Theories of a Gamer: Breaking Down “To the Edge”

March 10, 2023March 10, 2023 / birdjericho

***In this blog, I’ll be discussing the story behind the lyrics to a major boss theme in Final Fantasy 14: Shadowbringers. Spoilers for the entire game through Endwalker are going to be flying, so read at your own risk. I’m the kind of guy that likes to read the last page of a book before I start, so believe me when I say: it really is worth playing through the entire experience blind from start to finish if you can help it.***

One of the most positive experiences I’ve ever had with a video game happened with Final Fantasy 14, and one of the most powerful moments I experienced within that game occured at the end of Patch 5.3, Reflections In Crystal. Released in August of 2020 (when things were most positively dark in my own life, coincidentally), the ending to this patch wraps up the entirety of Shadowbringer’s storyline as well as much of the entire major conflict that has embroiled our main cast of characters up to this point. While the details of the story get rather complicated (as most Final Fantasy stories are apt to be), I’ve found that the source of my emotional connection to this ending lies in the major themes involved since this point, themes that are echoed within the utterly fantastic musical score of composer Masayoshi Soken for the scene that wraps up Patch 5.3. To that end, I want to break down the story behind the lyrics of “To The Edge,” the song of the final boss fight in Patch 5.3, and examine both why I personally love it so much… and why literally every single person I am aware of who played this game loves this moment.

And I mean… everyone. Pick one and watch. They’re all wonderful. Super long, but wonderful.

It’s not every day that a video game patch comes out that is so universally beloved. Not a full game, not a game expansion, a game patch. The fact that this story’s conclusion is so widely accepted and loved by its audience is incredible to me.

In fact, I submit that unless you are skipping every single cutscene to get to the “endgame” content of Final Fantasy 14 (which is absolutely antithetical to why any person plays Final Fantasy in the first place, never mind Final Fantasy 14 in particular), if you play through this and understand what’s going on, you will love this scene, no matter who you are. A big claim, I know! But every streamer that I’ve ever watched play through this moment gets emotional during the scene that occurs immediately after the big boss fight with Elidibus. I’ll be the first to admit it: I cried when watching it the first time, and I get teary-eyed every time I rewatch it. And for good reason: everything from the writing to the music to the voice acting to the gameplay is 100% spot-on. It’s just good video game storytelling, and it’s storytelling that everyone seems to love in the moment, no matter their background or personal beliefs.

But why is it so good?

There is a great deal of tragedy in the lives of every single main character in Final Fantasy 14. This is also true for side characters, come to think of it, the depths of the MMORPG setting enabling a lot more “side character” progression than would be possible in literature or movies. I think it’s safe to say that there isn’t a single “Mary Sue-type” character in the whole of Final Fantasy 14; no character obtains power, adoration, or ability without a supreme amount of “pushback” from reality (i.e. loss, sorrow, struggle, and effort), with the only possible exceptions being Zenos (the “big bad” since Stormblood) and the Warrior of Light (which is you, the main character). And even then, the purpose is thematic: just because you’re blindingly powerful doesn’t mean you escape consequence. For Zenos, it’s straight-up acknowledged that he’s a sociopath, bereft of anything resembling empathy, and that lack has haunted him since childhood. For the Warrior of Light, their “Mary Sue/Marty Stu” nature comes from the fact that they’re meant to fully belong to the player; the player is all but invited to “fill in the blanks” of their character’s history, to a large degree. They’re only a “Mary Sue” to the extent that Harry Potter is a Mary Sue, or Luke Skywalker, or Frodo, or Neo, or all the other “blank slate” characters with a mysterious past who are only “blank slates” to enable them to stand as proxies for the audience. It’s all very BYOB (or “bring your own backstory”). Some of my favorite FFXIV fandom artists actually write their Warriors of Light as truly fractured and tragic beings themselves, characters who have only found their fate-defying power through overcoming incredible personal trials and quiet sadness. It’s thoroughly (and excellently) universal to be “the good guy despite the odds.”

(These comic are written and drawn by the incomparable @DaPandaBanda, by the way. Please give them a follow, their work is fantastic!)

