Chapter 1 - Crystal World
Abhi started plowing the field with Brownie, a chocolatey horse, while his elder brother, Dev, sat on a heap of soil a little further to rest. In the absence of their parents, they took turns working in the rice field today.
A few kilometers before them, a vast wall of water stood tall, tilting inwards little by little while going upwards and then curving somewhere miles up, covering the whole piece of flat land in it. From afar, it seemed like a tiny world in the shape of a semisphere encaged by the never-ending sea from all around.
‘A prison, huh?’
Dev wondered while gazing up at the currently illuminated Great Sea. His little brother, Bira, had told him that there was no mention of a territory under the sea in the ancient texts.
On the other hand, the Crystal World, where they all lived, might be a kind of prison and just a small territory shattered from a relatively large piece of land. For some deed so wrong that their Great Ancestors, the first generation of humans on the Crystal World, did around a million years ago, they were all banished from the Mainland of this bigger world. Forced to keep fighting the dangerous sea creatures till they all get eaten.
‘Pretty devilish punishment if you ask me.’
It made no sense to Dev why someone would go to such lengths just to torture their enemies and not kill them directly. Dev could not fathom the whole idea of savoring pleasure in others’ sufferings. At least not yet.
Not that Dev ever wanted to, but his mother had advised him to try understanding everyone’s point of view, even the mindless creatures.
In her opinion, practicing this habit would help him in many precious life endeavors and make him better understand many things about others, such as the hidden intentions behind their deeds and what exactly motivates people to perform certain kinds of actions, especially the evil ones. As a result, Dev tried his best to comprehend others’ mindsets from time to time.
Bira also told him that the Mainland might be very different from the Crystal World they lived in, possessing so much more than they could ever imagine.
In the ancient texts, there were traces of races that they had never even heard of. Also, there were many foods and delicious delicacies from which their tongue still needed to become familiar with. Apparently, Brownie, their horse, was named after one of such a mouthwatering delicacy. It was among the tastiest treats the Mainland had to offer.
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Dev had never been out of this small town that was at the end of this Crystal World. So, for him to imagine a much larger piece of land than the one he had already been living in and had never seen completely was a task of utter difficulty.
For him, Crystal World was already a vast, Sea Mammoth-like existence, with a couple of million people residing inside it.
The last thing that Bira told Dev was the most foolish of all. He said that on the Mainland, there was a similar entity to their Floating Egg, which excluded so much light that it filled the entire land. It was called the Sun, and even if it had no wings, it would fly in the air, always rising from the same direction every day- the East.
‘What a moronic thing to record in ancient texts! I’ve to stop Bira from spreading these findings to others before he makes a fool of himself in front of everyone. How can anything fly in the air if it doesn’t possess wings? Even a kid knows that’s not possible. Meanwhile, our Floating Egg in the Great Sea above makes much more sense, and anyone can see that it always rises from the direction it had set the previous day, which is really a logical explanation. How could an object that went in one direction come from the entirely opposite one the next day?’
Dev knew that everything Bira told him about the Mainland was found by him in the ancient texts, so he was bewildered as to why the Great Ancestors recorded such irrational things in the ancient texts. This made Dev feel that these ancient texts were nothing more than nonsensical conspiracy theories and that there was no truth to them at all. He indeed had a good reason to think this way, though, because, on the Crystal World, there existed an object above in the Great Sea in the shape of the shell of an egg that was broken from its top. It was an apparent knowledge for the people in the Crystal World that this Floating Egg swam in the Great Sea every day on a fixed route and rose daily from alternate ends- from North to South and South to North.
‘The ancestors who wrote ancient texts must be out of their minds to fill the heads of others with such insane ideas. It almost seems like they were drunk when they wrote all this.’
But then, if it all was just a lie, then what about the first generation of humans themselves? Dev was not sure if he could reject all that Bira told him so readily yet, as most of the equipment people used in Crystal World today came from these first generations of humans. Also, there was a lot more information in ancient texts that, over time, had proved to be all true, which had helped modern humans immensely. And most importantly, where did they themselves come from?
Dev and his Abhi recently learned how or, more precisely, from where the babies came from, which was rather disturbing knowledge for them.
Abhi even bathed for 3 hours straight after he got to know he came from his mother’s inside and exited her body from… well, someplace not so pleasant. And pleasant or not, the first generation of humans must’ve exited from somewhere too. It wasn’t likely that they just came out of thin air.
Dev drowned so much into his thoughts about the Crystal World and the might-be Mainland that he forgot how much time had passed and only came back to his senses when his mind started hurting thinking about all this stuff.
Focusing his attention on his surroundings, Dev’s gaze fell on Abhi, who was currently in a deadlocked fight with Brow… well, not just a regular Brownie but with a rather angry Brownie as it seemed.