From a space we might call “above”, an Entity watches – gargantuan, unfathomable, other. The furthest bounds of space condense into insignificance within the swathe of her shadow. She endures beyond the limit of infinity, bearing the burden of time untold, and becoming numb to all its exhaustion. She witnesses whole galaxies wink in and out of existence; to her existence itself has become trivial, insubstantial, a fever dream.
Sometimes, the Entity extends – languorously, if speed can be perceived relative to the whole of eternity – and spins in her palm a dreamy sapphire sphere sheathed in cotton-candy mist. Though it is just one world, she already knows too much, and dreads knowing more. The Entity is too far away, too sweeping in her ministrations to understand all of the sadness, to relieve all of the hardship. But now, as she is wont to do, she decides to try.
Slowly, she becomes aware of the multitude of awarenesses – every little living speck on the glowing blue planet she perceives with such clarity and depth. It seems to be an important time – bells are tinkling in the wind, under rows of soft lights, but they seem devoid of an audience. The living specks are instead huddled within their shelters, and this time around, many of them seem to be separate from each other. The Entity senses their yearning, hears their secret wishes: to coalesce, to intertwine. These strands of longing stretch across the planet’s surface, cocooning it in a web of desires that never come to fruition.
A melancholy monotony has settled over this world – the deafening stillness after it has stretched to breaking point, and burnt out in a final, all-consuming roar of destruction. But underneath the monochrome, the Entity can feel it – twining through the rudimentary patchwork of broken life, painstakingly piecing it back together – something like a network of glimmering golden thread.
Like many of the specks’ emotions, the content of the thread is cacophonous, clumsy – an amalgamation of hope, stubbornness, impatience. Even so, the Entity understands somehow that these feelings, immaterial at first glance, are born of a deeper care – a care that seems to rivet one speck to another against all that may come against them. The care behind a, though unspoken, unified promise of better days to come.
It is now that she, not in despair, finds herself weeping. Perhaps her tears will fall tomorrow, blanketing the decorated fir trees in the squares, as snow – cleansing, healing, new.
