The silver staff strikes upon the black empty, with each strike light
leaps up into the air in a circular radius, like sparks flying from a
fire. The bearer of the staff walks along side where his feet fall the
shadows remain undisturbed and the light falling from the staff falls
flow around him.
The staff forges the path, and with each strike months falls away,
years rescind, and the present gets left behind. The past looms
before him, all the empty nothing of times that will never come again.
When the staff judges that the distance is far enough, he stops. The
staff is raised and a brilliant light spreads forth large and bright in
one big burst. For a split second there is no darkness at all, the land
is all molten glowing silver, but then the staff recalls its light.
Sucked back within the plain silver wood, the staff is once against
just a staff, barely visible in the overwhelming darkness.
Barely visible? Before the darkness was so deep that nothing could be
seen within it, but no longer. Now we see small glowing lights. The
light of souls in motion swarming about. These are the shadows that
remain, the afterimages of times gone past. They are like pyreflies
darting out here and there oblivious to the fact that they are no more.
The staff bearer reaches out one hand and calls out a word in a tongue
long forgotten. A true name he speaks. One its owner does not even
know. Out of the darkness one of the light flies rushes to the hand and
is cradeled there. The bearer closes his eyes for a moment and senses
its substance. He does this for a few moments then let’s go and calls
forth another. For many long hours he does this, calling each light by
name so that he might learn of their nature.
Finally he finishes, exhausted but far from done. He stops for a moment to rest and contemplate all that he has learned.
This, he judged was the time of striving. Here there were dreams and
wishes, wants and needs. So much confidence and not a small amount of
false bravado too. There was haunting uncertainties too, disturbing
thoughts and distressed fears. What am I? Who am I? What can I be? What
should I be? All things were possible for these lights, suicide and
success equally likely to stand just beyond the next horizon. There is
so much joy. The laughter is wild and reckless with a tinge of madness.
Projects are attacked with passion and determination, the greatness of
the goals driving the seekers to surpass their potential. There
was a beauty in all this, a chaotic light of hope that one might want
to see spread and grow forever and always. But like all fires, it can
only last for as long as their is enough fuel to burn.
But there was so much more to see. He smiles sadly and strikes his
silver staff yet again upon the ground. In an instance his
perspective changes. Now the lights are all around him swarming
randomly fully oblivious to his presence. He walks and the lights stay
with him now moving through time with him as he walks back a little
further.
Suddenly the lights scatter, the staff roots itself in the ground. Here
is the barrier. The staff bearer reaches out with a hand and
feels a wall of darkness impassable. The lights that had traveled with
him now form a kind of screen before the barrier unmoving like they are
frozen in an instant of time.
The staff reacts again, light flashes and projects over the small
lights flowing through them and then images begin to appear on the
black screen, images of times further back. Eras that defined these
souls before they came unto themselves.
The staff wielder examines the sites but can make no sense of them. For
some there are beautiful pictures, images of happy times that tell of
beautiful tails. For others there are dark pictures of dreary days.
Deep stories are told in these images but there are patches of
blackness where the souls dare not look. For many others there are
darkness and lights, complex stories of good and ill that define how
the present beings burn and glow.
Still for the vast majority the images drawn are not so clear. There
are blurry spreads of light and colors showing nothing but base
emotions, fears, joys, and uncertainties. Here are stories never told
and never fully realized. Here are pasts half forgotten and half
ignored and mostly just seen as nothing special by those forged by them.
For a few, a very small few there is nothing but darkness
projected from. A black barrier through which they dare not look. The
past is for them unfaceable. The darkness is too great. They block it
and ignore it. Only light outlines can be seen in those shadows, the
stuff that nightmares are made of.
The silver staff’s ligh recedes. He sighs. The deep past holds no more
revelations than ever before. The chaos born from a distorted
unity-less tradition-less reality cannot be easily mended.
He turns.
Once again the lights swarm about him and he walks forward. This time,
the days and months come forth gathering about his feet carrying
forward toward the present.
As time passes ever onward the lights stay with him. Then they scatter
spreading about a few months latter they gather again. Months beyond
another scattering. Then another gathering. A third time and the wizard
walks on.
Finally the lights scatter one last time, and this time they keep
scattering spreading through the dark world growing brighter as they go
coming closer to their true selves.
The staff takes him forward ever closer to the present. Finally it
stops him, at the very edge of reality, the moment before the
perceived moment. Now he stands within a small pool of darkness
with a pulsing silver light in the center where the staff’s energy
preserves the artificial stasis. Around the dark pool lies the
images of the real world, in black and white, still not quite real.
Yet again the bearer calls forth one name at a time and this time the
small spirit lights pop into the darkness like pushing their way into a
bubble of unreality. They are again cradeled in the hand of the
sorcerer who speaks soft words over them and senses their spirit and
then lets them go back out to rejoin the present.
When it is done the wizard falls to a sitting position the staff still
stands beside him unheld maintaining the circle of timelessness. The
bearer is tired now yes, but more overwhelmed by all that he has seen.
He cups his face in his hands and catches his breathe letting his
thoughts order themselves.
After a time things began clear. This was the era of reason he observed
but any who think that reason is a simple and stable thing do not know
reason. The lights were in some ways deeper now. Greater now. Their
lights now hid complexities that cannot be understood in any simple
terms. All that was there before was there before but now it is
controlled. Now the mind is triumphant over the passions. The spirit…
no not suppressed… more like transcended the recklessness of youth.