While every expansion in Final Fantasy 14 illustrates the sorrows and frustrations of our very imperfect but well-intentioned ragtag group of world-saving adventurers, Shadowbringers in particular emphasizes how even characters of great personal strength and ability can fail and suffer disappointment. Alisaie and Alphinaud, the lovable elven twins that were once brash and impulsive in their desire to strike down evil, realize that strength and determination alone cannot erase sorrow (and, at times, can actually exacerbate it). Y’shtola, the scion who prides herself on her intellect, self-sufficiency, and destructive power, comes to the realization that self-sacrifice won’t be enough to solve the world’s problems. Likewise, Urianger comes to understand that he needs to trust those around him to do the right thing, later affirming in Endwalker that deception for the sake of others rarely ends well. Thancred, once the eponymous lady’s man of the team and all-around ruffian, quite literally becomes an at-first-unwilling father figure, one who learns that sacrifice is actually a better deal for you when you sacrifice out of love instead of obligation, and a thousand-fold times more fulfilling than doing so out of regret or fear. And then there’s Minfilia, or at least the reincarnation of her (long story), who learns, among other things, that freedom to care for and love other people becomes almost meaningless if the people you love can’t (or don’t know how) to love you back. Ryne is such a wonderful character on her own. Don’t worry, Thancred learns how to dad by the end. (All hail Dadcred, long may he pun.)

And don’t even get me started on G’raha. I would die for that wonderful boy.

For their part, the Warrior of Light learns that they too are utterly insufficient to play their part alone. Cast adrift into a world separate from the one he’s known, Kaelan (the name of my WoL) learns that this world stands literally upon the brink of annihilation, and that without his assistance, this world (known as the First for reasons that will be explained) will be consumed and destroyed by a flood of Light. Not lowercase “light,” like someone destroying the world by turning on too many flashlights, or by being so kind to puppies and orphans that the fabric of reality can’t accept it and deletes itself. But by uppercase “Light,” the elemental manifestation of everything that should be “good” and “holy” and “symbolically sacred” but most decidedly isn’t. You know how too much of a good thing is bad for you? Like how drinking eight ounces of water in a day is excellent for one’s health, but drinking more than two-hundred ounces of water in a day can literally kill you? For the surviving denizens of the First, the world is literally drowning in a tidal wave of monsterous and twisted angelic abominations. And not only do these deific abominations want to kill you, they force you to become one of them if they succeed, the terrifying transfomation into which being way more unsettling than you might think.

Check it out if you don’t feel like sleeping tonight, because holy crap (pun intended):

(Come to find out that the developers actually “toned down” the horrific visuals of this particular transformation because they felt like the finished product was enough to get the point across. No kidding. Don’t wanna kill the “T for Teen” rating, but man, the body horror of this scene pushes it.)

There’s more to saving the First from its horrific and “glorious” end than killing a bunch of twisted angels, unfortunately, and there’s a reason why uppercase “Light” is the magical element in question. In Final Fantasy 14, there are (or were, originally) fourteen worlds, thirteen “reflections” that are all copies of “the Source,” or the world in which the majority of the game takes place. The Warrior of Light (who adopts the title of “Warrior of Darkness” in the First, for obvious reasons) has been brought to the First to end its impending cataclysm for one very serious reason: when one of the reflections of the Source suffers from a world-ending catastrophe, the Source suffers a similarly catastophic event in turn. Thanks to time-travel shenanigans, the Warrior of Light has a chance to stop what will become known as the “Eighth Umbral Calamity” before it happens.

You know how our group is known as the “Scions of the Seventh Dawn”? Well, there have been seven such apocalyptic events in the Source’s past (being known as “umbral calamities”), and each time they have been themed as being caused by one of the eight elements. The First Umbral Calamity was a climate-devastating set of storms and hurricanes. The Second Umbral Calamity was a worldwide lightning storm that darkened the skies for decades. The Third Umbral Calamity was a worldwide drought that transformed once-green forests to deserts and wasteland, sparking continental-sized wildfires, etc. And so on for water, earth, ice, and darkness. The Seventh Umbral Calamity in particular should still be fresh in the player’s mind, as the descent of Dalamud and Bahamut’s explosive introduction was exactly what happened during the introductory cinematic of the game. Each calamity was caused by the literal death of one of the thirteen reflections that lie outside of the immediate setting of Final Fantasy 14. These events were not accidents, either. Each calamity was caused by a shadowy cabal of immortal body-hoppers known as Ascians. Taking on many faces and titles through the centuries, the Ascians have been responsible for the death of millions of people in the Source throughout the entirety of recorded history, as well as being responsible for much of the world’s overall misfortune and suffering.

