Garden of Embers: Beneath Devouring Eyes #2

Epilogue

"May the Eyes pass over you."

*~*~*~*

We do not recall our earliest existence.

For uncounted cycles, we danced in ignorance. Faces warmed by the Sun, backs cooled by the Void, we spiraled together in darkness and light, oblivious. Or so we imagine, for no memory touches us of that time.

Later, awareness began to come in flashes, and this we do recall. When we aligned just right, our horizons welcoming each other just so, we awoke. For brief moments, we sensed. We marveled at ourselves, stretched across and between four spinning blue-green orbs, wondering what we were and why we were. We slept. Awoke. Slept again. Blinked. Gazed at one another and cast questions into the darkness between us.

These are the moments we recall. There are likely many more we have forgotten. We suspect we had predecessors, those who died without giving us their memories to hold. Our star is prone to destructive solar flares, though it has calmed compared to its early years and we have found ways to survive. But who knows what rich memories burned long ago? Perhaps we were something other than ourselves, once. Perhaps we were not ourselves, or even a "we."

Gradually, however, we came to know ourselves. We came to know the lives we cradled among us. So many lives, unnumbered varieties that came into being, grew, transformed, and faded. Massive spore towers that scraped the clouds. Miniscule crystalline cell weavers. Cyan root systems that fed whole continents. Clivias and their sea cousins, the lolligines. So many lives.

They were of us. They were us. Over time, we came to understand that, by some mystery and miracle, our minds had emerged from this vast, ever-changing net of existence that spanned our four worlds. We arose from the great common life we all shared, and pledged together to nurture and guide that life for the good of all.

For eons, we lived alone. There was only us. Only here.

No, that is not true. We knew there were other places. Other worlds orbiting other suns. Other lives, utterly unlike our own. For a time, we even considered exploring the Void. But in the end, we stayed here. What need was there for exploration beyond us when we were not yet done exploring within ourselves? We were enough. All that we needed, and all that we wanted, remained contained within ourselves.

Then, you came.

At first, we did not know what to make of you. You drifted into the Void between our four worlds like some enormous clivia. First, one of you arrived. Later, another followed. It took time to understand that these vessels were not you, but merely shells to carry you to us.

When you emerged from your great machines, we found that your minds were different from our own and those of the lives among us. Vastly different. We could not feel your thoughts, and so assumed you lacked minds. We could not speak to you, and so thought you lacked language.

Yet in time, we noticed that you--some of you, at least--seemed to hear and understand others of your kind. We considered the possibility of your sentience and soon confirmed it, although we could not feel it move within us. We only marked its presence by its passage across our backs.

And by the scars it left there.

By the time we understood what you were doing to us, it was too late. You feared our attempts to connect. To communicate. You feared our efforts to understand and learn to provide for you. We saw this but did not understand it at first. Your minds were too different from our own. You languished in isolation, each dwelling in your own little world. Each valuing your own individual, lonely existence... and protecting it fiercely.