on the cliff’s edge of winter, before the world fell into the flowery embrace of spring ; eden lovegrove came into the world.
a crimson red christened him in the blood that would taint the early shadows of his life, his quaint fingers reached out and yearned for a comfort that would never come ; and though his lungs burned with the weight of tears to be wept, the boy did not cry. asphyxia neonatorum —— respiratory failure is what the midwife had called it. the breathless agony of life had flooded and drowned eden from the moment he was born.
intubated plastic, solemn-faced physicians, silence —— then breath.
‘ good boy, ’ said the midwife. ‘ what took you so long, hm ? cry, my dear. never be ashamed of your tears. cry and everyone knows you’re alive. ’ *
as he bloomed from a deep shade of blue to the blush of peonies, eden couldn’t possibly have understood a word of what this midwife said ; let alone have remembered. and yet, from the moment he began crying in that little hospital room in wisconsin, all throughout the long years of his life —— as if he had remembered, as if he had understood —— his tears had never stopped. eden was alive, and it was a wonderful, and breathtaking, and excruciating, and harrowing thing.
‘ i see it all. i feel it all. i am inspired. my eyes fill with tears.’ **
with those sorrowful eyes of his that saw so much ; with heart-ached tears that ran like rivers down the curve of his cheek, eden ran from place to place in search of a sanctuary that could provide him refuge from the maddening, relentless, woebegone chaos of life.
nightmare-chased & sorrow ravaged —— in search of the pieces of his shattered, world-weary soul —— it was in this condition that eden lovegrove first found himself in kaos. on the day he’d arrived he’d walked and walked and walked ; exploring the sleepy, deeply picturesque streets in all their cobblestoned charm until his feet were sore enough to distract from the wound in his heart.
eden’s toes curled gently into a horizon of golden sands ; soft waves lapping at his feet as he relearned how to breathe. a softness emanated from the setting sun ; filling the broken man, full, to the bone. the world felt wide —— and for the first time in his life, on this strange and beautiful island called kaos, eden felt like he might be in exactly the right place at exactly the right time.
when eden collapsed into bed that night ; an unfamiliar light of hope began to glow against the jagged edges of his sorrow, and he felt in his soul that tomorrow might, perhaps, at last, be kinder to him than the woes of yesterday. as he closed his eyes ; eden felt his fingers, and toes, and body, and thoughts transform into dream dust. he tumbled into a deep and velvety slumber, and for the first time in years there were no nightmares laying in wait to devour him. in the hold of his dreams, there were no monsters —— no shadows of grief nor great valleys of sorrow.
rather than horrors, eden dreamed of a sun-blessed place that night. there, he saw himself surrounded by people that loved him. some were people that he’d loved and lost in the past ; some people were those with names he hadn’t yet learned. but they were all there —— in that kind, soft, dream. that sanctuary.
a sanctuary called kaos.
eden’s woes had followed him everywhere else on earth —— but for a brief, warm moment —— in the embrace of a few kind souls, in the love of a man he thought he’d lost forever, and in his broken heart that finally began to heal, he found peace on kaos island.