I used to think the name for their collective group was an odd choice by the developers. It’s a word that never seemed to easily roll off the tongues of the voice actors when speaking it, especially during the game’s early events (during A Realm Reborn). Pronounced “ass-ee-ans,” more a French word than English. But, like so many complaints I had about the story at the start of FFXIV, there’s a reason for its oddness. I mean, it’s right there, in its French-like meaning and pronunciation. The Ascians are literally “ancients,” the world’s first inhabitants, and their mission is to bring their once-beautiful paradise back into existence through the destruction of this objectively imperfect world.

I mean, yeah, there’s your theme: murder and sacrifice the “real” world in exchange for utopia. What villain in history hasn’t used that as their excuse? For the Ascians, though, their “utopia” actually was once the reality of the world, and not simply an “un-place” like the word utopia suggests. For them, this utopia is not a concept, but a memory. And a very painful one.

The lyrics of “To The Edge” start like this:

All our splendor bathed black in silence
Our surrender, a somber reverie
Slowly drifting down into twilight
Left to sifting through fading memories

The “world” of Final Fantasy 14 didn’t always used to be thirteen individual “reflections” and the Source. It used to be a single beautiful unsundered world, a boundless paradise called Etheirys (pronounced ‘eh-ther-iss’). It was a bountiful sphere, a place where physical want and poverty did not exist, where magic abounded in every soul, where even children had the ability to create anything their minds could envision simply by imagining it. No one suffered. No one starved. No one wanted for anything. No illness could not be cured, and no imperfection could not be corrected.

Sadly, their very strength of vision, their “creation magic,” would prove to be their singular weakness. Seemingly out of nowhere, their creation magic became corrupted, and their simple sorrows, doubts, and thoughts of despair began to manifest into the creation of monsters, their every waking nightmares made very real. The subconscious fears of every man, woman, and child on Etheirys could become reality at any time, and no one could control the expression of their own unique demise. So in order to save the world and themselves, the ancient inhabitants of Etheirys utilized their creation magic to stop this inexorable march of death, and sacrificed half of their number to create a godlike being that would reorder the rules of “creation,” that would shield the world from complete destruction.

They would call this “god” Zodiark.

Those ancient people had never dealt with such supreme sorrow before. Such loss. It’s hard to imagine what that loss might look like, what the societal ramifications of losing more than half of your population all at once might be, especially after losing so many to the physical manifestation of their worst terrors. The closest pop culture reference I can think of would be Avengers: Endgame, but to be honest, I don’t think Marvel got it quite right. They didn’t have time to develop the concept on screen. The scene with Steve Rogers in a post-Thanos PTSD support group is neat, but… I don’t know, it would be so much worse.

Historically, this level of social devastation has actually occurred before. Between 1347 and 1351, half of all people living in the city of London just… died. In all of Europe, between 30% to 60% of all people simply dropped dead, most doing so in less than three days’ time after contracting the bubonic plague. They called it the “Black Death” for a reason, and the consequences of that pandemic are still being felt almost 700 years later, both economically and systemically.

(I didn’t realize this, but the Black Death spread so far as to also affect China and Northern Asia as well: in regions such as Shanxi and Guangdong, every six to seven out of ten people died between 1356 and 1360. Such an incredible loss of life, however, does not appear to have happened in India at the same time. This, and the fact that the majority of recorded deaths in China occured after the devastation in Europe makes the chances of the plague originating from the Silk Road unlikely.)

