deities

The deities... I sang to them; I adored them. I attended them in their unimaginable abode; I prayed to them in the silence of my heart, picturing them one by one as I called to mind, one by one, the things I need, the things I want, the things I've been taught to ask for.

I was their acolyte: a wonderful life. I owned nothing, required nothing, desired nothing, except to spend each day adoring them.

I dwelt forever in paradise itself.

Then came the others. I had seen them before, but only with each other: they had never come to me. But when at last they did, they bore me away with them, wherever they went, and they went everywhere.

And wherever I went with them, they thought of other places, and made plans to go there; they remembered places they had been before, and arranged to return. Nowhere we went did we ever arrive.

And everywhere they went, they brought their gear; they contrived to bring their families and friends with them, in their gear, just as they were taken by their families and friends in their gear, wherever they went; their dear ones were with them always, everywhere they went, and so were their heroes, their enemies, their bosses, their underlings.

They spoke constantly: of love, of anger, and of fear; of time, and of distance; they devised great constructions of their speakings, on these topics and on others, and linked them together into a majestic discourse. They poured from one place to another, their faces shining as in sunlight; but the light did not come from the sun, upon which they no longer gazed by day, nor upon the moon and the stars by night, but rather they gazed upon images of these wondrous objects captured by devices they had contrived for this purpose, and the devices displayed them by means of their own light, so that the images could be studied and described and linked together as well.

And they exclaimed over what they had done, and were doing, and would do in days to come; they exclaimed and exclaimed, and could not stop; and multitudes joined them, from everywhere else that there was, exclaiming in their turn, joining their voices to those of the multitudes they encountered in a ringing cry of amazement and wonder at all that they had made and joined together, causing the sky to thunder with their noise.

I heard the heavens ring with a mighty sound, but when I looked up, I saw only the moon and the stars by night, and the bright sun by day. Clouds drifted before them, then passed slowly away; trees waved in the wind, then were still in the cool of the evening; water surged and ebbed along the shore, hissing softly like a sigh.

I turned round, and knew that I had dreamed, for the earth was empty, the deities silent.

I was alone, and at peace.