Beginning

I was the last one to go.

I felt it couldn't have been otherwise. All around me, the air was silent. From my core to the edge of my body, the voice of life had toned down to barely a whisper. It made sense, I thought, in the mist of my mind – by then, there was nothing left to consume but ourselves.

I was the only one to face that cold, absolute silence. Not a soul was there to hold me in my passing. Even the crushed Guardian, with its faint throb of energy, faded fast in the howl of the wind. I would have given anything for a touch, a presence – be it a cruel one or not.

I was alone, yet no different than any of us. If the war had taught our kind anything, a message lost in the void, it was that we were equal. The same breath sustained us, beings of cloth and light; the same fate ended us, ice corpses on a bed of snow.

I was alive, they weren't; but nothing more set me apart from them. I lay on the ice where the last group had fallen, like the miserable remains of my companions. I, too, was wrong, weak and doomed. I would know no salvation.

I left the world after everyone else. Like everyone else I would have died, hadn't it been for the star.

My head was frozen into place, fixed on above. I couldn't miss it. It cut the thick storm in two, with the grace of a pair of wings; it fell on my dimming eyes like lightning, powerful enough to soothe my pain. And I understood.

Our arrogance had been to believe we were alone. Superior and almighty we had deemed ourselves, just to drag all other creatures in our own damnation. And if we still thought to be the core – if we were dying out in despair, assuming everything else would end with us – the star was lighting the sky to prove us wrong.

I recalled our roots, the true meaning, in the glimmer of its unwinding tail. I saw the mother mountain and its endless spring. I felt the force which had nurtured our tales since the dawn of time, despite our lack of respect.

I alone got the chance to remember. Beyond the borders of my eyes, even where I had no way to see, the world spread endless.

I wondered if, from the place I was headed to, I would ever get to tell someone else.

The star crossed my soul right before I fell asleep. In the space of one gaze, it made me whole again. It was the last thing I saw.

This must be why, every time their lives begin, I am their first.

My late tribute to Journey's fourth anniversary, in honour of a game that changed my life.