Chapter 0
Night.I am on the other side of the sky. It is dark. The stars shine brightly and I feel hot air, a smoke, slipping past my feet. I looked up. I am looking at myself as if in a broken mirror. I see my eyes, but different. My body, but smaller, more insignificant. The shadow beneath its feet is the same as mine, size and depth, color, pitch black, darker than the night. I blinked. The moment I opened my eyes, I was already looking at my real body. A being at least five times taller, breathing slowly, guttural sounds coming from its mouth. My sounds. To see yourself through foreign eyes was something I never thought I would experience. I tried to reproduce them. The sounds. And I heard an unfamiliar voice, a voice and words I did not know. I breathed with a new body, but I was still me.
Day.I am on the lower side of the sky. It is hot. The Sun melts me before I even understand what is happening. And I flow across the sky as drops of sweat flow down the faces of mortals beneath me. I fell. I separated from the Sun, but I was still connected to it. I shivered. I tried to sing a song, the one I loved most. But I could not. My voice sounded the same, it was sweet while speaking simple words, but I could not put melody into them. My body was icy, not blazing with the Thousands of Flames of Time, but cold, ordinary. What was I?? Water streamed from my eyes, and I felt a new sensation, unknown to me until now.
I walked in nothingness. A desert. Empty dark-gray sands floated in the air like ash over a battlefield. I tried to run with this new body. I succeeded, but it was much slower, as if I ran five minutes to cover a distance I would once cross in two steps. I could not fly either. My wings were gone… I felt hard, rough horns on my head, but they too were not what I once possessed. I heard a strange howl. I looked around. There was no one near me, but my eyes… they were the same! And my hearing. I could see and hear things happening hundreds of kilometers away. And then I saw her. Small, weak, a woman lying in the sand of this very desert. She was screaming. I had seen humans cry, but with her it looked unnaturally, as if it were the first time ever.
“Vila!” I shouted loudly without thinking.
Something is tightening in my chest. The water dampened my face, and even with my hands I could not remove it. I hated this water. Why now, go away! It was cold. I hate the cold. I like to watch it from afar, but not to feel it. My body curled even more into the grains of sand beneath me. I heard a voice in the distance. I could see nothing through my eyes wet with this evil cold water, but I could still hear. And speak. With my voice, strong enough to reach the end of the world.
“Alet!” I shouted in response to the male voice somewhere in the unknown.
And I did not know her name. But she did not know mine as well. And she called me Alet, and I called her Vila.
And I did not know his name. But he did not know mine too. And he called me Vila, and I called him Alet.