*Is it any wonder that dancing skeletons became the thematic motif* *of the age?*

Imagine you live to see half to two-thirds of your family die in the space of a week. Imagine what that might do to your worldview. What meaning would the world appear to have, when your life can be snuffed out so easily by an invisible reaper? It wasn’t just poor people dying, either. It was the rich as well, the high and mighty, the royal, the ordained, the “powerful.” No one was immune to this spectre of death. And yet it was only 150 years later that the Renaissance would revitalize Europe, when guilds and the trading class would form, when the ability to climb social ladders through physical and intellectual effort would begin to develop. That’s a stunning realization to me, a testament to the strength and wisdom of my ancestors (a.k.a. those that survived the Black Death, because I obviously wouldn’t be here if they didn’t). It’s telling, though, that the Renaissance did not occur in the 14th century. How could it, when so many people were so completely destitute and filled with despair? I don’t know the history well enough myself, but it stands to reason that it would take the inhabitants of Europe at least a couple of generations to forget such a magnitude of death, to be able to “move on.”

I mean, from such terror, death is a mercy, but only for generations yet unborn who will not know it.

For the surviving inhabitants of Etheirys, though, such mercy did not exist. For these former members of paradise, death wasn’t a concept that they regularly had to face, even unwillingly. As we learn in Endwalker, while it wasn’t “uncommon” for the people of Etheirys to die, they did so more out of obligation. In their higher state of being, if you did not die, the next generation would not have a chance to be born. The Lifestream, the source of all life in Etheirys, was a massive but ultimately limited wellspring (at least conceptually). When you died, your memories and your life force returned to the planet, allowing new life to continue on unimpeded. Sure, you could just choose not to die, to keep learning and living for as long as you wanted. But it was considered selfish in their culture to live longer than your duty demanded, and to fear death was foolish since they knew for a fact that life, memory, and even the concept of “self” never really technically ended.

But then came the Final Days.

Without a compass wand’ring lost in lies of faith
(Faith slowly wasting away)
Only alive in fighting Death’s amber embrace
(Our hearts beat loud, unafraid)
On Hands and knees we pray to gods we’ve never seen
(Come shadow, come follow me)
The final hour upon us, no more time to breathe

Imagine a state of being where the concept of death suddenly turns from optional to completely mandatory and everywhere at any time. That the mere thought of death is suddenly killing people without warning. What would that do to you, psychologically? To all of a sudden lose so much, so quickly and so awfully? Imagine being a father or a mother during such days. You’ve lost friends, family, and children to monsters born of their own nightmares. And then, in order for you to live, you would have to lock away half of those that survived, perhaps some your own children, to be bound within an undying “shield,” within Zodiark. You would have to live the remainder of your eternal life knowing that you will never see them again, never hear their voices or see them grow, and that you can never save them. Or perhaps you would sacrifice yourself so that your remaining children could survive. It would be noble of you, but they would have to realize the same of you, that they could never save you from your eternal imprisonment, and that they would always have to carry their memory of you in that state, forever.

Needless to say, those ancient survivors couldn’t accept it. The guilt of survival. The loss of paradise. The realization that they would never live again within their perfect world, in easy and carefree lives, free of pain and regret and haunting memories of death.

What would you do in that circumstance?

What would you do if you thought you had the power to reverse it?

Know our places, for worth is wordless
Evanescent, this writing on the wall
Brother, stay this descent to madness
Come and save us, catch us before we fall!

The boss you fight at the end of Patch 5.3 is a man named Elidibus.

To be completely honest, Elidibus as a character has been so completely mysterious that his story up until Patch 5.3 has been rather… cliché, so to speak. Until this moment, he has been your typical JRPG mustache-twirling 4D-chess-playing mastermind that no one understands, not even his fellow Ascians. But in this moment, you become very aware of his modus operandi, as well as his overall purpose. His is the last of his people, and now thanks to the Warrior of Light and their fellow Scions, the last of the Ascians. His duty was to remain separate from Zodiark, to hold the resolve of his people within him, and to be their final representative. Their last and ultimate speaker.

Why did the Ascians feel they needed such a representative, even so far in the future? Because something happened after the creation of Zodiark, something that needed executive-level correcting. Something unthinkable. Something beyond unacceptable.

Someone rebelled.

Venat (pronounced “ven-ah”) was once a ruler among the ancient people of Etheirys, a member of the Convocation of Fourteen. A “traveler” of sorts; a wandering representative. According to her station, her title was known as “Azem.” Whereas her fellows ministered to her people, it was her station to travel the world, visit different cultures, and discover everything life had to offer. This included learning ideas and concepts that her people did not easily entertain. Even during her tenure as Azem, she was considered by her fellows to be… odd. But most that held the title of Azem were considered eccentric; it came with the territory. When it came time for her to give up her station and grant it to her successor, it was tradition for retiring members of the Convocation to “die,” to return to the Lifestream and offer up their experience and knowledge of the world to the world and future generations.

