What to do with the everpresent darkness

After some time, the darkness finally went away.

After waiting and waiting, and noticing that the sun never came out, any hopes that I was still on earth finally vanished. I died, and this was the limbo I was now trapped in. The idea was… disturbing to think about, to say the least.

“Again? Why didn’t you eat it, you know it's so much worse if you let it get cold.” Said Howard, interrupting my thoughts.

He did that a lot.

I had finally tried the mystery meat. It tasted like chicken, the most bland, boring chicken I had eaten in my life. Did this world not know about seasoning? If they do not, I have to get away from this accursed land as soon as possible. I have to find salt or I’m going to go crazy.

After bickering a bit and promising that I would eat it Howard left again. He usually appeared out of nowhere, talked with me for a while, and then left again. Him and Lyra were the only people who came to the infirmary, and Lyra was still as silent as she was when I met her. At this point, I am fully sure that she does not understand me.

“Where do you all even get the meat from? I don’t think this place is big enough to have cattle, is it?” I asked her, knowing that silence would be the only answer. She did not even turn to look at me when I spoke to her.

I had fully accepted that all our conversations would be fully one-sided, but at least, having someone around allowed me to bounce my ideas aloud without feeling like a madman. The silence can be oppressive, and if I have to be the one to fill it, so be it.

And on some level, even if I refuse to admit it aloud, having her around makes me feel less alone. She might look emotionless, but knowing that she’s taking care of me does make me feel less afraid.

At the very least, I felt safer, if I did not think about the fact that my caretaker was a girl and had my same age. I know I’m wounded, but if I need a bodyguard, what could she do? And really, what did I need a bodyguard against?

I had already tried to ask that to Howard, but he evaded answering that question, just like he did with most others that I also did. At the end, he started bringing up the excuse that I didn’t need to worry about any of that and should just recover.

Needless to say, I don’t speak much with him anymore.

I rose up and walked to the still broken door. Someone should fix that, I feel guilty everytime I look at it. They didn’t even clean the broken pieces of wood. At this rate, I’ll have to end up doing it myself.

Lyra followed me with her gaze, but didn’t follow me until I crossed the door. She stayed some steps behind me, close enough that I could feel her presence there. That feeling was all I had, as her footsteps were completely silent, and she seemed to make an effort to not make any noise at all when moving.

When I went outside, I looked at the sky. There was no sun, but it was far more illuminated than it was before. The light seemed to come from an enormous band of light that floated in the sky. Initially I confused it with the horizon, but with nothing else to do, I spent a lot of time looking at the light in the sky. It actually seemed to be closer to us on one side than the other. Maybe we were not at its center, and the center was that gigantic volcano looking mountain in the distance.

I really hope that’s not a volcano, it could as well be inactive, but the idea that it could not be scared me a little bit. That mountain was also on the list of things I preferred not to think about.

Apart from that, the only other thing in the sky were the stars. That little bit of familiarity made me feel slightly closer to home. At the very least, they seemed to be the same, I was not precisely an expert about it so I wouldn’t know.

I walked around, slowly. I was almost completely healed, but did not want to risk kissing the floor again. I passed a couple of huts and I saw some other villagers, but unfortunately, none of them spoke to me. Actually, I felt like they were avoiding my gaze. Did I do something wrong? Was it because the first thing I did was fall through the stairs of the temple in front of the entire village?

The list of things not to think about only got longer.

I walked away from the center of the village. There were less people there, and I wanted not to be around them anymore. Soon enough, I had returned to the infirmary I was in, but now, I was looking to the village border at its side.

The small rocks in the floor created a light that surrounded the entire village. In most parts of it, I could see a forest outside, but here, in the particular part of the border I was in?

Absolute darkness. It extended far into the sky in a vertical line that collided perfectly with the stone circle in the village border, being several meters wide, until it simply stopped at some point. It was an oniric view, to say the least. And, it also was the most interesting thing I found in my very few short strolls through the village.

I grabbed a stick from the ground and stuck it into the darkness outside. After a moment, I pulled it back. It was whole.

Well, at the very least it seems harmless. Or if not harmless, at least it's not acidic or something like that. Whatever it was, it required more experimenting.

I grabbed a stone and I threw it in. I waited, and waited, but I could not hear a sound. Not even the sound of the stone hitting the ground, or a tree, anything. Maybe it was a void? At the very least, I did not trust myself to stick my fingers in there.

Yet.

And so came the second experiment. The stick was safe, but the stick is made of stick, while I’m made of meat. So as a logical next step, I had to use the piece of mystery meat I had snuck in my pocket precisely for this purpose. If the meat came out whole, then it was most probably safe for meat-based creatures too, right?

I pulled the little piece of meat from my pocket and then tried to insert it into the darkness, before someone grabbed my arm, forcefully, and pulled me back.

“elicebmi nmaddog uoy, gniod uoy era tahW!” Screamed Lyra, absolutely furious, in her strange language of which I understood not a single word.

She started grumbling again, saying what could only be a very creative string of insults and offenses that I was glad I could not understand, while she pulled me back to the infirmary. Once I entered, she forced me to sit down, took the plate with the rest of cold mystery meat away and left.

She was still grumbling when she did.

I was speechless in a way. A pit grew in my stomach when I thought of how I somehow managed to worsen her surely terrible image of me once again. I thought of following her and apologizing, but she looked so mad that I knew it would only make things worse. I don’t like it, but it may be best to stay here and do damage control once she returns.

Seeing as I was alone, and apparently, had done a grievous transgression, I decided it was enough exploration for the day. I lay down on the floor, but a spiky piece of wood stung me when I did. Again, they still had not cleaned the splintered remains of the frame I broke.

Hell, if they are not going to clean this mess then I’ll have to do it myself. It was my turn to grumble, as I started putting all the splinters together, carefully. I put them all near the wall, the one that now had a massive hole I made when falling down, so nobody would step on them by accident.

I looked at the hole. Apparently, the walls were completely hollow, I could surely break them with a punch, if I tried.

I put my fist in the hole, imagining myself punching through, and that’s when I noticed something sticking out, just barely, from the space in the wall. It seemed to be a thin and rectangular object, hidden in a crack that I swear I did not create.

When I saw it, I felt as if I was messing with something I should not mess with. Instinct made me look around, to make sure that neither Lyra or Howard were around to see me. Seeing that the coast was clear, I pulled the object out.

It was a notebook, tattered, with a deep yellow coloration, bound with a worn thread. What was this thing doing stuck in the wall?

I opened it, and to my surprise, I could understand it. It was hasty, and whoever wrote it had terrible handwriting, but it was undoubtedly English.

“If you are reading this then I am most surely gone, dead or not. When I got summoned here I was told that I am a hero that could help this world thrive, but they were lying. And surely, they are lying to you too.

You are not a hero, and nobody here is looking out for your wellbeing. They brought you here as a sacrifice, and I’ll write what you must do if you want to have a chance of surviving this hell.”