Andrey Krapivin: Inside
Animals burrow holes, people dig pits. Animals hide in the holes, people despise norms and fall into their pits. Animals get outside, into familiar world. People get out into space deeper than pits, where it`s darker than it was before. And so they live.
The night, like a blanket that covered everything. It is forever dark, deep and warm underneath. There is no warmer color than black. There is no cold color there, there is never unnecessary light. Every cutting ray of white is dear and, fortunately, transient, not eternal, like a hare falling down. Like an Indian making a step into. Or like you – forming up everything.
A flash – and people. Then darkness. A flash – and legs. The second one – knees, the third one – between them. The forth – deeper. The sixth – inside! Her? Me? Inside that substance which is me. You, he, she – a space fully dependent on me. Old ideas about the sun rotating around a point, which then turned out to be not the center of the universe. Inside her, me, my surrounding space – always scary and viscous – might be loud, might be ringing, might be happy and even funny, but later inevitably it will be scary. There is no world without a moon. There is no space of eternal happiness of light or blissful permanence of darkness.
In any world created by me, you, us, sooner or later the moon rises and lights everything with its cold, silent, black-and-white light, creates shadows in pitch-dark night, puts objects into shape, endows with the soul the trees, their branches and the very darkness, which is happy to be lit, to be penetrated, which is happy that animals became people and people got naked and kneeled down to surrender themselves, to give up, unfold, grasp, run away, lie down on the back and bend it, the ground under the nails, bared teeth or fear on the face with the hair in the darkness only with the face exposed to the moon. The light, one, two, three, the eye. Second time. A scar on the face, on the back, on the chest, stomach and inside forever. Never again. Tomorrow again, anew, more.
