Two Halves of a Whole

Can you hear the droplets of water separating from the stalactites, trickling down the walls, merging with those large pools on the floor with no more than a splash? 

Can you feel the soft wind with harsher undertones, hear it brushing past your ears - the rustle of gossamer fabric and the crunch of sand beneath her feet?

She slowly steps towards the void within that void itself - a cavern borne from a network of tunnels, shifting beneath layers of dark substance no human eyes have seen. Neither earth, nor the sea. Superior intelligence, she thought, and champions of selection. What a joke. There is so much we don’t know, a whole world of which we are blissfully unaware. 

As her eyes adapted to the darkness and began to seek the light within, she contemplated opening her eyes and returning to reality for perhaps the hundredth time. In about the same number of seconds, or maybe less, she would realize that this was, in fact, reality, and nothing could change what became of the past - the life she led.

She did not know her name. She knew not the minute of day. She had nothing but her heart and her conscience, and synergy with this new realm.

All that could be heard were her gentle breathing and pounding heart, the sifting of sand and crunch of gravel. 

Each grain under her bare feet. 

The breeze caressing her body, dress flowing around her, the swish of it around her legs. It weighed nothing, yet she could feel everything. 

Everything and nothing. 

Stars and darkness.

Blood and sweat. 

Marrow and bone. 

Conscience and soul.

If she reached out, would her fingers disappear into the pitch black? Would she step into yet another portal, this one blindingly light instead of an uneasy black? 

Was this death? 

She could see nothing but a faint glow, a rainbow of light washing over the rough stone walls of the cavern with no end. 

As the blue shifted to a pale green and green to warm yellow, she realized the light came from the pools of water. What was existence, she thought, and what is matter? The iridescence could not be ignored. No thoughts, happy or sad, plagued her mind. She simply was. 

Watching her fingers touch cool liquid, she could not help but momentarily pause - the silky fluid was not water, but a shimmering liquid that let out bursts of gentle light that grew and faded, like little pinpricks in a clear night sky.  

For a moment - or so she thought - the water caressed her fingers, her hand, then her arm. The long, billowy sleeves of her nebulous dress were not wet. They still floated. And once that moment had passed, she stepped away from the water and gazed up at the stalactites, so seemingly ordinary. 

Ordinary, like who she was when she walked her world?

Was this death?

She moved closer to the void, inch by inch. 

It did not rush away from her. It did not engulf her. It waited. 

When her heart calmed, and she was ready to leave the pools of water in the cavern that had at last ended, she stepped into the black.

It moved. It had form, and then it did not. She was suspended in the air. Was it air, or something else?

When the black receded, she saw a pit. A large pit, a crater, with jagged edges and crumbling walls. 

Crumbling like her will and her resolve to live, or her constant search for happiness? 

What was happiness? What did it mean to even exist? she thought.

As the breeze grew to a wind, the dress remained the way it was. It simply existed, and so did she. Why would they be affected by a gale that blew away the rocks, the water, the stars, but was not intended for them? 

The rustling gave way to a slow rumble, much like a hungry stomach. 

And from the pit rose a being. 

It was not humanoid. It was not alien. It shifted forms, and had no definite morphology. 

It had no eyes, no ears, no mouth. But when it spoke, ice tumbled off mountain caps and the water blown away by the gale returned, dripping from the roof with newfound ferocity. 

And somehow, in her heart, although there was no sound, she knew what the ancient being with no eyes was asking. 

So she held out her hands, shut her eyes, and reached down to her darkest depths; the farthest reaches of her mind, and found what she required.

Good and bad.

Ripe and rotten. 

Contemplative and rash. 

She said, “I give you myself. I give both halves, both sides. My heart, and my mind.” 

She could not hear herself.  Insignificance shone bright. When she opened her eyes a moment - a day, a month, an eternity later - her hand glowed faintly, remnants of what had been taken from her.

What she had given.  What she had lost, and what she had in turn gained.  She knew she could now leave, and would know what comes after. 

When she next looked at the stars, it all faded away into a blinding white.