Garavand (Glimpse)

How does one describe the fears of all who reside in the light? Do you not call it darkness? If that is your answer, then I am the entity you call darkness, alive somehow. I know not myself how I survive, but I see, I smell, I feel, I hear, and I taste, just as you do. The cold does not bother me, while you, it kills. That is why you light fires, while I cling to the shadows. You're weak. I'm strong.


You tell stories of me, such horrible nightmarish tales, but I cannot say they are untrue. Your fellow humans look to the dark as a thrill, and it is from there where I strike. They scream and cry, but in the end all is silent. This is not about survival. The dark is my domain, my home, I defend it.
There is another name that humans call me, a name devised by them of no understandable origin, but I enjoy it. I am a Garavand.


I listen to them, to you, humans. The shadows hug me, hide me. So many stories of you are created right before me. I watch the darkness within these humans breathe, my kin, trapped within the confines of flesh. The garavand is inside you, but sleeps, shows itself at times of intense emotion. They suffer within you. If one has my kin, so must all. I watch a human bring life. Her darkness shows as they take the newborn from her, calling out to me. The baby is a girl, like I once was. She's to be sacrificed to the dark, to us. There are many of us.

They carry her through the forest, lit by torches. It is an offering for restraint, a method to gain distance from garavand that lie in wait. Human belief is groundless. They expect us to kill the babe. Their evil is heavier than ours. What can we do with a baby so young left in the darkness to be devoured? Wolves come, we protect it. We take it. Otherwise, it will die out there. It will become a garavand eventually, all of them do. The humans don't realize this. We, the garavand, are the darkness, but we are also them.


"Stop it, Mav!" Remy said. "You're a jerk!"

"I'm just reading," he replied. "If you're scared, you shouldn't be here. Why ARE you here anyway?" Remy looked away. She couldn't just say she liked being around him.

"You could read in your mind," she replied. He just wanted to scare her. "They don't sacrifice babies anymore, do they?"

"Who knows?" Mav replied. "Maybe in the wilds they still follow the old traditions. We evolved past that. In Yaris, we just keep lights up. That way we don't fear the dark."

"They aren't real though, right?" Remy asked. The garavand was a fear of the dark, nothing more.

"Who knows?" Mav said. He said that a lot, but Remy figured he was trying to scare her. "Maybe if I turn this light off, a garavand will climb into the room and snatch you away. You better stick close." His finger lingered on the switch. Why did they even make switches? Why ever turn the light off? The dark above lasted all the time. It existed above their heads as the emptiness beyond the world. Mav was being a jerk. He held out an arm for her to go to. Remy grimaced and stayed put. "Suit yourself." The light went out as a shiver ran down her spine. There was nothing around.

Those first moments of darkness felt the scariest. In the change, eyes lost focus. There are no such things as garavand, Remy repeated this in her mind as her eyes closed. The nothing of closed eyes felt calming. There could be no darker then closed eyes. She slowly opened them. It wasn't yet time. She closed them. Her eyes would adjust soon. Something touched her arm. It was Mav for sure, just playing tricks again. The touch shifted and glided on her skin, creating fright bumps. It went up to her neck and chin.

"Quit it, Mav!" she said. She opened her eyes. It was still dark in the room. It should have been brighter.

"Quit what?" he asked. He was a liar. It was him trying to scare her. A phrase circled her mind: I am the entity you call darkness.

"Liar!" Remy said. "I said, quit it!" She swung at the feeling of touch on her cheek, but her hand glided through air. The feeling was still there. He had to have perception goggles. They allowed seeing in darkness.

"Remy," he said. "Are you touching my hand?" This joke was absurd. He was taking it too far. Remy stood and headed for the light switch. Where was it?

"Hhhhhheeeeeeeer..." a sigh of wind breathed in Remy's ear.

"Very funny, Mav," she said. She would not accept fear just because he was being a butt. "Enough of this! Turn the light back on right now!" He didn't reply. She opened her eyes. The darkness didn't fade one bit. He must have sealed the room tight, all for a stupid joke.

