There was no sun where he lay. No stars. No moon. He could see nothing but oil-spill darkness, shiny and iridescent like beetle shells. The darkness was distant and subtle. It moved as quickly as a flower blooms and rots.
He lay there for some time, staring at the honey-slow movement of darkness, rippling around him in silk-smooth undulations like an ocean of tar caressed with an evening breeze. He gazed upon its slow movements with the unfocused attention of a dreamer. His mind was still and silent. His thoughts were a glass-smooth pond of water, undisturbed and tranquil in morning light. He did not think, he only saw.
As time passed, the stygian darkness grew closer. It was not moving on its own, and he had made no movements to approach it, but closer it drew, nonetheless.
The flow of time was nothing to him. Years may have been months, centuries seconds, or days weeks. He did not track grains of sand falling from an hourglass. He did not hear the tick-tock of a clock. There was nothing in the darkness of this rippling void – nothing but him and the edges of his confines.
As he watched the rippling darkness draw closer, he saw a brilliant light reflected in its folds and ripples. The light was bright but dispersed thin like a cloud of mist. He watched the cloudy luminosity dancing in the mirrored darkness and came to his first realization in that space. He was that drifting fog of light.
The conclusion dropped into the glass-smooth water of his thoughts without even a ripple. He was undisturbed by this discovery, and so the revelation drifted down through the depths of his psyche to be pondered later, or never at all.
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After some amount of time passed – eons or heartbeats, he had not kept track – there was no more darkness in the space he filled. When he first saw himself in the mirrored walls, he had looked like a breath on a cold winter’s day, but now he felt the mist of his being lightly press on all edges of his enclosure. He was not a breath anymore. There was no space that was not filled with him. A gentle pressure had built up gradually as his size grew, but it was not gentle anymore.
He felt a small section of the mirrored barrier crumple slightly, and for the first time, his mind was startled. The walls had always been there, inviolable, immovable, and invulnerable. The thought that they could break spread fear through the waters of his mind like a drop of ink, slowly diffusing through his peace. So, he acted.
He reached out his mind through the unnumberable scattered droplets of his being and contracted. The change was slow, and at first, there were no signs of any changes. Then, all at once, two droplets brushed against each other in the core of his cloud – not a unique or infrequent occurrence given his growth – however, this time, instead of separating immediately and continuing to drift along some ephemeral eddy, they stayed together. Later, the two drops collided with another one and became three. Then the three became four, then five, then ten as they met another group, then twenty, forty, then a hundred. The count quickly cascaded out of control. The largest drops pulled the smallest towards them with the strength of their contractions – his efforts had created almost a gravitational pull between the droplets – and the smallest groups eagerly flowed with the pull as they joined together again and again in their efforts to become one.
Eventually, somewhere between the time it takes for an eye to see and a star to die, it was done. There was no more mist, only a singular sphere of liquid, shining with a strong silver light. Its size was not measurable as there was nothing to measure with. However, he no longer pressed against the walls, which were so distant again.
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Time continued its inexorable flow, and his mind drifted beside it, but apart. He watched the flickering light his new form cast on the obsidian walls revealing delicate whorls of color hidden deep within the magnificent darkness of the barriers. Gem-like flecks of pigment rose to the surface of the undulating wall, sparkling joyfully for a time, before slowly sinking back into the jet-black darkness. He spent his time tracking those flecks of color, watching them flow and dance as his light revealed them again and again.
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Gradually, but relentlessly, his light grew. The gentle light was radiant and its source – his body – was massive again. He absentmindedly noted that there was only a fraction of space left before he touched the walls again, walls which no longer seemed invincible and unyielding to his light.
Rather than chance breaking them further, he decided (quite slowly) to delay the issue. Once more, he pushed his will out to the furthest edges of his watery body, before he then pulled it all inwards with a command to contract. His waters rippled, then slowly compacted, forcing themselves inwards until he was three-fourths his original size, then half, then only a third. He felt pressure building throughout the whole process. His form resisted the unnatural compression. He did not care. It was only discomfort – like trying a new stretch – not pain. He would persist.
This did not happen quickly. He had to focus on forcing the change continuously, devoting his entire mind to the task, unwavering in his attention. It was no trouble to him. He did not have enough room for multiple thoughts anyway, and he never grew tired.
Eventually, there was nothing more to do. The water was no more. Instead, he floated as a solid sphere, incandescent with its light and as volatile as the sun; carefully controlled and held in its shape through his will alone.
He felt no pleasure at his success. There was no feeling of accomplishment or achievement. He was done and there was plenty of space to grow and fill once more. It was as simple as that.
So, he resumed his empty-minded observation of his surroundings, now full of new details to see in the furious light he had created.
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He did not dream in that place. Did not contemplate how he got there or where he would go. He was not drowning in boredom staring at the black walls surrounding his floating body. He was barely sentient. He existed purely in each moment with no thoughts for the future. However, time passes whether it is measured or not. And on it flowed.
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He had grown again. If he had enough space in his mind to hold more than two thoughts at the same time, he would have known there was no stopping this. He had grown in the past and was doomed to grow in the future. He could not make himself smaller again, there was nothing smaller to become. The built-up internal pressures would not allow any more compaction. It did not matter. He had not thought ahead. He barely thought at all. He only knew he did not want to touch the walls, walls which lately looked as delicate as paper. He did not remember why; those details had fallen away into the depths of his mind long ago. He knew he could not contract further. His body already required constant attention to keep contained (it did not strain him; it was as easy as breathing now).
He decided if there was no way for him to become smaller, he would have to find more space to fill instead. Ignoring the impossibility of that thought – impossibility did not concern him – he reached out his will to the very edges of his form for a third time, grasping himself firmly, before he folded his body inwards.
Instantly, his body collapsed like a dying star. He folded inwards and simultaneously expanded into new dimensions. Each hidden pocket of reality was like his current surroundings. They were all surrounded by black barriers containing them from every angle, much like an obsidian shell. The spaces were numerous, and his body began to fill and explore them all.
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Sometimes we hide from our thoughts. Focusing on the “now” in a desperate attempt to ward off the future. Change has a way of creeping up on us. It looms over our small lives like a dark shadow, worming into our ears, pouring down our open mouths, and sinking into our bones. A lack of thought does not protect from the future. It is a blanket we throw over our heads in an attempt to hide from monsters. But monsters are not stopped by blankets. They rip our flimsy shields out of our hands and force us to confront the truth. Change is the sister to Time. They come hand in hand. They are unstoppable, unavoidable, and uncaring of our wants and fears. Time passed through this pocket of inaction. This dimension of peace, and in her wake came Change.
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There were no more cards to play. He had filled his hidden spaces to the brim and then added even more. Countless wandering paths through unseen dimensions were full of rivers of light. There was not a fleck of shadow remaining, and the walls that enclosed him at every turn were groaning at the pressure. He knew there was no more escape. Nothing stays as it was. And so, with a thought, this mysterious being of solid light, brilliant as the sun and endless as a sea, shaped a small blade out of his body, pressed it up against that old divot in the wall, and without hesitation, shoved it in.
Every wall burst outwards, and everything was drowned in golden light.