Forever stalks the night across these barren fields of dust.  Its step falls with reigning control as warden of all that ever breathed, all that ever sought to strike out and grasp reality, to grasp the shadows themselves and exist.  From the darkness we’re born, in the darkness we die, and within its writhing shroud, we feed and survive.

For that is all we do, is it not?  Claw and burrow into these cracked and desolate fields for any touch of the warmth that fuels us.  Yes, that is all we do.  We don’t pray we find it.  We don’t worry if it doesn’t come.  We dig, we burrow.  We search for any bit of heat left in this forsaken world, until our fingers come away slick with our own blood and bone.  Without a thought of pity for the life spent in vain, we roll into the night once more, never seeing, never reflecting upon that which we change, that which simply exists.  And as the last bit of our stolen warmth drifts away, her ever-blind majesty unstitches us once more.

Perhaps there’s not even a we.  Perhaps it is just I who wanders these fields in ever-present hunger, not lusting for an end, simply knowing what must be done to survive.  Yes, that must be it.  I am nothing more than a lone parasite, an insect on the back of a world of fading breath with its very light dying away.  What do I do to this pitiful creature?  I suck away the life seeping from it.

But why do I only consider this now, of all time that has passed before me?  In these dark and writhing shadows that damn me to a life of savagery, a life of the purest mindlessness, what touches my thoughts to spark reflection?  This world has kept my thoughts stagnant for an eternity, perhaps for days, for however long I’ve walked these fields.  Now, after all this time, a stream has poured through these dry riverbeds and washed away the mud from my eyes.

For the first time in the ever still, shifting darkness, something has changed.  Something has come.

It comes like a knife, tearing through the sky that must have never existed.  Against the darkest night sears the last change of a near dead world, yet the first revolution of a rising planet.  How… beautiful.  How… terrifying.  How the night wanes in the path of this soaring diversity.  How the shadows rip in half as the change splits across the sky.

What is this… feeling that prickles the flesh of my body, like an emptiness that I have never bothered to recognize mere inches away from fulfillment?  I must know.  Even now I can feel its fade as the change crosses the newly born sky.  I can’t let it leave.  I can’t let this die.  I must have that light.

For the first time in the ever still, ever shifting darkness, the world itself seems to shift beneath my flying feet.  Across the barren fields I go, hard and cracked and no longer satisfying to a taste touched by something new.  Across the world I bolt, chasing that which could make a life never questioned worth living.

And suddenly, it touches.  In a moment of still and ever moving contrast, the last and first light streaks towards the solidity of darkness and shatters time itself.  A moment of stillness, of the purest change that even reality itself struggles to comprehend.  The shattered pieces of time and once still universe fly like shards of ice away from the explosion of radiance.  It blinds the eyes, burns the soul so brilliantly with such beautiful pain to frozen nerves.

I can almost touch it… I can almost reach out and feel that which will complete me…

What a foolish move.  What a witless action.  Why couldn’t I have rolled back into the shadows?  Why couldn’t I have lived out my days in such lovely, peaceful ignorance?  For it’s in this very moment that I fall doomed to a life of want.  Or perhaps it’s the moment after that, when reality’s wound heals itself, when time finally catches up, when the explosion flies free.  That light, it burns so bright, burns the shadow-laced flesh from my bones.  So much pain, the pain of sadness and despair, heartbreak and misery.  Such longing for beauty and peace, happiness and… love, yes love.  Of all things that could burn harsher than all, it’s love that peels away the shadows in agony.

But it’s not death that finally takes me.  Nay, far worse; it’s life.  As I pull my hands from what was once a useless face, it’s not the darkness I see once more.  It’s pinkness.  Pink, fleshy, spongy tissue.  Skin.  A body touched by true life.

All around a once dead land dances the light, and at last, I can see.  I can see the cracked land beneath my feet, the shadows running and screeching in agony as the shockwave takes the world.  I can see the sky light up with such brilliance, such gloriousness.  Yes, it’s the only word that can capture this moment.  Oh, pure gloriousness!  All the beautiful warmth this poor body could ever hope to consume.  All the life I would ever hope to have now flowing through my body.

As the feeling fades, I know it’s all I’ll ever hope for again.  For the first time in my life, I know where I’m going.

I’m going to follow the light.

Already, as I gaze around the newborn land, dark clouds pool on the horizon.  The light will change and disappear, but it will never go away.  It’s my job to find where it is now.  For that is what I am, that is what I and those who will come to pass will do.  We are the seekers, but me?  I’m the first.  The first to roam the world to follow that which makes me who I am.  I am, above all, the first of the humans.