She chose not to. It didn’t feel right for her to do so. She loved life too much to give it up. She loved the people she served too much to step away. She believed deeply in the goodness of her people and their ability to accept guidance and wisdom, and she wanted to continue to be a source of that wisdom, even if that meant breaking tradition and continuing on.

When the Final Days came, that belief was sorely tested.

Venat disagreed with the creation of Zodiark. As the player discovers during the events of Endwalker, Venat had good reason to do so: she knew something about the cataclysm that her fellows did not. She desperately tried to convince them that the sacrifice of so many was not the correct path forwards. But they didn’t listen to her. And so, out of pride and fear, Zodiark was formed. And, predictably, although the immediate chaos and death subsided once the god’s protective presence shielded Etheirys, the people began to realize that they could not accept this outcome. They could not accept that they had lost so much, so quickly and so awfully. Out of desperation, they prayed to their new god to sacrifice yet more to restore to them the paradise that they had lost. But they would not sacrifice those that still lived… no, they would do much worse. Instead, they vowed to nuture and sacrifice new life until every soul they offered to summon Zodiark would be replaced. In their sorrow, they were fully willing to drain the Lifestream dry and sacrifice their children yet unborn to reobtain the lives that had been taken from them.

And Venat would not accept that.

Like broken angels, wingless, cast from heaven’s gates
(Our slumbering demons awake)
We only fly when falling, falling far from grace
(Hell take us, heaven can wait)
And like a message in a bottle cast to sea
(Disgrace, untold and unseen)
Quick to their ends, our candles burn, until we’re free

With assistance from the few that followed her, Venat sacrificed her own life to introduce a new god into being. A goddess. Weaker than Zodiark, admittedly. But a goddess that could hold Zodiark in check, sundering Him and the world itself into fourteen equal parts, including all of the surviving souls that called the once-unified Etheirys home. Thus was Hydaelyn born, the mother of the newly-divided Source and all of its thirteen reflections. To stop her people from sacrificing themselves into oblivion, she divided their souls and their ability for magic, so much so that these new beings could no longer create “something” from “nothing” through will alone.

No longer would man have wings to bear them to Paradise. But while they could not fly, they would instead learn to walk.

In this imperfect state, they would learn to rely on the goodness of others. They would be able to cultivate courage. Their children would learn wisdom through necessity, and power through cooperation. Then, in time, they would even be able to conquer the very concept of despair itself, something that her people in their hubris and ability could never manage. For the true enemy of life was the very despair that ravaged the ancients, the true secret of the Final Days that Venat alone once knew.

They would learn to hold to hope and faith, when all other lights would fade. To learn on their own that Life is a riddle, to bear both rapture and sorrow.

That they must feel. That they must hear. That they must think.

That they must live. That they must die.

But above all else… that they must know.

Yes, time circles endlessly, the hands of fate trained ahead
(Pointing to the edge)
All things change – drawn to the flame, to rise from the ashes
To begin, we first must see the end!

And that lyric is, ironically, the one advantage that the Ascians did not have that Hydaelyn did. And they couldn’t have known they didn’t have it, either: they did not see the end for the beginning. They never learned why the Final Days occurred in the first place. Sure, time-travel shenanigans, memory-erasing, and all that. But do you really think that Emet-Selch would have been humble enough to accept Venat’s solution to sunder their world, even if he could have remembered why? Would Hermes, after all the trouble he caused? Hythlodeus would have, but he was not a member of the Convocation. The people of Etheirys were so blinded by what they lost that they could not have looked to the future, even if they wanted to. Elidibus himself had fallen prey to this fault, and although he does not intend to, he reveals this fault before the fight atop the Crystal Tower: he has been fighting to restore his people for so many eons that he can no longer remember the person he made the promise to fight for. Once the battle is over, even though he cries at the memory of his friends, he does not remember their faces or their names. The only thing he remembers is clinging so tightly to duty and responsibility, that they once chided him for overworking himself, urging him to spend more time outside in the sunshine. Unlike Emet-Selch, who has such a bright recollection of his past that he created a perfect replica of the capital city of Amaurot by memory (which is a wonderful amalgamation of the words for “love” and “decay”), Elidibus has forgetten why he continues to fight. To him, the petty details are no longer important; only the big picture matters. He, like Emet-Selch, had lost himself to dutiful despair. For, without it, he has no reason to exist.

