I was born to the far shores of Cato, a populous but little known land, on one of the larger isles that encircle the main land. My parents were caring but inattentive - they supplied me with food and shelter, and generally aimed to do right - for that I remember them fondly. But by nature I was uninspired - my environment failed to change that, and my dependence dissuaded me from venturing far. Thus my childhood was passed in equanimous ignorance, whiled away sequestered in small nooks and crevices between the streets of a city that passed me by day by day.
It goes without saying that they were a poor place for a child. As the part of me that yearned never found space enough to unfurl, I found myself becoming unhappy. Not knowing the cause, I attributed my misery to the various discordant sights and sounds I was confronted with in the city. Each foreign object was jarring to a mind accustomed to only narrow places, and sent me further into the recesses. Time passed, and that was all.
It wasn’t until my 17th year, when I first caught a glimpse of the brilliant light beyond, there in the dull gray haze one early morning. As I walked down the sidewalk to an empty street on my way through a peaceful stretch of the city, it had pierced me through to my unhappy heart - I quailed, and stepped through to a world identical in all aspects, only rotated through an undetectable degree. I had felt nothing. Like the first breath of life, or the final passing of a memory, I have nothing to remember it by, I know it only by the certainty of its existence. Partially-abscised trees had lined the path, whose slender branches made for poor decoration. It had started me on a different path. I paused before the rooted creatures, and wondered.
For some reason, I began to doubt that there wasn’t more to each desultory moment, hidden somewhere I couldn’t reach. Similar thoughts had passed through my mind before, but they had never amounted to anything - something in in that moment must have suited my pattern of thinking receive it - my mind latched on. I wondered if there could be possibility in sterility, impossibility in reality, if there wasn’t more to each peeling branch and twisted leaf than I had ever deigned to acknowledge. My mind reeled, searching for phantom traces in the ether, and found none, slid off the unflinching prosaic facade cleanly. But the light had planted a kernel where it pierced me, and it would gradually grow in time.
Slowly, the neglected parts of me began to unfurl. Even in a narrow place there was room to stretch and maneuver. They would not come out but haltingly, and though I waited impatiently for them to emerge, many would not come out but part way. There were few compared what might have been, and many were shriveled and stunted but I loved them all the same. And it occupied me entirely to engage but one anyway - it would be many years till I learned to wield multiple. For a time I nurtured my newfound selves, reconciling myself to their presence and practicing their shapes.
Looking back it is hard to view the period in context. Constantly I was hindered in my progress by the deficiencies of my past- so I said to myself, though it might just as well have been due reasons as myriad as my own weakness or the absence of some external factor. Undeniably, much could have been done to greater effect in those years. There are many faults with which I would hold my younger self to account. But, it was also a time distinguished as the first in a long line of murky memories to be colored by the light. And so I cannot help but view it with some degree of pride and fondness.
But I was delayed in my pursuit of the light. Much of the world continued to bewilder me. I sought to lay claim to some small parts of it, but could not even recognize which part I sought. All the gifts which are summarily available to the lowest of citizens appeared as distant as the moon to me, hovering over the mainland behind murky clouds. I stumbled blindly through its streets passing by much which would have aided me in my pursuit, so that when the time came that I was to be sent away, it brought to a close a chapter of my life in which too much was still incomplete.
As I grappled with the world, my selves, and a foreign environment, the effect of the light lost much of its power. I recalled, every now and then, just to remind myself, but it had grown faint and flimsy, such that sometimes I could not be sure if I was looking at the real thing, or a figment of my imagination. But of course, it could only be real. I was soon reminded of the fact.
The second time, I met with the light on board the Ganymede, looking out to where the green glass sea met the shimmering dusk.
…TBC