Raluca Ioana Vârgolici participates in the “Short prose” section of the International Literary Creation Competition, 4th edition, from Bucharest, Romania. Raluca Ioan is 30 years old. We thank her for her participation and wish her success.

                                                                                          The last dream of Atman

“There was neither death nor immortality then. There was no distinguishing sign of night nor of day. That one breathed, windless, by its own impulse. Other than that there was nothing beyond.”      
                                                                      Nāsadīya, 10:129 – 2, Rig Veda.

There was only darkness, casting its shadows on timeless realms, eons before templum Brahman would pace his echoes to make the first light clasping neverending brims. For immortality asks for time, and e`en though before creation there was none, he was before ever going to be, long before forging  dreamless, tempus Atman. 

Yet ever Atman sings a hymn of being, and God listens, and he later adorns what would be called the kin of men by the sound of his archaic song. And the same hymn lies in the spirit of men, and no man could forget its calls, for its echoes reverberate moments, as their lives vibrating in the web of time. But men will receive the breathe of life far late, long after death consumed the first crumbling lights in the age of rebirth.

Before time could tell the tales of beginnings, Atman succumbed into spheres of dreams, dreaming of being him, for he is him, and yet not the same, thus the hymn he sang was, too, corrupted by the darkness, and it`s grasping silence.

But then the nothingness starts to tremble, for he raises the cloak called time, and within the depthen of the blackness, a shining dot emerges. The first beginning, shivering in solitude, and many more to be brought to life, until the same blackness consumes them all, in the era of black holes.

And one dot, out of many others that spread across timelines, caught Atman into its enchanting story. For its glimmer would follow the once forgotten rhythm, as the light breaks into obscurity, singing in his eternal remembrance. Whilst the white veil is dancing and extending its frightening warmth across the space, it follows hymns once lost, thus now bringing movement to elements of power. At the dawn of time, under pillars of light, energy, and chimes, giants were born; the greatest and biggest stars, whose greatness once conquered the forever ghostly, endless darkness.

Then there were moments, rolling on the beating cloak of time, too many to count and too few to grab in such dormand, unborn memories. Until one moment afterward, there were family of stars, and spheres that lack light, and black holes roaming around, and undiscovered white holes, and forces were keeping them all in their place, on a pace he once tuned.

And more moments after, there was life, and Atman was fulfilled for he could see himself in the transcending colors – but no color was truly alive, until the breathing of the first men. He then could see the majesty of God, the mercy of his atemporal being, and the cruelty alike. For he made the moving stars, the colors of their deaths, the painting sunsets and the aghasting fate of lovers who are searching for one another without ever once meeting. 

For the fate of men is shared with that of stars – few meet, some die alone, and others pledge to meet on the bridge of shining hope, alas Rigel and Betelgeuse. 

And e`en he sees it all, for hope blooms in his spirit, and mercy, and sorrow, and happiness and all the emotions this universe could ever gather – he learns them all. In silence he swings, between O and A, thus the once dreamless is now dreaming his last dream before the cosmogonic flash.
                                                                              *

And today, on chains of stars, Atman lives, and dreams, and hopes, and travels in men`s abysmal hearts, and sings his hymns, bringing unbowed God closer to their bowing, fragile spirits.

But the tale is lost, for only those who dare to wander can find the wanderer.