I have walked across a garden of souls. And there, I met a noble nightingale, the sweetest soul that ever bloomed. Something deeper than love dawned. Soon the stars pulled us worlds apart. Endless echoes of her haunt my mind.

The Moon spoke to me. Her voice was soft and certain. She told me what to do, and I obeyed. It was easy... one voice, one command, one path. Nights passed, and I began to wonder whether the stars could speak too. So I listened. And they did. They all told me what to do. A thousand voices tangled in my mind. A thousand strings pulled me in every direction. I couldn't tell which one was right anymore. Maybe none of them were. I stopped listening. The sky fell silent. And in that quiet, for the first time, I heard my own voice.

The moon blinked. Pious peasants prayed. Elephants marched under the stars. Hideous thunders flooded the streets. Dreams ended and waking nightmares began. Worlds filled with fury.

The stars painted tempests on thousand canvas. A river of roars quenched heart's hunger. Enlightened cosmos untethered fiery phantoms. Serene floods cleansed the longing to blaze.

At the other end of the world, sickness dawned upon my dearest. Upon the barren blood of hundred million dead souls, people built walls that grazed the skies. Then they burnt the bridges that stretched across the sea of tears of thousand million more.

With fog of falses, they blind my brothers, and with threads of thunders, they silence my sisters.

At the edge of the holy cliff, I rest. Echoes of my voice fell down the abyss, and the abyss spoke its name.

How dare the gods!

Fight all that is divine, I will, until health dawns upon my dearest.

Eighty pieces of puzzle riddled down the river. Salty stream pulled on my strings. No two pieces fashioned together. Icy current stripped me of my soul. Was I the last piece, or was it all a lie?

A saffron sky dawned on us. All our scars on the table. The clock racing against the hearts in our hands. Tethered by naught but a string of heart. Flushed in a wave of fleeting stars. An unsung web of worlds untethered.

In a not so distant past, there lived a people who shared a fantasy. Mountains of memories formed over many moons for they lived and breathed adventure. Hearts of gold melted in the heat of passion for each other. Surfing time and tide, they grew inseparable.

Knitting a future meant a trek over the horizon. Ashes rained from the skies for countless bridges burned. Luxury awaited some and some awaited luxury. In the cosmos of time, memories faded of many. Howling winds echoed through canyons of eroded dreams.

There I lay gazing at the sea of stars sailing through the night. All that once was may never be again and whom I once knew I may never know again.

Warm air accompanied by a melody of footsteps greeted my back. Saw did I a sight brighter than day, and soon bridged the space between us with an embrace.

An ocean of voices condensed all around me. They are but mirages in which I drowned. The air turned to cuttlefish. A subtle pattern of warm chaos spiralled. In its eye I lay paralysed, gasping for breath.

In exactly seven years, the universe will retire itself. I deserve the right to retire myself. We all do. The state doesn't see it that way.

Four hours have passed since sunrise. I leave for the meeting at the abandoned diodomo. I walk past a few crowd cameras. Someone covered them with paint. It was before the protest a few days ago. I've lost count of how many protests I've been in. I reach the diodomo.

The meeting starts. It's about our next protest. Everyone's sharing ideas. I have one. They like it.

We leave the diodomo.

We arrive at the city's busiest junction. I sit down in the center. One of my comrades walks up to me and pours gasoline over me. I light a match. I begin to meditate.

It is customary to offer an apple at Diodomo and receive a share of the sacred juice. Yesterday, two apples were placed in front of Dio and the doors were closed. When the doors opened later, only one apple remained.

Everyone seemed to be heading to Diodomo today. I joined them.

“How much for an apple?” I ask.

“Fifty bucks.”

The prayer from speakers everywhere almost drowned out his voice.

I take an apple and hand him fifty bucks.

There is no place left in the storage room for visitors' shoes. I leave my shoes on the street like everyone else.

I pay a thousand bucks for premium entry. It's not as crowded as the free entry.

I hand my apple to the priest. He pours my share of sacred juice into my hand. I drink it.

The prayer stops.

A man's voice tells everyone to leave immediately.

I leave.

I find a taxi. I tell the driver my address. I ask him to change the radio to news. The news anchor's voice breaks through, “...after several people who drank the sacred juice died yesterday for reasons that are still unknown...”

My stomach begins to hurt.

