Story idea credited to Ieze Svain, written on request.
Paradise Lost
I remember when I believed in Paradise.
I remember the feel of warm sunlight bathing me like so many gentle hands. I remember the way the forest smelled after a misted rain. I remember those funny little creatures that used to chase each other around the skirts of the rivers. I remember how perfect it all felt, and how unreal it seemed to be. I couldn't imagine a place this perfect in my wildest dreams. Even the earth beneath my feet seemed to sigh with every step, as if pleasured by the restless urge to explore I could never seem to satisfy.
It was my utopia. It was my world outside the world.
My name is Nai Eijofur, and I will not survive this story. Listen closely, for you may be all that is left of me.
When they came, their shadows covered the ground. Day became night, and the forests groaned with the stark cold. I couldn't feel the sun touch me. I couldn't hear the birds. Even the insects seemed to hide from the great golden behemoths in the skies. I heard the horns sound like great trumpets of doom.
Clouds parted and fled from these man-made behemoths, and birds fell from the sky, ruined by the impossible energies passed through their precious bodies. It was as if these ships were everything opposite to nature, and the spirit of the land itself rejected them. The Amarr had arrived, and they brought their 'paradise' with them.
At the time, I was a personnel manager for Spiritis Calling, an initiative designed to maintain the idyllic world for the benefit of our people. We fed and cradled this world as it fed and cradled us. From all tribes would visitors come to find the spirits within themselves again. The bonfires of Voluval ceremonies flickered in the distance every night. Children would walk into the forests in the evening, but only adults would return come the morn.
The Amarr came to us with tales of a paradise in the skies. They told us of a benevolent God who loved us, who loved all. They told us we must come with them to find this paradise. We were all so confused... we did not understand. Paradise was here... not out there. Again the horns sounded, and the earth shook with force.
While our people bickered and fought the choice we knew we had to make, those aliens waited. They waited and they watched, daring us to say no. Some of us wanted to stay. Others wanted to leave. Most of us wanted to hide. Somewhere along the line, we found our stones and water - and we picked up arms that had long since collected dust.
On the last morning of freedom, we stood in the plains, in the forests, on the rooftops and in the streams. We stood, and we looked up at the sky. In one silent voice, we declared we would not see their paradise, for we had found it already. The Amarr ensured we kept our word. The horns sounded a third and final tone, like the death knells of a people who thought they had a choice at all.
They came for us with their own. They burned our utopia with their own. Their light shone from the sky-ships in great burning lines, setting both tree and rock aflame. As we watched our very lives turn to ash around us, we learned something we'd somehow missed all along. We learned we'd been mistaken. We'd been fooled, just like those who slapped iron chains about our ankles. We learned that what we'd lived for was a cosmic joke, something to blind us from the awful reality.
There is no utopia. There is no-place.
Our people would remember this lesson for all eternity, for we learned well it the day we watched our Paradise Lost.
((OOC Note on the Amarr horns))
Author
Topic: Paradise Lost (Read 4819 times)