Creation

Strong Content Advisory. Reader discretion advised.

-0-

This is what it’s come down to?

Stroke.

Stroke.

Counterstroke.

Thrust.

Parry.

Step back. Make space.

Everything I am?

Parry.

Feint.

Low thrust.

Everything I can remember, gone in an a moment. Everything I don’t remember but happened to me, erased.

Half-sword block.

Pommel-strike.

Again.

Again.

The things that I’ve seen that are only special because it was me who saw them, lose a piece of their significance.

Miss.

Dodge.

Roll.

Recover.

Stroke.

Stroke.

If all those dreams people have about what comes after are wrong, then everything I ever was will disappear.

Parry.

Parry.

Parryparry.

Block.

From sunrises to first kisses, every moment that has only ever happened because it happened to me will disappear. Vanish out of creation as though it never was. If, I am not in the image of God, then I must be creation itself, observing itself.

Dodge.

Right hook.

Again.

Dodge.

Thrust.

And I cannot allow that to end!

Overhand.

Side-hand.

Recover.

Thrust.

Thrust.

Tackle.

If everything I am all I ever will be, I cannot allow that to end!

Punch.

Punch.

Punch.

Punch.

There is still more to see. More that I have to experience because I am the only thing in creation that can experience it the way I can. I have an obligation!

If it must be me or you who gets to live. To continue -

Punch.

Punch.

-experiencing creation then it is going to be me. I cannot allow it to be you.

Grab dagger.

Because I have a choice. And I see that I cannot choose to end, and certainly neither can you. You can try, and I’m sorry because I know how you must feel. You feel the same as I. In your head you are thinking the same thoughts as me.

Raise dagger.

Grapple.

You don’t want to die either. You can’t, your mind can’t comprehend it! You and me. We are the same!

Get breath back.

Scramble for dagger.

I’m sorry. But I’m not going to die here.

Ground tackle.

Punch.

Punch.

I don’t want you to die. I want you to keep experiencing with me. I want the everything that is you to continue. But if it has to be like this, me or you, I can’t let it be you.

Grab dagger.

Strike.

They call me a hero. We hold a feast in my name and my deeds are sung of in the taverns and dockyards. I served the realm well and brought honour to my Lord. I deserved to feel proud.

But I could only feel pride that I survived. That one of the things that creation chose to experience got to experience my continuation. I was not chosen. A combination of luck and determination and skill got me through. But I was not chosen.

Randomness wove through creation. But now I could see the hand of God at work in the mortal world. I could understand why the people thought as they did. A guiding thread must be the answer, a grand design and instances of intervention.

But what I felt with sword in hand and death standing before me, that terror of nonexistence, that heresy, was not the hand of God. I did not feel it guiding me, as we all believed must be so in a trial by combat.

Smile.

Shake hands.

Stop smiling.

Eat.

Drink.

Parading before me. They do not question that a being as equal to them in mind as he had been in rank was dead. A word we invented to designate a difference from the only thing we’ve ever known. Gone from creation as he was. Nothing to ever be experienced the way he would again. And nothing left of all he had.

Kneel.

Cape.

Kiss ring.

Rise.

Is this all a distraction?

Smile.

Cheer.

I feel as though I observe a field of puppets meant for children.

Laugh.

Again.

Things so apart from myself that I can never know them. Unreal. Shades and specters of men and women I thought once to have known, almost as one knows a character in a play. Building stacks of knowledge I could never have scribed. But still they exist.

Speech.

Words.

Words.

Words.

Words.

Words.

Again they cheer for me. Again they raise their glass to me.

Raise.

Drink.

Every one of them is what I felt against my foe, what I felt desperately battering to survive, to continue to experience. Every one. Just the same. The magnitude contained within my skull, the unknowable depths of being that I, in Creation’s grace have to even call myself an “I”, have within myself is likewise within them.

Talk.

Respond.

Joke.

Barb.

Deflect.

Are they aware of that? Can they be aware of it? Can they not be? Are they aware that each man or woman beside them are just the same as each other? Desiring the same thing, in the end.

To see. To experience. To exist within Creation as long as they could so that Creation could see itself through their eyes.

How could they be?

Smile.

Laugh.

Clap shoulder.

They would go mad.

Deflect.

Catch eye.

Wink.

The weight of it. After seeing what I saw in that enemy’s eyes, after experiencing the desperate struggle to simply continue. The weight of knowing that he was not an endling in only one way. It’s crushing.

Flirt.