Lost In Character: Transmigration Chronicles Of A Nameless Heroine 76 Time Out Of Memory Ii

They remembered too strongly, the ones who could not open themselves up to the unfathomable realities of this world. They might not have known it in their minds, but their spirits recalled it – that though their bodies were tied to the earth, a part of them had come from the stars.
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They felt this even more deeply each time the sun would set and darkness would envelop their havens of safety. Many creatures that sought their flesh hunted in the night. As they laid on the ground, huddled together, never once feeling certain that they would live to see another daybreak, they would look up to see a blanket of twinkling lights, and for brief s.n.a.t.c.hes, their fears would give way to awe.

They could not have known those lights were billions of other suns around which other worlds revolved, yet if they had felt their smallness and relative insignificance against the infinite backdrop of everything else, they ascribed the reasons to other causes.

Being so far out of reach that nothing could touch them, not the predators, not the storms and the famines, not the deaths in childbed and the sicknesses that could slay even the st.u.r.diest of men, these stars had become their ideals.

After all, the patterns they formed were unchanging. The way these patterns appeared and disappeared in time with the seasons' s.h.i.+fts – the way they wheeled across the heavens ever so steadily and predictably – this had instilled within these humans an immense sense of relief.

The night sky was not something they ever needed to be wary of and guard against. In fact, it had given them much without ever demanding anything in return.

Now and again, they'd borne witness as stars descended from the heavens. They could not help but make much of these occurrences. What did it mean that there was one less pinp.r.i.c.k of light up there? Did it die? Would they all fall one day, as mortals do?

Then, a turning point: a star had come from the dark ceiling of their world, and it landed among the snow-capped peaks visible for hundreds of leagues in every direction. Those who'd witnessed it spread the word, and for the first time, it had occurred to many scattered communities to seek out for themselves the answers that they were all growing increasingly desperate for.

In droves and trickles, people had converged to the foot of the mountain ranges. The bravest and the most desperate embarked on the long and arduous climb up the many peaks, in search of the star that had descended to join them here on this untamable place where getting through each day was a struggle.

Many turned back as soon as their fellows started dying. The inhospitable cold was something they were not prepared for, the air seemed to go thinner the higher up they went – or was it that they'd grown weaker? They'd not brought enough food to live on, and there was nothing to scrounge in those barren fields of rock and ice.

Alas, of those first seekers, there had been a few who would not be swayed from their search despite nature's hazards that had barred their way. Having next to nothing except their will, they climbed, up and ever up, until they could climb no more.

Whether they had chosen in the end to return to their people and later try again, better prepared, no one then could have known. Even among those who'd chosen to climb back down sooner, many had still died. From those who continued on, not one had returned.

Had they survived and found what they were looking for? Their bereaved would like to think so. And though the ones who'd attempted the climb knew better, they did not shatter the illusions that had emerged and built up at an astonis.h.i.+ng pace around their failed quest for a fallen star.

It was only they on the ground who had failed, they told themselves. Those who continued were fundamentally different from them all – surely their efforts had borne fruit. Surely they were up there now still, with the star that must not be a star at all – that was certainly not dead but was instead powerful beyond measure.

Up in those peaks was a light from heaven that had descended to mortal soil. Could it not be that life there was infinitely better? Yes, it must definitely be that way. And since that was so, no one could then blame those first seekers for not returning into their midst.

This was the only reasoning those that had been left behind could accept, and it had also allowed the rest to keep on believing that the sky in its benevolent brilliance was faultless, that it would lead them to no harm as it continued to maintain order in their otherwise unpredictable world.

Now, it no longer watched over them only from a fathomless distance – it had sent one of their own down, that mortals might have someone closer to turn to as they went about the arduous task of living.

There were other stars that came after the first, and so it also was with mortals. Despite the known dangers, the humans that had settled around the base of these mountain ranges never stopped attempting to scale the perilous slopes in search of the sky-inhabitants' dwelling.

Others had followed the footsteps of the first seekers – all better prepared, each surer than the last that though so many had paid with their lives for their failure, they would succeed and join the other mortals… and the beings of light that they had come to call G.o.ds.

There had not been many of these individuals with ambitions so lofty that they thought nothing of risking everything. Most who had great ambitions also had wisdom enough to recognize that in this matter, they were dealing with uncertainty. A mere possibility was not enough on which to bet their lives.

Still, the part of them that came from the stars wanted to believe. It had given them an even greater sense of peace, this idea that they were being governed by powers that watched over them from above.

To these divinities that demanded nothing, they were inclined to offer their grat.i.tude and awe. They built mounds in the likeness of mountains; they built monuments of stone that reached up – as close as they could make it to the G.o.ds' mortal dwelling, to the stars.

These efforts to build, and build high, were what they dedicated their lives to, the ones who remembered in their souls from whence they came. In some, though they had not been prepared to risk their lives on blind faith, this was similar to how others physically tried to reach the highest peaks. This was as much an expression of their desire to return to the sky, where they would not be at the mercy of the senseless and the unpredictable.

Thought was also a manifestation of energy, though they knew it not. What they had collectively sent out to the heavens was reflected back, until their beliefs became their truths.

Of the G.o.ds and G.o.ddesses that would eventually make up the pantheon of this community of early peoples, the one they hailed as chief was he who was the light incarnate of the things they valued most: order and constancy.