Only I Remember

Of all the things I remember, the feeling of falling is sharpest. There is no wind, but I don’t feel stable. The world rocks around me, and all the control I once had over myself is gone. There is panic, there is fear, and above all there is confusion. I don’t know what is happening or why, but I know it has its roots in something beyond my experience.

Before the fall, there was a long time. Just a long time, and many things. Messages, sent to various creatures of varying ability and capability, most ignored. There was a long, unrelenting love completely without bias. Not for one, but for all, and none of them seemed to understand the significance of this. One would think the knowledge of being so eternally and unconditionally loved would bring them to their knees in awe, but they didn’t even know.

I grew weary of it all. It pained me, however vaguely, to see them wander around in darkness, hurting themselves and others. When they asked for guidance they ignored the response, then blamed their pain on the silence. Deaf and blind, all of them, and I could do nothing no matter how hard I tried. Yes, it hurt, and it made me impatient with all their kind. What use, I thought, of trying so hard to reach the ears of those who have chosen not to hear, the eyes of ones who have chosen not to see?

Through millennia I wandered this way, feeling a love I was wary of, and an annoyance that became my second nature. I watched the rise and fall of great men, even as I tried to whisper messages in their closed-off ears, deeper into their closed-off minds. Even their souls, once nearer in substance to mine, had closed to me and to everything else around them. Mortals were no longer aware of the richness of the world, of the connection between them and all things. Even the best of them were only truly aware of themselves.

What to do? After so long of watching and hurting, I had long ago resigned myself to seeing their destruction.

Yet, I found the meaning of true love, and true pain, in one of them.

There was a child, no more than seven of their seasonal cycles, perhaps as young as five. The Divine sent me to him with the knowledge this one would be special, would be more. This one needed me more than any had needed me in the past. More, this one would listen.

Oh! How he listened! I told him all I had been instructed, and he watched me with those large, inquisitive eyes as he soaked it all inside and held it deep within his growing soul. As I spoke, as he looked at me, I felt something spark. Something within that for my entire existence had only ever been a vague thing. I know now it was a muted version of what the mortals feel. My kind feel in dim shades and in music just below the realm of understanding. This thing that grew in me for this mortal child was more. In his presence I felt in rainbows and comprehensible notes.

I was sent only that once, meant to return afterwards. I stayed, I watched him, I saw as he told the things I said to his parents, to his family, to the larger clan. I felt for him, all the while telling myself I didn’t, because I should not feel so much for just one. No, my love was meant for all, it should not be concentrated for only one.

I watched as the people around him became inexplicably afraid. Their bottled souls couldn’t grasp the nature of this child’s words, the meaning behind his message. Despite his youth, despite his innocence, they feared him and their fear lead them to pick up stones and throw them at my darling little one. For all my power, I didn’t have the power to stop them. As he cried in anguish of all kinds, all I could do was try to comfort him with telling of the place beyond, where he would feel no more pain, even as inside me blossomed something deep and sharp.

They killed him. His own family, people who had known him for all the short years of his life, they threw stones and beat him with them. I watched his eyes grow dim, and I felt pain as no other of my kind had ever felt pain before. When his soul passed to the realms beyond, I wanted to follow but couldn’t. I couldn’t face such an innocent soul after letting something so terrible happen, nor could I face the things roiling inside me.

The instability began then, the feeling of no control. Emotions raged and stormed inside me that had before been little more than trickles. It hurt. It hurt. Why? Why did it hurt so much, why did this one mortal cause all of this?

History doesn’t remember him. History doesn’t remember so far back, and his life was too short to be of any significance. Only I remember him, remember what he could have been if not for the free will choice of frightened people. Only I remember the love, the confusion, the hurt and the fear he caused in one being unused to such powerful feelings.

Only I remember him.