I lay still, swallowed by a darkness so thick it felt alive. No shape, no horizon, no end—just an infinite void pressing against me. It's too dark… I can't see anything.
For a moment, fear gripped me. Then a thought drifted in, soft but undeniable: "So this is what the world becomes when there is no light… when nothing protects us from the endless night. The light—it has always been our shield."
And like a flame sparking in the hollow dark, memories lit up inside me.
I was small again, fragile, unable to carry even the weight of my own mistakes. Every wrong I made seemed unbearable, and at the sound of my mother's raised voice, tears would instantly fall. I thought she was cruel then. I thought her anger was punishment. But when I broke down, she would kneel beside me, her eyes moist with regret, her hands trembling yet gentle as she held me close.
"I'm sorry," she would whisper, her voice cracking with both sternness and love. "I scolded you because I need you to learn. I don't want you to lose your way. I did it because I love you."
Even now, I can feel the warmth of her presence, like a lantern glowing softly against this endless dark.
But then another light comes into focus—quieter, steadier, like a morning star that never fades. My father.
He was not a man of many words. He didn't need them. His silence spoke louder than anything else: in the way he rose before the sun, in the way his hands grew rough and calloused from endless work, in the way he bore the weight of the world without complaint. Humble. Patient. Forgiving.
I see him again, in the memory haze—his figure bent slightly with fatigue, yet standing tall in spirit. He wasn't the kind of protector who raised his voice or shielded me with walls. Instead, he guarded us by enduring, by providing, by being the steady ground beneath our feet. Where my mother's love was fire, burning bright to guide and correct, his was stone—solid, unmoving, dependable.
Sometimes, in the quiet after my tears had dried, he would come close, resting a heavy but reassuring hand on my shoulder. He never scolded. He never demanded. Instead, he simply looked into my eyes with an understanding I didn't have words for back then. It was as if he was saying: "It's alright. You will stumble, but you'll stand again. And I'll be here, waiting, ready."
Between them—my mother's flame and my father's stone—I grew. Protected. Shaped. Forgiven.
Now, as I drift here in this consuming darkness, I finally understand. The light that saves us from the void isn't only the sun in the sky. It's them. The people who loved me fiercely and quietly, who fought in different ways to keep me whole.
And though the dark presses closer, I no longer feel afraid. For even if the world loses its light, I carry theirs within me. A flame and a stone. A mother and a father.
And as long as I breathe, I will never be without them.