Double-edged Sword

As we continued onward with our journey, I tuned out the sounds of my companions' excited blabbering as I silently reflected over the short encounter. I had been initially overwhelmed by the warmth of its gaze, only for my opinion of it to do an immediate 180° turn when I thought it was going to kill us. 

In that moment, I had realized how indifferent it really was and how insignificant I was in the face of absolute power. I didn't even amount to something to be remembered - I was just a bug, something to be crushed and forgotten. That was when I had looked past the facade it presented to us to see the face of a cold, uncaring killer.

It was for this very reason that I had been able to spot the coldness and disregard with which it held us even after it had saved us from certain death. It hadn't really killed the creature to help us, but rather because something had intruded upon its territory. Even the regenerative leaves it had graciously sent to us were little more than a calculated gesture to raise favor - though to be fair, it already more than what I had expected.

However, the more I considered the Greater Life Herald, the closer I got to a disturbing question: was I any better? Would I have mourned for an ant or insect I had accidentally or purposefully killed? Would I have even noticed it or its death, much less remember that I had murdered it? 

Even if it could be argued that it was just because they were small and not easily seen, I could hardly plead innocence or ignorance about the billions of animals that were killed every year, for food or any other reason. Although I rarely ate meat myself, I had served it to customers with no thought for the lives taken just for the needs or myself and others. Ultimately, was I any different from those lives carelessly reaped in an instant, the nameless creatures that lived and died by our will?

It was a simple truth that I reached: everyone, or everything, was insignificant in the eyes of someone else. There would always be someone greater than you, then someone greater than the same being you looked up to, in an infinite loop that continued endlessly. Perhaps even gods feared something that was greater than them.

Perhaps it was foolish to draw conclusions when I knew I was in a state of heightened emotional sensitivity, but at that moment I forged a double-edged sword; in times of need I would draw on it for strength, and when I reached despair it would be my greatest shield. Yet I knew it would force me to keep on striving for strength - so I could see those beings that I could not yet imagine or die trying.