Once upon a time, or the Wadi Rum Desert

They were born on the same day, or at least that is what they say. Chronos and Silence.

Rumour has it that they loved to slide on the planets’ elliptic orbits, Mercury, Jupiter, and Uranus.

And that they liked to let themselves fall, weightless, into black holes. Their hair would look messy indeed, once they got out on the other side, but the Moons say that their laughter made Eternity shine.

They also say that the two little rascals used to throw huge pop-corns to each other: the Stars! It was pointless to complain, but then again the Stars used to enjoy it.

Sometimes Silence would lose his balance and fall towards distant galaxies. Chronos, who was stronger and braver, would then run and run. “Nothing will ever tear us apart, Silence. I will always find you”.

Then, it happened. Boom! Dust. Stellar ambulances. Red eruptions spitting high up in the Sky. Dark wings. That deep pain while waking up. Blindness. His hand, nowhere to be found. The only thing Chronos felt was the acidic taste of Truth: “You fall onto Earth, Chronos. Do you remember anything about the accident?”. Of course, I do.

Silence did not want to jump onto that Comet, this time. He said: “We will get too close to them”. You were aware he was afraid of their motors, their phones, and their loud ignorance. Instead of listening to him, you dismissed his fears: “C’mon. Let’s do it! We will not fall”.

Silence and Chronos, though, did fall onto Earth. Ananke, the Inevitability of Fate.

They say that from that moment, Chronos has been wandering, pitiless and eyeless, across our planet. They say he still looks for him. His heart was hardened by Solitude: he destroys rocks, and worsens our wrinkles. When he is around, skyscrapers crumble down and Love disappears. Chronos keeps on running: clocks and photography have proved completely useless to curb his force. He knows that Silence is not dead. Silence has been simply playing a new game: an eternal version of Hide-and-Seek. Chronos has never stopped running after him: on the snowy tops of Dolomites, in Studeniča monastery, in long-lost ghost villages in Northern Ireland, and on the bottom of the oceans. Nevertheless, Chronos thinks that just once they were really close, touching even. In the Wadi Rum desert, in Jordan. He had been endlessly wandering, overturning ever-changing dunes and shouting “Where are you, my friend?”. Around him, the Light was playing with red to orange to gold sand, and long shadows were dying on the rocks, caressing the thirty thousand petroglyphs in Lawrence’s Desert. Then the Night, at last.

Chronos turned his eyeless face towards that Sky where he used to play with his best friend.

Up there, Her. The Milky Way. “Where are you, my friend?”. “Here I am”. Maybe.