Прохор Озорнин - On the Wings of Hope - Prose

Prisons and colonies. Penal servitudes and executions without trial. The ruined families. The deformed destinies. The destroyed culture. It was a horrible time…

***

He was the creator – one of those, loving his work – the artist and the writer of a new century. The century of creativity and freedom, a century of democracy of reasonable people – a century of peace, a century of creative recovery and inspiration. The century of world's blossoming – century of sunrise.

He worked along with other people. Creativity for goodness became a symbol of the epoch. Virtue became a world star, the sincere love became the sun, tenderness became the drops of a rain irrigating the Earth, the purified human hearts – stars in a sky.

The wonderful epoch of sunrise and ascension…

***

Pictures emerged from his memory one after another and immediately rushed away into unknown lands.

Epochs and centuries, replacing each other. His life – his set of lives in this world, set of the ways, passed by him in different epochs. He was all of them… he was in many times.

Now, only now he has finally remembered it. He has remembered it at the long last – this memory of his ways was always with him, was in each new life, but only now he could feel and realize all immenseness of own life – and all its greatness. Lives in myriads of epochs, life in myriads of times. Myriads of lives in one of the myriads of worlds.

How huge was his journey! How even longer and greater it can become! He has learned much in this time – willpower in battles, determination, and courage, fidelity and devotion, creativity as a life feat – all this became him. All this has grown and has assimilated in him.

He was in all – and all was in him. He was the creator, he, as well as others, was the creation of God – and was becoming his semblance.

The man has still stood for some time on his knees, listening to himself. This memory was with him – it always was with him. Now it was with him forever. He has already learned much about himself and this world, but there is still even more left to discover. For his journey – is a journey in the eternity.

And then he stood up and with a confident gait has moved to an exit – and left a temple.

Has sighed deeply. So, this way has just begun – his work is awaiting him, his life is waiting for him. And let the memory of this day never leave him – let it become the fire, guiding his way – a new journey in the transformed world.

So be it!

01.07.2003

“Stretch! Now push on! Push on! More! Come on, darling, I know that it hurts! Such is our female fate, we all passed through it. Here… I can see his head! A little more! He comes out! He comes all out! A little more, push on!”

Young mother – a woman of approximately twenty-five years – could barely constrain a cry of pain, which was continually coming to a dried-up throat and desperately, like a sea wave, rolling on a coast, seeking to break over and get loose. Two women were helping her during a childbirth. One of them was a midwife, who was now anxiously fussing near the woman in labor – and a complete stranger would give her by her look about forty years even though she was hardly thirty years old, having glanced on her face, which has grown thin due to a constant lack of sleep, and her hollow brown eyes. And the second… sun-casting, golden-colored and as if slightly transparent hair of the second woman were as if fluttering on the invisible to ordinary people wind during these moments, obeying the will of all the energies that were streaming through her, her celestial-blue eyes were shining with patience and kindness; white clothing, reminding a fantastic and magnificent wedding dress, only supplemented and emphasized her beauty. Hands of this second woman, so similar during these instants to a young regal bride, were directed to a woman in labor – and brightly flashing sparkles of light were continually flowing from them and smoothly, precisely like winter snowflakes, falling down from the skies, sitting down on her tummy, from where the newborn baby was about to be completely born. Neither the woman in labor nor the midwife saw in these minutes this mysterious stranger – for eyes of men are too blind to notice what is subject only to a spirit. Yet this didn’t confuse invisible guest at all – for the nature of her mission was so noble that a life for the sake of her fulfillment was already the highest possible reward. The light that was now flowing from her hands through invisible thin threads to a mother and her child, was weaving hidden for a common mortal being a purple sphere that was protecting them like a shield. A smile was playing on a face of the blue-eyed blonde and her cheeks have already managed to blush during the time of operation.

Life was entering the law. The baby was about to be born.

***

The woman in a black hood and the dress, reminding itself mourning clothes of a widow, who has recently lost her beloved husband, accurately stepped over a threshold, having almost hooked by a door’s handle with a hanging on her back and attached to a belt scythe. Having hushed to a cat, who has rushed under her legs and was just going to start crying “meow”, thereby breaking the blissful silence, so loved by this woman, she looked around and methodically put away from a pocket of her black as night dress a book of impressive thickness.

This, as it usually turns out in real life, completely unexpected by inhabitants of this institution guest wasn’t afraid to be discovered at all. To tell the truth, only cats and these few living beings, who have not yet lost a connection with what many mortals call as “the other world”, were able to detect her presence here.

Having once again re-read one of the pages of her book, which has been wrapped up in a black-brown skin, this green-eyed brunette slowly nodded, as if having made herself sure of correctness of the choice of both time and place, looked on a bony watch that was attached to her hand, and started slowly walking deep along the corridor.

Those ones living in this nursing home, if only they knew in advance what type of guest have visited their house today, would immediately rush away like mad from this future mourning place, protecting themselves with various signs of the cross in a strange hope that they, these signs, can alter their fates, which they have been forming for many years of own lives. The guest in black perfectly knew it – and this fact cannot give birth to anything other than a sad smile. For uncountable eons of her devoted sovereign service, she managed to get used to such an attitude from mankind, and it ceased to disturb her any longer. After all, for her, it was usual – and the only possible one – job, and this guest has been trying to execute it as precisely and carefully as possible.

Maybe in regards with her similar attitude to own work duties, she now decided to say a final goodbye to each of elderly pensioners, who were peacefully sleeping during this midnight in closed rooms away from prying public eyes. She quietly climbed by a cold stone ladder on a second floor with bedrooms, trying not to produce too much noise with her shod black brilliant boots or to touch yet another piece of local household furniture with her casting opaque light scythe, and started traveling from room to a room. She quietly embraced sleeping people, trying to imprint their faces in her memory and to hear the sound of their still-beating hearts. Two out of several dozens – who have lived their mortal lives very dignifiedly – she embraced so strong and has been holding in her hands for so long that beating hearts of the two stopped their rhythms while their masters were dreaming, thus entraining their souls in wanderings through labyrinths of other worlds. One may say that these two were lucky ones – they have left before those to whom this life will seem like a hell after several dozens of minutes. They were the worthiest ones among all living here and therefore according to the orders given today to a black guest, their parting with this world should have been as painless as possible. Having kissed this couple, our guest dexterously opened her thick book on the last page, which materialized from out of nowhere during that very instant and added itself to a book. Two names of her recent beloved ones were already imprinted on this page in golden letters – unlike a vast set of gray and almost black-colored names, which were filling in a small script several previous pages of this chronicle. Shaking her head with satisfaction, the guest in a black hood, covering her head, has been continuing her night trip until her bony wearable highlighted “five minutes before 1 A.M.” time. Then, as if having bethought, she took her eternally wearable weapon from her back, approached electricity switchboard and forcefully struck it several times with her scythe. Something flashed inside it, began to sparkle, then sparks started running over the wires, flame jumped on wall-papers, then on elements of furniture, greedily consuming oxygen. Several minutes later entire floor started blazing.