The Bottom Shelf Review

The Void’s endless expanse is suffocating. There is nothing, yet it fills the lungs and presses against the senses. All that can ever be seen are thin strands of webbing stretching from nowhere to everywhere that try to make sense of it all. Sometimes the darkened shape of the wide-eyed, long-armed spider, Kaimara, may dart past at the edge of vision. They were the first movement in the nothing, drawn in by the timeless Void, and they delegated to themself the task of counting the moments for eternity on their mighty web, but they are seen only when she is near. Only when Aylia, the beloved goddess, is close and her light—oh, her magnificent light—catches the threads of time or glints off a watching eye. Only when she speaks does sound feel gentle and warm, rather than the scuttling of the spider’s legs or deafening silence.

“Umbryn,” Aylia says to me, calling my name. “My dear shadow, are you with me?”

“Always,” I respond, a whisper over her shoulder, a dark reflection in her wake.

It is not as though I have a choice in the matter. Ever since the first drop of dew fell from the spider’s web and Aylia glittered to life on its surface, I have been behind her, encompassing darkness as she does light. I walk in her footsteps, I dance where she dances, and I listen to her sing. Sometimes, I even catch a glimpse of her face. Long lashes curl like their own beams of light and hair is tucked back from her face with a band of webbing, strung with dew drops that cast bursts of colors across her fair skin. I wonder if we might look alike, but she has not told me so. Her eyes never meet mine. Nor do they ever land on my face. I dissolve under her gaze.

Perhaps I am not real. A figment of Aylia’s imagination, personified.

But then again, I suppose the empty universe has created a rule with the pair of us, all those millions, or billions, of ages ago. Wherever her light goes, my darkness must follow. Never the inverse.

I peered at my reflection once in a large droplet that hung heavily from a thick strand of web. There was not much to see. Aylia’s light nearby twisted around the silhouette of myself, sucked in like my very presence drained the light from the space I took up. All I could see was my own eyes, staring back at me. They looked so melancholy. I shook the web until the drop fell, and I pondered as I watched the dew drift away if I might be less so if it were only me, without her to compare myself to. But as darkness is the absence of light, I cannot exist without her.

She ruins me and she completes me.

“Do you ever wonder if there are others?” Aylia asked me once. She was braiding her hair.

“There are none.”

“Then where did Kaimara come from?”

It was a good question. She is always so wonderfully curious.

“Another universe, perhaps,” I told her.

“Mmm.”

It disappoints her when I do not give her the answers that she wants to hear.

Often, I find myself wondering what it is like to be Aylia. I sit by and watch her converse with the spider. Even though Kaimara never responds—they have no mouth—their eyes meet and their hands touch. Aylia is fascinated with the long, nimble limbs that sprout from their sides and keep time on their web. She has never held my hands or touched my arms or my face. We are opposites, she says. It may destroy me. Or both of us. She only wants to protect me. I do as she says and keep my distance. It is never the answer that I want, either.

Thrice now, however, I have nearly caught Aylia by the hand. It feels natural, somehow, to dance hand in hand when she throws her whole being into her elegant steps, and I find my body moving on its own to reach for her before I remember her words and pull away again. It is such times I am glad that she never looks at me. My face may show shame at my disobedience. Or worse, it may show regret that I had not gone through with it. It is a torturous tug of war.

The first two times, she did not even notice my movement. The third time, however, her dance stops and she falls quiet. She is listening.

“I am sorry,” I say into the silence after it had begun to make my ears ache.

She shakes her head and sighs. “Darkness and light do not mix. You know this. You only follow… It is all you were ever supposed to do.”

For once, her voice is not an oasis in the void. Of course, she has told me before that we are not to mix. Of course, she has reminded me time and time again that I am her shadow. I am tethered to her, just out of sight. A shimmer in the corner of her view. But this time, those last words ripped into my chest.

“You cannot know that.” My hands clench at my sides. “You cannot. We are all there is, just light and dark in this endless place.” I pace behind her, frantic, racing thoughts tumbling through my mind, and out through my lips. “The Void simply exists; it will not speak to us. Kaimara will not speak to us. There are no others, there is no grand design, no consequences to action, no purpose. There is only what we have!”

“And what is that?” Her cold words add another sharp sting to my gut.

I stop in my tracks as I search for a word, anything that can describe what exactly there is, while my head throbs from the quiet. If I simply do not answer, she may forget that the interaction ever happened. Or at the very least, not arguing further would ensure that she does not grow angry with me. I nearly fall back into the sweet comfort of silent obedience, the rising of my voice returning to just a whisper in her ear, but a thought strikes me before I can.

“Something,” I blurt out. My words cannot stop once they start. “We have something in all this nothing. Wherever you go, I go. Even if I were not just your shadow, I would still follow you. You are everything. And I…”

There is no response, even as my voice trails off into the silence. She is as still as the Void around us. Then I spot a movement on Aylia’s face, and I move closer, only to realize that it is dew. It runs from her eyes down her cheeks before detaching from her skin and floating aimlessly away. She turns, just enough so that she can catch a glimpse of my form in the corner of her eye.

Her voice nearly breaks as she speaks once more in her soft, soothing voice. “I am not everything. Not without you. If you touch me and disappear, who will stay with me? Whose loving eyes will I have to watch over me?”

“I will not disappear,” I say to her. “I am your shadow. As long as you exist, I exist. We exist. Together. With all the dark corners I encompass for the rest of eternity, I will continue to love you. If… you would have me.”

My hand stretches out, palm extended and light glaring between my fingertips. It burns, but I do not move. Not until her gentle, searing fingers interlace with my own. There is a moment when our palms rest against each other, and Aylia’s eyes turn finally to meet mine. She is smiling.

Sharp white light devours my vision.

The universe rumbles, like a great yawn, as it takes its first breath, and beams of light and shadow erupt into every corner of the Void. I feel my form shredding as Aylia holds me and I hold her. Her arms burn against my own cold flesh, and I never want to let go even as she shatters bit by bit into shards of light, pieces of myself breaking loose to follow them in a rampage across the Void; colliding, hardening, glowing, and sending clouds of color spiraling through the illuminated darkness, until there is nothing of us left except for everything.