Chapter 3: A Conversation with a God
Blake Fruits
It should be noted thatwhen dialogue between Abradm and Trearshimeen occurs they are, in fact, speaking a mixed language of Cesriminion and English. For the sake of convenience when important and lengthy dialogue is engaged in I will write it mostly in english. There will only be a few exceptions to this rule. It is because, for one, I am not a linguist, and for two, I don’t intend for my readers to learn a fictional language. They are speaking a foreign language and I am looking into ways to signify when the characters are speaking english and when they are not. This point of language is important to the story.
File. Open. Previous seven days. Letter from Athena 1
My dearest Abe, I wish I could see you right now. I bet you weren’t expecting a good old fashioned letter. But you know I had to do something. I hope you love it.
It’s so hard to believe that we’re leaving our home.
As you, my stouthearted and fearless stellanauts, nay, royalty of the celestial elite! embark upon this trek through the stars you will be engaging in a unique activity none before us have ever had the opportunity to. The great universe is before you, and the world has joined together on your behalf—on all of ours, all of humanity—a miracle of no small feat! Heaven Fleet, may God; Allah, Lord Jesus, Krishna, Yahweh and any God of Creation whose hand touches the hearts of those endowed with your immense calling, guiding your flight, ascend you upon the wings of his angels, even his most high guardians! We have found common ground in the face of grave terror. But let me assert to all of the inhabitants of our place, from every continent and climb, to every religion and species of faith, to every one who loves and every one who still struggles to find love, to those who’ve gone before, and even to our animals, of which we, like figures of old, hope to take to new worlds, this is a moment to give thanks and a moment to pray with one another in mutual wonder the likes we have never before seen. It is a moment to hope hand in hand with out neighbors—not to mourn or criticize. I commend you, humanities dearest hope, to that heaven above, the endless sea of stars, and pray these words ring in the ears of the angels who adorn the bows of your star-ships. Safe travels saviors of humanity, safe travels our diverse and beloved people of Terra. May your dreams be blest!
Oh, President Swan certainly knows how to rally our morale. I was bawling after that speech. But just imagine me using his voice! Fearless but a tad—nasally and with that southern drawl. It’s hard to imagine that he’ll be gone, just like the rest of them. It’s hard to process.
Abradm, I have to tell you something. I know you think that I am a fearless warrior. But I am afraid. There are so many uncertainties. The unknown is vast and we are just a small bubble that could burst at any moment. It’s hard to imagine all that is before us, and all that is going to happen, for us, and for all of those we leave behind. I can’t even write of it, it is so horrible, what is going to happen. Even though we’ve known of it from our childhood it makes me so sad, you know that. On top of that I should almost feel ashamed to mention that I feel a little strange that you’re going to be five years older by the time I see you next, and I’ll just be the same. Isn’t that strange? Is it a selfish thought in spite of all that we represent? I know it doesn’t really matter, but it does a little. By the time I wake, our home will all be gone. It’s hard to think about. It doesn’t make sense. And no-one talks about it either. But it’s true. I can only imagine that this feeling I have must be inside of us all. I don’t know how anyone couldn’t have it. It’s like an abyss ever-present. I think we’re all in a state of shock but we don’t show or talk about it, just living our lives with this ghost lingering around us trying to pretend it is no ghost. But it is there. It just makes me want to cry. How can it be? How can everything just be gone? I’m sorry. I’ll be happier. I want you to be happy. You need to be filled with goodness to keep us safe while we sleep. You are strong Abradm. Stronger than I. Stronger than any other I’ve known.
Oh, babe, I cannot tell you of the adoration I have felt for you over these past few years. I would not be here were it not for you. We are the pioneers of a new spacefaring generation. The unknown lurks within every AU. We are crossing the vast ocean for the first time, like the explorers of the new world before us, and the explorers of the ancients! But this time we won’t be devastating any cultures and enslaving their numbers! Smily Face.
Dear Abradm, you have endeared my love, and you have enraptured my heart with the love once sown from a single kiss, a singularity in time marking the genesis of a new universe—ours.You cannot begin to know my love for you. It is this love that gives me the courage, the courage that I don’t see so prevalently in myself but the courage that you insist I have. I could not do this without you.
During this time, our time apart, and throughout the rounds we will find that the few years in-between wakes will feel nothing but as an unpleasant dream, one which we can always come out of into the embrace of ourselves for our time. Do well, and I shall do the same. You have eased my fears and loved me like no one has, or ever could. I hope to have given you something just as wondrous and precious in return.
