Book Two: The Temptation Game
Chapter Seven: Mother
DIAMOND
For eighteen years, the world was darkness, but I had no sight to witness it. The world was small, but no vastness shrank its perspective. The world was warm, and no cold could pierce my comfort. The world was her, and I knew her to me my mother. She was the thumping heart that gave me life, the intimate warmth that embraced me, the encasing walls that protected me. She was the cord that fed me, the womb that molded me, the voice that spoke to me. The voice was a whisper in my mind, a tingling along my spine, a soothing caress through the growing chaos of thought. I grew and became, filled the space with my mind and body, existed as one with her until something suddenly changed. A piece of me that had not been there in my long incubation, another half of me that gave me independence from the mind that had made me. For the first time in my eighteen years of life, I heard words.
You are my daughter,
Mother whispered,
my first of another, and you will be my joy in this world.
The voice spoke of joy, and I felt it swell boundlessly. The voice spoke of trust, and its resolve strengthened me. The voice spoke of love, and I told the voice I already knew it.
You are love,
I said to the voice, knowing it to be true in the purest sense. Love was the comforting warmth that surrounded me, love was the heartbeat that assured me I wasn't alone, love was the life that I grew into, that I would never depart from. Love was this eternal bond of mother and daughter.
For now, I am your love,
the voice chuckled,
but you will find that your love cannot be held by just me. You are different from the others I have made.
There are more than just you and I?
I asked, awed by the revelation.
Where are they?
There is a world beyond the one you grow from,
Mother said.
Too vast to explore in a thousand lifetimes, and too deep to even scratch the surface of. Upon the world, live billions.
Billions was not a thing I knew, so Mother taught me numbers. The numbers themselves meant nothing, so Mother gave them perspective. My world of primal emotion expanded to one of material and concept. Space and stars, earth and sky, rocks and plants, beasts and people; Mother planted perspective into my mind, and from it, sprouted the stalks of wonder. My curiosity was a ravenous thing, and each hungry question that was sated only spurred an appetite for more. Mother was an enthusiastic enabler, and fed my dependency with her immense breadth of histories and stories, facts and theories. I learned the processes of logic, the histories of man, the mechanisms of the stars and the cycles of the earth. The painting of knowledge changed from abstract, to impressionist, to realism, but it was only a portrait of understanding; I needed to sculpt it with my own hands.
When can I join the world?
I asked Mother.
When you are ready, child,
Mother replied sweetly, her smile evident in the tone of her voice.
I'm ready now!
I insisted eagerly.
I want to see the cities and the mountains! I want to talk to people and love them all!
Patience is a concept you've never seemed to grasp.
When will I be ready?
I asked, testing the strength of my growing body, pressing restlessly against the confines of Mother's womb.
Very soon,
Mother said, calming me with her hushing whisper, easing my restlessness with the comfort of her warmth,
there is someone very special I need to tell you about first.
The other?
I asked.
The one you said helped make me?
Yes,
Mother said,
let me tell you of her, while we still have time.
Mother spoke to me of the one called Father. She told me Father was full of love, and her love was a perfect thing. Mother told me that Father would love me as much as Mother did, because every part of me that came from Mother, also came from Father. I asked her what she meant by that, and she told me Father would explain it. It frustrated me that there were answers Mother would not give me, but it made my eagerness to meet Father grow. Father was a different perspective from which to teach, a different heart from which to love. I asked everything I could think of about Father, and Mother answered with equal enthusiasm, the tone of her voice telling me more about Father than her words ever could.
Then, her tone changed. The steady calming cadence of Mother's heart began to beat faster, louder; galloping instead of trotting, thundering instead of thumping as though accelerating to some horrible destination. I felt fear for the first time. It was an emotion as instinctual as love, and just as powerful. It compelled me to seek the warm places of comfort, but there was something wrong with those places now. I asked Mother what was happening, and she told me that Father was in great pain. I didn't understand pain; it was as foreign to me as fear had been until a moment ago. Father taught me her first lesson.
Mother's pain began to bleed through the cracks of her love, cutting through her voice like an off-key cello in a symphony, a dissonance marring the melody. Mother was supposed to be perfect and eternal; Mother wasn't supposed to feel pain. I screamed to her, begging her to make it stop, desperate to return the world to what it was, to what it was supposed to be. She replied with fear in her voice, and it sung in discordance with her pain. It was a different kind of fear than the one that gripped me; more understanding, more experienced. It was horror. I felt it all around me as Mother's voice broke and shrieked, the soothing tenor shattered. I learned of death, and I learned of hate.
I hate Father!
I cried.
I hate her!
NO!
Mother screamed back; the agony wretched in her throat.
You will need each other when I am gone!
Gone?!
