Shadows

This was a writing prompt from a book I just got: The Writer’s Book of Days by Judy Reeves. The prompt consisted of this one word. I was supposed to write whatever came to mind and at first- I was lost. Then I thought about what I think of shadows and some concepts I hold. As I wrote it turned into bits and pieces from one of my characters. A supposed bad guy doing what he has to for the greater good, or balance. Warning, this is unedited (aside from spell check) and written without looking back, grammar and misused versions of to, too, there, and their are to be expected. Please don’t point them out, I want to try to polish it on my own one first.

What came from my fingers cannot be taken back. I will leave it as it is and learn from it. That and I’ll be adding a nicer, more understandable version to my private blog in a moment or so. You guys just get to see the practice work. ;)

Shadows are silence. They are the darkness between things and yet that which fills empty space.  Dark comes from light as fire casts darkness in it’s attempt to illuminate. Darkness and shadows. One of the same or two different things?

The place where no light goes but only light can create. The place where beings of whisper float and waft like wisps of fog and smoke. Curling around one another in an endless dance of insubstantial touch.

Traveling between worlds we must fall into shadow. Travel as a group and don’t look back. Keep your eyes forward lest you fall behind unavoidable lost in the endlessness. Don’t let them touch you, these shadow creatures. They seek merely to take your threads of essence in hand and corrupt you. Twisting and twining them in the most foul of ways.

Keep your eyes forward and don’t look around but don’t forget either. Don’t pretend they aren’t there, that they don’t exist. That would be stupid. Acknowledge and respect the shadows. Their presence is forever true and like the sky above your world they are a part of something much larger than you, they contribute to the balance in unseen ways. Without them we would know no light, if the light could even exist without it’s counterpart we would not know it. We would have nothing to compare it to, nothing to point out it’s presence to we weak and small minded humans.

The shadows give us perspective. Respect them but do not look into them. Only a spare few can walk into that fury with open eyes but only because they are already tainted. They have already had their threads twisted and twined, pulled and prodded. They survived but they were strong and none return unscathed.

Respect them but keep your eyes forward. Do not look back. Do not look into the black. Keep your eyes forward and your mind alert. Keep your eyes forward but never forget.

The dark is not evil nor the shadows bane. They’re doing merely what they must. Protectors of the balance. They seek to do what most cannot stomach, to be the bad guys when bad guys are needed. To feed from us and corrupt us because if they didn’t their might not be an us at all.

Without them there would be no light, nor gray. We’d be lost in a sea of sameness without knowing the different, without knowing anything, without definition. Shadows bring us perspective and in essences they are the true light workers, the true good guys.

Accept your shadows, watch them within yourself, see the threads of fate, but don’t look back.

Shadows do the jobs that no one wants to do. They take the labels and titles and names that no one wants to bear. Guilt, anger, hatred, self loathing, depressions, sadness, the emotions no one wants to have. They do the dirty deeds that no other can do but yet must be done. Balance must be maintained. Imperfect perfection, the chaos causing peace. Even imbalance has it’s purpose.

Just don’t look back.

Please don’t look back.

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