There was a room. It was not very big, but seemed full of extra space from a lack of content. It was perfectly clean, the dark wooden floors were polished highly to a black shine, and the whitewashed walls and ceiling always looked freshly painted. There was no art to brighten the walls, and no rugs to soften the floor. There were no windows. It was a hard room, a room of corners and edges, leaving a harsh, tinny taste in the mouth. There was one thing inside, however.

The bed seemed to cling to the ground, stretching itself out across as much of the shiny floor as possible. The spread seemed to be a blend of the white walls and varnished floor; its grey was of a nondescript shade that drew attention to the starkness of the white and black rather than softening them. It was here that they slept at night.

The two would get out of this bed every morning and leave the room to prepare themselves and go to work. Where they worked was unimportant; sometimes they themselves had trouble remembering. What they looked like was unimportant because they themselves did not know. They never spoke inside that room.

Yet it was a bedroom, and they returned there every night to sleep. After work, and an evening meal, and after dark as well, if either bothered to look outside before entering the room. Neither of them ever did.

They both slid under the grey coverlet in one fluid motion, but the fluid was liquid steel. Neither made any extraneous movements; their bodies were synchronized to the last little tug of the bedspread under their chin. Both looked blindly up at the ceiling, willing sleep to overtake them. They lay in bed as twin statues, carved out of a cold, unyielding stone. Sleep never came to them.

Each lay in bed, awake, feeling the presence of the one next to them, knowing that the other was also awake, but saying nothing, not acknowledging that presence. The ceiling and walls had a sort of luminescent tint of midnight in that darkened room, in the absence of any ambient light. Each looked up into that midnight, and although neither of them had ever seen stars, they somehow viewed the stars that floated beyond the ceiling. They both lay flat on their rigid backs with their eyes wide open, gazing up into the universe that unfolded before them. Suns, planets, galaxies shot past them and they didn't even blink. Their eyes never shut. It was as if one false twitch of the eyelid would take this away forever, and they would have to lie sleepless in bed with no vision to make it worthwhile.

It was the same every night, the same every day. The room never changed, the couple never changed, the vision never changed. For years, for centuries, for millennia, this story played out again and again, until every day was one, and every night was one.

Until one of them blinked.

For a nanosecond the brilliant lights and pinpoints against the dark of the pupil were cut off. In that moment, the roof disappeared. For the first time, the two turned their heads toward each other. They looked into each other's eyes to see what the other was seeing, to find out what the other was feeling.

It did not matter which of them had blinked. It did not matter which of them had knocked away a balance kept for thousands of years with one small twitch out of place. In fact, neither knew which one committed this indiscretion; their minds were so synchronized that there was no dividing line.

The roof was gone. In its place there was...a view. The pair slowly turned their faces upward, and looked out at the world.

They saw the night sky, the moonlight pouring into the room and truly lighting it for the first time.

Both turned back toward each other, as to a mirror, to watch the amazement and surprise and joy bloom on their face, in their eyes. And then one closed those eyes. But the other's eyes were still open. The eternal pattern was utterly and irreparably broken.

And suddenly the face with eyes shut seemed...different. The cheeks tinged pink. The body softened into curves, and she opened her eyes to see the figure next to her. She broke the silence.

"Close your eyes," she said softly, musically, her voice ethereal and rippling with newfound freedom. "Close your eyes, let the darkness take you. Let it bring you to a place of starlight and freedom within yourself. Let the darkness come; do not fear...I will watch over you."

The nondescript, sexless being next to her lifted its eyes to her face. She saw fear in the colorless irises. A trembling, baseless fear that had no place in any human face or any human heart. She met that fear with her misty hazel eyes, and she beat it back. She leaned forward over the figure, and gently closed its eyes with two of her fingers.

Black eyes snapped open, a man sat up straight in the bed, raised his hands and gazed at them curiously. He had never seen himself before. He heard a muffled noise next to him, and turned to meet the gaze of the woman beside him.

"What am I thinking?" he asked...almost rhetorically.

"If I could tell you that, you wouldn't be thinking it," the woman replied with a quirked eyebrow.

The man smiled slowly, smiled for the first time. The woman gazed long at his face, and then her mouth curved to match his...but not identically. Their smiles were different--their souls were different--they had souls.

They smiled at each other, until they both started laughing with sheer joy. Their laughter encompassed an exhilaration, a freedom, a flight that the universe had never seen, nor felt, nor heard.

Laughter--light, ringing laughter--the first laughter. It shapes this universe. Joy shapes this universe. Pain may shade it, but the shape is determined by joy. Ananda: the joy without which the universe will cease to exist.