Which, sadly, was the whole terrible reason the Final Days occured at all.

Rock of ages, we cast the first stone
In our cages, we know not what we do
Indecision, here at the crossroads
Recognition, tomorrow’s come too soon

Follow blindly, like lambs to slaughter
At the mercy of those who ply the sword
As our song wends, dead underwater
We’re forgotten, for now and evermore

*I have this in poster form on my bedroom wall. It’s a beautiful reminder for me not to get lost in the past; I can’t change what happened, only what will happen.*

The grand irony of this pivotal moment? The person he made the promise to is standing right in front of him. The Warrior of Light themselves. And the only reason the Warrior of Light can’t tell him this… is because it hasn’t happened for them yet. As Hythlodeus would put it, the Warrior of Light is Elidibus’s new-old friend, and he doesn’t know it. Sundered into pieces, perhaps, a mere 9/14th of his former self (I did say Final Fantasy was complicated; fractions, amirite?) But the same person nevertheless.

Time travel is messy, for sure. But almost always tragic.

(As of the writing of this article, this moment still hasn’t happened yet in the game, and is only a guess on my part as I trace the lines of theme in my head. I can’t wait for the end of the Pandemonium raids where I’m sure it will happen. Consider this an official guess.)

On top of that, the Warrior of Light is (and once was) the holder of the title of Azem. The successor that Venat herself once chose, in the days before Etheirys fell apart. And although their sundered condition makes it impossible for them to remember that past life, they once volunteered to become sundered when Venat became Hydaelyn because they trusted her enough to do so. They didn’t become like the Ascians, filled with unending memory and sorrow and terrible power. They chose weakness and ignorance. Pain and imperfection. They chose to endure as a powerless reflection within a wicked, sinful, and despair-ridden existence… so that one day, they would rise up and become the hero that would save their world from destruction and despair.

In monochrome melodies, our tears are painted in red
(Bleeding to the edge)
Deep inside, we’re nothing more than scions and sinners
In the rain, do light and darkness fade!

What I want to say is probably going to sound incredibly arrogant. Ignorant, probably. Stereotypical of a blindly-obedient religious nutjob, most certainly. Believe me, I used to be a missionary: I’m fully aware of how crazy I sound when I talk about my religion. But I want to say this anyway because it’s absolutely the truth of how I feel:

As a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, understanding the story of Final Fantasy 14 the way I do and seeing how happy and emotional the ending of Shadowbringers and Endwalker makes its players creates an unbelievably deep sense of contentment inside me that I haven’t experienced anywhere else. I connect with Venat more deeply than almost any fictional character I’ve ever come across if only because I feel exactly as she does: I am holding onto a secret that will not only forstall the actual final days, it will unlock the secret to eternally defeating despair. But no matter who I try to tell about it, no one will believe me. And thus I live and watch the world crumble, not fully understanding the truth I hold, but knowing enough about its power and beauty to get really sad whenever I get rejected for mentioning it. Regardless, the contentment I mentioned remains because I know how universal these themes are, and how they make people feel. And that they continue to connect with people, even if those people don’t fully understand why.

Am I alone in feeling this way? I ask because I’m sincerely curious. I feel like it’s the tale of Cassandra, neatly contained within a single religion, and then stories like this pop up. It never fails to surprise me and make me wonder. If you don’t know, many of the themes of Final Fantasy 14 echo concepts about the world that I truly believe, and that Latter-Day Saints believe. There’s a reason for the very biblical undertones contained in “To The Edge,” and I struggle to believe that the greater percentage of FFXIV fans are aware enough to appreciate them.

I believe we are the literal children of a Heavenly Father who sent us to live in a very broken and imperfect world for a purpose that is difficult to comprehend, let alone believe. I believe it is a mercy that we do not have a recollection of who we once were, who our loved ones once were in relation to ourselves, and especially who we are in relation to who we could one day emulate… because if we had that recollection, I believe we would be killing ourselves to get back to that place (and I mean that more literally than figuratively).

