On The Seventh Day

Man emerges from the cave, blinking in awe of the Big Light.

He is happy for two days.  Everything is a discovery.  The world seems full of magic, and even sparkles and shines.  Everything is fascinating, to the smallest detail.  A blade of grass with a Lady Bug.  Tree bark.  A dirt clod.

Man examines and sniffs and tastes and feels.  His senses are hyper-transmitive.  There is adventure at every turn.  He lopes across fields and climbs mountains and drinks the water from the stream.  He discovers there is an Other.

The Other is magical, mystical.  To gaze upon the Other makes Man feel violently ill, yet crave for more.  The Other is rapturous, dazzling, hypnotizing.  Man feels himself drawn inexorably towards the Other.  Before long, they join on the third day.  As he stands at the mouth of the cave, the world is his and it swells his pride and his power.  As the Other joins to stare at the future, in all its endless possibilities, he touches the Other's swollen belly, and feels it move.

At the dawn of day four, Man has settled to his chores.  He busies himself with the tasks of Life, feeding, talking, transferring his Self into its future carriage.  The world is his.  He turns beauty into function with his hands.  He builds his empire of ideas, and he sculpts them with his tools.  He casts his eye upon the Land, and the Land bows in supplication.  The Man can do no wrong.

On the fifth day, he finds his mistakes.  The Man is crushed.  In his hubris, he skipped a detail, now the detail is a flaw, and the flaw becomes a crack.  He watches as it crumbles and morphs into shadowy perversions of what he had dreamed.  The tastes are blunted and the textures are all cold and hard.  He curses the Land, but the Land doesn't hear him.  It no longer seeks his gaze, nor bends to his command.  His tools lie in a jumbled heap.

The Other is no longer magical.  She has been distracted with her own fears and failings.  They stand together surveying the ruins, but they are miles apart.  There's no longer stirrings in her belly, and his power has long been tapped out and waning.  As the Big Light covers itself, they curse its warmth, and curse the darkness it leaves behind.

On the sixth day, the Man wakes up to find himself refreshed, renewed.  In his dreams he saw that failure is only a perspective, and there are many more to choose from.  His dreams told him that it was all illusion: the Big Light, the Other, the Land, the empire, and the future.  His mistake had been that he built with his hands, when all he needed was his thoughts.  It wasn't a matter of what he saw, it was how he saw it.  In his joy, he began again, but this time would be different.  This time, he knew what he had done wrong.

The Other, seeing light in his eyes, smiled at him, and his chest swelled once again.  He went to the mouth of the cave and cast his eye over the Land, and the Land looked back, now not out of fear, but of respect.  The Man cleared his mind and began to create again, only now his hands were idle and his tools untouched.  An empire rose before him, and this time is was one of beauty and function.  This time, he created for the sake of creation, because the alternative was unthinkable.  The Land rose up before him and gleamed in the face of the Big Light.  That night, the Man pulled the Other close to him and told her his secrets and dreams.  And they slept well.

On the seventh day, the Man was very tired.  His body hurt and refused to take commands.  The Man pushed himself and the Other came to help.  Together, they rose up to go and gaze at the Land once again.  It lay at their feet and they rested against each other.  It was a satisfying creation, and they both wished it would last forever, but they knew the Truth, that all things pass, and soon so would the creation.  But for a moment, it was a wonder to behold.  They were happy they had lived to see such a thing, if only for a moment.

The Other looked at him with pride and joy, and the Man looked back with a sly smile.  His eyes shone with light, but is was the light of dying embers.  The Other knew, and the Man knew, and it was the right thing.  She turned to enter the cave, and he followed with peace swelling his body like a fruit in season.

At the mouth of the cave, the Man placed a withered hand out to steady himself.  He turned over his shoulder and looked back at the empire.  There, near the base, was a fault becoming a crack.  He smiled and closed his eyes and the fault was no more.  The Other called to him from the Darkness, and he stepped into the cool air, his back fading from the Big Light until it vanished.

But the creation remained.