Oct 13, 2026
"Is anybody home?", he yelled over the metal walkway, that extended into the dark on both sides. There was a gradient of light going down the distant walls. The roof was made up of smoked glass panels set in metallic frame. It let in some light, but not enough for the bottom of this shaft to be illuminated.
At the start of another walkway, several meters below, a door opened. At first, it seemed to have opened and closed by itself. But if you looked carefully, you'd see the shadow of a person walk towards the middle. Because it's just a shadow, you can't really tell whether the entity is looking up or down, but, from the body language suggested by the way the shadow moved, you got the sense that it was making unwavering eye contact with you. The walkway, the dense darkness and the seemingly infinite drop did not scare the shadow. The shadow was not scared of home.
"Did you finally miss us?", the shadow asked. When it spoke, the voice filled the air as if all the darkness around him was speaking at once. The voice came not from the shadow on the walkway but from all of the dimness around him.
"'I didn't know there's more than one of you...", he responded.
"We are one in that we are made of the same thing. But we are many if you give us names and purposes."
"Oh... Okay. I... I will try to understand that. Which, actually, is why I have come to you today. I understand why I need you. I wanna try to understand you. Can we talk?"
"We are talking."
"I wanna have a sincere conversation with you. Not just make a deal. Not like this. There's a nice bench nearby. Can we go there?"
The shadow said nothing and did nothing for a few seconds, that felt like they'd never end. And you could've sworn the gradient of light on the wall got ever-so-slightly steeper: the light got brighter and the darkness got denser.
"Meet me outside", said the shadow, and walked back into that door.
He walked back out the door he came in from, climbed into the elevator that had mine-shaft style mechanical doors, and ascended to the ground level. He walked out, subconsciously bracing for bright sunlight (an illusion due to the light in the shaft), and was caught off-guard by how dark it was. Of course it was; he came here at night. But the illusion was stronger than that memory.
It was not completely dark, though. He could still make out everything around him under the moonlight. Some distant streets on the horizon had lights, but this area was illuminated purely by reflected sunshine.
He stood by himself, under the full moon and the few bright stars that managed to outshine the moonlit haze, over the unkempt grass covering the frontyard of the elevator shaft, surrounded by crickets and the occasional firefly... but... he did not feel alone. He knew his shadow was in his company. Not just the absence of light, but his real shadow.
Finding comfort in this company, he walked across the frontyard, onto a path of stones that led down to a pond. The grass around the pond was tall enough that you would never find it if you weren't looking for it unless you accidentally wandered onto the path. The path cleared onto what would be called a small beach if it weren't made out of larger pebbles instead of sand. And in the middle of that not-beach was a bench facing the pond. He went and sat down.
"Not a bad view", said the shadow.
The voice seemed to come from everywhere but the moon.
"I know...", he replied. After a few moments of silence, he followed up: "How have you been?"
"In some ways, I've been doing well for myself", the shadow answered. "I have grown up a lot. I have absorbed many different kinds of pain and suffering: heartbreak, guilt, shame, malice and apathy. I'm sure I'm forgetting many more. There's so many of us in the village. We all have our specialities."
"I didn't know there was a whole village."
"Oh yes, we are a people now. But, truth be told, times have been getting tough for all of us."
"How do you mean?"
"We've been able to grow in the dark. Heaven knows we've grown. Some of us are monsters by now. But at the same time, we're claustrophobic. We wanna see the moonlight. We wanna see the sunlight. We wish to see the real light of the real day, not this make-believe world you've trapped us in, giving us just enough light to exist but not enough to have sharp edges or any meaningful difference in how cold the dark is and how hot the light is. We don't know how many of us there are now, and we're afraid of our own powers."
"I think I know what you're talking about. I've felt some of you try to escape."
"Of course we have. You think it's fun to live in the dark, when you are darkness?"
"I understand. But... the longer I went through life afraid of you, the longer you festered, and the more afraid I kept getting of you. Now, I'm outright terrified. What do I do?"
"Look me in the eyes, and say 'I love you'. You have to mean it."
He felt like he could look anywhere and say it. It will feel like eye-contact if he means it; and like "just" water or stars or grass if he didn't.
"Do you love me?", he asked the shadow, not entirely sure why.
Before the shadow could answer, there was a rustle in the grass behind him. The instant he heard it, he suddenly felt alone. Visually, the darkness stayed the same. But it was as though the darkness lost all density and was merely the absence of scattered moonlight. His shadow had made the dark feel like a weighted blanket. Now that it was just the darkness, he felt naked.
He looked back nonetheless. He saw a pair of familiar eyes look at him look at them. They acknowledged being spotted and made no effort to run away. Instead, out stepped a girl he once knew but had forgetten since.
