"Wall Between Worlds"

[Varthikes]

''WALL BETWEEN WORLDS"


I RECALL UPON a time. A time long before we knew of you Humans, and of other creatures existing Beyond our world. A time in which I knew of no others. A time before I broke into this world

In that old world, silence and darkness reigned--a darkness that was darker than would be a starless sky. Within an envelope of warmth and comfort, however, I seemed to float in that world.

After some passing time, faint shadows I began to see upon the walls of my world. Not a thought was there in my mind wondering about those shadows. Neither a thought, nor a dream occurred to me at that time as to what was beyond that wall. Nor was there a thought or dream in my mind that there even existed something beyond that wall. This was my world--the world. And it ended at those walls. I was its sole occupant.

Other things, though, I began to notice in that time. Things that were attached to me, feeling them twitch--four legs, a pair of tiny wings, my tail, as I know them now--in a reflexive test movement. Voices, then, I began to sense in my mind. Incomprehensible were they, but accompanied by comforting feelings and a soothing croon that seemed to come from the walls.

*

Too small the world soon became for me. Cramped against the walls I became until I was pressing against them with my head, trying to get them to move apart. I struggled even as I heard within my mind those same voices as before, accompanied by those same feelings of comfort and affection. Against the walls, I continued to struggle until I heard a sudden explosion and my head pushed through, stopped no more by the wall.

From that first break, what remained of the wall followed--the wall that had been the limit of my world--shattering around me. I was released onto a warm, soft surface. Against the suddenly brighter light, which, as would I later notice, seemed to glow from the Hatching Chamber walls, my eyes squinted in an effort to take in all at once my new surroundings. Having believed that old wall to be the extent of the world, with neither a thought nor a dream of what laid beyond, overwhelming was the sudden realization of the existence of a much larger world. Looking down, I confirmed with the sight of the fragments of my old world that I had indeed broken through.

Turning my head about from where I laid on my belly, glistening wings too small to fly drooped to the sides, I found four others like me around the chamber. Together were two of the others lying while the other two were busy munching on the walls of their own old worlds.

The voice I again heard--the same as I had heard from within my old world. What the voice said remained incomprehensible to me with the exception of the last word: "Varthikes," which I simply knew to be my name. From my clutchmates I turned to look up and see two much larger versions of the others. The voice spoke again as they, through glowing, golden eyes, looked down at me. And, from those eyes, the same feelings of comfort as had I felt from within my world seemed to pour forth.

I chirped in reply, and sent back the feelings of love and security. By mere instinct, I knew these two were my virsem--"parents" as would say you Humans to describe their relation to me.

As was speaking to me a somewhat lighter-sounding voice, I looked about with a cramp-like pain emanating from my stomach. Cut off now from the continual nourishment I had received from within my world, the first feelings I felt of hunger. Upon the sand-covered ground I found the fragments of the wall of my old world, and, feeling indeed a craving for them, proceeded to devour them. I used for the first time my small, backward-pointing teeth to break the larger fragments into manageable pieces, moving my flexible tongue to transfer the pieces to my throat, which stimulated the muscles there to transport the pieces greedily down to my begging stomach.

Soon were the fragments all devoured, and exhausted was I now from the efforts and excitement of breaking out of my old world. Upon the soft ground with my four clutchmates I gathered myself and closed my eyes to sleep for the first time in this new world.

I would in the cycles to follow my hatching discover how much bigger was this new world than my old world. I would learn also of all the life that shared this world. A wall of its own would I discover this world to have. And, like the one that had enveloped my old world, would this wall one sunrise--one day--be breached.


THE END