"Mav?" she asked. He wasn't responding. She kept her eyes open and called out a few more times. The darkness faded. She wasn't in the room anymore. There was nothing around her at all. Her eyes adjusted to the dark. In the distance, three darker figures stood on a slight hill. One waved.

They didn't look like human figures. So much ran through Remy's head that it made little sense to her. How did she get way out here? Fear made her shiver. The figures grew, but she knew they were coming closer. A deeper darkness obstructed part of her vision. It was as dark as the figures in the distance. Her mind told her to run.

Remy took off into the hints of a field opposite to the figures approaching. This environment was new to her. Her time spent around human beings was led in light. That endless brightness encased her in bliss of wealth. She never went outside, never disobeyed, never wondered what was beyond it. Mav had. Now she suffered because of his actions. She begged for mercy as something grabbed her leg.
Remy fell not two meters from where she took off. She looked in the brightening and saw only a shadowy tendril on her leg, just as dark as the figures that approached. Another now towered above her, holding onto her.

She saw nothing. Human eyes could not see the garavand. A thought skittered around her brain. On her recent birthturn, when she turned twelve, she received a necklace with a particular stone bound in featherstring. The mineral was called Verete. When looked through a crystal of this mineral, one could rid the world of darkness of the eye. It allowed the darkness to step aside and reveal what truly hid in the corners and crevices. It was her only option.

"Doooooooonnnnttttt..." a sigh beside her said. She saw nothing, until the verete filtered her vision. There was only green at first, but then what she saw faded into partial light of the distance. It must have been Yaris, her city. Remy turned her head and regretted it. Three awful creatures approached. She shuddered even looking at them. Their grotesque visages made her sick. The pressure on her leg made her turn and look at it. There was another holding onto her leg. She screamed. Remy wanted to live. Her survivalist instinct kicked in with flails to free herself.

Verete left her eye, but what she saw would not go away. The creatures looked like darkness once more, but the disgust threw Remy to her feet as she broke into a run. Her necklace was still with her, but she didn't want to see them again. Was it a garavand? Something grabbed her on both sides of her midsection and threw her back to the ground. She need not look. It was one of them.

"Sssssssttaaaaaaaayyyyyy..." a whisper crept up Remy's skin. She could feel the cold creeping on her neck. What did they want with her? All the things that elders said about garavand beamed into her mind.
"If you see darkness in the dark, run with all you can. That's a garavand. They eat babies and kill humans. They tear them limb from limb. They are everywhere. If you feel a touch, but nothing's there, that's a garavand, my dear."

The elders often spoke in riddles. Most of the city considered them senile. Only now, the things they said made sense, but it was too late. The creatures would kill her. Remy wanted to scream, cry for help. There was no chance anyone walked in the dark so far from the city that could help her. A dark tendril extended toward her. She brought the verete to her eye again. 

It looked like a human hand, but only in small part. The fingers on it protruded from different locations and flexed in wrong directions. The whole thing looked like a bulky mold of grey flesh, not like an arm at all. Remy shivered. This green crystal allowed a painful look into her demise. It felt better not to know.
The other dark ovals came up to her slowly. She wanted to expose them for what they truly were with the piece of verete, but feared what they could look like as a whole. Since her life was forfeit anyway, she brought the green crystal to her eye. She deserved to know what would kill her.

The second her necklace extinguished the shadows surrounding the garavand, Remy felt sick. It was too horrid a sight. The three creatures each had hands similar to the one she saw, an oozing clump of gray flesh sprouting fingers at random locations with white pulsing veins. The fingers clenched. Up the arms, the flesh turned dark gray. By the shoulders, it was black, glossy, and formed limp spikes that hung off the shoulders. There were a number of holes in their chests. One of the three had a big gaping hole through the middle, while the other two had three smaller ones in random locations on the body. Remy turned to the one holding her. It had no holes. Why was that? She turned back to the other three to find them even closer.

