The Fabric of the World

"Please, stop! You're tearing at the very Fabric of the World!"

They were standing atop a small hill at the edge of a rather large city. The hill was covered with bright green grass, beautiful and in perfect contrast with the black and grey of the city that seemed to stretch onward forever, full of its little people with their little lives and little pains, little hopes. Everything became little in sight of that city. Indeed, the hill was barely noticeable next to the city, dwarfed by its size, but beneath the surface, far below the ground, the hill's roots ran deep, spreading under the whole city and beyond it, defining, shaping the world.

And on the top of the small hill, silhouetted perfectly against the blue sky above, they stood. A young man, aged perhaps fifteen years, with clothes that could in truth be called little more than rags, his features sharp, perpetually angry at the world surrounding him, his hair black and cut short, he had the small beard of a man who had not shaved for a couple of days. He was standing with his back turned to other man, an unbreachable wall of nothingness, so that the latter might as well not have been there.

The other man was a hunched, badly dressed old man, with no hair on his head but a very bushy beard, that of a man who had not shaved for many years. Or combed , for that matter. He was standing behind the younger man, his hand stretched forward, begging to be let in, that his words be heeded. His eyes were wise, full of emotion. In them one could see pain, suffering, despair, anger, hope, love, betrayal, and many other feelings that cannot be described properly with words. And though the older man could not see them, the younger man's eyes were full of absolutely nothing. There was no love, or hope, or beauty, nor was there any pain or suffering or despair. There was nothing but a dark void, empty save for the black reflection of the dark, unnatural thing he was creating - the Hole in The Fabric.

"Please! You have to stop! You have to understand!" The old man cried, despair clinging to his every word.

The child was an orphan, because his parents were dead, or perhaps just because they did not give him the warmth and love he needed and deserved. It made little difference, for the result is the same in both cases – the child was an orphan, at heart, if not in name. And the heart is what matters, for within the heart is where everything lies, all the traits and experiences that define a person. In this case – a decade and a half full of nothing. In his short and empty life, the boy had achieved a deep grasping of the way of the world, though not as deep as he had thought, of course. It never is, never can be.

Finally, he turned to face the other man, his face a blank slate, showing nothing.

"You fool old man. You're just like all of them, weak and stupid, desperately clinging to what they know, unable to let go and face change, even when it is clearly for the better. You want the world to remain as it is; you want to freeze time, to stop change.

You're scared; terrified of the unknown, holding on to the familiarity of the past, all the while condemning the future to wither and die. You fail to recognize that change is in the nature of the world, that in the cycle of life, all old things die while new things are created. Soon it will be your turn to die."

Ironically, while the words he spoke were truth of a kind, he was unable to apply them to himself. For just as the old man clung to what he knew, so did the boy cling to the nothingness he was so familiar with, greeting it like a best friend and using it to define the future.

Turning back to his work, he crouched down and sighed a long, audible sigh of satisfaction. Muttering a few words, he finished his creation, and stepped back. There, in the middle of the green meadow that coated the hilltop, was a black, empty hole.

It was beautiful.

"You see, old man, your precious Fabric is torn, and yet the world continues to turn. But not you." He added and spared a look for the now terrified man. "Oh, no, the time has come for the past to burn away."

As he finished speaking, a circular wave of pure death erupted from the hole, spreading in all directions in powerful surges. It touched the old man, and he crumpled to the floor, then faded away, leaving nothing behind. The circle of death sped onward, making the green grass wither and die, replacing the soft ground with bared, jagged rock. When it reached the city, it was absorbed in it, disappearing from sight.

And the boy too went into the city to live his life, soon finding his own pain and suffering, and love too, and beauty, and betrayal, and many more emotions that he had never felt before.

And as the years passed, all the little people continued living their little lives, and the landscape, as viewed from the rocky hilltop, changed. The city shrunk and moved and grew again, its shape was converted, and its color changed to bright green. Wars were fought, and finally, new life grew out of the death that came to pass. In time, society was turned around, and soon no one remained who remembered that that small hill in the middle of nowhere was once covered in green grass. Nor did anyone mind, for the rocks came to be perceived as beautiful and right in the minds of people.

And on one summery day, an old man with a long white beard and wise eyes, and torn clothes, their colors faded with the years, was desperately holding on to the past. He was standing on a rocky hilltop with a big hole in its middle, crying at the boy in front of him, begging him to stop, to understand why he must stop.

"Please, stop! You're tearing at the very Fabric of the World!"