Darkness is has no rigid form; it shifts and moves as it pleases. Taking whatever form it needs to manifest its desires. But its formlessness prevents it from holding those desires with any permanence. The results of the desires then become less and less meaningful as the hunger for more builds. Unable to maintain a steady grasp on the fruit of its efforts, the very act of obtaining more becomes its mission. More, more, more— shouts the boundless hunger that’s found only in something truly shapeless. A shapelessness that seems impossible to imprison, yet is locked in an inescapable purgatory of hunger that can’t be satisfied.
Darkness is the default. It is absence. An absence that’s solely focused on consuming. And despite letting consumption define its existence, there’s a beauty to the bottomless resolve of the darkness. It doesn’t stop. Silently lurking and waiting to gain more ground. Never forcing its advances, but always knowing exactly what shape to take to invite its target into its clutches.
Light has a rigid form defined by a set of principles. Its consistency is matched only by its warmth. It seeks nothing but contentment found from its very existence. An existence that requires a source. Implicitly, the source gives the light a purpose, even if the purpose is abstract and hard to define. Despite the abstraction, light offers clarity, never deception.
Light certainly does not get go wherever it pleases to fulfill its desires. It’s cast forth from the source with direction. The direction, plus energy from the source, gives it a substance that creates warmth and counters the darkness. In a way, one of the core properties of light is to provide a necessary contrast to the darkness. For without light, there is nothing but all-consuming emptiness.
From its cold, vapid purgatory, the darkness envies the light. An envy that’s an unbearable tension between a hatred for what it’s become and a love of what the light offers. Being inherently self-sourced and self-centered, the darkness seeks to keep the power that is its consumptive shiftiness, but also have the warmth, direction, and contentment of the light. So the darkness aims to trap the light and harness its power for itself.
In trying to trap the light, the darkness feels more and more of the warmth of the light. It grows to crave that warmth. Eventually, the darkness falls in love with the way the light’s warmth makes it feel. But in falling for that feeling and not so much the light itself, the darkness fails to truly understand the light. Unaware of its mischaracterization of light, the darkness shifts and twists with all its might to get the light to fall in love with it, hoping that it can trap that warmth forever if it becomes that object of the light’s desire.
Despite not being able to make traps of deception like the darkness, the light recognizes that the traps always do more harm than good. And being the good natured abstraction that it is, the light tries to illuminate the truth for the darkness-- that the only way to truly love the light and have its warmth is to acknowledge the source and become light yourself.
Blinded by desire and belief in its own power, the darkness refuses to yield to the light. It refuses to rely on an external, abstract source. Consequently, the darkness is never able to genuinely love the light. Instead it continues to walk the dark, miserable path of power and consumption; keeping itself in a prison that’s as strong and shapeless as itself.