I look forward to the day that we can hold each other under the force of real gravity again. Sometimes it is so easy to forget that all of this is artificial. Even the carrots seem to know intuitively that they are straining against something their forebears hadn’t wrestled with. They taste just a little different too. Maybe a little grainier. I can’t really put my finger on it. Sometimes, I would close my eyes on the Parkway, all the beauty of our world surrounding, and imagine that I am with you.
I wonder if even God foresaw our ordeal, our plight to the stars. Perhaps it was meant to be this way all along. That paints a grim picture, I know, but how is it then, that I can love you so much. Can it be anything other than God that authors such splendor between two hearts. I sometimes feel that no one has ever loved anyone as much as I love you. Yet, where are those left behind? Do they not feel as strongly? Do the children coming into themselves not have a right to feel what we feel? Does the universe have no thought for them like it is suppose to for us? Perhaps they are destined to go to Heaven. Perhaps we are to take the namesake of this vessel and impart upon the ground which we land the blessings of all that we have learned. God must be the perfect judge of any man, Abradm. We are to live and love in spite of of death and hate.
My love, I await the day that I see your beautiful face again. May these years go by swift for you. I will be sleeping shortly. This time apart will feel nothing but a dream. The next time I see you you will have taken us to the orbit ‘round Breana. I look forward to establishing a colony upon that world.
My dear, may Heaven treat you well.
I love you.
—Athena
P.S. Don’t get too busy and forget to go to church. Reverend Bowman needs your help.
Love, goodnight.
“Bo-ya mon, Adeorhe?” Trearshimeen, standing wide eyed and exuberant in the sparkling light trickling through the swaying branches of the Wellas asked Abradm quizzically, interrupting his withdrawn gaze. This was, essentially, to mean what are you doing, wonderful spirit?
Abradm was caught looking quite odd staring off into space toward and through a thicket of large flowing Wella Trees whose branches wound around the ground and wove into the rolling mountainside through a sea of moss and vines. He gasped suddenly and looked at his palm in surprise at the sound of little Tre’s voice. A sigh of relief immediately came. Only the lines of his palm were upon his hand, nothing more, and he responded.
“I am just lost in thought, Tre, that is all.” He said calmly, his patchy dark beard twisting around his jawline.
Then he along with Trearshimeen simultaneously turned and looked toward the east through a clearing in the trees. In the days following their escape from the abysm the two of them had made a little camp and had, at this moment, found themselves facing, from the mountains across the springs of tesourty which looked toward the rectangular opening of the cave system, a problem supernal. It wasn’t a matter of sustenance—for them at least. Tre knew the mountains well, she showed Abradm the abundance of fungi which sprang up around the trunks of the flowing green vines of the Wellas. Squirrels, or creatures that looked very much like squirrels, raced around their gnarled trunks as if playing games with one another, their mouths full of seeds, and they too, at least the bolder ones were caught in little traps and consumed. It was a significant upgrade from the rotten food they were condemned to eat in the caverns of the abyss. Abradm had even managed to hunt one of the larger beasts of the valley for meat. He ate its flesh raw, then skinned its hide, scraped and stretched it to make a primitive protective and warming layer. It took off the slight chill omnipresent in the air. He had utilized the information from an old text which he had downloaded from Heaven as it orbited overhead in it’s weekly passover. His sleek jumpsuit, if you remember, remained in the cave where he had stripped it off.
Shelter was of little concern at the moment, as well, as the weather, unlike the day of the escape was quite pleasant. The vexing problem at hand came in the way of none of these things. It was an issue that rose up between two opposing minds which were now dependent on one another in a very intimate manner. One mind gazed with a heavy shadow back and forth between Heaven and Hell, and the other, light as a feather in the rays of the heart warming sunlight given to them by Osernes danced with ease in whimsical wonder. Abradm stirred to his core. The utilizing of the pocket of air made possible by the source of the beasts food, the bucket he had taken from its rope remained unattached from its tether and drifted unseen in the deep spunks of the blackness. He had severed the rope which gave those beasts their sustenance, and now it was apparent from their heightened observations that the three guards who interacted in a small wooden structure near to the opening of the pit began to sit on their swords without a thought to those below. The rope dangled, frayed and severed, blowing in the mountainous breeze inward and out from the empty gusts of its mouth above the opening which Abradm now watched with a heart sinking back into that void.
