chiaroscuro

Chapter 1

A hand up…a hand to the left..she had learned to trust her strength as she felt her way along the ledge. More than her strength however, her intuition seemed to be telling her exactly how far the next minuscule outcropping was from the tips of her fingernails. Speaking of fingernails, she hadn’t had the time to inspect them, much less the stupid ambition to pull her hand from the face it was clinging to, but she could tell by the way they scraped against the baby pieces of gravel littering the ledges that they were most likely worn to the skin and in some cases, jagged as the day had been when that awful boy broke her heart with his.

The snake. He’d let her try to fill in all the cracks in his broken heart with hers, and just when he was to the point of being all healed up, he’d run off and torn it loose. He took the pieces she’d patched and left holes exactly that shape in her heart. Venom seeped in, manufactured from the essence of betrayal and angry sedition, eating at the edges until the mass that remained was bitter as 97% dark chocolate and its unpredictability was coursing like the chalk from the rock that was filling her lungs at this present juncture.

The anger lent itself to a cough (though that may have just been the chalk dust) and she shuddered at feeling the slightest variation in the position of her left foot. At this point in the game, there was really no room for variation. The slightest hiccup, literally, could be that catalyst to quicken her to death at the bottom of a ravine away from the face of the rock and probably away from her actual face…or at least some of her would be.

She eased her way to the next hand hold and gingerly began to test the vicinity for her foot's next temporary home. With this activity came thoughts of a longing to belong somewhere and to someone. A desire to have that niche to hold on to and return to when venturing out proved less safe than projected. To feel as though you were made for a specific belonging, as though your soul was a hand finding the one its fingers meshed perfectly with.

Putting her weight fully on the next step, she used her arms and legs to extend herself up to the next resting place. She felt the pleasant but taxing tightness as every muscle in her back strained together to bring her plan about. The tension and then the sweet release as she breathed into the space this new position created were tangible and simultaneously emotional. Finding a center to strike out into a great unknown, she set her body's compass by the top of the rock face and reached to Find something, anything to hold on to, since in her experience, rocks are unlike humanity in that they are steady, but similar in that they are overwhelmingly unforgiving.

At some moments she felt proud because she has climbed this high, but at others, she was stunned by the seeming impossibility of reaching the top. The unattainable top was an entity which could not be sensed by touching the rock or by calling out for it. The only way to get there was to keep striving, but even if some brave soul reached the top, there would be a taller peak to conquer somewhere and when you stand on the highest mountain top surveying the world, you are still dwarfed by those monumental galaxies of explorations you would give your soul to be able to access. The transcendence elevated her heart and crushed it at the same time. Though she climbs up infinitely, she will never reach the end of higher. This futility swallows souls, but the struggle becomes a purpose in itself, because apathy would slay you faster. She knew that she would never cease climbing and seeking that which is higher. Futility is no deterrent to the indomitable.

With all of this in mind, she turned her face to the highest point imaginable,  she gathered her resolve and reached out again. As these things sometimes go, the next grip she sought crumbled as she clutched at it, and though it was through no great fault of her own, she had not properly braced for a rocky betrayal. As her other limbs began to lose their grips as well, she felt the overwhelming peace of terror, a calm clutching in her throat, as if that was what her hand had grasped instead. Her back arched to try to save her, but to no avail. Her stomach leapt up to help, but he could do no good. She made one last effort to save herself, to keep the rock face close. It only served to, ironically, propel her higher for a split second before she was suddenly caught in a downdraft to oblivion.

Chapter 2

Aderyn opened her eyes. Her name meant bird and like a bird with a broken wing, she had plummeted right to this hospital bed. Indirectly of course, with an abrupt and painful stop at the bottom of a rock, she’d been told. The nurses were all whispering their amazement at the fact that a girl so young and from such a low class of society , characterized as hers was by disease and suffering, could survive such a fall with so few injuries. She sustained amazement that here in this cave, where all of civilization was contained, healers could be so adept with their fingers. In a society that dwells mostly in the dark, occupations requiring precision, generally suffer and cause suffering in others. In Aderyn’s case though, the healers had been able to prod out her broken ribs and set them. They’d bound up the gashes in her neck, side, back, forearms and thighs with skill and not too much pain after they gave her some of the darkest moonshine they could obtain.

End

Through her fluttering eyelids, the light poured in. A woozy sense of disorientation set down in the pit of her stomach, and Aderyn felt at peace. The light pushed past her lashes, it tickled at the edges of her lens and her pupil rejoiced painfully at its touch. Every nerve ending tingled and she felt as though all the cells between the front and back of her eye were struggling inwardly with whether to embrace this strange light and strain to drink in as much of it as they could, or to shrink back longingly, excited, but terrified of potential destruction from such unadulterated purity. Time since becoming aware of the presence of such a spectrum of wonder seemed to be standing still, eons upon eons of fullness, but at the same time as though these endless ages were contained in a single momentary sip from an ocean so wide it spanned eternity. Lying still in the kind of alone-ness that feels complete with no one else in the same universe that you are imagining, Aderyn absorbed the warmth, the orangey color seeping through her closed eyelids. It almost seemed as though her eyelids were blushing with joy in the presence of the light and could no longer contain their glee.

How does the light appear to you? Does it come in a form like a man? Like the face you’ve longed for all your life but never quite been able to dream into focus? Or is it more comparable to the softness of a puppy nestling in a fluffy ball by your side? Why would it come to you and not bring its warmth? Why would it not change everything. In the moment when the light illuminates every recessed cavern of your infinite being, your only choice is to give yourself up to this lucidity completely. Washing through her torrents, the light was transforming Aderyn as she saw that life had been only a shadow of everything that could be possible. Darkness can only fill to death, there must somewhere be something casting against the wall its every brightness, attempting to break down the walls containing the darkness so to better pervade all spaces with light.