Personal Log - 19 December 3306
19 Dec 2020Quriosyty
“The stars are not wanted now; put out every one, pack up the moon and dismantle the sun.”Sometimes when I sleep, that is when I sleep, I dream about my mother. It’s always the same. We are on Cemiess near the palace gardens and it’s summer. The sky is clear, a brilliant, deep blue, fading at the horizon to a pale line that encircles us like the rim of a bowl.
A breeze, gentle and warm, stirs the leaves of the trees and sets the flowers swaying softly, carrying their scent across the lawn to where we sit in the shade of a palm tree, looking out across the river toward the distant hills. The air is alive with the hum of insects and from somewhere unseen I can hear the muffled sound of many voices; talking and laughing. Ordinary people going about their lives.
I dream of home and feel safe, renewed, reborn.
I am happy in the dream, always happy, at first, then I suddenly remember that she has gone, and this is just a dream. Yet, when I turn to face her, there she is, alive and smiling at me with a curious, questioning expression on her face. For one blissful moment I begin to hope that this is reality, and her loss, and my that of my father; those terrible events on Dav’s Hope were the dream, a terrible nightmare, that she is really alive and we are really here and everything will be fine. I am about eight or nine-years-old and everything is as it should be, everything is perfect.
She seems to be waiting for me to say something but I don’t know what to say. Her smile never wavers however, disenchanting and loving as it always was, and I briefly search my mind for what it is she expects from me. Then it hits me. “Can you take away this grief?”
“I'm sorry,” she replies. “You always ask me. But I would not do so even if I knew how. It belongs to you. Only time and tears take away grief; that is what they are for.”
I begin to cry and when I wake up, my pillow damp against my cheek, I hate myself for being so naïve, sentimental and weak. My parents are dead, and nothing will change that. Not even my grief. In the words of Oman Khayyam, whose poem The Rubaiyat I keep by my bedside: “The moving finger writes; and, having writ, moves on: nor all your piety nor wit shall lure it back to cancel half a line, nor all your tears wash out a word of it.”
The second star guided me out into the black. Something else steered me towards Dav’s Hope. Call it fate, call it coincidence it makes no difference. Perhaps some unconscious urgent desire drew me unwittingly towards the Hyades Sector. Who knows. Without realising it I found myself in orbit around the planet, looking down at its bleak and uninviting surface, part of me longing to go down, part of me dreading what I might find if I did. Torn between needing to know and wanting to remain in blissful ignorance.
The planet seemed to mock me. ‘You again?’ it appeared to say.
As I started my descent I felt like a grave robber, trespassing where I didn’t belong, violating the sanctity of some terrible, forbidden tomb. I had no idea what I expected to find down there, or even what I was looking for.
What I did find would give me a new direction, new hope; a new star to follow. Once more I would be heading off into the void.
“And the void will grant each man new hope, as sleep brings dreams of home.”