Searching for the Sun
On discovering godhood, the sun, and the mortal world. Or: Kajo's story, long, long ago.
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Despite all the stories nothing could have prepared Kajo for how lush the mortal world was.
Even the most barren places on the planet were not desolate, not truly, not in the way the Below was. Life forms big and small seemed to burst out of the most unlikeliest of places, different living beings thriving in the dark, others in light. Moss and lichen patterned the forest floor of the woods where they’d taken solace; even the soil itself seemed rich and teeming with life.
Even wind was changed from what they had known. All trees, Kajo had discovered, sounded different in the wind, others rustling, some whispering, yet others sounded like singing when the breeze was gentle enough.
The sky had come as a shock, an enormous expanse that changed with the hours and seemed to go on forever. They still weren’t completely convinced they wouldn’t get sucked into it all of a sudden. Clouds raced across the heavens, sometimes slowly, sometimes dizzyingly fast, their colours never remaining the same as the sun rose and set.
And the sun. Beyond’s name, the sun. It had burned their eyes the first time, so much brighter than anything they’d ever known. The light terrified them; even at night the light of the moon was so terribly bright that they instinctively wanted to hide from it. That the moon waxed and waned during its cycle puzzled them, first diminishing into darkness only to emerge anew once more. Death and rebirth, over and over. It felt fitting somehow.
They learned to like the clear new moon nights the best. The sky looked less like an empty void with stars patterning it from horizon to horizon, and they found they could watch it forever.
The armour they had buried deep underground piece by piece, never wanting to see it again. It would not even fit anymore on their changed body, assembled for someone entirely different what felt like eons ago. It took very little encouragement for the grasses to take over the small mound they had created – a soft nudge of a thought and plantlife happily took over the turned soil as if it were a personal offering, covering it so thoroughly that it looked undisturbed once Kajo was done.
It pleased them, this new magic. It felt no different from before, yet it flowed effortlessly seemingly without boundaries, or at least they hadn’t yet discovered them. Cupping wilted meadowsweet between their palms only for the blossoms to regrow at their touch was an exhilarating experience. Sometimes they woke up to a ring of harebells that had grown around them during their slumber out of nowhere. It ran wild, uncontrolled and unexpected.
That, too, terrified them.
Terrified, yes, but not always enough stop them from experimenting. They wanted to know. They had to know.
The burning need to get out that had always been there had been replaced with something new. It haunted them, the knowledge that this world was impossibly vast, much too vast for any single being to learn it inside and out, but Kajo wanted more. There were so many questions that begged for an answer, and they multiplied by the day.
If ascension had been a trial by fire, the fire had burned out long ago and left behind new, fertile soil beneath the ashes. All they needed to do was bury their fingers in the earth and find the shoots already craning towards the sun.