The waking dream (5 Aramiyakhin of Poràkol 1865)
Thousands of years before the skyscrapers rose on Kaiatha Sound or the holographic gardens clustered along the wharf, a boy watched his father and his mother die at the hands of the Erebi tribe, peeking through the cracks in a woven grain basket. As their blood splattered across floor—as he heard the screams of the other villagers——as the riders razed every house in town but his———as the scent of uncooked grain made his mouth water————this child felt the veil between reality and illusion part. He claimed to see a tapestry falling from Heaven.
Decades later, on returning to the ruined village, he commissioned stacks of paper and began to write the epic that would change my country’s spiritual history. No one heard the story but the young child who brought him porridge and ink from Kiasmu until the local council demanded to know what the ancient stranger wanted with bones and dust. The old man’s name was Maratìn, and he claimed that he had written a story dictated by angels.
Five thousand years later, everyone still knows his name.
Maratìn taught that the world is holographic and brilliant in both kindness and cruelty; the only constant is change. All smells and tastes evolve by the moment. Science and myth wrap around each other like two halves of a double helix, feeding off of each other until they reach perfect organic unity. In the waking dream, cancer cells build in patients as red-beaked birds tear their souls away. Every chance of causality is Tsemanok, and every blade of kau shaking in the breeze is Yilrega.
The world is holographic and brilliant, deceptively bright and beautiful. All of its smells and tastes—everything we think that we know—pales in comparison to the unknown. Mysteries require silence because speech and awareness profane them.
An adviser’s initiation is a ceremony that comes from the womb of time—straight from Sehìnta’s mouth in the Shushei Enaharipui—but to reveal everything would make it profane.
In Kamo #597, Sehìnta details the questions that must be asked of those wishing to enter her service:
- Do you swear to uphold the will of the people?
- Do you swear to follow the straight path?
- Do you swear to respect the Fadehin, our religion, and our way of life?
- Do you swear to sacrifice your life for the collective good?
- Do you swear to join me and never look back?
Everything that I have ever wanted has fallen into place. The carvers have set my name in the crumbling stone, and the Priestess of Enakhiavoshei has anointed my forehead with the sacred oil. A man showed me seven sacred things that I can never relate to anyone, but these items a cascade of doubt struck a bell in secret.
Call me a hypocrite, but Sehìnta without succumbing to the past at least once. At least life is easier for us. Unlike her, we all die. We forget.
But what if I can’t follow her without looking back?
Maratìn teaches that most things are impermanent. Love lasts. Hiahetà’s love for Kakedi is an undercurrent throughout the entire work. Its narrator, the nuamë nuaf iča, reveals that he can never stop loving Sehìnta.
Perhaps Sehutannyi and Kelis will stay with me forever.
