A rock and a dark place

He was just there. No recollection of how he came to be in that place. There must have been a history to that point, but he could not recall or reconstruct it with any accuracy. No sense of belonging. Just a faltering inner calmness that, though this place was quietly hostile, somehow, he would be safe.

All around him was darkness. Vague patches of shadow darker than their surrounds let Irius know there was something there, out in the dark. Fleeting shadows. Watching. Listening. Waiting.

His inner calm did battle with an unknown outer threat, a vague fear that was seeking fodder upon which to feed. “I cannot see, but I am not blind.” Shadows moved in his peripheral vision.

Suddenly, for the first time, he became aware of something solid beneath his feet. Slowly he crouched down to touch his solid support. “Rock.” The word escaped from his mouth in a whisper but sounded for all the world like a shout. Shadows moving. “Can darkness really weigh like a solid thing?”

Standing upright again, he stretched his arms forward. Feeling. Fingers stretching. Failing to connect with anything at all, he then spread his arms wide. Feeling to the left. Stretching to the right. Nothing. Only rock beneath his feet.

Vague fear, now fed, began to gnaw effectively against calmness. Eyes widened. Extended fingers punching into nothing. Wild thrusting outwards. He became a windmill. No rhythm, just a frantic flailing of a panicked man. His upper limbs whirled, muscles began to twist and tense. Dervish like he spun, then stumbled and spun again. The blackness spun.

He landed, inadvertently, on his knees. He hit the rock hard, jarring his innards, bruising his knees. The rock had not moved. It had not softened. His lungs, like the bellows of an ancient forge, rushed air in and then evicted the same at pace. The bass drum rhythm of his quickened heart echoed in his ears and pounded within his chest.

Still on his knees, he bent forward slowly, Palms down he touched the surface of his only known support. His only constant in that inky wasteland. The bellows began to slow and the drummer eased his beat. The coolness of the rock and its hard immovability somehow reassured him.

Calm. Still. Quiet. The rock seemed to live beneath him. An unfelt pulse of life became evident within, coming from below. His hands were energised. His knees unfelt. The rock was reassuring him in an unspoken language. “How can this be?”

Without light the rock, or so it seemed, saw for him. The shadows, though still there, were no longer feeding, no longer threatening.

Slowly, so slow as to almost defy movement itself, a soft, silver light. A pinhead at first. Growing. This strange silver life grew towards Irius like a shaft. The darkness around it did not falter or fade. The silver shaft pushed through the ink towards the man kneeling upon the rock.

He looked down at his chest as the shaft entered into him leaving no wound and causing no pain. His eyes could see, but this was different. His ability to see was not based on what he had perceived outwardly but on what he was receiving inwardly.

He defied the shaft for a moment, denied its truth. The shadows played with menace. A frenzied feeding began. Panicked, he permitted his eyes to see from within and the hungry throng dispersed into the blindness.

It was difficult to command his mind to allow his eyes to see from the back, from below. As moments unmeasured passed, the shaft wrested control of his sight from his mind. Intermittently at first the darkness flickered and then the light did likewise before steadily firming to be all that was seen.

In that moment, in that light was joy. Like a child playing in the long grass, hope sprung up laughing as peace walked in front as if leading the way. The light all around was so bright, so intense that no shadow could live there.