627
Beyond Earth.
Within a prison built of storms and darkness, the traveler who wandered forever in the gap between the planet and the cosmos raised his head.
Red moonlight flowed over him like blood. His mind alternated between haziness and lucidity. As he wandered, he occasionally turned to look into the distance, as though his gaze could penetrate the fathomless, empty darkness and see that blue planet.
After he had strolled like this for an unknown length of time, the darkness quietly thinned a little. Sensing something, the traveler looked into the distance.
"Don't you want to take another look?"
"Don't you want to go back?"
"Your children miss you very much, too. They've never given up searching for traces of their ancestor."
"My poor child, away from home for thousands of years. Do you still remember what your homeland looks like?"
With difficulty, he ignored the kind, gentle words of the tender mother beside his ear. With difficulty, he restrained his desire to break free of his bonds for a moment and look at his homeland. He turned his head, took a step, and once again advanced through boundless loneliness and deathly silence.
The struggle against himself was long and painful, but fortunately, a thousand years had already passed. Only the final eighteen years remained, and the struggle would surely reach a conclusion.
After walking for who knew how long, his muddled mind, in which only obsession remained, gradually became lucid. By the time he came to his senses, the red moonlight had quietly receded, and silver radiance lay like white frost on his shoulders and hands.
Bethel Abraham looked at his hand, then puzzledly reached out and closed it, trying to grasp that silvery-white light.
An ancient fragment surfaced in what little memory he had left-back when