Walking

It is dark, all the world is dark, and I walk down the path before me with my eyes on the ground not far from my feet. I can't remember how long I've been walking thus, in the lonely darkness, but from behind me I begin to hear footfalls, familiar sounds of the walker with whom I have traveled so many dark paths. I know the rhythm of those steps, know their soft sounds more intimatly than I know my own...I turn about, just for an instant, to meet the other's eyes. No words are spoken, for between the two of us speech has become but a hinderance to communication, so close are we.
Yet as I turn my head back to place my eyes on the path I tread once more, an inconsistency of the world behind me gives me pause. There is something discordant about the haze of grey, something that stands out...as I watch, one streak of color appears seemingly beyond the earth, reaching into the sky itself. It's a faint thing, almost imperceptible, but there. I cannot determine what shade it is exactly; at first it seems blue, but so pale as almost white, then rose, then violet, then scarlet, then amber...I cannot make it out.
I realize that my feet, which had been moving ever onward of their own accord, had now stopped of the same. The walker had stopped as well, entranced by the explosion slowly creeping across the sky. And as we watched the horizon burn, so bright was it that our eyes burned also. The world, so dark seconds before, now lightened into just grey, then twilit, then simply dim, and onward through every level of illumination one could get until the world burned also.
We stood there, marveling, letting the burning light clear the darkness from us. We had forgotten the dawn, forgotten the touch of sun during the long night. And so I realized that though the brightest lights do cause the darkest shadows, so also do they banish them to the deep corners, under-places, and closed spaces in the world where few choose to go, leaving the rest open and clear for us to walk in.
The darkness must be bourne, if only because it is the other side of Light's coin...and the one thing that eases the burning of pure goodness from us, as we could not survive it in constancy.