#5 Free the World from this Putrid Mire

[Aesopian 1640]

~| The Filthy Tongue |~

 

   

 

Faith comes from the mind of Men, and so is shameful.

 

The sparrow does not have faith the sun will rise, the sparrow believes with reason that dawn will come, as it has come after every night prior in that sparrow's life. Beasts do not believe in powers or realms beyond the ones they experience with their senses. Those beliefs might be comforting, but they are just comforting lies, and in nature, there is only truth.

 

I do not need faith to believe in the GOD of the Canonists, because He is present throughout all creation. Nor do I need it to believe in Yemekar of the dwarves, because he has put a piece of himself into his creation. Men look hard for their gods, when the reality is air and scent. There is a consciousness which permeates all existence. It courses and ebbs, a great ocean on which we float. To it, Daemons and Aenguls are just another kind of boat, and Aspects are currents given names.

 

Our Creator did not create the natural order, because when the world began, our Creator became the natural order.

 

We call this the Flow -- the ongoing judgement of every act and event that takes place.

 

The Flow is a god. Not because it is worshipped (it isn't) or because it grants prayers (it doesn't). It lacks an agenda. It even lacks anything we'd recognize as a mind. It is a god because it is a piece of a higher reality, and also this one. It is a thousand times more real than the world we live in. If the world was a book printed on rice paper, the Flow is an iron spike that nails it to the table.

 

I saw small plumes of smoke when I gazed over the canopies in Laureh'lin. I smelled the ink burning. You have done well. When we work towards restoring the world to a state of balance, we are calming the Flow, so that it might spares us from the terrible storm. Although a single one of us cannot do much on their own, together we have true power, and together we may have the strength to bring the world back into balance.

 

The Flow is the medium disrupted by actions which unbalance the world, and stabilized by actions which balance the world. It can be as calm as a puddle, or as violent as an ocean hurricane. It transcends the boundaries of realms. We cloth it in terms like 'Aspect', when it is a component of all existence. It is living, and it is thinking.

 

A tree dying must be balanced by a tree being planted, but what of more complicated matters, like a sonata being born, or a kingdom rising up? Order built in sensation and social structure is just as damaging as order built out of iron and timber. All realms are within the jurisdiction of the Flow, even the realm of thought. All must be balanced.

 

Now, I will place another task in your hands. Any of you, or all of you. Put a field to the torch. Barley, oat, carrot or sweet potato, it does not matter. Civilization survives on a backbone of a thousand farmers, breaking their bodies tilling soil while obese men laugh over mugs of ale and haunches of meat. But the survival of a city is delicate. A single fire will not destroy a farmer, for he can replant, but a city will descend into starvation and chaos within mere months.

 

Show that you are dedicated to the cause of restoring balance to this world. I ask this of you.

~ March Ash

You find a message on a sheaf of bark, scrawled in animal blood.

Next Previous

Each flower was unique, like a snowflake.

[Malaise 1570]

((These are scary and well-written. Keep it up.

[Guest]

Kairn rests the parchment on his desk, smiling softly before he again goes to sleep. He agrees with its message entirely, and after a day well-spent toiling in the fields he felt as though he could identify with its meaning on a personal level. 

[Cave_Creature 467]

Faeinn took her time to read it through. Put in these simpler terms the concepts began to form and make more sense to her child's brain. There was more to her world than she understood, and these fated messages were meant to teach her. She finished rifling through the three pieces of bark she'd hidden away, and finally got up to her bare feet. There was no use in learning if she didn't act on it - a parent's valuable lesson. So the child elf scampered out of her father's home and past the city gates.

 

She used both hands to tear a torch out of its sconce on a farm fence, shakily stumbling with it toward the wheat fields west of the city. She tossed it as far as she could when her toes sank into the fertile, moist soil of the farm, and watched the wheat burst into a ravaging fire, spreading across the field. She hurried off home soon after before she might be seen.

[ThatWeirdGirl 432]

A ghostly woman found one of the messages near the ruins she called home, and her chest tightened and burned with something she hadn't felt in years. Rage. She grasped the bark, crushing it to splinters in disgust. The elves of Laureh'lin reaped the benefits of their home, but according to the message they wished to let the city burn. They were stupid animals with no forethought, like a dog shredding it's own bed.

 

And as she buried each splinter into the mud, she chuckled lowly. She didn't care, they could burn if that's what they wanted. The idiots would always weed themselves out, make room for the slightly intelligent ones.

[shortchangehero 4217]

[Lotoke 25]

"You cannot just assume that if you smell fire, it was caused by your message."  Enedor comments, gripping his stave. "forcing nature to balance by burning the world won't work."

[Elad™ 560]

Moved to the Archive. It shall be sorted into the appropriate category shortly.