They walked closer on strange rubbery sticks. It took Remy a few moments to realize what they were. Each had two of them. It was like black bags filled with something soft, but hard enough to support them. Her eyes travelled up the muscled body in search of a head. Though it was muscles on the body, something was wrong. The whole flesh was black, but the muscles did not belong in places they existed. Some even flexed randomly with veins glowing white when pushed against the skin.

There was no neck. Instead of one there were four dark tendrils. Two spiraled at the sides where ears or eyes would be and had a black bulb on the end of each. They rose up half a meter. The other two were different. One was a round ball that rose only a few centimeters off the base and the fourth was a sort of triangular funnel, a wide opening with no possible purpose. These creatures looked as if someone took a human body and painfully reconstructed it inside a suspension of black ooze. Remy took the verete away. The darkness surrounding her felt calming, but she would not forget how they looked. They looked much better as ovals of darkness.

"Tooooolllllldddd yoooooooouuuuuuu sssssssoooooo..." a sigh sounded. Could they talk?

"You can talk?" Remy asked. Nothing answered. Was she hearing things? To lose her sanity in the final moments of her life was a cruel fate. "Please say something to prove that I'm not going insane. My name is Remy. I am twelve years old. My father is a-"

"Ssssshhhhhhh...." it whispered. "Weeeeee caaaaan't taaaaaalllkkkk. Theeeeeeeey wiiiiiiillllll heeeeeeeaaaaaar ussssssss." She felt instantly better. She wasn't going insane.

"Are you afraid of them?" Remy asked. The idea was ridiculous. A monster afraid of fellow monsters? They had no mouths. How did it speak? "Don't let me die here." The words escaped her mouth before she knew what came out. Something about the creature holding onto her felt human. She could almost imagine it as a caring individual that could help her.

"IIIIIIiiiiii aaaaaammmmmm Aaaaaaakiiiiiiiiimmmmmm.." is said. It introduced itself. That was a step forward. Now that Akim was a fluffy shadow not a grotesque monster, Remy felt a little at ease. Would he protect her? Was it even a ‘he’? "Staaaaaaaay quuuiiiiiiieeeeeet..." Remy sat on the cold ground and waited to see what happened next. Fear slowly drained from her. She felt more as currency than a monster's pray. She smiled.

The other three garavand stopped walking a few meters away. One of them split in half at the chest to reveal white spikes coming out of both sides. That took Remy by surprise. It was a mouth and it was visible without the verete. The darkness must have been some kind of coating on their skin. Nobody had details about these things. Everyone considered these creatures as frightful stories, mysteries of the darkness surrounding the mysteries of unsolved disappearances and the like. The maw opened wide and a large white tongue emerged from within. It kept coming out bigger and hanging in the air. It came closer to her.

There were bits of red on the tongue, spots the color of blood. She twitched as it slid over her neck, expecting warm wetness. It was cold and dry, as if cold paper. Remy closed her eyes and waited until it stopped. She opened her eyes right after and recoiled. There was a human face underneath the tongue and it looked horrified. Remy almost screamed, but held herself back. It was unlikely the face was garavand's, but perhaps it was the victim of something recent. The face was not complete. Only the eyes and mouth appeared on the white surface as if it melded into it. The eyelids to close the eyes didn't exist. The look was in a frozen soundless terror.

The tongue retreated and the maw closed. If they conversed, it was not audible. To calm herself down she created a conversation between them in her mind. She authored the situation. Levity resonated.

“She’s tasty,” the one that licked her would say. “But is she worth the price?” She imagined herself as something of a commodity. If they haven’t killed her yet, she must have been of some value.

“I’m having second thoughts about this deal,” Remy imagined Akim say. She looked from one to the other. “I think I want to keep her.” The three garavand flared their maws open in anger at the fourth. Remy put the verete to her eye to see more. In response, Akim extended two spiraled tendrils with bulbs at the end toward the other three. They reached above Remy as a spark jumped between them. It was electricity! The sudden light in the verete gemstone plunged her vision into total darkness again.

