Set your story in a countryside house that's filled with shadows.

It was my house; I had lived there since the beginning of my memory. Filled with shadows, balanced upon the arch where light and darkness met: sunlight would stretch itself out along the long halls, coming from the windows few and low, trickle its unsteady way around corners and through the slits of doors, then finally be vanquished by the darkness, its energy spent. This tenuous war between the two casted shadows everywhere, hazy silhouettes hovering around the house, always watching silently as we went on with the day. And as the day went on, they would shift, moving around so ephemerally, never quite the same.

It was these shadows that gave the house a strange wonder, a vitality that was always changing. It was what could be called the heart of the house, a strange spirit that always promised something new, that tomorrow would be wondrous and still beautiful. It was both excitement and fear, for the excitement for the adventures of life could never be experienced without a hint of fear. In this house of grey and shadowy things, I learned my very first lesson: how to be curious and explore. And it was those shadows that had suddenly started to move around me, they were the ones who taught me this lesson as they shifted in and out of my sight.

I would chase them down, back then, explore every darkened corner to find them where they slept: our little game of hide-and-seek. Stalking down those halls where the little light travelled often, experiencing for myself the eternal clash that bore young energetic shadows upon the very edge of the border. A quick peek into the many rooms where they stood sometimes, the temporary abodes for them, depending on the arc of the sun through the windows: at times they were crowded, at times sparse. And my personal favourite, the basement: I would take up a single candle and go below, where the shadows were the most and the oldest, having lived there since time immemorial. They had been here since long before I was born and would be for a long time after, but for now, they were here, and that was enough for me.

Those shadows became my closest friends: they would sit together with me, and tell me fantastic stories, and put on a show as they moved and danced. I would occasionally join them too, adding my own shadow to the mix: a conglomeration of writhing shapes illuminated on the other side by a candle; the interplay of hues both bright and dark to form a composition strong, bold. It was those days with the shadows that filled my earliest youth, before anything else I knew, the endless adventures and forays into the dark that kept me entertained.

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But I grew, and grew out of them too. No longer simply exploring the house’s contents, I would go out to the wider world. New friends, new experiences; the shadows were content to let me leave and move my world, and see what life outside the house had to offer. But still they lingered somewhere with me, always hovering somewhere in the corner of my eye, behind a tall tree or at the end of a slide. They would be gone when I looked, and I would end up going back to my friends, but the shadows from my house were never truly gone.

A grim reminder, I had once thought, that the shadows of the past could never be removed from oneself. So I strove ever harder, into the sun where they could not follow, into the world of people and things, away from that old and shadowy house where light and darkness blurred. Black and white, never an indistinct grey, as though that could ward off the shadows of spirits, or of my own mind. But there was still a time when day turned to dusk, and I had to return; when day slowed at dawn, and I had not yet left. When it was neither maddened day nor oblivious night, the shadows were there, standing, listening, and watching. They did not move; I did not want them to, but they were there.

But I grew, and grew stronger, smarter. I learned that things were never so black and white, neither people nor things: there was always some vague, indistinguishable grey. I learned that everyone had their own shadows, benign or malevolent, whether they could see them or not. And I could see my shadows clearly, always hovering somewhere near. Perhaps they were simply figments of myself, but they were almost benevolent, a memory from when times were good and filled with excitement and fear alike. I learned that there were worse than shadows, worse than those of people and things. Pure light, blinding light, the absolutely insufferable light that never varied in its emotionless glare. And despite that, total darkness, blackness distilled to a wicked point within people’s hearts. I learned that I would rather stay in between, in shadows, where the weakening of light and darkness would always give birth to something new. I relearned my shadows, and I relearned myself.

It was my house; now changed far beyond the world of my memory. A new house, shadows gone: the light of electricity banished them, be it day or night, filling itself out in every room and hall, uncaring for the darkness vanquished in its wake. Together with the shadows, the house had lost that certain something that had so enchanted me as a child, its unique vitality that always promised a childish wonder for every exploration I had made. And sometimes, when I could no longer bear the hueless glow against the gnawing void, I would take up a single candle and go below, where the shadows could still hide untouched, gathered together from all the corners of the world. But I did not join them now, I had no need to. I would just sit, and listen, and watch them move.