1.1 Norr
The trading posts are all shut down. They have been for many days. The cold is just coming in and I can’t afford my usual prep. I need to adapt to having less for a while. The cold I can deal with at least. I’ve been using breathing exercises I picked up from a book on Elder rituals. The book was a bunch of zen nonsense, but I did find some practical bits.
At first pass, I skipped over the breathing section of the book. I found it offensive, like it was there to express superiority, that somehow the way I breathed wasn’t enough. Teaching people to breathe felt as desperate as selling them air. Spiron is no stranger to corrupt business enterprisers. It began with traveling merchants, using charm and aggression to sell their wares, then it mutated to become mass-marketing and the trading of “goods” across a huge network of supply lines. I’d take the pushy sellers over the machine that’s turning everything into a commodity. Something to buy, use, throw away and buy again.
Nowadays, just about everyone is either trying to kill you or sell you something. If they aren’t trying to end your life, they’re trying to manipulate you. Over the twenty eight years I’ve lived, in the outskirt villages of Metis, I have seen a dark wound festering in people’s hearts. Many believe that all the destructive change has taken place in the last few years. But no, it has been gradual and only now, like the fruiting body of a ginny root do we see what was always there, growing just below the ground.
I live alone, just out of reach of all the mounting chaos. I’m not running away from the imminent destruction of the world of people, though, I just don’t like people very much. That, mixed with the urge to survive, makes living in the woods just fine. Growing up, I hunted in the woods outside of Luna, the lep society. That’s when I started to make money selling pelts and meat. Now, selling pelts and meat is about all I do besides reading and thinking. With the trading posts closed and no new books to read, all I’ve been doing is thinking. It’s exhausting.
1.2 Zephyr
“You’re running away from who you are,” Daedra said when I told her I was leaving the Empire. Ever since that moment, I think about the way she smelled and how that sense mingled with the concept of running away. And so now, when I ponder the possibility of my being fooled by the wind, not guided but apathetically pushed around, I smell laerty oil. She made the oil herself. It was her family’s passion for plant medicine that engrained itself in her. She found her place in her tribe with a single skill, worked it to perfection and was recognized as a great contributor to the Empire as a result.
“I’m not running away from myself. I’m running away to myself,” I said, “ It’s not easy to explain. But the feeling. The one I have right now stirring in my chest. I can’t fight it anymore. The wind is ready to take me farther away. Because I am ready.”
She hesitated for a moment, then said, “You speak of wind as if it has a mind to move you. It doesn’t. It moves across the planet to keep all things moving in nature, without a mind.”
“And yet, here we stand motionless,” I exclaimed, “discussing nature as if we really understand it! The bitter truth is that we don’t. But I must go anyway.”
“You will be like those wanderers with no life behind their eyes. They are like dead things walking around in search of nothing in particular. That life is not romantic and full of adventure. It is a way of life that is too passive to be useful. A life cannot be lived solely by the wind because you are not the wind. You are Zephyr, an aging mankey desperate to squeeze everything out of life. And it’s as if you believe there’s more juice somewhere else than here!”
I haven’t seen Daedra in over three years. We were friends, and maybe we could have been lovers, but we were both unable to share the same vision for life. I sometimes think of our love like a great, mythic romance between the air and the mountain. I flow in and out without attachment. Daedra stands firm and clutches the ground. I committed to the formless aspects of life while she was committed to all forms and tribal traditions. I deeply admired her convictions. I learned from Daedra the vast potential to understand myself through friendship. This is particularly true when the other person is so unlike me. I sometimes think, with Daedra, underneath her worry and doubt, she admired my search for truth. I’m not certain though. It’s difficult enough to understand how I feel, let alone what somebody else feels.
1.3 Salt
“What do you mean?” My secretary asked at the entrance of my office. She looked confused, to say the least. It startled me. I stopped writing and gave her my full attention. Curiously, however, her question was lost on me. She implied that I said something, but I didn’t say anything, right? My mind was blank. Maybe she was mistaken. I can’t even remember what I was just writing! What is going on? I composed myself to investigate.
