"The Timeless Search for Our Hearts in a Parable"

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All his life, Adlai had lived in a world without fire. Yet, it was his world only. For the rest, it was a world surrounded by ordinary miracles, where daily people did impossible things and took them for granted. Things that Adlai could never do.

 

And never would.

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Why? Adlai wished he knew. Why he and, as far as he knew, he alone had been chosen to live in darkness while all about him people bathed in the light. People with spells on their fingertips: Children who could change the colours of objects at will, students who could write essays just by swiping their fingers across a page, and everyone who could summon a flame with just a wish in their heart and a spell on their lips. All about him people had magic. All about him people had light. Yet he, he didn’t. He was shadowed in darkness peering through sorrow at the light he could merely see but never touch. It was simply so for, when the time had come, as a mere baby, for him to receive magic, it had been withheld from him. Why? Adlai wished he knew why. Why? What had he done? Why? Why was he shrouded in darkness in a world of light? And cold in a world of flame?

 

It seemed a question never to be answered. A story with a beginning but no end. One to be borne till the end of days when all could ask their questions. Long Adlai had forced himself to be content with this. To be content with a why never answered and a pain never cured. This was his life. There was nothing he could do other than to make the best of it.

 

But then, surprising news comes; news of a chance, a chance to go on a Quest to gain all he had never had and ask all he had ever wished. A Quest that would risk his life, his soul, and his very person. He would gain it all or lose it all. That was the bargain and those were the stakes. A Quest not for the faint hearted, not for the weak, and not for those in darkness.

 

Would he go? Could he go?

 

Could he not?

 

This is his story.