The narration of silent conversation was over. Eyesight was lost for the moment, but there was a touch on her arm. Something grabbed onto her other arm. It was a tug of war over her, while also using her as the rope. The pulling pressure felt painful until a sound broke the pull. It made no sense to Remy, but it could have been Akim’s roar of defense. Would he go that far? It was strange that nobody knew that garavand made electricity. There was a lot to learn about those beings in the darkness. Maybe some could even be friendly.

When the darkness faded, Remy was standing in a bit of water. Akim was nowhere to be found. In the distance, the lights of a city felt blinding.

“Akim!” Remy called out. Did she not want to come back home? “Akim, where are you?”

“Gooooo Baaaaack…” he said. She looked around, but there was no deeper darkness. She looked up to find him in the dark above. He was flying! It was more like floating, but it was a new discovery. His maw opened and extended a white tongue forward. Underneath, there was a face of a boy her age. This face was not frozen in terror however. This face was smiling, almost laughing. How was this face relevant to the garavand? Why show it?

“What is that?” Remy asked. The tongue rolled back and the maw closed. “Where will you go?” Why did she care? This creature was grotesque, a killer of children, the endless dark, a fear of all humanity. Something about Akim told her she needed to help him.

“Gooooooo Reeeeemmmmmmy…” he said. She frowned and turned back to the city. The light felt strange now. With another look up, Akim was gone. There was nothing to do no but go home.

The closer she got to the city, the more the lights pushed her back. It stung to se it after the darkness. Her eyes adjusted soon. The guards, holding onto their light torches, didn’t let her through. The sticks with an orb produced normal light until pointed. A gout of flame enveloped the sphere and burst forth at the intended target. Some have said that the flame formed different animals long dead, as if they survived in the fire as spirits. They were weapons of light and heat, now burnished at her as if she was the enemy.

Her parents retrieved her from the gate with warm hugs and happiness. They thought she died. Remy decided not to tell them everything, just enough so that they understood. The rest was up for research. She needed to look through that book and read about garavand. Mav had it. She needed to see him.

“I want to see Mav,” Remy said. Her parents looked at each other. That never meant anything good. “What is it? Where is Mav?”

“Honey, please understand,” Mom said. “We thought you got taken.”

“What did you do?” she asked. Fear ran through her. Fright bumps mingled on her arms.

“We reported him for turning the light off,” Dad said. “He’s been sentenced under the laws of the codex. I’m sorry, Remy, Mavion has been put unto deep sleep for half a turn.”

“He’s just a kid!” Remy burst out. “What is wrong with you?”

“You were gone two cycles, Remy,” Mom said. There was no way. She just left the day a slice ago. How did two cycles run by? A single turn was forty cycles long. Every cycle had eight slices. Each slice, had twenty tor, a man-made measure of time, all of them. A tor had thirty sins, while each sin had sixty cons. How Remy managed to be gone for two cycles was beyond her.

Remy ran to her room as soon as they got home. The rules of the codex were absolute. It was forbidden to turn off lights. People still did it in secret. They never got caught because it was not a closed off room. Some light always managed to slip through, saving them from garavand, an incident like hers.

Deep sleep was not really sleep. It was a punishment because the person stayed conscious the entire time. They could not move, talk or feel anything. They became trapped inside their own bodies for however long they were serving. Everything the body needed in that sleep state was connected to maintain the health.

Mav was not sent there as first offense. His troublemaking drew Remy to him a bit. How could she go to his house now and get that book? Condolences would now work. His parents must have blamed her for sending him to the deep. Could she even explain what happened, that it wasn’t her fault? She needed that book, not to sound cold, but she was more interested in what a garavand was than the wellbeing of the troublesome boy.

She faded off to sleep embraced by the light. The safety of home lulled her away. She had a dream, a nightmare by many standards, but Akim came and saved her. His fuzzy shadow cloak was soft to touch as if black fur. Human hands peeled a hood off. There was a smiling face beneath, the boy’s Akim had on the underside of the white tongue. It was attached to a boy’s body now, and looked normal. His cloak came off and vanished. He smiled at her. Remy expected the same whisper voice, but it wasn’t.

