The sun was beaming warm and yellow high on the bright blue sky, burning away any clouds from Esther's mind. Passing splushes of green trees, soft yellow terraced houses and old ladies, knitting in their dooryards, she couldn't help but let out a quiet, joyous melody. Let it flow from me, she thought, and bring happiness to the world around me, for I love it so.
At home--on her balcony--she would enjoy a drink, the company of her fiance and the view of the great orange disk, slowly dying with indescribable beauty, bleeting on the green sea. When the sun had finally died out and silver sprinkles bestrew the dark blue night sky--parading around the glowing, pale plenimoon--they would go to bed, satisfied and carefree.
But there in her dark, scorching bedroom she woke up with a shock and an unpleasant feeling running with the river of sweat down her back. She stared out the window, from her sheets, at the moon grinning, then turned towards her lover but he was nowhere to be seen. In a fright, she turned back to the window, staring at nothing but the darkness staring back. She leapt out of her bed, crying, this is a nightmare, but onto a cold stone floor she fell and suddenly found herself in a dark, dank cave.
Bewildered and hopeless on the icy floor she wept, not caring for the sharp rock gnawing at her bare skin but certainly feeling it. All alone forever now, she said to herself but just as she did, faint voices of casual chatter found its way to her, echoing down the cave, coming from up a slope--the end of which seemed to shine with bluish daylight. Though it seemed far away and like a fever dream, Esther managed to stand up and--with all her strenght and much pain--stumbled upwards, towards the light. The closer she got the happier and more homey the chatter seemed--she could even make out the voices of her dear mother--but her legs felt like liquid or soft butter and her thoughts were grains of sand, deteriorating her will to move on.
She sat down, just for a quick break, she told herself but started weeping again, long exhaustive cries, cursewords at the world, herself, alone in the dark cold cave, people being joyful right outside, where they couldn't hear her wailing and she just couldn't go. The tears ran down her body in streams first warm but soon like ice. They formed a river on the cave floor and she slipped down to the bottom of her personal hell.
Here, her river turned into a lake but though she was shaking from the cold and the crying, she kept on weeping until she could no more and collapsed there on the stone cold floor. She woke up sore, feeling as if she had been fighting the worst of demons--and lost miserably. When she saw that she was still in the dungeon she tried to cry again but no more tears did she harbour and no more sobbing would her body do. Ditching that plan but with no less despair, she crawled to one of the cave walls and rested her weary, bare and battered body against it. It seemed indisputable now that she would never leave the cave. As that thought dawned upon her and exstinguished what little hope she might have had left, she etched her name into the rock wall, badly tearing her fingers in the process. Bleeding--not only from her fingers but also from all the small cuts on her body that the cave of a thousand spiky rocks gave her--she sat back and shut her eyes.
Esther woke up with a start and was about to weep again--purely per reflex--when she found that she was back in her soft, warm bed. Golden light from the early spring sun was shining through her window and dancing in the curtains, birds were humming and whistling jolly melodies all the while her alarm was screaming aggressively, intensely displeasing; she had overslept and would be late for work. In a flourish of clothes, cuss words and quick breakfast with too strong coffee, she made herself ready for the day and tramped hastily out of the door, all while rehearsing excuses to her boss in her head.
She had had so many days off the past half year that she couldn't afford these small derelictions and she knew that. She had not covered from the accident that late summer, she supposed she never fully would, but she finally felt ready to revisit the cave.
This time armed with a flashlight and proper footwear for the steep slope ahead, she ventured down the gaping wound in the earth. Down a windling path, far longer than she had thought, until she reached the bottom. Panning the light around she first noticed that the cave was much larger than it felt like when first she was there.
Then she saw it; the innumerable names of all the people in the world--of all nations, all ages, all cultures. There was her father's name and there her late sister's. There, a name she never knew and there one everyone had read about. Names in scripts she couldn't read and names not yet given.
All the names of the world, together there in the cave of despair.