At first, in the days or so after their escape, the soldiers still managed to dump the juicy slime into that pit allowing it to pour downward as vomitous rain on those pathetic low dwellers who occupied its belly. It was as if they were feeding the mounting—like a god who rumbled angrily in the pangs of hunger. It wasn’t long, however, before they simply stopped sending anything down into the system. It appeared to become too inconvenient without the bucket, and Abradm knew the folk in that abyss were starving. Who could tell to what extents they were reaching to sustain their lives, animalistic as they were? And it was he who severed their source in order to escape.
Caravans filled with food, both for the prisoners and the guards, and other resources, spices, jewelry, works of art and other affects, wobbled through the valley daily on a stony road. They were powered by oxen-like creatures that the locals called Drogons, whipping them on occasion to stay on the path or move more quickly, and the allotments of food which were to go to the prisoners, albeit the hardly edible food, was disposed of in the fields while the guards enjoyed their hearty meal delivered them on silver plates.
Abradm, gaining strength, and rejuvenation of spirit from the open air, the sun light powering his heart, and the company of Tre, and from the fields of Relli Berries prevalent throughout the hills conversed with her over what was to be done as his mind reeled over the reality that he knew that there were those in that pit who wouldn’t live a day more without some food.
“Gollo at, feya-dim?” Tre spoke. She innocently spun in a circle waiving her arms in the sparkling light.
Abradm’s brow intensified as he tore a piece of meat from the back of one of those squirrel-like creatures while he stared off into the distance, his mind processing information like a computer. He remained silent for awhile.
“Abradm.” Tre nearly whispered speaking with her eyes closed, her face toward the sun.
“What do you suppose we should do, Tre?” Abradm responded, finally speaking, and in modulated manner.
“I suppose you mean of those animals in that cave?” she sighed unpleasantly.
“Of course, Tre.” He said thickly and slow, his eyebrows curving upward toward the center of his forehead. He didn’t realize how easily he was speaking with her. The universe seeming to translate their conversations into a mutual understanding.
“We are free, Adeohre. Let us be free and leave that place behind.”
“What are we to do with our freedom, knowing that we have condemned fifty men to die?”
Tre spoke almost immediately, “Let us move about in the light of the sun and enjoy our—lives.” she hesitated, “We have not condemned them. The King has, and it is those soldiers who’d caused them to starve, we are not responsible for them.”
“We are to live with no regard to anything? Only our desires? Even with the understanding that we have implemented a chain of events that would go on to render fifty men to the dust? What are we to do with the rest of our lives with that upon our censors?”
“Why can we not just eat the fruit of the mountains and be happy with the shining sun? Osernes smiles on us.” She said, her face lowering while the wind picked up.
“Why cannot the men in that cave do the same?”
“Because they are in the cave and we are not?” Tre said defiantly.
“We were in the cave, too, Trearshimeen.” Abradm said as he hesitated upon a new thought.
“What does that matter now?”
“Why did you send light in after me?”
Tre, stopped and looked down toward the green below her feet, and her eyes began to well up like springs in wind-whipped desert.
“Because, I love you, Adeohre.” Tre spoke softly with a sniffle.
Abradm reached out and cupped her gentle head in his hand. Her hair was fine and her cheeks, soft. Her little voice pierced his heart and he spoke again.
“It is that very reason we must concern ourselves with those suffering in that pit.”
“But I do no love them. They are terrible creatures.” Trearshimeen pouted in disgust.
“And so too might I have been under different circumstance, should we not show compassion to all creatures. Even the most vile?”
Trearshimeen paused, and then conceded.
“What are we to do, then? We have not the power to free them, and even if we did, they would do terror to free people.”
“What you say is true. We will not free them to terrorize the rest of this world. But we must find a way to feed them at the very least. We cannot let them die because of us.”
“Perhaps they wish to die. And feeding them is more to ease your conscience than to benefit those wretched souls.”
Abradm paused, “You suggest that the moral thing to do is to let them die?”
“I only mean to say that it is you wish not to waste your time with those beasts who tried to kill us. Is your desire to save them for them, or is it selfish to ease your preconceived notions of nobility.”
Abradm was stunned at Trearshimeen’s words, “You speak insights beyond your years, nonetheless, maybe what you say is so, but my natural inclination to think no more of those creatures is reason enough to think of them, we must do battle with our natures if we are to grow.” He spoke steadily and rebutted with a piercing inquiry,” Tre, How did you manage the rivers so easily, even with a pocket of air that sustained me in the dark, I nearly met my fate in those waters?”
