Titans
[7] CAL

The Genesis [02:30]

Location: Unknown

The light is blinding. I hold a hand up to my eyes as it fills my field of view, disorientated by the dramatic change in lighting. One moment I’m in utter darkness. The next, I’m staring into the heart of the sun.

“Who are you?” The light asks, and I think, I’m dreaming. I must be dreaming. Falling through blackness, surviving the fall, and looking into a seemingly source-less light that speaks – it’s insane.

“Who are you?” the voice insists, and I realise I’m being stupid. Light doesn’t speak.

“Maybe if you stopped shining a light in my face I’d tell you,” I reply.

“Oh…” The light swings away, coming to illuminate a patch of rocky ground, and I replace that it’s only a flashlight. Its glow is bright enough to illuminate my immediate surroundings – rock, rock, and more rock – as well as the person standing before me.

“Sorry,” they say – she says. Her hair is dark and cropped to just below her chin, framing a face half cast in shadow. Somehow, her eyes seem to shine out into the darkness, piercing and richly blue.

For a minute we just stay like this: her in a defensive stance as if I might attack at any moment; and myself situated on the rocky ground, my body aching. The brief memory of falling returns to me, flashing through my mind – the wind, the weightlessness, the force yanking me downwards, flipping my stomach – before it is blown away into the night.

“Who are you?” the girl asks once again, only this time her tone more closely resembles curiosity than fear.

“I’m…” Who am I? As if the universe has responded to my question, the answer falls into my lap, handed down by the darkness. “Cal,” I say. “Cal. I’m Cal.”

“Cal, short for…?”

“I don’t think it’s short for anything.”

“So that’s it? You’re Cal? Just Cal?”

I probe my mind for more answers but none respond to my call. “Yeah,” I say softly, and frown. Why don’t I remember anything? Why can’t I remember anything?

“What about you?”

The girl looks shocked. “Me?”

“Of course. I told you my name, now you tell me yours.”

“I’m not sure I…” She trails off, seeming to consider something for a moment. I spot the moment it comes to her, her eyes suddenly going just that little bit wider, but she pulls herself together neatly, voicing her name in a steady tone. “I’m Lilith.”

“Well, Lilith,” I say, climbing to my feet, dusting the dirt off my black pants. My body still screams in protest, but I ignore it. “I suppose some thanks are in order. You did, after all, just save my life. I would be dead had you not been there to break my fall.”

She laughs, but the sound is harsh, sarcastic. “Yeah. I’m glad you had fun because my chest certainly didn’t. My lungs feel as though they’ve been flattened and I’m certain I’ve bruised some ribs.”

“You didn’t have to catch me. You could have just watched as I fell.”

“Maybe I would have had I known what I was catching. All I could see was a light. I’d been walking around in complete darkness and suddenly this light falls from the sky, and I just thought I had to get to it, you know? And then, before I knew it, I was being squashed into the dust by some teenage boy.” She pauses, then adds, “You shouldn’t thank me. I didn’t mean to save you.”

“Nevertheless, you did. And accident or not, I owe you one.”

She shrugs and raises the flashlight, aiming it away from us. It lights up the rocky, barren ground for about a hundred metres, at which point its rays grow too dim to illuminate anything. There is no horizon in sight.

“So, sky boy, you happen to know where we the hell we are?”

I stare out at the dark expanse before us and shake my head. “I wish I did.”