Satya was scared out of his wits.
His mind started spinning, his sense of touch going haywire.
He felt the surface of everything. His clothes felt rugged and burned in some places. His shoes felt damp and smooth. His skin felt dirty, rough, and burnt.
And the hand...
The hand was cold, nothing like a human.
It felt as if a snake was crawling on his shoulder.
All of these sensations filled his mind, overloading it.
The dam he had built within his mind started overflowing slowly, and suddenly it exploded into a fury of thoughts.
These thoughts were the final needle for his already stressed-out mind, and he went unconscious.
Suddenly, there was nothing.
No thoughts. No sensations.
Just the black void of nothingness.
Perhaps it was better this way.
Without thoughts or senses, Satya couldn't acknowledge the Human Sketch's existence.
Or even feel it.
Therefore, it couldn't harm Satya.
Because it experienced the world through others acknowledging it.
After some time, when the world was covered by the blanket of night, there was no light in the world except the shimmering glow of fireflies in the field of flowers.
Satya sat up and looked around.
"Are you awake, Traveller?" the Shadow asked, full of confusion.
"I guess so," Satya said in a dazed state.
"What caused you to become unconscious?" the Shadow asked.
"What caused me..."
Suddenly, Satya remembered the statue.
"Did you not see that statue on the mountain? And what was it that put its hand on me? It was that hand which caused me to become unconscious," Satya explained in a rush.
"What statue...?
There wasn't a statue on the mountain."
"Did you not see the statue...?
But how... it was there. I saw it."
"No, there wasn't a statue, Traveller.
When you were looking at that cursed mountain in the distance, you suddenly closed your eyes, covered your ears, and kneeled down.
After that, you fell unconscious."
"Didn't you see someone put a hand upon my shoulder?
There should have been someone.
I definitely felt him."
"No, Traveller, there wasn't anything.
It was just a trick of your mind.
Your mind is the most dangerous thing in the Amarvan."
Satya was confused beyond reconciliation.
He was so confused that he didn't understand the Shadow's hidden meaning.
The Shadow was warning him.
To make it as if that thing had never existed.
Perhaps it was even manipulating him into thinking like that.
But Satya was fear-struck.
His fear was proof enough.
His fear made it real.
His fear gave it power.
His fear gave a being a gateway into existence that should have never existed.
Now he was being corroded by it.
Slowly but surely.
Satya felt alone.
Faced with this threat, he thought he could have gotten help from the Shadow.
But it was calling what he saw and experienced a mere hallucination.
He felt truly alone even in the company of the Shadow.
Unbeknownst to him, the Shadow was looking out for him.
It saw and felt all the things Satya felt, but it was trying to protect him in its own way.
It was just like life.
When someone guides us not to do something because they themselves have experienced the pain it brings, we misunderstand them due to our lack of knowledge.
Even though they mean well for us, from our perspective they begin to seem bad.
"Live in reality, not your delusions, Traveller."
The Shadow liked to speak in riddles, but it could never truly understand human emotions like fear.
Fear brought on by the unknown.
The fear built into the human mind through evolution.
It could never understand that because it was a Shadow.
Satya remained silent.
Even alone, he looked at the fireflies shining in the night, illuminating the world with their tiny radiance.
In the middle of the night, flying over the field of flowers, they looked as if they were painting the world in an array of colors.
That night, Satya couldn't sleep.
He stayed awake throughout the company of the Shadow.
The thing was, both the Shadow and Satya had mostly been alone in their lives, so they enjoyed the peace and tranquility of silence.
One could say they were fluent in the language of silence.
So they talked in silence throughout the entire night while watching the fireflies dance.
The next morning, Satya looked ahead to witness the boundless sun.
But he saw something beyond words.
He saw the radiance of the glowing sun reflected through countless waterfalls and rivers spread throughout the mountains.
Clouds hid the peaks of most of the mountains.
It was a moist morning, which only made the waterfalls and lakes feel closer than ever.
Satya continued on his march toward the highest mountain.
After some hours had passed, Satya entered the forests of the tall mountains.
The trees were enormous, dwarfing even the Revolving Forest.
Satya was currently walking on an old, rundown path that hadn't been maintained for centuries, leading from the flowery mound toward the mountain reaching the sky.
Looking around, Satya caught a glimpse of a deer staring at him.
It was evaluating whether Satya was a beast of prey or not.
Satya thought to perhaps give it a scare.
Seeing branches near it, he made flames erupt from them.
The deer panicked and ran away.
Satya felt a mischievous happiness.
Perhaps a small melancholy against his suffering.
Suddenly, Satya heard the breaking of branches behind him.
He looked back only to see—
a wolf had jumped on him.
Only then did he realize that the forest had already gone quiet.
---
{Being misunderstood by everyone,
I feel a sense of loneliness.
Surrounded by people,
yet not a person who understands.
Perhaps this is what it means to be a miser,
without anyone to rely on.}