Haunted Grove
The Shadow lived in the forest. Really, it was a specific grove of trees that the Shadow had been told to stay in from the dawn of time. The Shadow wasn't aware at how time began or end if it was eternal, but the Shadow left that up to other, more qualified beings in the hierarchy to muse about. The Shadow only cared about this specific groves of trees because it was the Shadow's specific grove of trees.
The Shadow’s sibling had been given many more things—a charge, a place, and a concept. A charge to comfort and to guide. A place in the hearts of human beings. A concept to be a member of deity. The Shadow didn’t get any of those things—just a grove of trees.
Time meant nothing to the Shadow, but time meant everything to the trees and the creatures of the forest. The trees grew, wilted, burned, dropped seeds, replenished, restored. The cycle and the seasons seemed endless as the Shadow played in the dappled majesty of leaves above. They were endless and would go on forever for the Shadow, if the Shadow understood the Father correctly.
Stay in this grove. This grove is your grove. Someone may come searching in this grove. If here, push them, test them, move within them. This is your duty.
It really was simple enough. And the Shadow got all the time in the world to watch the animals play, chitter, continue. The Shadow would move among them—squirrels, deer, angels—as they flitted in and out of the Shadow's sacred grove, the grove the Shadow loved.
Once, a small child had gotten lost in the woods and come across the Shadow’s grove. The child had cried, and so the Shadow had tried to drift toward the child, but that just made the child cry more. Soon, other children came and gathered that child away, shooing the child for being so foolish to enter the grove. The Shadow hadn’t thought the child foolish; the Shadow had thought the child brave.
Another time, a child, taller than the first child, crept into the grove, a giant bow in hand. The Shadow noticed that the child crept upon a deer, so the Shadow had moved beneath the child, causing it to become sore afraid. The child missed and left the grove downtrodden. White snow covered the ground soon after.
Finally, the day arrived for the Shadow’s purpose to be fulfilled. Mingling among the trees at the edge of the grove, the Shadow felt a child enter. The child was distraught, searching, seeking, wanting to know truth. The Shadow felt the longing in the child. Knowing that this was the child the Shadow had waited for, the Shadow crept forward, out of the midst of the trees, onto the ground where the child knelt. The child seized up as the Shadow snuck below and surrounded the child, as the Shadow had been instructed.
The Shadow was not sure what purpose it held to come upon a child searching for truth in this manner. The child knelt down in the middle of the darkness, mouth open, words trapped. The Shadow surrounded the child more, knowing that its one purpose from the Father was to be here, at this moment, to surround and envelop this child.
The child struggled against the Shadow, but the Shadow knew it was more powerful. For a moment, the Shadow slackened, worried about harming the child in any irrevocable way. The Shadow knew that if it pushed any harder the child would feint or run away afraid. Was that what the Father had wanted of the Shadow? To stop this child from seeking truth? The Father dedicated self to truth though, so that did not make sense.
"Fa—G—" a hoarse whisper escaped the child’s mouth.
At that moment, as the child exerted a fierce and determined will, a pillar of light bore down upon the Shadow. The Shadow hissed, for the light was bright and cut holes in the Shadow’s body. It was more of a surprise than a pain. The Shadow scurried away from the child, confused about this sudden light. Above the child descended a Father and a Son, children, radiating light and comfort. The light cast the Shadow away into the edges of the grove.
Confused, the Shadow waited at the edges of the light. Had the purpose been fulfilled? Had the Shadow completed its mission? The children spoke to the child, words the Shadow did not care about for they did not seem to care about the Shadow’s grove. The Shadow rushed to the trees, which seemed as if they were on fire, and others seemed to fill the grove and then leave the grove, concourses of angels, many of whom had flitted in and out while the Shadow waited.
They were all in the Shadow’s grove—all desecrating the Shadow’s place, the Shadow’s duty. Was the Shadow not meant to stop this child? Was the Shadow’s purpose something other than what the Father had told the Shadow? Why was a Father in the grove now, stopping the Shadow from doing the Shadow’s duty? The Shadow poked at the light surrounding the children and found an impenetrable barrier. The Shadow’s sibling, slipping in and out within the grove, filling it with might and majesty and spirit.
You, the Shadow thought.
This is the purpose, the Shadow’s sibling responded.
And the Shadow knew it was true. That this was the purpose—the Shadow had fulfilled its duty, had tried to stop the child, but the child had won. Persevered. Conquered.
It stung though. It hurt, and not in any physical way. Was the Shadow’s only purpose to try to stop the child? So much time—even though time was immaterial for an immortal beings, but still—so much time. Waiting, trapped, just to be cast off at the end, kept from the glory occurring in the middle of the grove.
At the edge, the Shadow waited.
When finished, the children ascended and the child fainted to the leaf-strewn ground. The Shadow moved around the child, but a light shield—the Shadow’s sibling—kept the Shadow at bay. Scuttling around the edges of the Shadow’s domain, the small piece of the world that was truly the Shadow’s yet somehow, no more the Shadow’s, the Shadow probed to make sure the trees and the creatures and the grass and the seeds were safe.
They were. At least some thing in the grove could be cared for by the Shadow.
Soon the child got up and walked away, to raise up imperial majesty for heaven, leaving the Shadow to haunt the grove forevermore.
I am participating in #Archtober from the ARCH-HIVE. They challenged creators to create something every day, or every other day, for the month of October and base it on a theme. I’m free writing for 30 minutes every two days based on the two-day schematic and theme rules they’ve established. So, the writing will probably not be super coherent, but it’ll be fun.
This writing idea came out of Joseph Smith’s official account published in the Church’s canonical works: “by some power which entirely overcame me, and had such an astonishing influence over me as to bind my tongue so that I could not speak. Thick darkness gathered around me, and it seemed to me for a time as if I were doomed to sudden destruction.” Usually, we see this as being Satan, but I wondered what it would mean if this darkness had a character, had a duty, and that duty was to try to stop JS from praying about churches. This comes into a thread of theology that I don’t necessarily agree with—that God has purpose in all things and directs all things, even the bad things, which are usually then skewed for the good—so it was fun to play for a little bit of this writing prompt with the Shadow and consider it in relation to its duty, even though that duty was darkness.
