A desperate confusion.

Feverishly, blindly groping dark caverns.

“I know there’s a way out. I’ve seen Sunlight!”

Lost in the dark.

He grew quite adept at navigating the labyrinthine perils.

Diligently.

Sweatily.

An odd cocktail of anger, panic, and investigatory desperation.

Strange amalgam of despair, tension, and a restless patience.

He took himself for countless, pointless self-initiations. Assuming imaginary burdens as wholly necessary. Strain a prerequisite for being.

His inner landscapes were anything but monochrome suffering, however. Yes, while he tormentedly, perpetually navigated the shadowy subterranean, the Sun still shone above.

Yes, while there was the constant background noise of angsty unrest lingering in his psyche, there were places of solace, even in the chthonic.

Areas where the Sun confidently reached his arms down into the cave system. Where the boy felt he could reach back, grabbing his Father’s luminous hand, to at last be rescued once and for all…

Of course, his hands fell through the photons each time, reminding him of his own entrapping weight, an omnipresent quality he could not escape — strain a prerequisite for just being…

Longing to be untethered like the essence of the divine pouring through the cracks of the cave, reminded of his physical vessel being like a cage for his bird-like spirit.

Caves haven’t much room for birds to fly.

I’ve terribly misled you if I made it seem as if he was alone. No — he was not, though it certainly felt that way to him. His physical vessel was certainly accompanied by other ones, though his spirit wasn’t sure how many others surrounded.

A glorious form of suffering stimulated his spirit, if we can define suffering as a longing unmatched. It was the longing for Home. Not home, mind you, but Home, with a capital ‘H’.

The home tossed to him by Fate’s tossing of her own dice could never satiate him. It was empty and cavernous, assuming the qualities of the tunnels of the underworld nation in which he was born.

Somewhere in his own heart, however, distant by light-years, yet too close for comfort all the same, existed the memory of Home.

Where home was emptiness, Home was fullness. Where home was coldness, Home was compassion. Where home was shadow, Home was the rich light projecting outward, making the shadows dance.

Yes, Home was where he belonged, and he knew it so. From a very young age, he knew — or at least felt — the difference between home and Home.

As he grew older, the nonverbal wrongness he carried with him through the tunnels became more well-defined. As the issue became identified in greater detail, so too did the gnawing — until it could no longer be ignored.

Growing in strength, and growing in power, he plotted escape from home, to embrace Home once and for all. So began the great getaway.

From home to Home.

From family to Family.