Palace At The Edge Of The World

They say that if you walked to the edge of the world you’d find not a precipice, but a palace. The palace is said to stretch on for miles - expansive and pristine, but far from extravagant. Bright light seems never to touch this place, but neither does darkness. It exists in a space of perfect balance. The axis of good and evil, morning and night, love and despair. 

Those that return carry back tales of a brother and a sister. Two quiet souls who look neither beautiful nor grotesque. They glide along the empty paths, unaware or uncaring, of the few eyes who watch from beyond the low, white walls. Several have tried to enter, but each time they step across the waist-high boundary, they find themselves a single step back from where they began. 

So instead they watch. They watch the sister and brother move from wing to wing, never rushing, never slowing. Though they know that time must be passing, they feel no urgency to track it, no wish to find its beginning or its end. 

The watchers come from many different lives. Anyone may find themselves along this path, wandering till the highest points of the palace come into view. One man is a broker, his life marked in chunks by the market’s open and close. Every so often his eyes flutter shut, tilting his face up to a sun that isn’t there. There’s a woman - a mother - who walks the length of the low palace wall, the tips of her fingers trailing the rough stone. A smile comes and goes from the corners of her mouth, a look that seems neither happy nor sad. There are younger watchers here too, rarer, but not uncommon. A boy sits in the gravel, chin resting on one hand. All around him the pebbles are mussed, his hand swirling patterns through the small bits of stone. 

There’s a strange kind of peace here, an absence of intensity. The watchers feel neither hunger nor satiation, neither alertness nor sleepiness. They simply are. A life of perfect balance, void of the roiling tumult of their previous day-to-day. Not all watchers make it to this point. Some, when they see it, know they’ve come too far. They’ve lost their true path, and they turn back to find it. But for many it’s a solace, a space of near-nothingness costumed in perfect balance. 

Every watcher follows a pattern. The palace first entrances them, soothes them. There is no fury, nor fervor once the palace comes into to view. Those excesses can’t exist here, not on the plane of perfect balance. But after a time, they each feel a slight tap-tap, a light touch to their senses. It’s easy to ignore at first, the sole distraction in a world of tranquility. But the tapping grows, tugging at their elbow, skittering across their spine. Soon the watchers must give it notice, must cave to the small thing it asks: to look back. So they do. At first, it’s furtive looks paired with spikes of near-pain. It hurts to look backwards, feels forbidden to even turn. But the feeling is insistent, an instinct or a memory. No matter how peaceful, no matter how calm, there is path that brought them here and they each have a place from which they came. 

Slowly, slowly, looking back becomes inevitable. 

Colors start to look brighter, their senses grow keener. The more they glance backwards, the less the palace seems to hold for them. The path behind them is fuzzy and distant, but each glimpse of the palace holds less and less appeal. Slowly an awareness spreads. Peace begins to feel like disquiet, contentment like a veil. The spreading wrongness siphons off their blinders - sipping it away, taste by taste. The hunger isn’t physical, but a longing begins to crawl through them. A feeling that’s familiar, but not altogether welcome. The longing is far worse than the tapping, more potent in its effect. It scuttles into cracks, spreads like spiderwebs across their skin. The longing reaches in deep, till it finds their heart - and shocks it from its slumber. 

Suddenly, the watchers miss the ache of good. The soaring feeling of joy or the simple pleasure of a laugh. The broker remembers the taste of beer on his tongue, the way his date teased him over the froth left on his lips. The woman sees the bumbling run of her daughter, unsteady but proud as she trusts her mother to follow. The boy can’t help but choke out a laugh, his dad’s silly grin dancing behind his eyes. 

The longing reaches in again, spears them more violently. A pain lances through them and they miss the grief of evil. The crushing blows of a cruel tragedy or the petty hurts from an unkind word. The man can nearly feel a phone pressed to his ear, the harsh words stiffening his jaw, clenching his hands. The woman remembers the closing of a door, her mother’s, when she asked her not to return. The boy is stumbling now, tripping as he starts to his feet. He left his sister at home, in a time she needed him most. 

They don’t know how long they’ve been here, they never cared to know how much time had passed. But the watchers are running back now, taking no last glimpses of the empty palace. This place, they’ve realized, is not balance, not peace. 

This place, is apathy. 

---

When the watchers return to the lives they left behind, they’ll tell you about a palace. About a place that sits on the axis of good and evil, in a space that light never seems to touch. There’s beauty there, they’ll all agree. An allure that seems like the only balm you can find. The watchers don’t warn you away, won’t tell you of the paths they found there. Instead, they’ll leave you with a simple note. 

When you find yourself there, at the edge of the world - take heart, have courage - 

And look back.