The paradise we came from resembles our world only in the barest and least impressive sense possible: Leibniz’s “best of all possible worlds” pales in comparison, though I believe St. Thomas Aquinas got closer. John the Revelator could barely attempt its description in Revelation 4 by describing its purpose and magnificence with intense symbolism of who lives/once lived in that place. The Garden of Eden alone might begin to describe a likeness of that paradise, and the imperfect actions of our first parents alone caused that place to become unsuitable for us, the world in which we live.

We are children of a Creator. I don’t take this belief lightly. The very essence of “creation” is not only part of who we are, it is meant to be intrinsic within us, and the concept of that desire for creation being warped and twisted like it is in Final Fantasy 14 is way more meaningful to me than the developers could ever have anticipated. While I don’t exactly appreciate the swelling emotional music when the message is so good, this video is an excellent example of this and other themes echoing in our modern culture.

We chose to come to this completely imperfect and flawed existence because we were promised that if we did so in faith, we would be able to overcome those two most final of endings: physical death (and everything contained within its concept) and spiritual death (which is Hell, and everything within its concept). And yes, though certainly a hard thing to say, I believe we did chose to come to this terrible place, every single one of us. But we did so with hope. That we could only overcome by trusting that the greatest of our Father’s children, even the Son of Man Himself, would do exactly as His Father directed. He is the “Rock of Ages” mentioned in the song, the ideal of perfection and strength that Elidibus attempts to compare himself to in the song (or conversely, that the ancients attempt to compare Elidibus to), and rightly fails, because it’s more appropriate in our modern minds for the tragic hero to fail and fall.

Fortunately for us, our actual Warrior of Light did not fail. Christ succeeded in His mission, and with flying colors, to the salvation of all. So many ancient traditions, and even those modern-day pop culture tropes of The Chosen One, continue to resonate this message. Every culture has its “chosen one” (or chosen ones), and whether they come bearing a sword, a message, or both, the effect is the same, as Joseph Campbell demonstrates.

A resurrection. A fulfillment of that which was lost. And a return home.

It’s right there, in the song, repeated:

Riding home – riding home
Finding hope – don’t lose hope

And it resonates because it is real. It’s as real as it is wrong to warp the concept of uppercase “Light” with death, and conquest, and nihilism. It’s as real as it is wrong for someone in real life to twist and manipulate the goodness within us to evil ends, and force “that which is best in us” to destroy our sense of right and wrong. It is as real as the desire to be the heroes we believe we can be, no matter how far short we may fall from that ideal. Because the Ideal is real, we have the hope that we can eventually overcome everything that will bring us despair in this life. Everything. I sincerely believe that.

And by the reactions of those that followed the story of Final Fantasy 14 to its conclusion, I believe that enjoyers of FFXIV’s story would be willing to believe in such hope as well.

Like Final Fantasy (and like any religious system of belief, really), the concepts contained within are both complicated and very easy to dismiss as flippant nonsense. Again, believe me, I know; I have been rejected to my face as loudly as I will reject everything that would otherwise be considered “canon” after Final Fantasy X-2 (Final Fantasy X -Will- did not happen, Tidus and Yuna are still together to this day, and you can’t convince me otherwise, the evidence and the themes of the prior two games is clear). But in all seriousness, I also know how silly it is for me to compare Final Fantasy 14 to something as sincere and sacred as the Gospel. Believe me, I know: when people in church start comparing the priesthood to the Force and start quoting Yoda, I die a little bit on the inside. But if we become unwilling to talk about the stories we love, that fill our minds and hearts with hope and healing, then we’ve done a disservice to them, and deny the power of the themes from which these stories originate.

Allow me to conclude this long and incredibly unnecessary article with one final observation: the Warrior of Light in the Endwalker cinematics could have been any class. Any class at all, including the new ones. As you know, there are many to choose from that haven’t had their day in the beautiful CGI-rendered spotlight (the fact that we’ve never seen a machinist in 4K breaks my rusty little clockwork heart).

Our Warrior of Light ended his journey as a paladin, a spiritual defender of his beloved goddess and the one true tanky savior of Eorzea.

