WORLD: Chiafella, TIME: 6357, CHARACTER: Xia

'And what if I fall?' We shall find out, my dear, I answer the voice in my head. I see my whole life flash before my eyes as I fall deeper and deeper still, through the mists and chilly winds, with no mysterious force to hold me back, catch my fall. Light breezes turn to strong winds that brush my face and the clouds turn into pure darkness in which I descend faster than the cold wet rain.

Darkness. Blackness. Nothingness. What is this place, if it is a place after all? What if I'm dead, what if...?

"This is The Dark Side. Welcome among the damned."

As my eyes get accustomed to the dark I begin to realize that I'm not alone. Lots of hardly visible figures stand on that desolated place to surround me, and soon I can see the pleasant glimpse of the torchlights. They guide me along the path of darkness that all but feels real, soon to arrive at a place that seems like a village. Several torches sparsely cast their dim light upon the village square, a neatly paved area surrounded by countless tiny houses, some of them enlightened up to lighter, grey shades of black. Dark grey smoke is puffing from the chimneys and I can even hear children's laughter in a joyful play.

"What is The Dark Side? Who are these people?"

I ask impatiently, curiously as an innocent kid when I'm led into a low wooden building that resembles an ancient countryside tavern. The place is far better lighted, with many fires shining from the strong torches attached to the bare walls and I can inspect the locals with all of their friendly features. An old man sits on a decayed bench opposite me and pours two big cups of wine from a well-preserved bottle as he begins to speak.

"I'm not sure if you are prepared to hear this story, but I guess I'm going to say it anyway. Because you asked, you want to know. And because you're going to stay here for a quite a while," he grins, sipping the blood red wine from a heavy cup of tin.

"The world that we share is consisting of two parts, and has been since the beginning of time. The opposite spaces together create a force that is able to hold them inseparable, along with all the islands with lakes and forests and houses that you live in. The world that you know under the name of Chiafella, which means The Light Side in the long-gone language of the first settlers, had been artificially created to match their vision of heaven.

'More than six thousands of years ago a dreadful disease had spread among these first inhabitants of the Dark Side. Most of them died in agony, but a part of them were strong enough to survive and mutate into a quite different species. These are the legends, that they had grown large wings glowing like the brightest rainbow, and not being able to stand the darkness of eternal night anymore they spread those wings and fled upwards. Tempted like an unknowing moth to the burning flame they were rising high through the Dividing Mists, seeking to find their living place forever upon the floating isles, with all the riches that their grounds provide.

'The Light Side was a true heaven, with unlimited sources of food, minerals and energy, and a spectacle of beauty with warm sun that never fades and green islands with nothing but blue sky below and overhead. Soon they had established their own culture and a way of life they hadn't dared to dream of ever before and they forgot about their origins, about their fellows they had left behind. But their well-being and happiness didn't last for long. Only a few centuries later they found themselves on the verge of a great war that swept them off the surface. There were just too many treasures and wealth to be had, temptations to a naive mind and an untried heart, they couldn't resist and let their greed lure them into the global war that was their first and their last.

'That is the history of Chiafella, of both sides of it. Our people remember through the stories and tales given to us by the generations past and the ancient books of legends they had written to make us witnesses to their unlucky fate. We had chosen to survive, the generations through the millennia, but the high price of our lives is to live in the eternal night, never ever have these faces been illuminated by the warmth of the sunlight, never have we felt the morning breeze caress our hair. There is no way out of here, back into the light or anywhere else. Xia, you must know this, understand and accept it for your own sake. You can't return to The Light Side once you have fallen through the Dividing Mists."

The old man finishes his exhausting and hardly believable tale, be it just the legends that never happened or the truth, written down in detail to preserve the continuity of the events passed by. I sit there on my own, silent and speechless, long after I watch him leave the tavern through the creaking door, and listen to the sounds of the empty room mixed with the echo of the words spoken in my head. These words keep haunting me, their weight descending upon me with all the sudden meaning, the revealing of history that I have never searched for, even though I pour and drink my third cup of wine. The old man's last words scare me most. I shall never return home.

Slowly I stand up and turn to walk out of the darkened tavern, not sure where to go and what to do, if there is anything that could be done at all. Like a fallen angel that was dropped through the hourglass I had awakened at the other side, a darker and deeper parallel to the only world I've known. Maybe this is the punishment, the dead end of the winding pathway of my fate, for all the wrongs and mistakes I had made during my life. The people that I've hurt, the hearts that I've broken, they won't forgive. Nobody will truly rest in peace, there is just a black hole that we fall into, sink into the mud of our lies, without a hope for salvation, because the only heaven we had and we lost.

I walk across the abandoned square, listening to the silent sounds of night undisturbed except for my own steps ringing and echoing upon the ancient stony pavement. The central area of the gloomy village disappears out of my sight and another gathering of low houses spreads before me, all covered in a soft black veil of darkness, along with some withered, dying trees. Far away across the distance I can recognize deep woods that are surrounding a wide lake and a swamp. What use can there be in living such wasted life on such a place, when all that this place can give is a constant view of death that chills the bones?

Then a familiar voice cuts the silence. I turn around to face a small shape of a child painted in the cold night air by the torchlights. To my great amazement it is Geeni, my beloved lost and found Geeni, and she is alive and well and merrily staggering to me upon her weak wounded legs. She starts crying and talking chaotically as if she herself was too confused to tell what became of her and how she ended up in here. I gather that the nightmares woke her up once more that fatal night but they were so vivid that she jumped out of the window and hurried across the plains. There she believed to meet her father who had died years ago, returning with his ship from ChiafellaMain.

"Mama, come," she pulls my sleeve so sweetly. "I have found my Daddy. He's here, and he's living in a nice house on the edge of the village. Come, he's been waiting all along."

Amazed and speechless I let my little girl guide the way. Silently, a delightful tear of expectation flows down my cheek.