“Remy, I’m glad you’re asleep,” he said. He had a soothing voice now. Where did she imagine it from? “Thanks. It’s my real voice though.” Remy paused. It was almost as if he knew what she was thinking. Did she dream him as a mind-reader?

“I sort of am one,” he said. This wasn’t possible. “It is. Dreams are darkness too. It is our domain. We go between dreaming human mind as we please.”

“How do people not realize this when they dream?” Remy asked. Nightmares would clue them in.

“We appear in human form just like you see me now,” Akim said. Did that mean garavand were people? “You’re partially right.”

“Would you stop that? Remy asked. If he could read her mind, how was she to ever have a private thought? How could she hide that Akim was attractive as a human? Remy twitched. She just thought it! She held up her hands expecting him to make fun, but his head was bowed.

“Thank you, but I only look like this in dreams,” he said. Remy saw tears rolls down his cheeks. “I can’t really stop reading your mind. We are inside it, after all. Anything you imagine here, you can bring to life. I’m hi-jacking your dream.” Remy imagined a story from the books and a blue rock creature wobbled past in the darkness of the dream. Soon after, a couple laughing older kids chased after it. They had so much fun, Tiarto and Sana. Being part of their story was a treat. Remy snapped herself to her own story.

“You said I was partially right,” she said. “What did you mean by that?”

“This is who I used to be,” Akim said. “I was alive once, back before I became this thing. People call us Garavand, but we stay out of their way in the world. The light doesn’t hurt us, but it exposes us. The cloak of shadow is the only thing hiding our misshapen look. Light dissolves them.”

“I saw you use electricity,” Remy said. “And you were flying?”

“The sky is darkness, our domain,” he said. “We move freely in the dark. As for the electricity, it has a limit. I used it up back there to get you home.” He sacrificed something to save her. Remy felt sad.

“Why save me?” she asked. He smiled and turned, hands clasped behind his back, trying not to answer. “Why, Akim?”

“Back when I was a human,” he said. “It was so many turns ago. There was this girl I knew. She looked a lot like you. The necklace was the final touch. She had one just like it.”

“What happened to her?” Remy asked. It felt as if she shouldn’t have. Was it a hurtful memory?

“She was killed by a garavand,” he said. Remy shivered. “I thought I was also killed, but I woke up as this thing. The VERY thing that killed her. You might imagine my unhappiness. It took a few turns to accept it.

“We always loved the concept of shadows. In any light there is a shadow, the object takes the light, and recycles it as a shadow behind it. There can be no darkness without the light. It would have no comparison without the duality, but the topic was dangerous. In our times, we still used fire to light our existence.”

“Humans now use fire as a weapon,” Remy said.

“There is something important you need to know about why the garavand took you.”

“It wasn’t just opportunity?”

“More than that,” he replied. “The Garavand-” His voice cut off. Remy tried to say something, but she couldn’t speak. Somebody was waking her up. The darkness faded along with Akim’s face. Her mother was shaking her awake.

“Honey!” she said. “You were talking in your sleep. Is everything ok?” The light blinded Remy’s eyesight as she sat up. It’s already been five tor. It was a rude awakening, and Remy furrowed her brows at her mom. “Was the dream that good?”

No,” Remy replied. “I’m fine.” She never had a problem with mom being in her room, but this turn, she was starting to want some privacy.

“Come down and eat something,” Mom said. “You must be hungry after all this time. What did you eat over that time?” That was a good question for Akim to answer. For Remy it felt like a few tor, but they said she was gone longer. A human could not survive without food and water for more than a few slices. Her stomach rumbled on cue.

