Individuality -- Fiction; Love stories; Men -- Psychology -- Fiction; Psychological fiction; Science fiction; Time travel -- Fiction
We found garments, and the Golden One gasped at the sight of
them. For they were not white tunics, nor white togas; they were
of all colors, no two of them alike. Some crumbled to dust as we
touched
[-them. But-] {+them, but+} others were of heavier cloth, and they felt
soft and new in our fingers.
We found a room with walls made of shelves, which held rows of
manuscripts, from the floor to the ceiling. Never had we seen
such a number of them, nor of such strange shape. They were not
soft and rolled, they had hard shells of cloth and leather; and
the letters on their pages were [-so-] small and so even that we
wondered at the men who had such handwriting. We glanced through
the pages, and we saw that they were written in our language, but
we found many words which we could not understand. Tomorrow, we
shall begin to read these scripts.
When we had seen all the rooms of the house, we looked at the
Golden One and we both knew the thought in our minds.
"We shall never leave this house," we said, "nor let it be taken
from us. This is our home and the end of our journey. This is your house,
Golden One, and ours, and it belongs to no other men whatever
as far as the earth may stretch. We shall not share it with others,
as we share not our joy with them, nor our love, nor our hunger.
So be it to the end of our days."
"Your will be done," they said.
Then we went out to gather wood for the great hearth of our home.
We brought water from the stream which runs among the trees under
our windows. We killed a mountain goat, and we brought its flesh
to be cooked in a strange copper pot we found in a place of
wonders, which must have been the cooking room of the house.
We did this work alone, for no words of ours could take the
Golden One away from the big glass which is not glass. They stood
before it and they looked and looked upon their own body.
When the sun sank beyond the mountains, the Golden One fell
asleep on the floor, amidst jewels, and bottles of crystal, and
flowers of silk. We lifted the Golden One in our arms and we
carried them to a bed, their head falling softly upon our
shoulder. Then we lit a candle, and we brought paper from the
room of the manuscripts, and we sat by the window, for we knew
that we could not sleep tonight.
And now we look upon the earth and sky. This spread of naked rock
and peaks and moonlight is like a world ready to be born, a world
that waits. It seems to us it asks a sign from us, a spark, a
first commandment. We cannot know what word we are to give, nor
what great deed this earth expects to witness. We know it waits.
It seems to say it has great gifts to lay before [-us, but it wishes a greater gift for-] us. We are to
speak. We are to give its goal, its highest meaning to all this
glowing space of rock and sky.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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