Information

Solomon
Legacy Name: Solomon

The

Glacier Archan
Owner:

orion

Age: 14 years, 10 months, 2 weeks

Born: June 19th, 2009

Adopted: 6 years, 1 month, 4 weeks ago

Adopted: March 4th, 2018

Statistics

Level: 25
Strength: 35
Defense: 10
Speed: 10
Health: 10
HP: 10/10
Intelligence: 14
Books Read: 12
Food Eaten: 0
Job: Unemployed

the beams of our house are cedar; our rafters of fir

this is a love story in hell

[ M E S S E N G E R ]

Introduction

the state of things

There is no common logic to be applied to Hell. No laws of physics or tenets of religion. Hell is a place of perception, illusion. A plane where no structure or atmosphere exists but whatever a solitary soul projects.

For most it happens to be a rendition of what that big book says, corrosive air and mountains of ash. Rivers of blood and fire in the sky. But only because those souls believe this is the fate for which they were always destined and deserved, that it cannot change.

See—these souls lack creativity. That’s the punchline.

Hell is merely a mindgame.

Any violence is mere perception. There are none that torture or take by force, no imps or devils with sharpened claws. Hell believes in clean hands, if nothing else.

Solomon solved this riddle a century ago. It only took him two decades. He is yet only one of a handful.

Now, his Hell is a shore, vast and pristine, marred only by tufts of lavender and a single quiet tide-pool. Blue mountains stand boundary on one side and on the other, a mirror of pale water with its own seasons. Calm. Consistent. It resembles how his Heaven would appear in every way except one: he is alone.

The only commonality between all Hells is solitude, the presence of a single soul and no others. Those taunting, tearing hands, Hell has found, never had quite the effect of an eternity spent alone.

This is Solomon's punishment.

There are some--or rather, one, who still exists on the plane of the living, that brass scale of a middle ground--that believe him undeserving. One who does not deny the dirt on his hands but rather the circumstances that left them so sullied.

The bird is the first of many things that should not be in Solomon's Hell. He first sees it on what he considers to be the Northern horizon. He sits with feet buried in cool sand and watches as it approaches. It takes three months, but time is a simple commodity to which Solomon holds little value. On one rogue violent day he watches as it must dart in and out of the surf as it crashes to shore. But as quick as it came, soon the water settles and the bird carries on.

--

It's on a cloudy day that it makes it within a few hundred feet. He thinks, in a moment of unfamiliar madness, that once it does approach, it will simply pass him by and carry on as if he were nothing more than another pile of sand.

--

The bird is a sandpiper. It has no eyes. He thinks little of this, but it is difficult to avoid noticing. It stops at his feet where they are buried under hot sand and stares at him as though it had eyes, as though he is not a mere pile of sand but to whom it was tasked to deliver some great message or speech. Solomon does not speak and he finds that whatever thought he entertains--about the bird, about the water, about time and the passing of one hundred and sixty four years--he does not entertain long. For it is gone as quickly as it arrived and the bird that should not be there has not moved. His messenger stands idly for eleven days and Solomon does not look away from where it should have eyes but where it does not have eyes; the bird does not look away.

--

On the eleventh day the sand is cool and the water is still. The messenger is gone. It was there, and then it was not. Hell is a mindgame, Solomon knows, but one with two players. Soul and Sentinel.

Solomon has a thought that does not flee, that sits with him as he buries his feet in the sand. The messenger is a third, an unexpected player on the board, he thinks for two years, without letting go.

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