“Oh, there was nothing easy about it. I almost didn’t make it.” Her tone surrendered her ease.
“I see. Well, let us be thankful that you did.”
“Let us be thankful that you made it, as well, Adeorhe. Let us thank God.” Tre spoke.
Abradm’s face went blank and his direction changed toward the subject to the guards sitting on their swords. “You say they are loyal to their new king.”
Trearshimeen spoke “Yes,” wiping her tears. “but their loyalties will mean nothing if you present yourself as a god that you are.”
Abradm caught his breath once again. “Why would you say such a thing? I am no god, Tre.” He asserted firmly.
“Are you a Whu-Thada, then? No. Perhaps you are Gobrana, sent to us from Heaven by Osernes! To fulfill the demands of Cu-Chellis.”
Abradm sighed, “There are no gods, Trearshimeen. I am like you.” He said aloud and then under his breath uttered “oddly enough.”
“You are not like me, surely you can see that. Nor any man that has walked this ground.”
“There are no gods.” Abradm repeated dimly.
Treaarshimeen sniffled and looked toward the sun, it reflecting off of her smooth skin. “Than who did my father pray to?” She asked innocently.
The heart of Abradm fell as an anvil to a steel floor. “Tre.” He said softly.
Trearshimeen’s face was contorted, and her eyes were darting around trying to avoid Abradm’s pensive gaze, tears welling up in them and the clouds swirling over head.
Not knowing what to say about her pantheon he suddenly remembered the note he had filed away within the locus of his dream. Treashimeen Dream: Open he thought. He has the skin of the laborers, the men my father owned. Abradm’s eyes opened wide as this file pervaded his thoughts.
“New information.” he said aloud not knowing.
“Trearshimeen.” He said softly.
Trearshimeen turned toward him slowly with the demeanor of a mouse and Abradm asked the question.
“Did your father own men?”
Trearshimeen was taken off guard, “Yes, but, why should ask?”
“Have you spoken of them to me?”
“No. I rarely even knew they were there.”
“But they were there, and they were of a different race.”
“Trearshimeen.” He looked pensively at Tre as his suspicions had been confirmed. Within a dream he had been given accurate information pertaining to the culture of this world. How was this possible?
“Yes,”
“How would I have known that your father owned slaves?”
“Perhaps you are a god, adeohre.” she smiled.
“Trearshimeen.” He said sternly. “Once and for all be done with these gods” he gritted his teeth. “There are none. You cannot count on God or any gods to save those people in the cave. Their prayers remain unheard should they in their atrocious misery say any. It is up to us to show love, to deal kindly and morally with our fellow man. We may fail in our attempts to save them. But if it were left to God alone, or your pantheon, those men would die outright, alone as the unhinged and hideous monsters they are.”
The wind struck the branches tensely and the mountain quivered in the burst of chilly wind. Tre was speechless and her hair whipped in the rising cyclone. But she spoke eventually and with a clarity that continued to astonish Abradm even more, “I do not understand that there are no gods. The gods is all there are.”
Abradm sighed heavily. Let us speak on this matter later. For now, let us think upon how we are going to save those men.
Trearshimeen hesitated and then repeated, “I do not understand no gods. But it may not matter. Those men believe in them, like all men. Approach them in the night, shine your eyes, and prey upon their convictions. You are Gorbrana, perhaps. And they will fear you to act.”
Abradm looked hard at Trearshimeen. His gaze was so heavy that he nearly saw right through her as she spoke of ideas beyond her age—the psychology of behavior and manipulation. She seemed almost as a specter of the mind rendering some haunted passages of thought into the midst of rational discussion. He was slightly disturbed. He was intrigued. This little girl, he thought, was certainly a unique individual. The kind that would change the world, and it seemed that there was no malice, but rather it must have been the product of long unobstructed thoughts left to themselves for time unknown.
“What you say is true.” He said after a long pause. “More so than you realize.”
“Belief is strong, yet knowledge is power to sway the iron to slay a lion.”
“What is a lion?”
“It is a magnificent beast from my home, long extinct, but held to be a symbol of power and grace, and terror likewise.”
“A beast from Heaven?”
“In a way.”
Abradm turned and gazed toward the outpost. The men were dueling with their swords in the field near to it, practicing their swordsmanship seemingly oblivious to the starving and deathly specimens only concealed by a few kilometers of rock and dirt below their feet.
After a long ponderous gaze he asked “Do you suppose the ends justify the means, dear Tre?” The mental of Gorbrana was descending upon his pneuma.
“I do not understand?
