The Invention Of Light

For as long as she could recall, Scarlett was not like the other children. She'd heard the stories of the ancient moon, Eps, being pulled out of orbit and decimated.

She wondered why the Gods had targetted the people of Voou with such anguish and abandoned them. Existence had been hard since the decimation of the moon. Crops were harder to grow without access to light, and life on the planet had become unmanageable. As for the inhabitants, their physique had altered over the millenias, they'd grown rubbery skin, dry and lizard-like. Their eyes had lost sight and being replaced with other core sensory components such as enhanced hearing and smell. Life was infinitely more difficult and progress had slowed from once what was a progressive and rapidly advancing race and planet to something medieval and archaic. It was true for many that life was an endless cycle of repetition and patience.

But Scarlett was different, born to Elijah and Blueberry, a humble woodturner and his dressmaking wife, Scarlett had a sunny deposition that her classmates often frowned upon. After all, how could you be positive when all you have in-front of you is darkness and misery?

One day, when Scarlett was five, her mother took her to a visiting Fortuneteller who was passing through town on her way to the city fair. The raggedy old lady with a crow-claw nose and crystalline irises and shrivelled hair took her orb and caressed it with infinite love as she looked deep into Scarlett's ocean blue irises, different from those around her, and she stood silent for what seemed like an eternity before her mother spoke, "Well, what is it?".

The Fortuneteller ran her claw like fingers through the young girls strawberry blonde hair. For she loved children, and this one bled her heart pure, "Your daughter is special. She will return something which was once lost to her people. Something that brings life". And just like that she exited the room.

Many dark days passed or perhaps did past, it was hard to tell when night and day were the same. When a planet never saw the sun because it was so far from their sight and never felt the presence of a moon because it was too far gone.

One day, Scarlett's mother asked her to go and pick some mushrooms from the forest. This was one food source that could grow on the planet without the need for light. It had become an essential food source for the inhabitants and they'd grown accustomed to the regular trips to collect it freely.

Scarlett loved the opportunity to be in nature, to be free with the sound of the bird call and the other wildlife. To be still and silent, nature was life, and life was nature.

She grabbed her wicker basket, put on her bearskin shoes and skipped out the door. It was colder than usual so she gathered it was close to winter and possibly even nightfall when the winter canines would enter the forest searching for food, while they were carnivorous, they never bothered for the taste of the inhabitants. It must have been the thick, leathery skin, or the dryness of the meat, it just did not appeal.

Scarlett ran into the forest, soon surrounded by a cascade of black tones, silence was replaced by the humming of insects and the distant call of birdlife. Everything told her that she was further from home with each step she took.

She lifted her nose into the air. A thick musty scent attracted her, the stale and musty smell of wet swampland that had not seen sunlight for many centuries, the dew of a mid morning autumn or winter day, this was definitely not summer as she could tell. But then again she had never experienced summer so how could she really.

Scarlett ran her finger over the tree trunks. There was an essense of rawness that she felt as her skin connected with the stoic wood. Soon she felt the unmistakeable texture of a fresh fungi. She tore at its rubbery base and then began to pull at more, dumping each one into her wicker basket as the collection grew and soon covered the base.

It was a brief moment, but nevertheless it was strange, at first she thought she must have fallen asleep and entered the dream realm where she often went to philosphize with the Gods on intimate details of daily life. But it wasn't that, this was real. There it was again, a strange sensation that struck her eyes. It was a different shade to the darkness she was familiar too. But what was it?

There it was again, it was uncomfortable at first but once she got used to it then it became warm and wholesome. She liked the way it nourished her irises. There was bond forming between the darkness she'd experienced her whole life and the strange new partnership she was forming with whatever the sensation was.

She started to lose control of her body as her eyes started to move up and down with rapid succession, she called it blinking, she didn't know why but it felt that was what it should be called.

Scarlett started to see something, it wasn't darkness. At first, she wasn't sure what her eyes were telling her. They'd never "seen" anything before so maybe her mind was playing tricks on her or perhaps she was still within that dream she kept telling herself she had been in. She was certainly of one thing, nothing made sense.

Then as if out of nowhere she could see, the trees, the leafy forest undergrowth, the trunks as they reached for the stars, everything was there right in front of her. And then it made sense what had started this event, a strange white thing in the sky, it was surrounded by others, millions of sparkling white and bright things.

It was extraordinary and it took her breath away, Scarlett suddenly felt something she'd never felt before - she couldn't describe what it was but she knew that she liked that feeling, and it was growing stronger and stronger with every waking moment.

Scarlett must have sat on the leafy, cold and wet ground for hours. She'd lost track of time and nothing really mattered because the sparkling things in the sky were so engrossing that nothing else mattered, not even the fungi she was supposed to be collecting.

After a few hours, Scarlett noticed something else, small animals flying through the sky, she recognised the sound as birds. She'd heard them like all the other inhabitants but never discovered them before.

After a few more hours, something else incredible happened. In the distance beyond the sparkling things was a giant round ball of what she now called 'light'. It was amazing but she felt some pain in her eyes as she looked at it for too long so she had to stop because she started to see strange shapes in her eyeballs and they stopped her seeing things that she was now familiarising herself with.

Later after the ball of light moved towards the center of the sky, Scarlett collected her wicker basket of fungi and discovered she could find her way through the forest not with her sense of smell and hearing but with her actual sight. As she strolled along, she looked up and admired the ball in the sky which had somehow changed the contrast of the darkness she had become familiar with, with a newer shade of black, almost gray in tone. She'd heard that once upon a time during the era of the moon, there were two specific period of the day, daylight and nighttime. Now, she was certain that she'd entered the daylight period.

Scarlett returned home and placed the wicker basket on the counter. Her mother stared at her without making a sound, but she sensed something was different about her daughter. "You were gone a long time", her mother quipped.

"Mother, I discovered something. Would you like to hear my story?". Of course her mother was intrigued but she wondered what could possibly be so interesting given how each day was always the same and excitement did not exist.

Scarlett explained to her mother how she had looked up into the sky and saw these sparkling things, how they made her feel alive and how they'd helped her navigate her sight. Scarlett continued long on into the day explaining her vision of the world. Her mother smiled and she felt a sense of warmth that she'd never felt since she had given birth to her daughter.

Scarlett had discovered light. And as the years went by, she taught people to see again and prosperity returned. In the generations after Scarlett had grown old and passed, Scientists invented a new moon and discovered a way to pull their planet closer to the sun so that they could bask in the glory of light and grow nourishing crops and so many other wonderful things.

After many generations, their bodies changed again. They were no longer leathery, their aromatic and hearing senses disappeared and were replaced by sight once more. They were given a gift by a little girl, and that gift was life and light.