Harmonia Mundi (part 1)

In the beginning there was no such state as existence.  All there was, embodied a pure, complete vacuum, an absolute beauty of nothing. Matter, energy, space, light and time, hadn't been born yet, they hadnt even been conceived. Everything was embraced by a state of non-existence, wrapped up in a membrane of immense darkness, travelling through infinity. An inflated balloon of  an infinitely small, infinitely hot, infinitely dense singularity containing all the matter in the universe, which suddenly began expanding to inconceivable proportions. Tiny particles were let loose, scattered around  in  a nameless creation, dropped in an everlasting quest to find their other halves in a newly created system. Being the first to acquire a name, Protons, the pioneers of generation, joined forces with neutrons and embarked on a dance resembling an erotic tango, swirling along the rhythm of a music that still didn't exist. Their heavenly union produced helium and hydrogen nuclei, the first babies of the universe. Tiny yet powerful, they interacted with each other through mysterious and luminous forces, complex combinations which released and absorbed energy, resulting in the generation of the first atom, a complete and independent creature, a dazzling existence in the still lightless uranian creation. The legend says that the beautiful and unique atom fell in love with gravity, whose ethereal beauty was incorporated in every single particle, every tiny gear of the universal mechanism. Their celestial wedding was a celebration to remember, a miracle that changed the world, as from their union the first heavenly bodies were born. The giant gas clouds that grew up to become galaxies and the smaller clouds which gradually turned into bright stars illuminating the new world like shiny diamonds. 

Somewhere, billion light years ahead  of the time those celestial unions took  place, our hero was born.  A combination of icy lumps of dust, water and gas, a seemingly dirty snowball, but in reality a royalty in the kingdom of heavens and celestial bodies. Silverhair was the  Marquis of the Oort cloud situated at the outer edge of the solar system.  Among the rest of the comets occupying the immensity of that spherical cloud, he was known to be the most restless of all, characterised by an insatiable hunger to discover what else existed beyond the boundaries of his kingdom and the comfort of his palace. And so one moment in the continuum of time and space he set off  on an adventure he didn't know where it would lead him.

He travelled among the dominions of the planets, through Mercury's craters and Venus lava filled volcanoes, Mars wrinkled surface and Earth's illusion of blue skies, Jupiter's stormy weather and  Saturn's tiny icebergs. He played around injured Uranus and got carried away by Neptune's strong winds. But that was not enough. Still young and full of energy he wished to see more and more and travel even deeper into the unknown of the cosmos. With his silver tail he shed light over planets colder than the ice he carried within him, darker than his luminous hair, drier than the starry dust he sprinkled in the cosmic skies.

His life had become a constant flying in the immensity of the universe, a freedom that made him feel like a feather on an angels wings, a little molecule on a grain of interstellar stardust.

He was captured by misty nebulas that formed warm and comfortable cradles, with their airy hands, for him to sleep, while the notes of the spheres played the lullabies of the clouds, like lunar rattles. And Silverhair slept under the sounds of the empyreal refrain, wrapped up in the tenderness of the divine symphony, only for as long though, as it was necessary for his starry body to regain its brightness and sprinkle his silver dust all over the galactic world, leaving the nebulas just with the vision of his tail disappearing among the meteors and the constellations.

Unstoppable, he kept moving further and further. Someone could say, he was determined to penetrate the universe, to find its end and go beyond it. You see, Sileverhair might have travelled  to the most distant and strange places but was still not old and wise enough to perceive the absence of boundaries in the world he had chosen to explore. When he thought he was reaching the wall of that inconceivably beautiful and fascinating place, too far away and a long time after he had left his cloud, believing he had seen all that there was to be seen, he came across something that never before in his life had he the chance of observing from such a close distant. He had heard other comets, older than the planets themselves, talking about the existence of such creations. You met them – if you were lucky – once in your life and then their images stayed with you, imprinted    on your existence like a tattoo. Silverhair never believed those stories. He thought it was all a legend the silly workings of old minds. Now, though, he was flying past her, he couldnt help but halt and admire her. Just opposite him stood the Principesa Quasar, allegedly the brightest object in the skies, the magic of the heavens, an incredibly luminous object. Lying at the furthest reaches of the universe, her light was powered by the black hole in her centre.  Dressed in a transparent, airy, purple bubble, pulsing like a heart floating in the depths of space and time, she absorbed inconceivable amounts of matter that produced the brilliant glow sitting inside the nebula. In a state of nirvana she was peering the universe, penetrating its darkness and travelling beyond its existence. She couldn't see or feel Silverhair's presence. Blind as she was, the only perception of her  surroundings was coming through her minds eyes and her interaction with the luminous signals emitted from other stars. Inside the purple bubble, she had constructed a world of her own and willingly trapped in it, she lived a content existence which could not be broken or entered unless permission was given by her.

