Auther: Anouk Pollet
First there was darkness. It was not the comforting, familiar darkness when you go to sleep in your bedroom, but oppressing, overwhelming black. It was all that there was, until one day a star came out of nowhere and fell down until it hit solid darkness and couldn’t fall any further. The darkness swallowed the fallen star and tried its best to extinguish it, but the star came up through the dark and bloomed into a small, silver flower. On every petal there was an overload of light, which would fall off and then take random places in the darkness, shedding light wherever they touched. They were the first stars, and they were every colour of the rainbow. The darkness saw the stars as a threat instead of its opposite, and rose up in revolt. It swirled like a tidal wave and crashed down on the source of all light, the flower. Long after the flower was dead light shone through little gaps in the darkness. Finally the darkness went back to where it had come from, satisfied that the flower would never again shed its light and destroy the darkness. All of the stars wept when they saw the dead flower, until before their astounded eyes the flower straightened its stem, unfurled its leaves, and returned to the vibrant thing that it once was. The flower didn’t stop there, but instead it went one step further and created a world. It was to be the first of many worlds that would make it their mission to fight the darkness. The stars were so happy that they shone brighter than ever before and the darkness was forced to retreat to a secluded and forgotten corner, where life bypassed it and light couldn’t reach it.
“I will be back,” it hissed as it left, but the stars were so happy that they didn’t care. The flower however, being by far the wisest of them all, considered the darkness’s words.
“It will be back, and next time we might not be strong enough to defeat it on our own,” it warned, and this time the stars listened.
“What do we do?” They clamoured, and in answer the flower used all of its remaining light to transform itself into a funny creature with two things called legs and two things called arms. The stars were curious. What was this new phenomenon that they were witnessing?
“This is a human, the first of many more to come,” said the once-flower, “and it will hold the light of the stars in its hands. Take care of it.”
The once-flower then died, its last spark of life giving the human thing consciousness. The stars watched as it made funny noises and looked around it, and some stars were so taken with their new toy that they became one on the green planet. And so the race of humans were born, made solely to fight the darkness.