“Sometimes, you just need to sit and bask, bake, under an uncaring sun.” He inhaled slowly, as if drawing in the very heat around himself. My ears were so poised for his next words I almost missed them in the background noise.
“Because, daughter mine, the world under your feet, the grass and insects and animals, all that wind and rain and ceaseless molten activity?” He exhaled his breath as if it were smoke from a tasteless cigar; a habit that he’d kicked but that followed him like a stray dog, “It barely notices your passing. Unless you Make it notice.”
I often wondered if that was why he had burned that giant factory down, assaulting the fire brigade, then police that tried to contaiin him, as if the fire were a warning about the real danger; he was worse than a five-alarm blaze, more destructive than an earthquake and twice as likely to pour boiliing philospophical threats down your throat as he was to scam you blind.
Those words he spoke to me (the last words he spoke to me) should have given me purpose – some drive to motivate me to better myself – but it only made me question whether the sun could, in fact, care.
I suppose that’s why I find myself in a broken pod, staring out the only window at a star so massive, even the spots on it could engulf me without incident; sirens wailing, the inevitable pull of atmosphere as it rushes through myriad leaks in the hull, even the broken chatter of my colleagues on the ship behind me as they attempt to understand why I sabotaged the pod before hurling it and myself towards that stellar oven.
In hindsight, I idly wondered if the old bastard was right, before I felt the first ray of pure, undiluted sunlight grace my form through the rapidly deteriorating vessel. Within seconds, I was blind, and mere seconds later, I was burning. A minute later, and what remained of my blasted corpse was igniting and flaring as the unfathomable pull of the sun drew it effortlessly in.
The sun wasn’t uncaring; no, no, it cared a great deal. But what an immense churning giant of gas and flame cares about is not something we can comprehend, let alone appreciate.
At least, that’s what the melting pile of jelly that considered itself to be my brain tried to explain during the descent to brain-death.
This is another sketch, based on a line of reasoning I stumbled into while doing what the titular father suggested – sitting out in the sun. Whether this all makes sense, I can’t say; I’m just content putting something up.
