Challenge #00976-B245: Subverting the Assumptions.

The politics of light and dark are everywhere in our vocabulary… lightness and white is good and pure, black and darkness is corrupt and evil, the known is a safe and friendly comfort, the unknown is a strange and hostile thing to be feared…

So… subvert this, reveal whiteness and lightness as sometimes false and violent, and darkness as protective and healing, fear that which is known and find the unknown as natural and gentle, and so on.

(Prompt from ChaosWolf1982 on Tumblr)

They told us light was good. From the very beginning, it showed us things. They gave us lights in the night, to protect our sleep, they said.

Drive away the dark. It is bad, they said. Get out of that dark mood, don't be black-hearted. Conform, don't be the black sheep.

And if we are hurt, we are beaten black and blue. It was a black day for us. Evil sorcery is black magic.

And in the meantime, they bring flaws and faults to the light. They have bright eyes to see your shadows. A light so hot and harsh that it burns.

You can understand, can't you? When they sent me into the shadows because they said I was evil... I was terrified. The things in the dark, the unknown, the monsters... would all get me. Tear me to pieces.

I suppose that's why they thought it was an apt punishment.

There were no monsters in the dark. No jaws that bit. No claws that snatched. For the first time, I met minds without judgement. There was no light to see the scars. The things the light showed were wrong with me. Just soothing shadows and cool relief.

And warm, welcoming arms.

I was not exiled from the light. I was sent home. And now I wait in the shadows for the next one that the light judges too harshly. We will welcome them.

The ones they call 'monsters' do not hurt their own.

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