Silverhair couldn't really understand why she couldn't see him. He swirled around her again and again bur whatever he tried brought no reaction from the Principesa. She had transcended in a universe he didnt know and most importantly he didn't possess the key to open the locked door between him and it.

Exhausted by all his fruitless efforts, but still not willing to give up and still very intrigued by this mysterious creature, he decided to forget all his fears and get as close as possible to the purple light.

“Ill find out what's the matter with you! I will crack your code,” he said to himself many times.  First he flew high above her and then diving with force towards the star, he encircled her in a silver light, making the heavens shine like a sea of diamonds. Such was the impact that when his silver stardust touched the purple nebula, little holes were created on her surface penetrating it and landing on Principesa's luminous purity. The rays of light which escaped from these holes turned the star into a night sun, an asterisk on a crystallised magma ocean. Suddenly for the first time in her endless life, she saw the real world and Silverhair , who flying  around her in excited and joyous circles dazzled her with his grace, his aristocratic way and his exotic beauty. Standing motionless, she wondered how she could have missed to notice all the beauty oozing from every single molecule of his gorgeous existence and all she wished for was the ability to become part of his world, to integrate into his being.

“I am Silverhair, the Marquis  of the Cloud Oort,” he introduced himself and bowed courteously in front of her.

“The Cloud Oort? And where is that? I have never heard of such a place before!”

“That is my home; a spherical cloud  of great mass that consists of icy objects, crystal lakes and starry mountains.  Its a beautiful place just outside the garden of the sun.”

“ Oh! And what brings you here my lord, thousands of light years away from your beautiful home?”

“I decided to take up travelling. Ive seen so many places, ventured where no one has ever gone before.  I have not rested for a long time and had no intention of doing so, until I saw you. You see I've heard a lot of stories about you but always believed them to be fables.”

“Stories about me? But I have never seen the real world, it is the first time that I have allowed someone to touch me like you did.”

“You may have not seen them but they have visited you before, a lot of us, some of them lost their minds and never came back, some others lived to tell the story of your beauty and uniqueness among the creatures of the cosmos. Now that I stand before you, I can say that no words can describe your amazing callous.”

“I am honoured my lord,” she said and it was now her turn to bow in front him. “ I am the Principessa and this is my home. Please come in and rest.”

Silverhair hesitated, what if she was trying to trick him into something, he wondered but as he approached the purple nebula he felt such warmth and kindness that every doubt he had about her intentions immediately disappeared.

From that moment and on Silverhair and Principessa formed a supernatural couple, a combination of forces unknown even to them, a power not yet explored, an unravelled strength that remained hidden within the core of their existence.  They were a union of innumerable chemical reactions,  atoms making love to each other, being born and dying at the same time, a complex of mortalities and cells recreating with the speed of light only to be swallowed nanoseconds later by the fire of the immensity.

Principessa, having lived at the same spot for an  infinity, felt compelled to show Silverhair every thing she possibly could, before he left. She wasn't a fool; she was very well aware, their powerful coupling would live a stellar death at some point, sooner or later. Silverhair was the universe itself, a graceful wholeness that could never be detained in a small, no matter how stunning, purple globule.

Together they flew to the borders of  the Earth and protected under the imperial nebula, they watched the enchanting sight of the meteorites, which unable to resist earth's attraction, lead themselves to suicide just to be close to it. They played hide and seek behind the curtains of the invisible North and South edges of the world. They swam along the glistening reflections of earthly swarms of fish and danced in union among the coloured displays of the inconceivably beautiful sheet of the Aurora Borealis. They spent their time in the endless night of the universal darkness, sleeping together, making love and living the absolute tenderness, the absolute unification of light and dark, of hot and cold. Until one day the dream ended, or at least time came that they had to wake up and drag themselves out of it, the one willingly and consciously and the other one with no choice but to accept the firsts wishes.

“I have to go,” Silverhair claimed.

“I know,” she said “but I don't want you to.”

“I need to go back and fulfil my destiny, the sun is calling me. I must go, even if it means that Im going to lose you. You understand, don't you?”

“I do and I would never be able to live at the thought of you staying here on my account.”

“I have remained at this wonderful place of yours for too long and Im scared I may not be able to find my way back. I need to ask you one last favour.”

“Please do,” she said. “You know I would do anything for you.”

“Could you please take me up to the gates leading to the gardens of the sun? From there I will be fine on my own.”

