Hearken Yon, O Child (Short Story, Chapter 1)

This is another bit of fiction I originally posted on Ubersite over a decade ago. This one was first posted on August 27, 2004. I worked on it here and there for a year or two, and then abandoned it, long, long ago. I suppose if there were any interest, I might consider resurrecting this story some day.

Eric was exhausted. His eyelids closed tightly, and he started to go over the events of the day but got only as far as a few words in his mind before the darkness of a deep slumber enveloped him.

The wind whistled all around him as he opened his eyes to see a deep blue sky in every direction. Every direction, that is, but down- which happened to be the last place he looked. As he gazed between his feet below him, the figures rapidly approaching took shape. He was falling, with great speed, towards a park in the middle of a large metropolitan area. People walked around trees and ponds like small insects, but that was soon to change as Eric rocketed towards the ground.

Eric knew he had been here before. Find the place, he told himself... find the state. He let go of all he was perceiving, and grasped hold of something inside himself- a state of serenity that was almost impossible to attain in such a dire situation. Opening his eyes again, a change had occurred within him... for behind his irises no longer lay an empty stare, but instead burned the fire of the Divine.

The citizens of New York who had the fate of witnessing the coming events would not forget them for as long as they lived. Those who happened to be in Central Park at that fateful moment could not help but crane their necks upward when they heard the shrill piercing note ring across the wind, coming directly from a bright dot against the cloudless sky that appeared to be growing rapidly in size. Within the space of scarcely a second, it flew with startling velocity into an uninhabited section of the earth, rippling and cracking the ground in all directions as it struck. The wave of sediment knocked several people over as it cascaded in a twenty feet radius from the point of origin.

A businessman gathered his senses and his hat from the ground where he had fallen, soon enough to recognize the figure crouched in the dust. A hand upon the ground and another stretched before him, he remained stationary for several moments at the epicenter of the explosion as an unearthly light cascaded about his raiment. It was a young man, clad in the whitest cloth- and strangely enough, his garb appeared unblemished by the cloud of dust that had yet to settle over the massive crater.

Eric arose from the place where he had landed, and surveyed the massive destruction around him. A few lay injured and bleeding from pieces of concrete that had fragmented and taken flight from a former sidewalk, but Eric knew instinctively that none were mortally wounded.

He was also cognizant of what he had to do. Every thought fell into place like the gears of a well-oiled clock; clear, precise and immutable.

"Boy? Boy, get up, you can't sleep here!"

Eric's eyes fluttered open to the sight of a bus station attendant, wearing the traditional dark blue uniform and cap. He pulled himself off of the bench into a sitting position, rubbed the sand from his eyes, apologized to the man, and left. He did not wonder about the dream. He had been having dreams quite like it, every night for the past three years.