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Calliope’s world was quiet.
She sat atop her hive, alternating between crossing her legs and folding them neatly beside her. It was difficult to sit comfortably, the clamp around her ankle pressed into her legs and she would sometimes sit on the chain leading back into her hive. Not a day went by where she didn’t think about how inconvenient her imprisonment was.
It would all be over soon, and she found great relief in that. Each day brought her closer and closer to the game that she and her brother would play with her friends, and she knew that she would leave this one behind to access whatever her new land would be.
Her eyes glazed over the expanse of her planet, the garish scenery of thousands upon thousands of corrupted statues. It was the reminder of a civilization long come and gone. A civilization that she knew she couldn’t be a part of, and had no desire to be, considering what they left behind. She would much rather live on Alternia as a troll, or maybe even humanity’s Earth!
This world was the one that she grew up on, and the solitude that it provided her was helpful on some of her rough days. Cherubim naturally had an affinity to solitude, and she knew that she wouldn’t last long amidst the hustle and bustle of either one of the planets and species she adored.
Nevertheless, it made her feel… lonely.
Not in a way that she already felt. Of course, if you were the only living being on the planet besides your wretched twin brother, you would feel the same. But it was the suggestion of a society lost to her that tugged down on her heart. She imagined all of the people who could have surrounded her if she was born into another life. People who could have talked to her and gave her the physical contact that she desperately longed for, despite what she was. Her chains held her back, and she knew that if her planet had any other form of life on it, she was destined to never feel the joy of that connection.
She wasn’t sure what was worse, being completely and utterly alone physically... or mentally.
On one hand, she had her friends that she could talk to whenever she wanted to, and whenever she saw a spot on their timeline that left them unoccupied. They loved her, she thought. At the very least they tolerated their conversations. Their constant reassurances helped her believe this. But there was always the nagging feeling in the back of her head that they weren’t actually there. She wasn’t having any meaningful connection with another person, and it only existed within her mind.
There was an old Earth term for the phenomenon, one that she can’t remember the name of, but she still held onto the concept and mulled it over now and again.
It went like this: There were prisoners within a cave that have lived there all of their lives, chained down and permanently faced away from the cave’s opening. The exit was steep and far away from them all, and it was far enough that not many people believed one existed at all. The fire behind them illuminated objects that they couldn’t see, and they could only identify figures that passed by from the shadows that were cast onto the wall. They had no idea whether or not these shadows were from real people or puppets, but the shadows were the only reality they knew.
Of course, she paraphrased the whole allegory. She knew it went on to talk about the nature of philosophers who leave the cave, blinded themselves by the sun for the first time, and adjusting to how the world truly was on the surface. But she can make the allegory mean whatever she wanted it to mean if it would fit the situation. This was her depressive episode, and she got to choose how to interpret writing!
Calliope had enough of moping around outside for today. As she descended, the chain affixed to her ankle rattled against the ladder. She felt the vibrations of the metal against metal with the softer parts of her bony claws. At least she knew that was real. The thud of her shoes against the floor was real, and so was the musty air filled with the scent of raw meat and sugarcane.
With the allegory still fresh in her mind, she drew the connection between the glow of her screen and the light of the fire. What she once considered the connection she had to other people now felt like an illusion; the colourful words on the screen were only shadows of what was real, and she had no true knowledge of what was on the other side. She was separated from them by both time and space, and it was a steep climb to get to the top of that slope and towards reality.
She could take the allegory more literally than the crusty old men who wrote it, given her unusual upbringing. She was physically chained to a cave all of her life, and the only contact she had with the outside world was the shadows left behind of a lost civilization She could climb out of the cave if she wanted to, but staring at the bright red sun of her planet was no issue for her. It was not the sun she needed. It was the connection to other people.
Her chain glided against the ground with a soft rattle as she made her way over to her desk. The drawing of Roxy enjoying her beloved juju sat half-finished between her cosplay wig and her computer monitor.
If it meant climbing and clawing up the steep slope of sburb to get out of this cave to see the reality of her friends, she’d do it. Because she knew where her sunshine was.
She knew who her sunshine was.