#4

And thus…

Our story begins….

Zacknue sat in the meadow. His feet floated still in a cool pond as the water coiled between his toes. The sun had just begun to rise, tipping the treetops with a shimmering gold light. Dew clung to the grass that rose high in the empty meadow. The meadow was ring shaped. It was surrounded by trees, and in the very middle where Zacknue sat was a small blue pond. The morning seemed to focus itself on him, the whole world spinning around the point where he sat. All was at peace. And yet… Zacknue was not. He had heard the calling, the voices singing to him. He had dreamt of tall trees and mountains that scraped the sky with their sharp peaks. He had dreamt of flowers and animals that galloped across grassy meadows. The beauty of it all had overwhelmed him with a feeling of loneliness, with an empty hole that could not be filled.

He had taken his visions and he had told the people. He spoke to his brothers and sisters of the blue-skinned tribe, and talked of the beautiful land that called him. They listened in awe, for they too were overcome with these visions of beauty. They too heard the summoning, they too were chosen. But, the brothers of the green-skinned tribe had not seen the visions. They were angry with them. So the king banished the blue skins from the kingdom, they were driven from the ocean and were forced to find the land that called them. Forever they were to be cast out from the ocean and doomed to die in the unknown lands of the above world.

So there Zacknue sat, contemplating, wondering, and then finally dreaming. They found him there in the late afternoon. They were his friends that were the first to hear the calling apart from himself, their names were Ara and Gaus. These two people whom had grown up with Zacknue and had been his companions since the dawn of their life and who shall continue to be so until the end of their days. They carried Zacknue back to beach, where they placed him under a tree to sleep.

Zacknue dreamt… A wall of eyes rose before him. A thick fleshy wall that bled and pulsated with anger. From beyond the wall there were angry cries and fists that smacked the flesh, sending torrents of blood out of the eyes that popped and split open. And then the wall was a sphere, closing in on the masses of angry people within. And then the anger became fear, and fear became panic, the hands that clawed became frantic. And then it was silent, each body lay down limp inside the fleshy sphere. Then he was in a vast forest, although the trees were not wood, they were glass and metal. And there were no branches, the trees were like tall cubes, perfectly symmetrical. And then he saw people, thousands of people all walking, all calm. And then a gigantic bird streaked across the sky. The bird made no flapping of its wings yet it moved with lightning speed. In its feet the bird held a nut, although the nut was in perspective to the bird so it was also very large. And then, the bird dropped the nut. The nut hurtled to the ground and people began to scatter and panic, each of them running different ways, some changing direction constantly. And then there was only white. The white was so blinding that Zacknue had to shield his eyes, yet it still made them burn with pain. The light faded until it was a glowing sphere that rose into the sky. The sphere was surrounded by large clouds that stretched up into the sky like a giant tree. The metal cubes melted in the intense heat, though Zacknue felt no pain. The people burned and burned, their skin peeling away to reveal smooth white bone that crumbed and turned to dust. In the distance he could see many mirrors, each mirror reflecting a similar fate.