The shore was empty. The footprints of the Tigress and the Bull had been erased—not by the waves, but by the deeper, more indifferent sweep of time. All that remained was the sea, the faint breath of wind, and the soft glow of the stars above.
They had seen this play before. Countless millennia ago, and countless times since. The rise and fall of great forests, the slow march of glaciers, the fevered, fleeting existence of mortal ambition—it was all a blur to them, a rapid succession of frames in an eternal loop. They observed the earth with a steady, distant gaze, knowing that nothing was truly new. Only the faces changed.
They remembered the Tigress’s radiant promise and the Bull’s steady, unyielding strength. They remembered how easily that hope had been squandered, traded away for the familiarity of ease. They had watched civilizations smother themselves—not in fire or flood—but in the slow, sweet poison of comfort.
It had been the sea and the wind that first taught the stars this lesson: the unstoppable force of harmony. The sea, immense and weighty, a grinding body of gravity and depth. The wind, invisible yet insistent, offering relentless direction. Alone, each was formidable; together, they carved mountains and reshaped continents. Their power came not from domination, but from the volatile dance of equals.
Now the stars exhaled a silent, cold breath across the void as they watched the small, self-inflicted tragedies unfolding below. The jungle’s creatures, flailing through the smoke, were not seeking harmony—there was no time for that. They sought only deliverance. Not the building of shelter, but the finding of one. A place to lay down the burden of their unsteady minds.
They longed to delegate the labor and hardship of living. They chose a towering shadow to stand between them and the scorching heat, grateful—almost smugly so—that they could now sink into comfort and let the world happen around them. What they wanted was not a companion in toil, but a conqueror of their troubles.
The stars shimmered, indifferent and yet profound, their light having traveled impossible distances only to confirm the obvious truth once more.
No comments:
Post a Comment