Let Her Go - Passenger

You only need the light when it's burning low, it seems. While the flickering dimness is dying, and your eyes are frantically flicking across the room desperately trying to memorize everything. And your head hurts from the strain. Your eyes burn with the effort you didn't even realize you were putting in.

The darkness is growing.

Growing into the room around you, winning control of the space, edging out the fading light. And some ancient, primal part of you feels the fear that all men fear in the darkness. You know there's nothing there, you know there's nothing to fear. But that prehistoric section of your psyche will not relent.

The darkness is growing, and the light is almost gone.

And suddenly there is no more light. Your eyes strain against the blackness, your heart pounds, your body is about to tense.

And you feel her hand slide in to yours. It squeezes, and you feel her breath on your shoulder. You are not alone in the dark,

And as sleep takes you, you realize that like the light before it in the morning you will miss the fading dark.

The Word of the Void

In the inky blackness of space, there are more things than you'd expect.  Don't get me wrong, there's a whole lotta nothing.  More nothing than the average human mind is capable of comprehending, for sure. But... inside that nothing... there's more than you'd think.

I'm not talking about neutrinos, or extrasolar radiation, or particles or whatever. Obviously they exist, and permeate the black. But still... you can travel a fair distance without seeing one of them.

No, the thing you have to watch out for is the nothing. Inside the nothing. Inside you. Being surrounded by that much darkness...mankind wasn't meant for that. We're creatures of the light, social things.

Dipping a mind into the black for so long, so deeply... there's a reaction. A chemical reaction. The mind corrodes, and the Word of the Void slips inside the cracks and lodges in the dangerous places in the brain. And once that happens... there is no going back.  No ammount of light, no ammount of love will knock it loose. The Darkness is inside you, and you are Darkness. You are the Nothing.  And you will heed its words.

There's a reason children are scared of the dark, and in the space between systems, you can see it.