A Life’s Worth

When Yue awakened from what she had presumed to be an eternal slumber, the one thing she saw as she floated weightlessly in darkness was a pair of cat-like eyes, each larger than herself. To Yue, it was as though she was a tiny flea perched on the tip of a cat’s nose, gazing into its huge, glowing eyes with a mixture of awe and fear bubbling away within the cauldron of her mind.

The left eye was completely white, except for the vertical slit in the middle – the pupil – that was darker than the darkest black, an abyss seemingly devoid of life, as though someone stabbed the top of the mid-afternoon sun and dragged the blade down, but ultimately failed to split it into two halves. The longer Yue stared into it, the stronger the feelings of wanting to look deeper, while simultaneously repulsed by the unnerving, endless chasm that could easily envelop her entire body if she tripped and fell into it.

The right eye was the opposite – a black canvas with a single slim beam of bright white which emitted feelings of gentle, soothing warmth reminiscent of those from the first flower to bloom at winter’s end, or the thin layer of sunlight that stretches across the horizon at daybreak. However strong the temptation was to approach this eye, Yue sensed that if she were to accept its allure, it would be like when one wakes up from a long, restful sleep – the sweet, peaceful dreams of the night abandoned and forgotten while stumbling blindly into a new day of unknowns. The end of a beginning, the beginning of an end.

The eyes were directed at Yue, the pupils unmoving as they appeared to study her. Yue involuntarily recalled her parents and their similarly cold, unfeeling glares when they would chastise her about what was ‘wrong’ with her – her bland appearance, her unrefined behaviors, her inelegant movements, it was always something different each time. However, the eyes did not emit animosity or sympathy – they simply stared at her, as though frozen in time and space. Memories, experiences, fears, desires – Yue had a hunch the eyes were boring deep into her heart and flipping through the pages of her soul. But she did not mind, for there was not much there to read in the book of her life anyway.

After all, she was only 18 when her story was cut short. In an age where the most spiritually devout were said to easily live beyond a century and legends of immortal mythical beings were told and retold with great admiration and fondness, Yue reasoned that her life most likely amounted to less than a single brush stroke in the chronological records of the universe – perhaps there was not even enough to make up a dash or a dot.

“Would I be a dash or a dot? Probably a dot. Simple and bland, easily substituted and replaced, with only one purpose of being the part of a greater whole. Glossed over and forgotten, eclipsed by entire paragraphs dedicated to the truly worthy.”

As Yue contemplated the insignificance of her existence, the eyes closed and a single, booming voice reverberated through her mind and soul.

“The Old One has reached Their Judgment.”