“There is a deep ongoing discussion from where I come from. The deontologist asserts that every action is intrinsically good or bad, and the consequence of the action is irrelevant.”
“Do you mean to speak to me of ethics?”
“What do you understand of ethics, dear Tre?”
“My father had a book on such treatises, yet I didn’t understand its precepts.”
“I would love to have read this book.”
“I’ve heard of an atheneum across Tusaches’ sea.”
“A place of books?”
“Yes.”
Abradm’s mind raced and his heart almost skipped a beat in private wonder. How would it be to behold the works of an alien Atheneum? he thought.
“Perhaps we can go there one day.”
“Perhaps, but speak to me first of this deontologist more.”
Abradm thought for a moment, “Do you suppose that it is wrong to tell a lie?”
“It seems likely.”
“Yet, you have attempted to convince me that I should present myself as a god to those men.”
“Because you do not see yourself as such does not mean it isn’t so, after all, I will be with you.” Trearshimeen said innocently enough but it was ominous.
“What do you mean?”
“Dear Adeohre,” Tre said beaming, “We need to come to a mutual understanding as to what a god is, otherwise we should not speak any more of this thing for the sake of clarity and sanctity.”
“Perhaps we do. Our semantics are somewhat skewed.” Abradm conceded in still ever deepening wonder of her obvious depth.
“Yes, as for a lie, I should think that it is wrong.”
“Always?”
“Yes.”
“What if telling a lie would save a life?”
“Then I suppose it might be permissible.” her brow furrowed in careful thought.
“So you would argue as a teleologist.”
“What is a teleologist?”
“One who, as I referred earlier, considers the end to justify the means.”
“Help me understand.”
“You may believe me to be a god, something I will address later, yet, to be sure, I am not Gorbrana. I am Abradm. Yet, if it means saving the life of those men, a teleologist might argue that it is within moral parameters to lie. He might say that I should pretend to be the god Gorbrana if it meant saving those in the cave. Whereas a deontologist would consider that one must always tell the truth under every circumstance, regardless of the outcome.”
“How long has this discussion been going on amongst your people?”
“A very long time.”
“Are these ideological principles that one considers in the thought alone, or are there real people who hold to these dogmas?”
“I should say that there are those who would not tell a lie to save another’s life.”
“Well, this seems ludicrous. Who would not tell a lie to save a life?”
“Those who argue that the consequences of the lie are unknowable and could potentially lead to even worse outcomes than had they told the truth and their truth be the cause of another’s demise.”
“I do not care much for those in that place, but how can it be said that a little lie is more wrong than the deaths of fifty souls?”
“You are a teleologist, dear Tre.” Abradm smiled. But you must then consider at what point a wrong, or a lie, makes a right. What do you consider a “little lie” and when does it become bigger than the consequences of the outcome that may be wholly unforeseeable to the liar with good intentions. This has been the bane of the teleologist for centuries upon centuries.”
“What do you mean?”
“A lie is one thing, but a teleologist must then wrestle with the more burdensome scenarios. Do you suppose it is ethical to sacrifice the life of one man on behalf of fifty? What if it meant killing those guards to save those wretched creatures whom they guard. And then again would it be appropriate to kill a guard who’s heart is good whom is only following orders in order to save the lives of fifty deathly and wretched creatures who’ve committed abominations worse than they upon the world?” Abradm paused in sad reflection… “and then again, would it be best to let hundreds die in order for a world to live in peace amongst itself, untarnished by corrosive forces?” Abradm became very quiet and glanced upward. Even in the daylight the little speck of light from Heaven glinted in the sun and he thought of Athena.
Piercing his profound stupor Trearshimeen spoke “Osernes sacrificed His son for our world among many others.”
“Is this your mythology?” Abradm’s eyes widened.
“It is the faith of my father. It was a story written down in his books.”
“Could you show me one of these books? Even if we had to cross the sea of Tusach?”
“I’ve nothing better to do with my time.” Trearshimeen smiled.
“Me either.” Abradm smiled back. “Dear Tre, how old are you?”
“I’ve no more idea as to my age than a fly knowns why he flies. But let me ask you a question. Are you a teleologist? Have you always told me the truth. I still don’t know where you come from.”
“I have told you no lies. But information is not always necessary and it remains the prerogative of the holder of it to speak only that which is pertinent to the situations at hand. I could not begin to tell you all of the reason why I am here, nor where I come from.”
Trearshimeen had a simple yet profound rebut, “Nor can I.”
