We couldn’t stop looking. We didn’t want to, either. We knew that what we saw was mostly illusion, only a little part real, and that this might make us hate the sight of ordinary real things that deserved no such judgment. But we lived so much with our eyes, and it was hard to look away when the harms of looking were not obvious at all.
The creature was familiar, vaguely humanlike, but just alien enough that we could not stop staring. Its features were extreme, its body elongated and yet curled into itself. How it conveyed power and fragility at the same time I could not fully understand. It seemed untouchable, fearless, and yet its eyes warned us that it could be easily hurt: [be careful with me] its eyes said [i was not born to defend myself]
We had spent the better part of three days navigating a labyrinth of caves before reaching this spot. And finally here we were, in the famed cavern. A small lake separated our team and the creature, who emanated a soft, blue light. The creature seemed life-size to us, but given the distance, that meant it must actually be a towering size.
“This is where we’ll spend the night?” one in the group asked. Another shrugged with an inhale, and then exhaled with a slow nod.
“We’re in no rush. Why waste the chance to spend more hours with it?” Everyone else murmured in agreement.
Tales of this creature had seeped out over the years. At first, only a few had found their way through the caves to see it. But now, there was an established way to get in and out of the mazelike tunnels. It was still a difficult journey, and not too many were trained in the ways to navigate in and out safely. And then, of course, there was the matter of who would want to make such a journey in the first place.
I watched the creature as it swam through the air in the distance. It was unlike anything I’d ever seen, acting as if ordinary laws of nature did not apply. And perhaps they didn’t. No one really knew what the creature was or where it had come from. Our people also were not such savages that any curious soul had who had made it here had dared to get too close or done anything that might disturb it too greatly. We thought the lake separating it from us must be there for a reason. Any form of capture or crudely converting it to entertainment as others may have done, was far from an option for us. Besides, from all the observations over the years, it seemed the creature never strayed too far from its spot.
The area of the cave we were in was filled with plenty of rock slabs flat enough to lie comfortably on. It was damp, so most of the rocks sparkled with a layer of moisture, but the cots we had brought with us would shield us completely from the effect. I nestled as comfortably as I could into mine, letting my eyes be mesmerized by the creature weaving a light trail in the dark.
[are you going to sleep] I imagined it saying as my eyelids fluttered of their own accord. [that would be good for all of us] I was now looking at its beautiful light from between two narrow slits. [you will learn more in sleep than you possibly could awake like this…]
In my dream that night, everything was still and dark. This was unusual, for I’d come to enjoy the odd yet realistic places my dreams tended to bring me to. There was nothing to see, and yet I could tell it was the darkness of a dream and not the nothingness of a light, transitional sleep. It stayed like that for awhile: a dream without sensation, none of the familiar random interruptions of old memories.
Gradually, I found myself moving. I often walked or ran in my dreams, and even got to experience the more fantastic experiences of flying, swimming through air, surfing down hills. This movement was different altogether. I felt I was weaving through the air, but it was not me directing my limbs. I was light, making careful, beautiful moves with precision, but I had no idea how or why.
[tonight, you live inside me]
The darkness began to lift in degrees. Small bits of light began to glance off what looked like the outlines of a space. The light flickered, never constant; it moved from place to place, glimmering where the walls looked shinier, flattening where the surface seemed more matte. With time, I realized the light was following me. Or rather, the light was coming from me.
[tonight, you live inside me]
The same line again.
I felt myself turn, and eyes adjusted to the dark, I could make out the calm surface of the lake in the cavern I had fallen asleep in. At the opposite end of the lake, I could see my own body among the rest of my team, all peacefully breathing in unconscious rest. Then my own reflection in the lake caught my eye. A huge, beautiful, glowing form stared back at me; it was not my reflection at all.
[do you understand now?]
I had somehow been brought into the body of the creature as I dreamed tonight.
[let’s begin.]
The creature and I began twisting through the air, rotating and moving so fast my vision blurred in patches of light and dark cave walls.
[we will stay in this place, but not in this time]
To when were we going, then?
[my memories]
That made sense.
