New Dawn

Through the neverending darkness, I moved step by step. Each step I take feels like moving through water. I start questioning myself while moving.

'What was I doing in here?'

I didn't know, or I didn't remember, I try to think back to how I got here, I think hard, I try to remember but... but... but nothing, all there is inside my head are foggy memories of a time when the light was everywhere when I could feel some miraculous force gently hitting my face.

I try to focus on those feelings, but they fade away in the infinite darkness around me, the melancholy hit me like a train. I focus on what's in front of me again. I want to give up, I want to just stop there and forget everything, I want that horrible longing to go away, I want to become a blank slate devoid of all emotions and memories.

While despair tries to creep its ugly claws inside my broken mind, I keep walking. I don't know why, but I feel a force pulling me closer and closer. To where? I don't have the slightest idea, it might be salvation or complete oblivion.

'Well, it's too late to turn back' I keep telling myself.

So I walk, and walk, and walk some more and, then again, the cycle starts anew.

So I am cursed to spend an eternity in agony. So days pass, months pass, years pass, decades, centuries, and so on.

Or am I wrong that there might have been only minutes or even seconds, but in here how can a man tell time? Once, I tried counting to know how much time I spent here, but to no avail.

One faithful day, I found it. The thing that the mystic force was pulling me towards. I saw the light. The long-forgotten sensation made my body jolt, every part of my body wanting to embrace it.

In response to it, I started running. The darkness didn't want me to reach it so, against my wishes, it started becoming harder to traverse through. I persisted, pushing with every fiber of my being wanting to feel it, wanting to touch it, and so I did...

The darkness around me started to crack and disappear, being replaced by the light I embraced with my whole existence. Soon, the darkness was gone and I only saw the light. From that holy light, colors started to appear and so an image started being painted in front of me. An image of a sandy beach and an island that had a statue with a man holding a long staff in his right hand.

After that mesmerizing sight, feelings hit me, and they indeed hit me hard. All at once, I started to feel the gentle sun rising on the horizon, on my face, the sea wind carrying my hair, and the smell of the salty sea that invaded my nostrils.

This was my first memory of this world.

After taking it all in, I tried to move, but to no avail. I look at my hands and they are small, very small. I panicked and tried to get on my feet, but I fell immediately on my butt.

I then saw an old lady approach me and I grew scared and, for no reason, I started to cry. She takes me in her arms and starts speaking in an unknown language while swinging me. I thought it's a song, a very soothing one, and so I fall asleep.