Ray

The sun is in a constant state of explosion, deluging us with its solar wings and cosmic rays. The sun will burn you to a cinder, given the chance. You can’t trust the sun.

Sunlight allows plants to flourish and create oxygen, and basically makes it possible for us to exist on this water-logged rock floating pointlessly through space.

One beam of light, one shining example of sunniness, decides to risk everything and journey to the heart of darkness. It’s got to be careful, it knows, so it plans as best it can. Off this snowy mountaintop, across the side of a hundred story building, bouncing off a radar dish, into a perfectly placed handheld mirror as a beautiful woman touches up her war paint.

And from there, straight into the dark.

One beam, remember, one beam alone, struggles through the wispy shadows, a line into the heart, the very center, of the darkest, darkest darkness. Bravely, this single ray flies, though perhaps a little slower now, working through the murk, fighting the night, easing into the belly of the beast.

That little ray sees things no beam of sunlight has ever seen before. Shapes in the darkness. Wisps of smoke, clouds, gloom, dank stones, full obscurity, demons and angels and playthings alike. One bright little ray, it proudly reaches into the ether, until it bursts in on a darkness so strong, so heavy, so overwhelming, it’s almost solid. Almost, but not quite.

And there, directly before it, the heart of darkness awaits, open, exposed, waiting for that ray of pure, unadulterated daylight. At the last possible moment, as the ray is about to discover all sorts of truths about the dark, the heart seems to smile, or grin, or grimace, and it holds up something like a mirror, something to divert the way’s path.

But it’s not a mirror. It’s a prism. The ray strikes it at full speed and shatters. Red this way, blue that way, greens and yellows and oranges, are strewn across the shadows of night. The ray cries out. Given no other choice, the ray embraces the darkness, it shimmers, it fades.

But make no mistake: that little ray of sunlight is now and forever a part of the darkness.