Letters Across the Sky

Dear Dusk,

It's not very strange, that I miss you. You were the closest thing to a friend I had. When you revealed your chosen path, it was a bit like a betrayal. I had known for months, of course, but I always hoped that maybe you would change your mind…that maybe, I could change your mind. So I showed you science and I told you about wonder. But in the end, only you could decide to see and to hear.

You obviously did not.

I knew it wouldn't matter. I knew we'd remain friends, that we'd be even closer as the years passed and you realized how much I valued your existence. I thought it might be better this way. You were the spiritual and I was the physical. You dealt in faith and I in knowledge. The eternal duality was perfectly represented between the two of us. Perhaps, the eternal struggle could finally be resolved between the two of us.

I was obviously wrong.

You chose to shut yourself off and to isolate yourself from us. Yes, I am a scientist. No, I do not agree with your beliefs. But neither have I agreed to discontinue our alliance. This was not a contract that could be terminated as soon as you could find no further use for it. It was a bond, forged in shared experiences.

We are not so different that we cannot continue, my friend. The greatest strength we had was always our diametric opposition to each other. Alloys make the strongest metals, and enemies make the greatest allies.

You were my ally, and now you have chosen to make yourself my enemy. This is the worst kind of enmity; it is the Arctic wasteland of relationships, cold and barren, devoid of everything and filled with nothing. The last gasps of the friendship I felt are starving polar bears. The ice is empty of sustenance, and they will soon succumb to its frozen grip.

I feel that this will not be our epilogue. There are chapters yet to come. Their contents fill me with dread anticipation of a most unscientific nature. A war between us can be the only possible outcome of this bleak stalemate. As yet pawns, we are both more than capable of gaining rank on the universal chessboard.

At the beginning, when I was yet naive, I assumed we would all be kings and queens, leading the battle and commanding the outcome. I see now that our choices and experiences have shaped us to particular roles. Without doubt, you are fated to become a bishop. Your thinking is linear and intensely focussed; like the bishop, you take great leaps from the rear ranks straight into the heart of the enemy. Yet, if you are black, you remain on black and never consider the white.

I find myself more suited to the garb of a knight. There is an uncommon, roundabout manner to the knight's movements that singularly appeals to me; a strategic, subtle indirectness in that dance between white and black, as though the piece is aware of a grayness just beyond reach. The knight's leaps are shorter, but are wider and have more freedom. I will not rise as fast as you do, my enemy, but I will outstrip you at the fullness of my power.

Because we failed to resolve ourselves in our youth, the forces we represent will come to a head in a final, all-consuming confrontation. You will have mysticism and dogma with the weight of centuries at your back; a great shadow looming behind you, threatening to obscure all. I will have the piercing light of a trillion questions, sung by voices clamoring for truth.

Because you turned our steadfast allegiance into a barren enmity, I have resolved to defeat you. My light will end your darkness and your reign of ignorance.

Yours,

Dawn.