Sampahan Seo

What happened when a stone meets a god of death?

An amber supposed to be a bright stone of the sun. It supposed to be void of life, barren of thoughts, and became an ornament for the kings and queens of great honor. But not this one. This one amber was special, since this amber had its own thoughts and consciousness.

It didn’t remember how, or why, it had its own thoughts. The thoughts just appeared from nowhere, and it just accepted those thoughts without even asking. And then, the amber tried to control the thoughts. At first, it seemed impossible, since so many incomprehensible information was stored into one, tiny stone. But the amber had all its time for trying to control the thoughts. And so, once upon a time, a living amber existed on the earth’s surface.

The living amber didn’t understand a thing, why it was there, lying without even bothering to budge in the dark. But the darkness was somehow calming, and it could hear the thoughts speaking clearly that way. And it is safer here, because it was just my thoughts that are here, so the amber thought. And so it kept lying there, undisturbed, for many, many long years.

One fateful day, the amber felt as if something was not right. Something, was bothering her long solitude darkness and calm. It didn’t understand, but its thoughts were running wild and became incomprehensible again. And before long, the amber found itself separated from its long dark calmness. What separated it was a bright light of white, and it was tore out from the darkness that kept it by things that it didn’t understand.

It gave up, and let its thoughts ran wild, not even trying to control it. And a moment of enlightenment came into the amber. It could see. The light didn’t made the amber blind, instead, the light granted more things to the amber. It absorbed the beauty of the light, and it saw the beauty of the light. Colors of many shades and hues, its thoughts slowly returned to became the amber’s consciousness. And there were these huge creatures, with loud vibrations and rough touch, and different shades of light.

The amber soon found out that the huge creature was called humans. And the so called humans brought the amber out of darkness and do things that the amber couldn’t understand, but it understand one thing. The humans made it lighter. It felt as if something was lost, but it couldn’t define what it was.

And so, the amber was made into a necklace pendant. It was not decorated, but it had its own strange shine that dazzled the humans. Soon after the humans finished turning the amber into a beautiful pendant, the amber was put into a small box, and once again the amber slept in the dark, even though its thoughts were running. Confused, confined, and unable to comprehend anything, the amber lost control of its own thoughts again and not even tried to collect some of it to form pieces of understanding.

When the darkness finally subsided, on the other side of the light was a human with a beautiful shade of light. The human’s shade looked similar to the sun, and the amber once again felt safe. It thought that humans with such shade would never harm it. And so it stays in with the beautiful human for a long, long time.

As time passed by, the shade of sun which the beautiful human once possessed disappeared slowly. And finally, it was gone. What’s left was a shade of darkness, hollow, and void. The amber began to feel uncomfortable. For so long, it had bathe in light and was admired for its beauty and brilliance, for its unique shine and for its irresistible charm. It had indulged in the light, and it didn’t want to return to darkness, where nothing could shine on it.

So that one dark day, the darkness that had been lingering on the beautiful human finally consumed it. And there stood a dark figure, wielding scepter that he wield to the human. And the darkness finally disappeared, but the hands that was holding the amber were stiff. The dark figure looked over the human, and found the amber. For the first time, the amber had someone spoke to it besides the beautiful human.

“You are a stone, yet you’re alive. But you’ve been living for so long, yet you understand nothing. Come, I will make you understand…”

So the amber was taken with the dark figure to the realm of the dead. It was a strange realm, yet the amber didn’t felt strange at all. On the contrary, the amber felt familiar with the realm. The dark figure revealed itself to be a death god, long forgotten in the midst of folklores and myths, and eventually his existence were denied in the name of puring the world of dark powers. While the world itself couldn’t exist without darkness, since darkness was needed to maintain light, and light was needed to maintain darkness.

His ramblings continued, and the amber was just there listening silently, on the palm of his dark hand. The amber felt strange, as if something familiar was said to it before. A word from the beautiful human, but it couldn’t remember what it was called. While the amber tried to remember the word, the death god put his dark disguise back and took the amber with him to his job. And that’s how the amber began to live with the death god.

It was a long, long time that the amber accompanied the death god on his mission. And slowly, the amber began to remember the forgotten word uttered by its former master, long ago. It was love, a feeling so beautiful, so radiant, yet so painful. The amber now felt uncomfortable, it could no longer felt safe in the hands of the death god. The amber’s thoughts was in great turmoil, and before long, the amber shut itself from the death god.

The death god kept speaking to the amber, but ignorant to the fact that the amber had long shut its thoughts from his words. The amber was no longer the one it used to be. And it was because of one word the amber remembered, and the meaning of the word. The amber felt strange. Lots and lots of indescribable feelings were there in its thoughts, but it didn’t know how to put it into words. And so, the amber tried to return the death god words in silence, but to no avail.

And one day, when the death god started his ramblings, to his surprise and to the amber as well, the amber could respond the death god’s ramblings with telepathy. The death god was very happy, since now he had a partner to talk to, but the amber’s reaction was the opposite. The amber wished for itself to be cleansed off its thoughts. The death god stared at the amber for a while. The amber released its disintegrating thoughts, so the death god wouldn’t understand anything. And after saying goodbye, the death god threw the amber into the river of souls to cleanse it of thoughts and feelings.

The amber’s last word was a ‘thank you’, and so it returns to an ordinary amber. Void of feelings, has no thoughts, and soulless stone that reflected the realm of death’s dim light.