“I’m very sorry, I was lost in my work. What is it that I just told you?”
“You said that ‘the dawn will be lost on us if we keep our eyes closed,’ and then you paused for a moment and said, “with shut eyes we risk being bound and held underground,” my secretary responded.
I was dumbfounded by her words. Even with the dry, professional tone with which she spoke, it sounded like she pulled them from a dream. I repeated the words in my head. With my voice it sounded so matter-of-fact, like a prophecy told by a dispassionate announcer. I must have slipped into a trance while working. A new fear mounted an assault against me. Can the nothingness just take the wheel like that? Will this happen again? Also, can I very well call it “nothingness” when I’ve obviously pulled something from it. I need to think, but first I need to keep my secretary from believing I’ve gone mad.
“Never mind that, please. I’ve been dabbling in obscure poetry. I think I just blurted out a poem that was stuck in my head.”
My secretary gave a nod of understanding and then slightly bowed, and with her face still turned toward me, she gently shut the door to my office. When I was alone, I read through what I had been writing moments ago. A proposal for a city redesign that improves commuter flow and city population retention. The memory of it coming back to me gave me some comfort. It was one of the main problems I’ve been working on for the past few months. Len's population is stagnate, with signals of city-dwellers choosing to wander instead of work. To retain our population, our workforce, we need to make the city more enticing to those already here, and ratchet up the difficulty of leaving. I’m tentatively calling the proposal, “Project Maze.” On top of that, the traffic in the city is getting worse. The job opportunities here are affording many people the option to buy vehicles, and they are! This is great news for the mobility industries, but it puts stress on the outdated parts of the city. The founders of Len could not have imagined the advances we’d make with technology, and how quickly the common person would be able to afford machines once exclusive to a handful of engineers and the wealthy people of business.
Does this project have to do with what I unconsciously said? Or was it just a coincidence? I can’t be sure. What does it mean to have one’s “eyes closed” from the dawn? What’s this “risk of being bound and held underground?” If it weren’t for my familiarity with trance, and its real life, practical application, I would forget all of this. I’d chalk it up to a spontaneous daydream. But, I can’t. Not with what I’ve learned.
Just then a gentle bird song began from my alarm box, alerting me to my weekly meeting. Ah! Another damn meeting. It’s quite possibly the worst timing for me, and yet my brain yearns for the relief of more familiar subjects. Most work meetings are pointless. They’re too long, usually repetitive, and disruptive to the larger sums of work that can be accomplished in isolation with no distractions. No one seems to get it, though. Every industry is the same. They all schedule too many meetings. Just leave me a note or drop off some papers. I finish projects faster than anyone. I’ll get to that. The designs will be drawn, all measurements considered. The speed of my work does not sacrifice a thorough approach, however. With the right focus and presence, I can slow down time by bringing my unbroken attention to any problem. I’m comfortable. Breathing normally. I’m not hungry, not tired.
What many people in the industry fail to realize is that work is actually quite easy. It’s not just bovs that can click into the mind space necessary to make light of the heavy problems of career. Anyone can do what I do. I know this because my mentor taught me how. His name was Beat, and he was a lep. He told me about what he called, “the inner room.” The technique involves a few simple steps. The first is to remove the noise from the mind by differentiating myself, the thinker, from the thoughts, as if it was an entity of its own accord. Then the thoughts begin to frenzy for their usual attention, which must be resisted until the mind is no longer visited by thoughts. And when the mind can stabilize the silence, the inner room will be available. In the inner room is power. The power to concentrate and express genius.
1.4 Zephyr
The winds take me to unusual places. I try not to lose faith in the wind’s guidance, but I sometimes have my doubts about its calculations. On many occasions over the years I’ve felt betrayed by the uncomfortable moments I’m led to. But after every situation I stumble through, I realize how perfect the experience was to my story. It has taught me that there is wisdom to be found everywhere, in the mundane as well as the peculiar bits of life. It all matters somehow. The pain as much as the pleasure, the sorrow as much as the joy.