Feliches arrive from the east at the end of summer and leave to the west just before the first rain. It is only for a few minutes that they rest on the island near the cliff.

A few days after I moved here, everyone from the village took me to the cliff. Nobody answered my questions. We waited for hours. Nobody spoke the entire time. The sun was nearly at the horizon.

Feliches broke through the clouds and landed on the island. I turned to a young man next to me. He moved his finger up to his lips. We watched the feliches rest. Nobody told me why. Then it happened.

A felich sang.

We all shouted, sang, and danced until we could see the stars above.

Seasons passed.

Colors are a distant memory. My fingers twitch. My thoughts bleed into each other.

The day of first rain is finally here.

A few of the elders do not wake up. We bury them. There are no tears. There are no rituals. Nobody says anything. Neither do I.

We go to the cliff and wait.

We watch dark clouds approach.

Rain touches the cliff.

A child runs over the edge. Then the rest of us do.

The exam was over. We stood outside. I did not know her name. She did not know mine. We talked about the exam. It was hard, we agreed. There was nothing else to say. We said nothing else. Then she waved goodbye. She tilted her head to the side when she did it. She smiled. I will always remember it. We will never see each other again.

The bookshop was quiet. A young man commented on the book in my hand. He was from somewhere. I was from somewhere else. We both read Nietzsche. He had just started Beyond Good and Evil. The shopkeeper told him to. I told him to start with Twilight of the Idols. He thanked me. We will never see each other again.

The movie ended. I remained seated. The young man next to me remained seated. The movie was just okay. We agreed. A character was not written well. We agreed. Spider-Man 2 was better. We agreed. We will never see each other again.

A civilization ago, there lived a man called Athio.

On a night with a full moon, gods whispered in his dreams of a woman whose heart was sweeter than honey and who was imprisoned in a tower lands away. The stars tethered his soul to hers. He swore that he would find and free her.

Before the next sunrise, he began his search for her. He carried with him a blade which he made from metal that fell from the stars. He killed with it those who came for his meat and ate their eyes.

He saw countless constellations before his search came to an end.

A smoky figure guarded the tower. An antlered head sat atop a moth body. It stretched its wings wide. Its ragged figure was darker than night and hazier than dreams. It twitched and flickered.

Athio's blade passed through the void that the entity was. He hurt nothing.

He walked towards the tower and into the void. Each breath cost him his strength. Will faded from his body. His chest grew hot and heavy. A crushing ache filled his head. He turned around before the void consumed him.

He dashed into the void. He moved towards the tower but the tower never came close. Reality itself rejected him. He turned around.

He contemplated how he could kill something he could not touch.

The horizon swallowed countless stars.

Memories of those he killed gathered. The gods whispered once again.

He dropped his blade and walked towards the tower. The floating abyss did him nothing.

He climbed the stairs. In the chamber at the top stood a mirror.

Graham, a rather young planet in a distant world, commanded an attraction unlike any other in her system. Whispers of her face breezed through aether like melodies in the wind. Every day, her host could be caught throwing glances at her. Fine grains of dust coated with frozen gases and liquids pilgrimed to her. Every night, a thousand streaks of burning light sailed through her skies.

Every single comet helped Graham flower; to give rise to a home as colorful as the dreams of a child; a budding paradise, on the verge of hosting life, about to become a safe haven for souls drifting through time.

One late evening, three moons of a neighboring planet, discontent that their host would not support life, took it upon themselves to tempt fate. Rakesh, the oldest among them, sang of their host who had been touched by a cometoid and fell to decay. He sang for all to hear; preached that all must abstain from comets' visits for they were evil.

It was a crescent lie that eclipsed the night.

The three moons formed an alliance, that they shall not suffer pilgrims to greet Graham. It was a pact made not in words but in stardust, with aether as their witness. The trio circled Graham, and together, they dented space itself, forcing pilgrims to loop endlessly around the cold edges of a young starving atmosphere. A dazzling system of rings formed around Graham, consisting of rocks, ice, debris, and shattered moons.

Spokes of mysterious nature flashed across the rings of Graham like lightning in a thunderstorm. Pilgrims began to conspire.

Indumathi, the youngest of the trio, circled Graham from the far end. She kept to herself, contemplating aether. Dawa took joy in closely following Rakesh, and the two spent countless nights revelling in songs of abstinence.

The songs, however pleasant, diluted their pact. None remembered the original pact except for aether - but one does not command aether nor ask anything of it.