“You know I would have done that even if you hadn't asked me,” she said and she could feel all that matter in her guts trembling and rebelling against what she had just uttered  but she knew very well , there was no way back.

So at an once more undefinable moment in time, while the sun was rising  for one part of a world and was setting for another one, when stars where dying somewhere at the same instant that others were being born somewhere else, they set off together for the gardens of the sun.

Principessa flew swiftly among the stars, the meteorites, the nebulas and constellations, passing by planets, literally with the speed of light, allowing Silverhair only a glimpse of those he had already visited and others that only she knew of their existence.

Like an infant in a cradle, Silverhair crawled inside the purple halo,  trying to protect himself from the force by which the quasar was travelling. He held tight on the cloudy edges of that protective shield not knowing or seeing where to they were heading. Every now and then he pushed her to the side in fear of crashing onto something with the speed she was flying among the celestial bodies.

“Relax, my hero,” she would calm him down,”and trust me.”

“Oh, this is great,” he would say later on when he'd realised, he could indeed trust her. “ A blind walk among the brightest of stars. Thank you, thank you,” he kept repeating. “What an amazing gift this experience has been.”

Shed turn into different shades of purple to show him, he made her happy, but deep inside the pain was so unbearable that made it hard for her to go on. She concentrated all the energy in that hidden matter and pushed herself a little bit further to complete the final chapter of their unwritten story.

“Ok, last step. Hold on tight,” she said and lifted him high above all the stars, from where he could see the gardens of the sun and the top of his cloud.

“You can now open your eyes, we are here.”

Silverhair, scared as usual, drew apart the curtains of the nebula hesitantly. He peered the surroundings first and only when he saw the Oort cloud, jumped out of the coloured  comfort into the darkness of the unknown.

“Oh, you made it, you brought me back!! I can see home now!! Thank you, thank you so much!!” he said and he had already turned his back to her, drawn  towards the cloud as if captured by a magnetic beam, whose force he couldn't resist.

The quasar stood there motionless, already feeling alone once more  and for the first time in her long and solitary life she decided she didn't wish for that any more. She just refused to let go of him that easily.

“Silverhair, please, don't leave me here, take me with you.”

“I cant, you cant,” he said,” I have a mission to fulfil, to pay my duty towards my country and orbit around the sun. Even if I could take you with me, you don't have the skills to follow me, you  don't know how to orbit around the sun.”

“Yes, but I can always learn. But there's no point talking about it, you are absolutely right once more. Dont listen to me, I am only a silly quasar that had never seen the real world before and is now dazzled by it. Go my hero, go, fly away to the sun,” she finally said to Silverhair who had already started crossing the gates of the solar gardens.

On her way back to the universe she tried hard to be strong. The purple bubble was flooded with the images of the few things, she and Silverhair did together, all the feelings that made her glow even brighter than what she originally did. Many have said that in the twilight zone of the skies they had seen a glow at some point in time that seemed like an explosion lighting up the world , a display of innumerable fireworks.  The satellites took a billion pictures of the magnificent uranian phenomenon, the telescopes from earth turned round to watch the peculiar sight in the sky, the news travelled on the notes of the divine symphony,  all the planets and the constellations moved a little bit from their not so fixed places and surrounded her forming a wedding ring, a group of curious spectators who gathered to watch a sold out performance taking place for the first and  last time. 

Principessa transformed herself into a whirlpool, absorbing matter and energy in a fruitful attempt to diminish the distance between him and her, to dismiss the universal rules which ordered astral bodies to move further away from each other and bring him closer. However, overwhelmed by all the images flooding her creation and every tiny bit of the matter gathered in the black hole sleeping behind the purple garment, suddenly and forcefully, she released all the energy she carried within her during an infinite life. A rain of solid matter, of celestial diamonds, spread over the skies that ruled the planets and she transformed herself into  a stellar volcano, whose eruption filled the universe with bright, silver lava; a shiny river that was stonified underneath her, forming a luminous throne for the princess to sit on. The marvellous sight of the quasar glowing now like a second sun, miles away from the  solar gardens, became another legend that travelled through the universe. But she, once again had turned blind and deaf to the world, her tears frozen outside her protective blanket, refused permission to anyone who attempted to enter the quasars heart. The chemical reactions, the secret combinations and the unseen powers took over once more to deconstruct Silverhair's images, breaking  them and their once celestial bond into tiny particles of cosmic dust.

Gradually,  a wall of transparent stones was built around her and willingly imprisoned in it, she slept and slept a sleep that seemed eternal. Occasionally she interacted with other stars, like she used to do before Silverhair's appearance and she learned how he had become big and famous among the other comets and how the planets waited for their turn to hail him as he orbited around the sun with his glowing silver tail.

