The dead night air within the orchard was thick with the smell of blood and ash, a noxious scent that lingered stubbornly on the tongue as it insinuated itself within every fibrous surface and membranous opening available to it. But for the sole occupant of that commonly dreaded place, it was neither disquieting nor strongly offensive, but as close an approximation to “familiar” as might now be had.
There was no one else present, save for the one, as was often the case during the latest and most secluded hours of the night; he knew from experience that these were the prime hours in which to hone his pyretic craft, when the light of reason was weakest and the world slipped naturally and surreptitiously into shadow and sleep. But even now -- especially now -- he could feel the unholy pulse echoing throughout the bleak and sprawling hollow, so vibrant with energy and strange necrosis, a pulse that thrummed discordantly across the network of ever-swaying and ever-reaching oily black branches. It was not a steady thread of life and vitality, nor the constant and predictable heartbeat of an organism of the natural order, but an unrelenting and cacophonous scream that spoke to him though echoes cast from deep, dark places within the bones. It was the voice of a profound hunger, primal and newborn yet ancient, one that -- given the will and the power -- would pull whatever living thing it could into its grasp… and devour it, without thought or remorse. And that, as the lone figure had gradually come to perceive, was one of the few facile estimations of genuine emotion that he could still relate to.
Or so it had seemed, for what felt like an eternity of night.
That inalienable hunger was now all-too-familiar, urgent and inescapable in its whispering of sickly comforts. It was a clawing impulse of need that could never be stilled, never be subdued, never be entirely sated. From that place, over time, had come some manner of false reassurance and specious solidarity; the initial pangs and overwhelming confusion had long since faded to a dull grey, the colorless hue of bones picked clean and forgotten beneath the earth. It had taken his fear, and pain, and uncertainty, only to slowly and insidiously replace them with... something else. The evocation of something terrible and eldritch, far beyond his comprehension, that had crawled within him to fill decrepit veins hollowed out beneath tired skin. It wanted to feed, just as he now constantly -- and desperately -- wanted to feed, and through the fruition of this depraved symbiosis there was some indirect glimpse of a much larger monstrosity finally stirring from its aeon-long slumber behind the veil.
Beneath the eerie swaying of red-veined boughs, he reached out to this dull and incessant gnawing once again. He contemplated its perverse ideology as he had so very many times before, and hesitantly turned his mind’s eye inward to the unfathomable emptiness that had gnawed its way within him. Less and less did he flinch when staring into that abyss, over the course of many long nights that had slipped away, one after another, into a fugue of disassociated nightmare... and the sudden awareness of this fact made him restless.
But now -- in this, the eleventh hour -- something had... changed.
There were faint voices also present now within the maelstrom of howling unrest, thin but discernible even above the deafening sound of gnashing teeth and overwhelming, mind-wrenching chaos. These voices, he had come to realize, were distinct and not a native part of this shattered landscape; they were something... new, something unpredictable and unfamiliar.
Or were they something... forgotten?
These voices glimmered like tiny pinpricks of light that refused to die, refused to be swallowed up and extinguished by the insurmountable sea of shadow that surrounded them. And so -- as was his nature, of course -- he watched them curiously. He contemplated the light of dead stars falling upon mortal eyes that would never know the truth of their existence, and wondered what that meant. He thought of raindrops tumbling from the sky, and how each and every last one would only fall to earth once. He pondered over fledgling birds first stretching their fragile infant wings to fly, and what a frightening experience that must be. Why did they do it? Why did they risk harm or death, even with the gentle provocation of their watchful progenitors, just for a chance to know what it was like to embrace the sky?
And suddenly, as his conscious mind raced to catch up, he realized that he was not staring into that terrible yawning abyss any longer.
He was looking up at the vast night sky, staring at it through blurry and unfocused eyes. Even though the heavens were largely obscured by shifting, creaking black branches that sought to blot it out, reached to choke it from even the furthest living memory until nothing remained, he could still make out thousands of tiny pinpricks of luminosity scattered across its infinite expanse.
And in that briefest of moments, he felt the vestigial presence of uncertainty once again. With a slow exhalation of breath, he squinted and allowed himself to drift, to lose focus, until those tiny pinpricks of flickering, faltering light grew brighter within that peculiar liminal state between the conscious and the surreal. He felt pain, and inside those scattered lights he witnessed the laceration of hopes and dreams. He listened to their cries, and tribulations, and felt their profound sense of loss… but also, something more. Something inviolate, and profound, and sacred. He felt the very momentum of their presence, felt them grow and change with each passing moment, and it reached to a sliver of something deep and long-forgotten within him.
The light of dead stars.
One of the celestial images grew brighter within his mind, and he saw its vivid crimson hue faintly illuminate the others; as the coruscating light of a thousand different stars danced and reflected off of one another, he came to realize how distinct each one was. How the sum of their experiences -- each one different, each one unique -- could not begin to encapsulate the complexity of their existences, nor the impact of each one upon the others. They were resilient, and ever-changing, with the capacity to love, to hate, to imagine, to create, and to feel joy, misery, and a thousand nuanced variations in-between. And as this revelation spiralled outward, it brought to his mind a single word.
Freedom.
The word itself was painful. It lashed at his mind with a sudden and vengeful fury, a brutal touch against raw and exposed nerves, threatening to drag forth and reveal uglier truths than he knew he was prepared to face. But he did not turn away from its memory, did not hide from; instead, he allowed it to wash over and seep into him, to affect him, and the abhorrent sensation surrendered to a final, paroxysmal epiphany.
He understood why the birds dared to fly.
The winds shifted the trees, or perhaps they shifted of their own accord; regardless, the creaking of their twisted and gnarled forms brought the lone bystander back to its senses, and to a sudden and sobering awareness of its surroundings. Drained and exhausted from struggling, they could already feel the ravenous hunger returning, hear the howling, gnashing chatter of the malevolent chaos within their mind beginning to grow louder, stronger, and more insistent. Soon, they could not ignore it any longer.
Dawn would come tomorrow, possibly for the last time... and when dusk began to fall, the final confrontation would begin. But within that knowledge, he had found a previously undiscovered solace; the acceptance and surrender of fate -- not to the inevitable, not to the cruel dictation of some predetermined, inescapable destiny -- but to the Unknown.
It was time... to let go.
"Bring me your suffering. The rattle roar of broken bones. Bring me the riot in your heart. Angry, wild and raw. Bring it all. I am not afraid of the dark."
- mia hollow