“I’ll be right down,” Remy said. “Let me just change. I must have been wearing these for a while now.” Mom left the room at last. Remy had no idea why she wanted privacy. It wasn’t as if she wanted to hide. It just would have been nice for people to knock when entering her room. Mav was the only boy she knew that understood that. He appeared in her mind. The hardship his parents went through because of her must have been painful. How could she explain that she wasn’t at fault? Aside from their feelings, Remy needed to get that book from Mav’s place to read about Garavand. How did people get turned into one? What else could they do? She was so curious about them just because of Akim.

Remy got up and changed inside her closet. She remembered Mav mentioning people living outside the cities. How could they even survive out there? Did they really sacrifice people to the garavand? Remy really needed that book. She went downstairs, lit as exceptionally as always and took a seat at the table. Mom laid out a welcome back feast, even though only three people would eat it all. Dad hugged Remy tight.

“I’m so glad you’re back, sweetie,” he said. Remy smiled. “I’m sorry about Mavion.”

“I want to go see his parents and apologize,” she said. Mom stopped eating and looked over at Dad. “I know you’re going to say it’s a bad idea, but I owe them that much. Please let me.” Asking for permission was starting to feel weird too. Wasn’t she lod enough to make her own decisions? A book about garavand must have been rare. Bookstores and libraries would not be allowed to carry such challenging idea. It bordered religion, and the last that was around, it only sparked conflict. Everyone in the city followed the codex. Dad held up a hand before Mom shut the idea down. He nodded.

“That’s fine, Remy,” he said. Now h looked at her. She hated that. He could make the saddest worried eyes ever. When he looked at you with them, you’d just want to hug him tight and never let go. Remy had to be strong, retaliating with the fiercest “I’ve got this” stare to put his mind at ease. He closed his eyes admitting defeat. Remy stood and bowed as thanks for the food.

“Thank you,” she said. “I’ll be back in a few tor.” She knew the way for Mav’s place from the repeated visits. He was such a fun person to be around, even though he pushed boundaries of their way of life. Would he be the same after he woke up? Half a turn of punishment could change him. Remy shook the thought away. He would be fine.

What did Akim want to tell her right before she woke up? It seemed important. She considered taking a nap when she came back with the book, or should could read until she fell asleep and meet Akim with more knowledge of garavand than before.

The book was a bit of a gamble. It could have been written by a fiction writer. That would be about the only way to publish it. The idea would never reached the intended minds otherwise. Everything was just words on a page until someone read it. Remy shook her head from the philosophical thinking. All she needed now was to read that book. Only two grieving parents stood in her way. Remy almost hit herself for thinking that.

Was she becoming heartless in the pursuit of something new? She hoped not. There was still life to live, things to try, even though people did not live long past fifty turns. At that point, reflexes slowed, and everything was a challenge. Most left what they had to their children and asked to be put into deep sleep. In that way they would live out the remainder of their lives without getting in anyone’s way. Theirs was a different deep sleep than used for punishments. This one allowed actual rest, growth and aging.

The limit to the elder sleep was the age. They could be taken out of the sleep if they were needed for something, but otherwise snoozed to death. Verete, the magical crystal that it was, thought it was probably some hard-to-understand science, was used even in that. The crystal was crushed and ground up into powder. When inhaled as fine grains, it eliminated the need to breathe, and kept the body sedated. It stayed in the body until the elder expired.

The city Yaris only held around ten million people, but other cities existed with up to hundreds of million. All the light was powered by generators using the heat that existed beneath the planet surface. The further down, the hotter it got. Traveling between cities was dangerous and only on important business. Within the city, the light trains existed to move people around. A variety of heat-powered machines existed to move people over water and land, but most used the trains.

Remy hopped on the train to Mav’s house. She often ended up there after school, hanging out with Mav. Her parents let her have a day for now. She wondered how long it would be till she had to start going again. That was their next question for sure, after she returned from Mav’s.

A few stops further and a short walk got Remy to the front of the familiar home. It felt heavy. The presence of welcome was gone. It made her sad, but she needed to talk to them, and above all retrieve the book. She knocked on the door and rang the doorbell. The waiting cons passed in tension. When the handle turned, Remy almost bolted.