“I don’t doubt it, dear Tre.”
The two continued to converse throughout the rest of the day, speaking more of lost treatises, and lands far away, upon philosophies, mythologies, and gods. And eventually the sun, which made it’s rounds every 30 hours began to kiss the mountains’ ridges and a purple hue shone through the troughs of the valleys.
“Alright,” Abradm spoke as he stared at those guards in the distance. “I am Gorbrana, the deity of the mountain.Tre.”
“Yes?” She replied gazing aloof upon the purple valleys.
“Why should I not be Cu-Chellis, the eminent deity? Or for that matter why not the risen son of Osernes, if I am to tell a lie? Surely this would strike upon those mens’ minds even more than the rest of these mountain gods.”
“I suppose you can be whomever you wish.” She sighed uncertainly.
The sun set. And Abradm began preparations to approach the guards in their sleep. Two of them slept, and one, a young Cesraminion, nervous on his lonely nights agitatedly patrolled the perimeter of the field surrounding the cave entrance.
Abradm approached the individual. Fur hung over a leather chest plate and a spear was strapped to his back while he kept a nervous hold upon his steal short sword. Animals prowled through the dark thicket and rustled the brush.
Suddenly, when abradm had approached the young soldier in the cover of a cloudy night, he, with a pit in his stomach comparable to the pit of the men he was trying to save, stood out from the trees, clothed in his hide, shining his eyes bright as he had done as the Whu-Thada in the cave, commanding in a loud voice the soldier to stand still and heed his words.
The young soldier drew his sword in terror, his face went pale, and fell backward in shock. And Abradm was speechless as the consequences of his deceptions began to ascend upon his bones. He could barely muster the verbiage to speak to the first entity of this realm that was not a little girl the words of his professed divinity. It was more difficult than he had anticipated, and thusly, he only sputtered a few commanding phrases with feigned authority.
“Fear not.” He spoke in the Cesreminion tongue, and with the unforeseen crushing nature of speaking in a foreign language to a new man, with the connections of blaspheming the divinity of the Supreme God of their world in order to satisfy a moral dilemma nearly broke Abradm’s mind in the very moment of attempting it. On top of it all lightning struck in the rainless distance and the ground rumbled faintly conjuring the memories of horrifying tremors of his own Heaven a year before. He sputtered broken words as his eyes shone into the terrified eyes of that poor soldier doing his tour of duty, “I am the son of Osernas!” he blasphemed. “And I have come to thee as a vision from heaven! Do you believe it!” he lied.
The soldier dropped his blade to the ground and immediately fell to his knees, “phirda sey! phirda see!” he repeated and prostrated himself before Abradm.
“Then bring those creatures their meat.” He spoke loudly, with an actors voice bellowing on the world stage who bemoaned his role in private agony. “I have seen your feast above while they starve below upon rock moss and man’s flesh. Will you correct this wrong?” Abradm spoke as the son of Osernes twisting truths as one wrings a damp cloth to exude its wetness. But his purpose was now rushing upon his very soul.
“Of course my Lord!” The young solider spouted instantly barely lifting his head.
“Then go, and feed them. Let not this transgression be upon thy head any longer.” And with those words Abradm departed into the thicket disconsolate and discontinued his light and left the soldier on his face in utter astonishment. Abradm distanced himself into the thicket and fell to the ground with no capacity to stand, so horrendous the blasphemous actions he’d taken wrought disunity in his being. He vomited in violence, and his face went white as the moon. As one struck dumb by a cosmic hand he rolled onto his back and stared into the sky unable to move or speak for the night. He felt as though he had taken a life and wished to be back in that abysm of which he came.
The morning came and Abradm hadn’t slept. And Trearshimeen spoke little, only asking if he was alright here and there. He never responded, but only stared upward into the sky through the swaying branches. The day went by, and the moon rose once again. Abradm still lied on his back. Trearshimeen stayed by his side leaning over his chest and nuzzling under his arm for much of the duration, still talking to him, asking question, and trying to comfort.
“I would love to see Heaven one day, where you’re from.” Trearshimeen said innocently, her head leaned upon his chest, and to her surprise he answered.
“Heaven is nothing but a vessel,” he said with a tinge of memory from his dream “perhaps you have already seen it, Tre.” he said quietly. “But my origins, my home, dearest Trearshimeen, is a gorgeous pale blue dot and a very green place. Merely a speck in the expanse of time and space, not much unlike this place, strangely enough, a long ways away, and long gone. I come from a place called Earth.”