Dissonance
…..
The orb glowed in my hands as I stared intently at it.
Its shape, though solid, felt like it melted into my very flesh. It turned hot as I held it still and I would have sworn it burnt my skin but I had no blisters and the pain was only out of fear from the heat.
Its surface was like burnished bronze and it shone brightly with an orange light.
…
My gaze was held steady on it like it was drawing my person into itself.
I managed to tear my gaze away from it and ask the man who had given it to me what it was, but as I lifted my head and looked about, he was nowhere to be found, no one was.
The marketplace I had been that bustled with salespeople and their customers had become a desolate land of strong wind and shifting sand.
At a distance though, a figure stood gazing at the view of stars littered across a night sky that seemed too mystical to be real.
I headed for it, and as I approached I noticed the clothing of the man who had given me the orb.
“Sir, what is this?” I asked as I held out the orb in my hand. “And where did everyone go?”
“You have been chosen by the orb to be a scribe and watch over the realms of man in the solitude of this ‘Wadi al-Hulm’. The land between all realities of life. You must reside here in solitude as I did and watch and record the lives of all that live in the ‘Al-Lawh al-Mahfuz’.”
As he spoke I noticed his eyes gleamed with a green light and dimmed as if it were a beating heart, his ‘Keffiyeh’ flowed with the wind and before my eyes, his body began to unwind and scattered but by bit like sand in the desert.
“What you hold in your hand is the ‘Al-Lawh al-Mahfuz’ and it has chosen you as its successor. My time is up, it is up to you to decide. It can grant you your wildest desires but you will never experience the life of the ‘Ins’ that you once lived, you will be of a higher existence.”
I had been silent because everything was too impossible to take in, but at these words I couldn't remain silent.
“What about my life before this? My brothers, my mother, ‘roh-i’, what happens to them if I'm not there for them?”
He turned his gaze away from the sky for a moment and looked at me with his gleaming eyes, his body had already been blown away by the winds and only an unraveling head was left floating on the wind. A soft expression overshadowed the seriousness on his face and he said:
“You may forfeit your wish and leave this realm if you so desire, the ‘Al-Lawh al-Mahfuz’ will not keep you against your will.”
He said briefly before fixing his gaze once more on the horizon.
He breathed deeply and after a short while, said..
“The duty we are assigned is immeasurable and if you reject it…, the progress of life on your world will be stalled for a thousand years till the next scribe is chosen.”
His words came out heavy on my ears.
“What does that mean?” I asked.
“It means that all things will grow and die within a short time and no progress will be experienced in the realms of man for the period of time that a scribe isn't present to record.”
“And my decision will cause this? Then I'm not really given a choice am I?”
“It is a difficult path to take, and though your options are seemingly unfair, the choice is still yours to make. You would not have been chosen if there wasn't something you desired above your own life…
The ‘Al-Lawh al-Mahfuz’ awaits your decision, whatever you want will be yours or you can take nothing and leave.
Goodbye young one and may the ‘Nafas ar-Rahman’ that flows in us all guide you to your true desire.”
…
And just as he said those words, he vanished on the tide of the wind and I was left their with the weight of a thousand generations in my hands.