The walls of the cave blurred and lightened in the haze of the memory. The lake was still there, but the cave was nowhere in sight. Sunlight sparkled and the ground was full of strange, incredibly gnarled, dark green vines I had never seen before. I twisted through the air with the creature, no touch of dampness in the air anymore. The lake in this memory was far bigger than it had appeared in the cave. Its surface reflected white sunlight, a bright blue-purple streaked sky, and shimmers of colorful life all around.
[I once lived in the open, like you]
The creature and I paused for a moment, just hovering, taking in the scene.
[everything was beautiful then. We understood that the beauty of one thing did not diminish that of others, and so all creatures sought to cultivate it in themselves and all around them]
The world we were in was truly stunning; it was not hard to understand what the creature was expressing. We turned slowly in the air, taking in every brilliant angle of landscape.
[it was not difficult, either. When all are actively engaged in trying to behold beauty and wonder, it is easily found. And so it is also easily created]
As I looked at the ground, some vines began to shrivel up and the sky darkened. Everything became hazy as we seemed to move to the next memory.
[one day, a being awoke and stumbled here. The being had never been taught the value of wonder and the feeling of ease, and without these two fundamental satisfactions, it had started to think the only thing that mattered was getting ahead]
A vague shape of an uncertain color came into view. Looking at it was like looking through an awfully uneven refraction: it was hard to make out exactly, and I could not even see where it began or ended. The only thing clear about it was that it caused a feeling of great disharmony within me.
The creature acknowledged my confusion.
[I have blurred it even more in memory, for there is no use in having it so identifiable we could make it out to be a clear evil. But in fact, its form was never complete, always shifting, by virtue of the very reality it had never fully figured out who it was itself]
How sensible, yet strange, this past was, that things projected their very essences outwards.
[truly.]
The creature replied to my thought.
The clouds continued to gather as vines withered and creatures scattered.
[Getting ahead for this being meant creating collections. It saw some lives and forms as having more worth than others, and tried to accrue these things, thinking owning or controlling them would give itself more power]
For the first time that night, I felt the creature sink, and curl into itself.
[with some things and beings considered more beautiful than the rest, the being deemed the rest ugly. I saw the world around me change, so much life around me devalued, neglected, left to die]
The darkening clouds of the memory faded into to an evening sky by the lake.
[soon, there were not many creatures left. Of the ones who had survived, many were too busy defending what they had and estimating what they might be worth to the shapeless being that they stopped cultivating anyone or anything else around them. Indeed, some of them turned to tearing others down, so that they themselves might rise higher in comparison]
A cool breeze threatened to turn the night cold, and I shivered with the body of the creature. Throughout the creature’s long, elegant body, little flutters of fear sent small tremors all along its skin.
[of the creatures that were left, there were a few that still remembered the old ways, the beautiful older days. They were all breathtaking visions, and it was obvious it was only a matter of time before the being tried to collect them too]
The cave reappeared as the darkness of night melted into the black of rock.
[this is no natural cave carved by rain and air, you see. This is an artificial structure, the only way I could escape the grasp of that scheming being, and where I am destined to stay. It is the only way to safely pass on the lessons of beauty and reverence that once filled the world but now are so easily twisted into currency for personal gain]
I wondered about the other creatures who had escaped the collection and judgement of that being.
[I do not know. In labyrinths of their own, perhaps, or out there still trying to pass on the lessons of the past somehow]
We were still undulating through the air, casting soft glowing light on the walls of the cavern. Across the lake, I could see my sleeping body shift slightly and my teammates start to move as well. The creature’s words seemed more and more to echo.
[do you understand?]
Then everything was still and dark again.
When we had all awakened, we quickly packed our belongings and prepared to leave the cave system. At the other end of the cave, the creature was still swimming through the air, as alluring and bright as it had been when we entered. But we knew now why each of us had come, and we knew our missions back in our world outside were far more important than anything we could do while in these caves. And so we left quickly, as silently as we could, the spirit of that creature with us for the rest of our lives, in everything we saw with new eyes, in everything we now loved with a beauty beyond compare.