The Middle

One day out of frustration the boy shouted: ‘WHY ARE YOU SO EMPTY?!’ into the depths so that no one could hear him, for while the waves of sound the question produced were towards the abyss, the sentiment was actually aimed at himself. The boy felt the ancient void inside himself and even if others shared this feeling, no one ever spoke about it.

The abyss was taken aback by the sudden inquiry being levelled at it so aggressively that it triggered the knowledge and confidence it always had and made it remember who it was.

Emptiness was invented by its children, it realised, a word for things they could not perceive and an ever enveloping and developing entity amongst them.

It itself was full, richer than anything on the surface, a refuge for anything it could contain and the source for all that was.

The abyss did something it had not done in how long it could not remember and answered: ‘Empty is the blindness of those who can see’ said the abyss .

The boy was in turn startled, having inadvertently started a conversation with something beyond his understanding. Though he had understood what was said he knew he hadn’t used his ears to take the answer in, the answer was something that reverberated in a part of himself that he could not define.

The innate connection he felt but not understood as a young boy suddenly made sense to him. From that point the abyss and the boy had no secrets for one another. The boy asked the abyss its name and many questions about its existence but a lot of the answers the abyss gave were far beyond him to understand.

The abyss in turn heard all about what its children had built and created and while it was impressed with their ingenuity and their sheer will to burrow blindly looking for something that wasn’t there, a lot of it was just far beyond it to understand

This relationship between the abyss and what it kept perceiving as being a boy, now a grown man, continued. The boy tried to get his people to break with their games and distractions to look the abyss in the face and perhaps gain something, but to no avail.


The boy remained a lonely man and kept deepening his bond with the abyss and to try to make his people see the light, until the end of his time on the surface drew near.

His hair had become long and gray, his body brittle even though it still had a silent dignity about it that commanded more respect than any of his developed muscles had done in his younger years.