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[CW: drug use]
And so the first word was spoken: “.”
– Parable 1
It is not an instant but a moment.
Even pitch will flow eventually, and so too, the pen which now hovers in the air will clatter to the table in time.
It is not so much a deceleration as an awareness of each tide through which your experience flows.
As we march on, the heralds of a new world, we must not grow content, must not cling on in fear of the End. Do not treat the days as something precious, to be hoarded or wasted. For they are made by us – with every step, a new second is born.
– Nkechia Olus
Your senses are dulled – not lessened, but given the bluntness of Human Resources laying off the nth person of the day.
You examine yourself with what could be curiosity, though it is blurred through frosted glass. The small jar you inhaled from sits on the table next to your hand. The sleeve hangs slightly loose, wrinkling to a point. It wrinkles again at the elbow and shoulder. There is a slight movement to your chest, glittering now with sweat. You see the heart, beating its languorous rhythm, follow it up to the trachea and the back of the throat. There, you see it – infection.
No panic – though there is a bubble of it in the person before you – just a statement of fact. Sand slipping through the hourglass, counting down.
The Many-Legged Stranger is sometimes believed to be one of Death's many faces for individuals doomed to die whilst travelling. Their whistle in the wind, the glow of a cold hearth as they depart – the markers of a visit drawn to its conclusion.
But your visit is not ending yet. You know this, see the paths forward.
It surrounds you, a clamouring – a calling. The threads coalesce, pointing skywards.
Dearr created each star in the sky, and your words must carry equal precision and beauty. You are to be a shining light for your congregation, Sky-Blessed one.
The building blocks of society lie scattered, disparate. They can be built, Babel-like. A word here, a smile there, it will carry through the air.
– Diagram demonstrating the four centres of a triangle, and their coincidence in the equilateral case
Strangeness's centres are laid bare before you, imbalanced. Detached, now, from self-empathy, you begin to wonder what purpose each exactly serves.
And then – another. Observing, as you are. There are no words, but you feel an exchange which brings with it a name to the forefront of your mind: Della Faye.
To describe it as a conversation would be unfaithful. There is… a transfer. And you are imparted with knowledge.
A quiet sense of unexpectedness; a lack of precedent; a fizzling contentedness; a reluctant goodbye. And memories, of days spent collecting ingredients, refining, brewing, testing. A familiar bunker that you have but dreamed of.
Your focus swings round as the drug begins to lose its effect, the glass window cracking under the weight of emotion. But there are other minds there, a handshake away. You find one, before it slips. A connection brief enough that all you get is the name.
Martya.
What was the first word unspoken?
– Explanatory comment on Parable 1 by Abbot Saburé (631)
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