Fiction: ‘Universal’

A wise man once said that we don’t exist within the universe; we are the universe expressing itself as a living being.

We’re as much a part of it as the stars, planets and galaxies. After all, everyone and everything was once made from star dust.

Once.

But what if some people are made up of a higher concentration of the universe than others?

What if some people are purer, rawer?

They have been with us our entire lives, which only makes them more difficult to capture with something as clumsy as language. But when you meet them, you will feel their impact. It’s the shock of staring someone full in the face and realising that you know them without ever having met them before. It’s that all-consuming look in their eyes that pulls you in with the force of a quantum singularity, making any kind of resistance futile.

The universe is neither good nor bad.

Neither cruel nor kind.

And yet it’s so vast and powerful, so completely absorbing and inescapable, that we feel drawn to these universal people.

There’s a force within them stronger than any laws of physics.

Not the brute force some people mistaken for power, but a surging river of creative energy that can sweep you away until you have lost yourself completely, leaving no trace of your previous form.

They are hungry like that.

Ravenous.

They soak up the cold logic and knowledge of the world in order to create something even more magnificent out of it, something that can change the course of human history, and even outlive it.

At the same time, there’s something temporary about their presence.

It’s as though they’re both there and not there, like a black hole that can only be detected by the matter it chews up. Even their skin can’t hold back the limitless ocean of energy hidden behind such a modest form, one which makes us appear as nothing but shadows beside them.

Next time you come into contact with a universal being, just let go. Fall into their eyes. They are as much a part of you as you are of them, because in the end none of us exist in the universe.

We are the universe.

~ Ekaterina