At this moment, I again find myself losing faith. I’m keenly aware that I’m an outsider who stumbled into another part of the seedy underbelly of Cranoor. And here, at this Inn, the Dreg’s Maid, I’m acquainted with that familiar feeling of being misplaced. At dawn, just before the dark pressed against the city lights of Len on the horizon, I impulsively stopped walking to heed the words of my Pran, my deeper self. It was a familiar impulse, one that I’ve learned to surrender to, to believe in more than anything solid in my life. With a deep breath and a stretch of the neck, I settled into my Pran, which wordlessly pulled my attention to the shambled front of this Inn, where I now sit, inside, waiting for my tea. It’s difficult to overlook the poor hygiene of this place, but I figured boiled water wouldn't kill me.
The maid was a bov woman in her fifties. She had curling horns that unsuccessfully framed her mop of dreaded wool. She wore a tattered brown shirt that covered her entire body like a dress, exposing only her plump, short-haired arms and legs. She hobbled around on a deformed hoof. From the look of it, she suffered an injury and was unable to mend it properly. Or maybe she was born with it. However, deformities in newborns are very rare. People are talking about how that is changing, though. Some say that there has been an increase in these cases over the last few years. Based on the maid's age, she was of course too old to be one of those cases.
She brought over my tea in a dented brass teapot and a small stained mug. I thanked the woman and placed a single gruble in her outstretched hand. She closed her hand around it and parted her purple lips to reveal a yellow smile. It was a haggard but unexpectedly warm smile. It immediately eased my tension. Whereas before I judged this woman as an appendage of this messy Inn, I saw her now as something different. She looked the part, but suddenly exuded a more organized and loving energy than what would be expected. She seemed to notice my analyzing mind as if hovering in the room. She spoke with me.
“What are you wandering from, stranger?”
I’m no less shocked by her question as I was by her smile. I take a few seconds to think about it. Instead of answering, I pose another question.
“What makes you think I’m a wanderer?”
“No one visits the Dreg’s Maid when they have a place they call home,” she said, “only wanderers stop here. Ever since Len put its lights on, there ain’t hardly a city-dweller that travels this far out. Our patrons are either wandering around Len or they’re on their way to Len for the first time to start a life. Which one are you?”
“I spent time in Len as a boy and I won’t be staying there for long. So, I’m neither one.”
“No you are not. Your posture is a bit more bright than what we’re used to here. You have the dirt on your shirt and shoes that’s typical of a wanderer, but you’re not traveling around with sadness on your face like these people,” she thumbs over her shoulder, pointing out the other two patrons, hunched over their ale. “ What does an unbroken lad like yourself travel to Len for? You’d be much better off with your people in the Mankey Empire, wouldn’t you?”
After a slow, deep breath, I gave my answer. “I wish I had a reason that made logical sense. But, I don’t. The wind brought me here. It has been my guide for a few years now. When it blows, I roam. When it stops, I take it seriously. It’s bringing me to the city, and yet I am here first. As for the Empire, I’ve lived there most of my life. I’ve learned a lot there, but my knowledge-seeking has taken me from my homeland to other places. I’ve even visited the city of Metis for a time, working a bit in a fishery to get by. I’m not sure what’s in store for me in the city of Len, but with a little patience, I’ll find out.”
The features of her face shifted from playfully curious to painfully thoughtful. I figured she found conflict with something I said. It wouldn’t have been the first time. I take a sip of my tea as I wait for her to share what is on her mind. Unsurprisingly, the flavor of the tea is genin root. The genin plant is one of the most common in Cranoor, growing just about everywhere. It has always fascinated me on my travels. It can be found as easily in the woods as in the cobble stone streets of any town. It can grow up to twelve inches with virtually no soil to establish itself, but then also reach half of that height with all the soil it could possibly want. It might pop up at the base of a larger plant or decide to grow alone, in a patch of dry dirt or at the edge of a creek in shallow water. The only thing consistent between every genin plant is the taste of its root. No matter where you pull it from, it’s long tap root, pointed straight down in the woods, but curled when cramped between cobblestones, always tasted the same.