Dawn was nearing. Rakesh and Dawa remembered nothing of the time before their songs.

Rakesh called upon Dawa and Indumathi for a summit, believing themselves to be prisoners of Graham. He shared with them his plan for escape. The only way out, he preached, was through Graham's death.

Dawa knew little but to follow Rakesh. Indumathi said that they were their own prisoners and that they could just leave if they wanted to. They laughed at her words and pitied her, believing she had gone mad.

The summit concluded with Rakesh and Dawa agreeing to carry out the heinous plot for the murder of malnourished Graham.

Dawa thought that Indumathi must be freed from her madness, and so she paid her a visit that night. Indumathi, underestimating the willingness of Dawa to act on ignorance, had not prepared to protect herself. It was not the last of blood to be spilt that night.

After midnight, Rakesh and Dawa visted Graham and stabbed her in her sleep. They were finally free, or so they believed. With Graham gone, Rakesh and Dawa became the most prominent presence in the region. They had been revelling in abstinence for so long that they no longer remembered how to withstand the impact of a rock, let alone hundred thousand.

In their final moments of that cycle, they heard the voice of a child "Smoke and mirrors do not make you a god no matter how many rabbits you pull out of your ass."

"In truth, there was only one Christian, and he died on the cross."
— Friedrich Nietzsche

It is an early winter morning. I turn on the tv. A program about weaver birds. The male builds a nest. If no female comes, it tears it apart and starts again. Sometimes another male destroys it first.

I change the channel.

Fishermen found a dead body in the sea. A missionary. He had gone to the forbidden island. He came back with arrows in him. Moron.

My grandfather went there too. The island folk spoke of rivalry among gods. A god planted a parasite in our world. It was an idea. The idea that we are born broken and must be saved. When all of mankind accepts it, our world will no longer belong to us. It will belong to the god that convinced us we are broken.

Strange, winged creatures stood still in the shade of a cracked wall. Their feathers were of colour akin to that of wood in the rain. Their eyes were dense as the void; a constellation of tiny specks glowed from within. Though they lingered in this world, they were not bound to it. These were beings that could exist in many worlds at once.

A child approached the creatures with a bowl of seeds. He sat with his back to the wall and let out a breath of prayer. As he tossed a handful of seeds on the ground in front of him, the creatures began to move. In the midst of the crowd was a youngling. From beneath its eyelids, a thin layer of skin crawled out, masking the void. The creature flew up to the bowl and indulged itself. The rest waddled around pecking at the ground in remarkable unison.

Later that night, incomprehensible noises flooded the dreams of the child, turning them to cryptic nightmares. He woke up only to find the noises still haunting him. The source, he realised, was outside.

Motivated by curiosity and fuelled by annoyance, he moved towards the door to the balcony. With every step, hesitance slowed him further, his curiosity grew stronger, his heart beat louder.

An eternity passed; he turned the knob and pushed the door wide open. An obscure being with a translucent form sat among dense clouds. A swarm of lightning traversed around it in ways unnatural. It was a creature from another world, come to consume this world.

Ripples of screeches echoed out of the dark of the night. Dense little shades moved in front of the clouds. The winged creatures were as fast as their screeches. They were there to defend the child and his world. They moved with the grace of a dancer and the swiftness of a fighter. The ripples of screeches collided with the swarm of lightning, denting the very fabric of reality around them.

The glass, tinted unevenly, did not open. On the other side are a great many windows placed symmetrically on walls of unsaturated colours. I could not count them all if I had an eternity.

At a distance, a group of younglings, full of life, stood tall waving their hands at the speeding train. I imagine they must have not seen me, for I am behind a tinted glass. Would it have been of any consequence to return the wave?

The gods painted the heavens with a symphony of colours. Never have I laid the slightest glance upon a spectacle so terrifyingly breathtaking.

Something peeked out of the sky. Its skewed body, scattered edges, and obscure being mocked me.

"Does that look like a rabbit to you?"

A strange yet comforting voice stole my senses. I wonder why I wasn't expecting company. To my side is a child whose attention could not be taken off the clouds.

The hind legs make it look more like a hare than a rabbit.

"Sure," I replied.

I gazed beyond to find a thin, subtle yet paralysing stroke of violet bordering a thick fiery cloud. With all its might, the sky, on fire, roared bright.

What does that one look like to you?