The Shade
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_The Shade_
There is a realm in which the dim glow of the moon, which always sits in the sky in the exact same place no matter where one looks at it from, perpetually illuminates a dirt plane that stretches infinitely across. Such a simple, flat field it would be, if it were not for the holes. In this world without horizon, as far as one can see, there are holes scattered about. There is not one hole which is the same distance from another, and yet each hole is identical - four feet deep, ten feet across, round - and they all share the trait of possessing an inscrutable purpose. All that is known of them apart from their physical details is whence they come: the efforts of a lone shadowy shade, who wields a rusty shovel. Whence the creator's motivation comes, however, is yet another enigma.
The shade works tirelessly. It digs and digs, each time swallowing the earth it has heaved within its own dark, ethereal mass. It works methodically, performing the same actions over and over again to produce each hole, leaving depressions in the ground without any piles of dirt left nearby, its hunger for earth insatiable. It works mechanically, perfectly, and mindlessly. Even though it has dug innumerable holes, it still goes on. Even though twenty million hawks' sight could be filled with holes, the shade still digs. Its will unknown, its intent unfathomable, the shade digs.
Each time it completes a hole as per its inexplicable parameters, it sits still, staring intensely at the nadir of the hole with its ghostly eyes. Soulless recollections of memories long dead and buried resurface, playing across its hollow orbs, but these ephemeral visions are incomprehensible to the shade. Yet, sometimes, rarely, it has a brief moment of productive cogitation, an instant of insight that ignites its desiccated heart. In the few and fleeting seconds of scattered understanding, its insubstantial body becomes substantial. It looks down at itself to see what is happening, but this act shatters its infantile coherence and the shade once more loses its lucidity.
Deprived of this sudden and infrequent stimulation, the shade, in the dying twilight of its spontaneously conceived perception, becomes dimly aware of its own forlorn being. Realizing the doom of these thoughts and feelings, it despairs and gazes up at the pitiless moon. There, it notices the moon's craters and remembers the mysterious holes around itself. The link is revealed, the shade is edified. Desperately, in the last throes of an only recently awakened consciousness, it expends the last of its primitive and rudimentary intelligence to devise a set of directives for itself in hopes of experiencing this state once more in the future. Again and again it repeats this set of directives to itself. The instructions cement themselves within the shade's dying mind and then they embed in its primal memory. The last particles from which thought arise are annihilated by the searing winds of an artificial and manufactured dementia, and the shade is left once more a vacant shell, possessing nothing more than the shovel it holds and its self-ingrained commands.
The shade pauses, staring at its tool, processing its directives. Then, it moves on to another patch of dirt and begins to dig once more, unthinking, unquestioning, utterly obedient to its immemorial instincts. It remembers nothing from its revelation, nor whatever had transpired from before, like a newborn that had opened its eyes for the first time, only capable of feeding and breathing. The shade works with renewed vigor, oblivious to the curse that operates upon it. The curse is a malevolent one, one that has ravaged the shade since the very first - it is a curse that had transfigured a person into their own shadow for reasons that have been lost to a sea of misunderstanding.
Thus, the shade shall dig in permanent dusk, insipid and ignorant, until the person that casts it dies and it is necessarily removed from existence or it, in one of its bouts of reminiscence and rudimentary understanding, recalls the curse and chooses to release itself from its own prison. This self-inflicted curse of cruelest design will constantly incinerate all memory, will, and spirit, leaving no trace of purpose, reason, or motivation, until chance alone delivers the shade and that who casts it. Until then, the shade shall dig alone under the scrutiny of the moon, for its cyclical curse condemns it to a numb, painless torture in perfect isolation.
-
What do you think?
There is a realm in which the dim glow of the moon, which always sits in the sky in the exact same place no matter where one looks at it from, perpetually illuminates a dirt plane that stretches infinitely across. Such a simple, flat field it would be, if it were not for the holes. In this world without horizon, as far as one can see, there are holes scattered about. There is not one hole which is the same distance from another, and yet each hole is identical - four feet deep, ten feet across, round - and they all share the trait of possessing an inscrutable purpose. All that is known of them apart from their physical details is whence they come: the efforts of a lone shadowy shade, who wields a rusty shovel. Whence the creator's motivation comes, however, is yet another enigma.
The shade works tirelessly. It digs and digs, each time swallowing the earth it has heaved within its own dark, ethereal mass. It works methodically, performing the same actions over and over again to produce each hole, leaving depressions in the ground without any piles of dirt left nearby, its hunger for earth insatiable. It works mechanically, perfectly, and mindlessly. Even though it has dug innumerable holes, it still goes on. Even though twenty million hawks' sight could be filled with holes, the shade still digs. Its will unknown, its intent unfathomable, the shade digs.
Each time it completes a hole as per its inexplicable parameters, it sits still, staring intensely at the nadir of the hole with its ghostly eyes. Soulless recollections of memories long dead and buried resurface, playing across its hollow orbs, but these ephemeral visions are incomprehensible to the shade. Yet, sometimes, rarely, it has a brief moment of productive cogitation, an instant of insight that ignites its desiccated heart. In the few and fleeting seconds of scattered understanding, its insubstantial body becomes substantial. It looks down at itself to see what is happening, but this act shatters its infantile coherence and the shade once more loses its lucidity.
Deprived of this sudden and infrequent stimulation, the shade, in the dying twilight of its spontaneously conceived perception, becomes dimly aware of its own forlorn being. Realizing the doom of these thoughts and feelings, it despairs and gazes up at the pitiless moon. There, it notices the moon's craters and remembers the mysterious holes around itself. The link is revealed, the shade is edified. Desperately, in the last throes of an only recently awakened consciousness, it expends the last of its primitive and rudimentary intelligence to devise a set of directives for itself in hopes of experiencing this state once more in the future. Again and again it repeats this set of directives to itself. The instructions cement themselves within the shade's dying mind and then they embed in its primal memory. The last particles from which thought arise are annihilated by the searing winds of an artificial and manufactured dementia, and the shade is left once more a vacant shell, possessing nothing more than the shovel it holds and its self-ingrained commands.
The shade pauses, staring at its tool, processing its directives. Then, it moves on to another patch of dirt and begins to dig once more, unthinking, unquestioning, utterly obedient to its immemorial instincts. It remembers nothing from its revelation, nor whatever had transpired from before, like a newborn that had opened its eyes for the first time, only capable of feeding and breathing. The shade works with renewed vigor, oblivious to the curse that operates upon it. The curse is a malevolent one, one that has ravaged the shade since the very first - it is a curse that had transfigured a person into their own shadow for reasons that have been lost to a sea of misunderstanding.
Thus, the shade shall dig in permanent dusk, insipid and ignorant, until the person that casts it dies and it is necessarily removed from existence or it, in one of its bouts of reminiscence and rudimentary understanding, recalls the curse and chooses to release itself from its own prison. This self-inflicted curse of cruelest design will constantly incinerate all memory, will, and spirit, leaving no trace of purpose, reason, or motivation, until chance alone delivers the shade and that who casts it. Until then, the shade shall dig alone under the scrutiny of the moon, for its cyclical curse condemns it to a numb, painless torture in perfect isolation.
-
What do you think?