#9 Devour the Flames Burning in a Newly-Lit Hearth

[Aesopian 1639]

~| The Filthy Tongue |~

 

   

 

Good people do their duty, not to receive a reward or to avoid a punishment, but for the sole purpose that it is their duty.

 

The creator would not produce a world where the divine good is one which is associated with rewards or punishments that are intrinsic to our psyche. Sex, power, wealth -- these things please us, and if our duty was to acquire them, then it would be impossible for us to distinguish between our duty and these pleasures and pains we experience.

 

This is how we know that our duty is not to keep our kin fed, to be knowledgable, to give unto the poor, or to perform any other number of tasks set out by popular philanthropists of our age. This may sound strange, but these 'duties' are also rewarding.

 

Consider a man wins a lottery, and then looks around for what fun he might have with his winnings. He might purchase a yacht, travel around the world, or fund his passage through a college. Or, he might decide to give that money to charity, and enjoy the special feeling he gets from making people happy. Regardless of what he does, he does not do so because because it was his duty -- he merely does so because he thought it was the most fun, and there is nothing admirable about such a selfish pursuit.

 

I heard birdsong of your efforts, of vines sewn into the cobbles of the cities and weeds planted before their walls. Throughout Urguan and Oren, in the north and the south, now those plants will grow. We will not see the fruits of our efforts. The day may even never come, the things we sew being torn apart by time, Men, and darker forces; even then, it may take generations for the first stone to be dislodged by the roots we raise. Our battle is one which stretches over aeons. Canyons will form, and give birth to valleys; mountains will rise, and erode to dust. Judgement shall come, but until it does, we have time, and we must make the most of it.

 

Our creator is not cruel. Our desires are not simply ways of leading us from divine, they are the divine good. Balance can be attained, and our duty be met. In such a perfect world, we are free to pursue what we feel -- those things which make us happy and which drive us. We do not stagnate. The world changes, yet stays the same. The pursuit of our happiness becomes eternal. It is, in some sense, our ultimate test: to determine not only if we can acquire balance, but what we make of it when we do.

 

Now, I will place another task in your hands. Any of you, or all of you. Once again I ask you to collect seeds and fruiting bodies, but this time not just of low plants, but of all species. Every sort of tree, every bush, every grass. Collect newborn wolves, the eggs of birds and lizards. Hand-carve buckets, and scoop up clutches of eggs from amphibians and fish. Slay wild bears (a gift of mercy, to spare them from the coming horror) and steal their young. A great man-made plague rises in the south that will soon claim all of Vailor, and it will push us from this realm. It is our duty to preserve all that we can find, and take what we might with us to a new home. The diaspora continues.

 

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.

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[idiot 502]

Garsto grumbles something to himself, collecting the message and storing it with the other scriptures he had collected from the same writer.

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