The sand glass of time was turned upside down countless times, the grains flowed through it again and again and Principessa continued her everlasting sleep sinking deeper and deeper into the dark matter of the cosmos, until her light was no longer visible by the constellations that once surrounded her, until it gradually died  out. She floated on the endless and unexplored uranian ocean, with no sparkle of life in her; a purple coffin drifting away into the cradle of the infinite night. The stars, mourning her loss, shut down their lights, the moon refused to glow in the skies and the whole universe was painted black. The notes of the divine symphony composed a tune praising her unique beauty and lamenting on her death.  The ethereal composition played among the heavens bouncing from one celestial body to another, from the planets to the galaxies, from the meteorites to the Aurora Borealis and from there to red dwarves and strange creatures hosted in the unseen corners of the heavenly arrangement. So far it travelled that it even reached the sun itself. Tangled on his photosphere it palpitated along with the sunspots, which rose and fell on  the constant birth and death of his surface.  Although the sun had never seen the beautiful quasar, he couldn't help but being moved by the sad song heard all over the creation and as a gesture of grievance he diminished his luminosity until he was, too, covered in darkness. It was only then that Silverhair realised, his silver tail was the only glowing particle in the universal mechanism.

“Sun, king of light, my endless companion what has happened to you? Where has your light and warmth disappeared?” he asked him.

“Glorious Silverhair, haven't you heard? Haven't you noticed?”

“Hear and notice what?”

“Havent you noticed that the stars and the moon don't shine anymore, haven't you heard the music of the spheres singing a praise on her memory and beauty.? Haven't you heard the heavens crying about the death of the brightest object in the skies? Principesa, is dead!”

At the sound of these words, Silverhair, who had orbited around the sun for an inconceivable amount of time, stopped to listen at the sound of the skies and then he heard it. A refined, thin and silky mourn vibrating in the heavenly silence. He thought he had forgotten but now the images swam around him, vessels of a resurfaced past. He saw her once again, lying in her purple bubble and shining brighter than ten suns put together! How beautiful she was and now she was no more!

“She's dead, my princess is dead,” he said over and over to himself.

“You have to find her, you have to wake her up and bring her back.  If she dies, we will all die!”

“But she is dead, where will I find her?”

“She's not, she cant be. She's lost, you need to show her the way back into the light, you are the only bright life in the sky now. The Eldest, they will help you,” were the suns last words before he was fully covered by the veil of darkness.

Wasting no time, Silverhair flew back to the Oort Cloud to appear in front of the assembly of the Eldest.

“Respected Majesties of the Oort,” he addressed them, “I stand here before you, to humbly request your permission to leave my orbiting around the sun and set off on a venture to find the purple Quasar, whose loss has shaken the harmony of our universe, placing even our own existence  in danger and uncertainty.”

“Silverhair, bright and mighty Marquis of the Oort Cloud, we share your concerns regarding the future of our world. For some time now, we have embarked on a quest to find a solution to the disharmony that has befallen upon our universe. The stars are dying little by little with the passing of each minute, the sun and the moon refuse to shine any more. We will eventually have to die as well and  when we are gone, light will be forever lost. But please do tell us, how do we know she is not dead, how do we know there is hope still, how do we know we are not fighting against a preordained fate, that's leading only to the end?

“We don't , wise stars of the cosmos. Once, a very long time ago, when I was young and restless, when my only concern was to see all, I crossed her way. I saw her beauty and felt her kindness. I got lost in her world but she brought me back. Such was her love for me that she chose to sacrifice her own happiness in order for me to fulfil my destiny. I wouldn't be here talking to you this very moment, if it weren't for her. I owe it to her, to try and find her as the least I can do to equate her generosity, whether she is still alive or forever gone,” said Silverhair and looked at the old comets, standing motionless, a complex of bright spirits. Their lights mingled with each other to create a mystic power that communicated  what was heard by Silverhair so far.

“Go our Lord,” they said to him when their lights had regained their uniqueness. “Our thoughts will guide you through your difficult mission and our hopes that you find her alive will light the paths you take. Save our world our brave knight,” they said and they bowed in front of him. Their celestial bodies shone then so bright that Silverhair thought for a moment, there was enough light to illuminate the whole world again. Soon after though, their flames reduced to nothing more than tiny lifeless sparkles.

And so he went once more on a voyage to the darkness in hope of finding the light.

He took the same way Principessa had followed to lead him back to the solar gardens, using his memories of their blind ride among the cosmos as a compass.