literature

Starving for renewal - EN

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Literature Text

My name is Wilson, and I'm an inventor.

Or rather I was, until a disastrous experiment sent me here. Here, I don't know where it is. Here, it's the end of the world, the beginning of time. Here is a new Eden where everything is still to do.

The gate I crafted with my hands hurled me in the middle of a strange, wild land, where, helpless as I was, fear, hunger and cold were my everyday lot.

But time had passed since my first clumsy steps in this world. I had set traps, invented the yoke, ploughed the earth. Mother Nature paid me, every morning, its levy of seed, of ripe fruits, of flesh, and a great fire burned into my hearth of fortune.

I survived this way many moons. How many, I don't know. Busy as I was drawing from the ground its nurishing substance, I didn't see the time fly. Worst, I didn't see my soul going with him.

At first light I hopped, an axe in hand, to gather logs for the fires, lights for the nights to come. Then I had to harvest pomegranates, durian fruits and pumpkins, carrots, eggplants, corn, check the traps, shave the bulls, plunder the hives, set new traps, plant new seeds and lie down at last, to start over the next morning.

Was it what I was, now ?

Was I prisonner of my life ? Slave to my needs ?

My scientific dreams were dying on my drawing board, and the routine of my work was speeding up their fall.

It had to stop, I had to make it end.

So one night, wild with anger -or was it lucidity ?- I did what needed to be done for a long time already.

I had a big cage where a single bird was singing. I slammed open the doors, letting my captive flee. And to put an end to this awful object, I twisted and wrecked the bars with rageful hammer blows. I put to the torch the value of my work, set fire to my walls, burned down all my treasures, and as I saw the flames licking at the twilight, I dreamt I was gazing upon the wings of my freedom.

I was done with servitude. If I wasn't a scientist, I would be an explorer.

In the shadows was lying down the last remain of settlement, a little crop, just a tiny square of ground ploughed this morning. I was going to set it fire, burn even the ground to make it barren, but between the furrows, a shoot, already, fragile, impertinent, was growing in the morning light.

Yet, if I wanted to be free, nothing required its death.

A bright dawn swept up the ruins and the ashes, and my doubts and my fears.

I was resolute to be reborn, to leave this life behind. I only took a bag with a few tools, flint, compas, a handful of seeds and a wooden spear. I'd drink water from the rain and go wherever the wind would take me.

And so I left.

My first days of wandering were wonderful, this land was rich of all kind of things, that were offered to those who knew how to catch them. Mushrooms, berries multiplied under my feet, without requiring any work, and a few twigs were enough to cast the night away.

But night was getting longer, and air was getting cool. I understood my mistake when the first snowflakes spotted the blue sky. Future would be tough. To get away from the bite of winter, I let the beard invade my cheeks, and I made some clothes from wool and fur.

A heavy blanket of cold came to cover the earth, freezing under its hold the seed, the bud, the fruit. The world, motionless and colorless, desolate and silent, was looking like a photography, and I, alone, lost inside this picture made of silver and glass, lived in the fear of its dreadful negative.

The nights were long, icy, merciless, they depleted fuel and food and, at the edge of my tiny island of light, a thousand hungry bellies were growling together.

The beasts attacked me three times and three times I pushed them back, but I was wounded, weaker every time.

I had to go home, to come back to my hearth, to my cooking pot, to my straw mattress. Alas, all of it didn't exist anymore, I made sure of that.

But there was still a thing that I did not burn down : my tiny crop, my little square of ground. I wasn't lost after all, I came here with nothing, I could still start over.

Full of hope I searched into the snow to find seeds I would plant at the first hints of spring. Eyes on the ground, like Hop o'my Thumb with his crusts, I followed that trail until a strange sound made me look up.

There was a door. Only a door, without walls, without house. A big frame of wood and steel set in the middle of nowhere, and slowly creaking open.

Like terrifying jaws, it was gaping on heavy, dense darkness that seemed to swallow the pale light of the day. And behind the doorsted, inside this pitch black night, a voice seemed to whisper :

"Come ! What do you have to loose, here ?"

But there was no voice. Only me, looking at my seeds, and wondering who, Icarus or Sisyphus, I wanted to be. Was it better do die aiming for the sun or pushing a boulder ?

One by one, the seeds fell from my hand. I made a first step, a second into the darkness. At the third, the wooden jaws in my back slowly started to close.

I had a little thought for my little garden.

Then, resolute, determined, to the unknown, to death, maybe, starving for renewal, I choose to step forward.
This short story was inspired  by Don't Starve, a wonderful game created by Klei Entertainment.

The original french version is available here.
© 2014 - 2024 Vassilius
Comments6
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Emfoofoo's avatar
a very well written and chilling story! great job!