The Sentinels Stargazer

Dark had swept across the coast, a looming and haunting black. It crept until it swallowed everything, blanketing the world in shadow. When starlight began to appear through the clouds, he was deep in the forest by the sea. Cicadas hummed from the underbrush. The music of the late night. 

The bear had found him in his dreams again. Swordfish did not know how to escape it. He had watched the animal die. He had seen the last moments of life leave through the monster’s burning, hungry gaze. When the bear had ceased fighting, when the blood no longer pooled against the earth, when the long shadows had come and swallowed them both, Swordfish had cried. Bathed in crimson and wounds, he sobbed into the ground until he felt that his life too would cease and he would join his family, finally fulfilled. When hours had passed and the deep dark of night had swallowed him and the body of the bear, he picked himself up and staggered into the unknown. 

The bear was dead. The bear was dead. Swordfish was enraged. Why had it not stopped? The gaping hole in his spirit had not been filled. He hadn’t understood. Blind with emotion, the boy had stumbled to the waters edge and collapsed. He had cried out to the sky and the stars and the great glowing moon - why does it hurt! It’s too much. It’s too much. 

Standing in the shade of the forest, Swordfish stared blankly at trees. He’d thought that revenge would heal him. He had believed that the death of the bear would return sense to the world, fill the chasm inside of him. 

But the truth is that some holes keep going. Yawning, heady, insatiable. There would be no healing from that gaping wound of his spirit. There would always be a darkness with the eyes of a bear.