Stories

There was no sound. The trees didn’t move, and there were no birds to sing. You look up to the sky and see the black sun. You smile. “What a beautiful day,” you tell yourself. You walk down the empty street and hear nothing but the echo of your footsteps. Dreadful faces appear in the forest at the end of the road. But that’s just imagination, not reality. “Well isn’t imagination real as well?” you ask yourself. You walk into the forest, deeper and deeper, passing a honey-bee perched on a flower. “Hello, my friend honey-bee. What is the meaning of life?” you ask. “Mine is to make honey for other living beings. And I keep the flowers alive, the beauty of this world. Every being has its own purpose.” “Yet I have none.” you say. “Is enjoyment not a purpose as well?” it asks. You think for a moment and say nothing. “Let’s go for a bit,” honey-bee suggests.

So you follow it to a pond. The black light of the sun shimmers over the water. “It is too dark to see my reflection. It is too cold to swim. Yet I am supposed to enjoy its presence. What about it should I appreciate?” you ask. “All the life around here was given by this pond. Why not embrace the circle of life itself? Treasure the ability to exist without any higher sense.” “But for what?” a voice in the forest says as a raven flies toward you and lands on your shoulder. “The tragedy of life is that all of it ends some day. None of us has the chance to do something that remains, that has a significance beyond our own lives, or those who let themselves be influenced by us.” Honey-bee answers, “Isn’t that a part of the freedom that was gifted toward us?” For a moment, there is silence. “Maybe it is,” you say. So you stand there, with the raven on your left shoulder and the honey-bee on your right, looking over the dark pond.

You wake up, at the first shimmering blackness in the morning. You get up, and look out of the window. There is your friend honey-bee, flying from flower to flower, spreading life for all beings. „It‘s nice, to not be alone.“ you say, as the raven lands on the ledge of your window. „What has happened to these lands, that has ended the population?“ you ask the raven. „Might have been the sun, or the storm, or even the population itself. Surely it hasn’t been like this since the beginning.“ he answered. You climb down the tree, which carries your house, and go to the place, where honey-bee flies. The raven follows. „My only friends, it is tiring to be, not knowing, who I am. I deeply desire to find out, why we are, while no others seem to be. Will you join me on my journey, to find myself?“ „It has passed a certain time, since i’ve seen some stranger lands. I would like to follow you, on your path, my dear friend.“, the raven says. Honey-bee continues: „Also I have never ever been further the lake, we once observed. It is in my deepest interest, to explore the beauty, this world can obtain.“

So you wander through forests, and over mountains. Pass rivers and lakes, until you arrive at the coast to the sea. „So this is the end of the world?“, you ask, as you stare to a wall of cloudy blackness, of which a feeling of eternity and nothingness emerges. The absence of time and space. „We do not seem capable of understanding, what we might have in front of our eyes.“, the raven says. Honey-bee answers: „Neither life, nor death, is finding its existence in such a place, or absence of a place.“ The wind is getting stronger, and it starts to rain. You turn away, and stroll along the shore, until you come to a river. Near the river, there is a house. „Maybe we should go in there to hide, and let ourselves dry.“ So you walk into the old cabin. „This place feels like home. Yet I don’t seem to remember ever being here.“ you say, as you start to collect some twigs from the dirty floor, and pile them up in the chimney. Just a moment later, a fire brightens the room, with it‘s light dancing and flickering on the walls. „I cannot forget the horrors of eternity, that I felt, when we were looking at that cloud of nothingness.“, you say, while the three of you slowly dry and warm up. "We do not forget horrors, we just learn to accept them." the raven says.