispered. “Safe and sound.”

He closed the window with a snap and then proceeded to walk the way that Darcy had gone. He wanted to go and give her a piece of his mind. That was the last time he was forced to chase down one of the bugs. From now on he would be releasing them into her room.

The young boy chuckled and walked from the room, completely unaware of the small bug that was staring into the room with an intensity that bordered on the frantic.

End of Story