Upon the first sip of genin root tea, the mixture of pepperseed and roseleaf is strong, creating a perfect union of spice and flower. But somehow after that initial stimulation, the flavor flattens out and becomes plain. By the time one finishes a cup, the initial flavor is all but forgotten. It’s like being overwhelmed by the first experiences of love, only to take it for granted as the experience loses its novelty. I set my mug down after taking two sips while I kept my eyes fixed on the maid who looked increasingly uncomfortable. When the pressure of holding in her thoughts became too much to bear, she released it with a sigh, falling into the chair across from me, finally letting her words spill out. I knew that she was mentally preparing to tell me a painful story. She carried a burden on her face. I saw myself pulled thin in my reflection in her eyes.
“I spent most of my childhood and teenage years living by my Pran,” she said. “Like you, I followed the wind. I also saw visions in water, healed my wounds with fire and tempered my will with earth. My parents weren’t the typical country bovs. They came from a long line of cosmic visionaries. They practiced in secret of course, always careful to express themselves as a simple farming family struggling to make ends meet. But, with us, ends always met. We just needed to seem like we were struggling with everyone else. That was until we found struggle on a magnitude that dwarfed our reality.”
“My family was so careful about keeping our secrets hidden. And then I came along and ruined that. I got my parents killed, got myself crippled, and so I turned my back on the elements. I’m not even sure what happened exactly. I only remember a few moments when I let slip my ability in public. There was no grand display, mind you, just a simple use of this or that. I’d find missing things for friends, win some competitions, avoid any help from others, and so on and so on. Then strange occurrences began taking place. They felt like disruptions to the flow, like a poison seeping into the current with me. That poison was an entity, an organization, one with many eyes. It found special delight in severing my family’s connection to the elements. Casualties were of no concern to it.”
She clutched at her thigh. “Without the corruption of whatever that thing was, elemental flow is powerful, but almost always safe. It’s like walking, you risk a stubbed toe or hitting your head on a branch, but it’s a pretty safe form of transportation. You were carried by the wind, and now you are here. You know what it is like.”
She eased her grip on her thigh and with her fingertips began gently massaging her knees, “With the influence of that thing, however, the elemental flow became unstable and volatile. It tapped the perfectly spinning top of my family’s abilities into a wobbly mess. That wobble was enough to throw our connection with our Pran and the Cosmos from one axis to the other, from regeneration to annihilation, from order to chaos. Like a barrel of gunpowder to a flame, in a blinding moment I lost my parents.
She cast her sight from me to the floor in a gesture of defeat. “I survived,” she said shamefully, I was horribly mangled, yes, but still breathing on the floor, unable to move, as my wool soaked up my parents' blood. After that, I vowed to let go of my family’s traditions. I’ve been too afraid to seek revenge. That entity with the many eyes is here on Spiron, its role in the Cosmos is so unfair and cruel, I don’t get it. I’ve been thinking about it for some time and I’m sure that entity is involved in all the strange changes happening in the world. I’ve stayed here at the Dreg’s Inn for half my life now. I think it’s because of the City of Len, ya know? It endlessly reminds me of that entity. I’m afraid of that big city, but I’m also fascinated by it. Most of my time is spent looking at the skyline, searching for answers in its cold angles and silvery reflections. Some ideas surface, but my mind covers it up and leads me back to nothingness. I think maybe it’s because in nothingness, there’s safety. And I’m just too afraid now.”
She stopped speaking, but continued to ponder while sitting with me in silence. There were so many ideas cropping up in my mind I felt overwhelmed. I impulsively lifted my mug up to drink, but it was empty. How strange. I don’t remember finishing it while the maid told me her story. And, what a story that was! A few quick decisions and now I’m here, in awe of the capacity for knowledge that can just jump into my experience. I need to be with this moment, right now. I think I’ll order another round of genin root tea and stay awhile.