It still pulsed, it was still bright, but it no longer burned. Now they
were burning coals not raging infernos their wants and needs carefully
controlled. Their paths for deterministically set. Their hearts better
known to them and their choices clearer. Decisions that might
have been put off in the past were now made. Challenges that seemed
like they could be put off were now saught immediately. These
were people forging a future as best they could, realities having made
it now clear to them that mindless wandering is not rational and does
not lead to any contentment.
But it isn’t that simple either. These people were not drawn to this
life by such realization. They do not abandon their past. They surpass
it. The truth realized through growth and thought.
There is great saddness and regret in many of them. Some yearn for the
glory years. But there is great joy here in them too. In many ways it
is a more real joy born of a deeper wisdom. There is the peaceful
certainty that the world is neither so bad nor so good as it once
seemed. There is just a rightness to simply living. Being. Knowing.
But it is NOT right. The staff bearer climbs to his feet and
grasps his staff once again, determination now sets into his
features. He calls forth the staffs power yet again this time
blazing a path to pierce the veil into the unknown future to perceive
whether his suspicions are correct.
And they are here there is the glowing plain of light spreading forth
through all possibilities from the present. Each light is constantly
happy upwards sloping and growing. But the growth is linear. The angle
not so steep. There were a few dips here and there were dark times were
come, eras of renewed uncertainties, eras of fear for others, disasters
unbidden, but the constant growth of happiness was steady for the most
part.
Constant. Linear. It wasn’t quite right. The growth was all wrong. What
seemed stable was actually as fragile as glass. If your growth is so
small, any real disturbance that shatters your world view would cast
you so far back into darkness that you might not be able to crawl out
again. But even if you could and even if you would be better for it,
the world would still not be quite right. Something was lost, a talent
from the past abandoned in the present. Has the soul forgotten its true
potential?
The staff and staff bearer began to grow, his spirit spreading out
larger his sight spreading until soon he could perceive all the
times in one view. There he saw the lights now as glowing silver lines
extended from the dark bearier all the way into the future.
He began the follow these lines, threading the strands of fate through
his fingers probing them feeling how the paths flowed forming a
constant story of life.
As his hands felt along them in many he found the cause of his despair.
There were places you see, where the lights threads were thined, or
broken. Moments of times past where parts of the soul’s wisdom were
abandoned. Lost. Here a decision not to strive for this. Here a choice
that that was not worth seeking. Somewhere else a choice that this
would be good enough or that that other thing just doesn’t matter at
all. Absolute decisions. Decisions to bind the soul with ribbons of
steal. And thus the fires of the time of striving were let to die
down without realizing their true potential in order to create an
environment where reason could take root.
And then the true reason became clear. During the time of stirivng
there was a glow of unity. That kind of connection that can only
be wrought forth when many of like mind are brought together under a
similar vision of the world. That unity was shattered in an
instant but the pieces of it carried onward being brought into the
whole of the present but not intact. And thus reason found itself
restricted unable to perceive all possible paths because it could not
draw from a collective community of souls.
The staff bearer could not fix it. He could not build back light into
the souls of the present. He could not mend wounds and build bridges.
He could not change people in the present to whom they would be had
they brought forth all of their past with them and bring to them in
this way an even greater joy. One that can grow exponentially
throughout all eternity.
But he could do something. He picked forth one light at a
time and started creating lassos of golden light. He forged these out
of magic and memory. He added love and hope and threw in a little bit
of fear and pain for nothing of substance can be born without these.
These lassos he connected to the lights and tossed forth from them back
through the eras to encircle the collections of light of the time of
striving. A thousand such lassos he created. Lifelines to the past.
Strings of memories that could grasp the good of the past and bring it
into the present to create a greater good.
Finally complete the wizard spoke a word. The staff transported him
back to his isolated thrown beyond the ends of time. There he sat
heavily, the staff fell into his lap. His job was done. He could do no
more.
Would this that he had done enable the spirits of these worlds to bring
themselves to a greater reason? Or would they not notice? Would they
accept good enough and forget about demanding the greater still? Would
they always be filled with regret of the days long gone?
The lasso’s would not work on their own. There was only one way to
bring back good that is gone. You cannot wish it to be. You cannot
hope. You cannot wait for it to come. There is only one way. Through
force of will.
It won’t be the same. It shouldn’t be either though they might not
realize it. They may abandon it for fear of the unfamiliarity. This
will be something new. Greater and better. Building the past into the
future, not a mere shadow of things begone. But they must will for it.
They must pull forth on the lassos and yank the past forward into the
present. Pull it against its will to a time where it seems out of place
where it is lost and seems almost wrong as a result. And then it must
be changed and incorporated, made to fit with the reason of the present
to serve as fuel for the glory of the future. They must will this. They
must seek it. Or the past will be lost, and though great good can come,
it will ever be limited in scale by the shadows of the past.
Will they have the will, the sorcerer wondered? “I never did”, he
thought. But they are different. Already they see beyond the substance
of their being. Already they embrace reason. All they need to do is
open their minds… just a little bit more.
He could not help them, but he could sit and watch them grow and hope for them the best that they can have.