They stared at each other for a few seconds that felt like they'd never end. "Can I sit with you?", she asked him. He nodded towards the empty space next to him. She walked over, sat down right next to him, snuggling into his arms, stayed there, stiff, for a few uncomfortable moments, changed her mind, wiggled back out, scooched over to the opposite end of the bench, took off her slippers, pulled her legs up, crossed them, and just stared out over the pond. "The reflection looks pretty", she said, after a few moments.
"It does...", he answered, never shifting his gaze away from her face.
She turned to look at him. When they locked eyes, the weight begun returning to the darkness... and then he looked away. The dark become weightless again. He looked at the glimmering moonlight on the surface of the water, while she took her turn to look at him. Her gaze cut through the darkness like a shaft of sunlight cuts through a fog.
"What are you doing here?", he asked.
"I missed you", she replied.
He looked down and then at her. Before he could reply, she interrupted him: "You don't have to say you missed me too just because I missed you."
He felt a little too seen for comfort. But it was true. He had not missed her. He had gotten so distracted in the pleasures (and pains) of his life that he forgot about her. He took a deep breath, as if necessary to accept a difficult truth, and exhaled a soft "you're right."
At this, the darkness got a little heavier, and stayed that way. She noticed him notice this, and continued, "I don't think I should stay. You have unfinished business with your shadow. Just... don't forget that we actually love you, and not just that you love us."
He looked back at the glimmering moonlight and chewed on those words for some time. Had he really been using love as advance payments so as to get love in return? He turned to look at her again but saw no-one there. Before he could call out her name, his shadow spoke: "Yes, you have. And you have to love that shadow of yours too."
"This feels like an intervention," he retorted, "can I.... nevermind. I don't know how I would explain myself even if I tried."
"Try."
He looked up at the sky and breathed in again. A meteor streaked across the sky. A sign? Are signs real? Are they real in this world? It didn't matter, he convinced himself.
"Stop convincing yourself of things!", the shadow said to him, with, for the first time, a hint of frustration in his voice. "If you think it's a sign, it's a sign. Now, say what you've got to say."
"IT'S NOT THAT EASY, ALRIGHT?" he snapped at the shadow, a little bit louder than he would have liked. But there's no-one else here to listen. As he yelled out those words, however, the darkness seemed to hold him tighter, as if comforting a wound that hurts in a pleasant way when pressed. He remembered that only wounds that are closer to being healed than to being fresh feel that way.
"It's not that easy...", he continued, ".... when you grew up being yelled at or even get physically hurt whenever you expressed yourself. Now I don't know how other people do this, okay? Many people I know were abused as kids. They turned up fine. What is wrong with me? Why do I struggle with the risk of upsetting someone? I intellectually understand that that is a necessary risk that comes with honest expression and love, but... why am I so terrified of taking that risk?"
He wanted to cry, but tears refused. The moon was nearly at the horizon, almost about to set.
"Only you can answer that for yourself. Only you know why you did what you did. Only you know why you picked up the habits you picked up. But I am here to tell you that you can't hide the darkness and keep the light. The brighter the light, the deeper the shadows. If the shadows are hard to see, it's probably because the light is too dim."
"Yes, I know. I've heard that before. Knowing that makes no difference to my actions. Often, it has the opposite effect; the harder I try, the worse I perform. What do I do? How do I love you again? How do I bring the darkness back into my life?"
"You can't."
"I can't?"
"You can't. That's why you did worse when you tried harder. Your shadows are negative spaces. You can't manipulate them. The laws of physics do not apply to us for we are immaterial. Real, important, but, immaterial." As the moon inched closer and closer to the horizon, dawn gently reached out from behind and spread it's arms across the sky. The stars washed out even more, but the brightest ones persevered.
He found himself rooting for the stars that persevered. But the shadow continued before he could entertain that thought: "The stars will always be there. They're not gone just because you can't see them. You have to let the sun rise. However fondly you love the stars, you have to let the sun rise. The brightest days have the deepest shadows. And there's always stars in the sky."
He hadn't even realized this, but now that he paid attention to it, it felt obvious: the shadow's voice no longer came from all of the darkness around him. Dawn was starting to cast soft shadows around everything. And the voice seemed to come only from specific regions around him, wherever there were shadows. The shadows were still fuzzy, as they were cast not by sharp direct sunlight, but by the scattered blue light finding it's way to the ground. But, at a pace imperceptibly gentle, yet, unstoppable, the light grew brighter and the shadows grew deeper. Their boundaries acquired more and more definition.
He looked across the pond at a bush on the opposite bank. There was nothing noteworthy about this bush, but it didn't matter. He felt... not just knew, but truly felt... deep in his bones, for the first time in his life... that everything he looks at will always have a shadow. So he looked, took a deep breath, and whispered, "I love you."