Jackal Among Snakes

We’ve had some hard times, the three of us. There was a period when the youngest considered every word and action he said to us like it might be his last. Maybe he was right to do so, given how two of us had acted once; one a zealot, the other cold-blooded. But he brought with him from Earth a little softness, rounding the edges out of his elders. One of us had been sharp by nature, the other by nurture, but our youngest part had taught us lessons beyond his years.

But then, he’d just as quickly say he wouldn’t be who he was without the aid of his elders.

Then again, none of that really mattered. We were as one, now. We had been expecting pain, perhaps confusion, when we reached out and touched the Tree of Being. Nothing of the sort came. Instead, it came as naturally as being. All our insecurities and uncertainties, when unified, felt insignificant. How could we reject ourselves for what we’d done? A ludicrous idea. Our mistakes are our own, our fears are shared, and our desires are understood. It was intensely comforting, though the emphasis was certainly on ‘intense.’

We had a desire, a single will, and a purpose for coming here. Once we had acquainted ourself with who we were, we took a measure of our surroundings. We lingered near the roots of the Tree of Being. Here, the existence of will was shepherded upward toward the light. The roots were the point from which the plant drew its life, but the true beauty of the tree existed further upward. It existed in the place it might be exposed to light, and where, in turn, our minds would be exposed and seen.

Trepidation rose within at the prospect of bathing in the light, at being seen by all who would look. Yet one part of us retained its boldness, its adventurousness, and its unending desire for deeper connection. And that one part, though a minority, was enough to send us rising upward. We did not lack for courage, to say the least. So long as one of us could persuade, we would keep pressing onward.

So we rose through the roots of the Tree of Being, rising upward with the ferocity of comets shooting through the starry skies. We grazed countless other ascending stars, but the roots were many and divided and we gleaned nothing from our brief passings. Before long, however, we felt an intensity unlike anything else we’d experienced before. Myriad wills collided, each of them opposing forces with just as much, if not far more, being as we had. Just like us, they had been, and after this, they would continue to be.

Our delusions of grandeur were truncated in the trunk of the Tree of Being, rather fittingly.

Our grand ascent met their chaotic whirlpool of golden minds, where the sheer magnitude of their being crashed against ours with noise enough to drown out the purpose of our existence. Those that had been for millennia uncountable crashed against theirs. The birth and death of civilizations, the slaying of ancient gods, the coming and going of Gerechtigkeit in all the times that he did… so many other existences, so many other consciousnesses, so many other beings and ways to be. It felt sufficient for us to be whisked away by the whirlpool, to listen to the melodies of minds far older and vaster than ours… after all, how could we hope to learn if we don’t stop to listen?

At least… it was almost enough for us.

ours? What made one suffering, one being,

even when crippled and blind. It was the strength of will to carry on, even when those closest had cast you aside. It was the

story rung out through the whole Tree of Being, regardless of our existence’s brevity in face of the Gilderwatchers. We were important, and our being mattered. Vasquer’s story, our attempts to end the cycle of judgment, our very existence—it rung out boldly, heard

once, washing over us in a

mistakes, the insecurities, the reasonings born of our reason—so too did the Gilderwatchers. We felt the countless reactions to Vasquer’s parting—the bold child who, kept ignorant by a peace treaty made before her birth, headed into the world seeking answers her kin could not provide. Sympathy, disgust, contempt, envy, longing—we received

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understanding coiled around us like a warm blanket, wrapping us in such tenderness and comfort that it felt all that we had ever done had been wholly worth it. We belonged here. We were welcomed here. Even

was nice, to be true, but it was not

pursue the Alchemist with a sickly body. It was ambition enough to try and preserve all, even when it was not pragmatic. It was ambition enough to consume the knowledge of Erlebnis wholly, and

Our ambition reminded us of our purpose.

answers to questions we hadn’t intended to ask. We saw it—flashes of

frame, the backdrop—he was the tree itself, keeping them all contained in this beautiful landscape. At first, we could hardly understand that… before it dawned that the totality of his being was vast enough it encompassed all of them, bearing it silently and graciously. He was enduring their battle of wills with all the poise of a tree erupting thousands of miles upward. He, alone, was supporting their minds and bodies while remaining totally unbending and

when we posed the question of what such a being could want, the warm light of acceptance and belonging all vanished, leaving behind only the cold blackness of a void that should not be. We ascended up the trunk in total silence with no

here, we fell asleep

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“So they awake.”