I don’t think I have to say anything else.

Shipbreaker – 2023 LTUE Poetry Sumission

February 20, 2023February 20, 2023 / birdjericho

*The inspiration: Hardpoint: Shipbreaker, from Blackbird Interactive and Focus Entertainment*

You inspect the steel-lined corridors

of a wrecked inter-system hulk.

Each plate and rivet, silent and cold.

A shredded engine

lies dormant under sizzling wires.

Your multi-layered yellow hardsuit,

pitted with dents and carbon burns,

is your only protection – tissue

in comparison

to the reinforced hull beneath you.

Transmitted echoes of distress still

ping your comm, repeating, frantic.

Nothing looks wrong from the outside, but

two dozen punctures

shredded the inside without finesse.

“Scrap the remains in twenty-four hours.

Eighteen for a bonus, copy?”

Says the orbital yard boss, his voice

the only sound heard

above your oxygen rebreather.

Untracked micrometeorites.

What a way for a spacer to go.

Disconnect power systems, then on

to biological hazards.

Nothing you haven’t performed before.

Just divert your gaze.

Don’t focus too hard on their eyes.

Each job makes you yearn for authentic

gravity. A home of your own.

You refuse to let their fate be yours.

This poor wrecked corvette

was never meant to be a coffin.

A hundred thousand credits per hour

transfers to the waiting vessel.

“Funny,” says the yard boss, through static.

“All this scrap’ll be

spacebound again by this time next month.”

He’s got a point. Breakers waste nothing.

One man’s wreck is another man’s

hyper-luxurious star-liner.

What is creation

but the bright terminus of ruin?

You will carve out your own future

with a fusion cutter and a dream.

Theories of a Gamer – Endless Remembrances

February 19, 2023February 19, 2023 / birdjericho

I’ve been playing a lot of Civilization-type games recently. I’ve played Civilization since Civilization 2, and there’s just something about being able to take over the entirety of the known world that appeals to me. But just because I’ve been playing the 4X genre since 1996, it doesn’t mean that I’ve gotten “better” at them. No, I’m the player that likes to play on the easiest “Settler” difficulty, raking in the free approval and strategic resource points that these kinds of games generate for the newbies. Did I say “newbie?” I meant weenie. Yes, it’s always Monday here at Super Weenie Hut Junior’s, and I love watching my civilization slowly take over the equivalent of the whole world/New World/galaxy/galactic supercluster/randomized map, all while crushing my enemies and hearing the lamentations of their poorly-developed infrastructure!

*If I were a Twitch streamer, I would be the most boring Twitch streamer ever.*

(For those wondering how far back in PC gaming I go, check out Conquests of the New World on GOG. I have an intense love for old Interplay games; no wonder I got so hooked on Fallout back in the day!)

In particular, I’ve been playing a game called Endless Space 2. In traditional 4X style (meaning it upholds the four pillars of these types of pseudo-board-games: Explore, Expand, Exploit, and Exterminate), Endless Space 2 isn’t your usual Colonize The Stars Simulator. Unlike Stellaris or Sins of a Solar Empire, you’re not the first empire to invent the FTL drive. The galaxy has already been conquered. Good news, though: that empire fell a long time ago, and you’re the newest face in the newest Space Race. While a few of the races you can play with have only recently emerged as a space-faring civilization bent on establishing themselves as galactic rulers, many of the races are actually “old hats” at playing overlord and have only recently resurfaced to conquer all over again. Turns out even some sub-sections of humanity have been star-hopping for centuries.

For those that might not want to take the time to play the first Endless Space (which isn’t bad, just less polished than the current title), the story is revealed in the semi-randomized mission quests you undertake as a species during gameplay. In my opinion, it’s a great low-stakes way to get the player invested into the existing storyline of the series without cramming it all down the player’s throat up front (each race has their own introduction cinematic, though, which is beautiful). While some of these missions can get super-difficult, they play into the strengths (and sometimes the weaknessess) of the race you’re currently playing. Play as the warmongering Craven race that literally cannot declare ‘peace?’ Complete your mission objectives and you’ll get better at curb-stomping. Play as the scientific Sophons? Your missions will help you research faster, or help you overcome your general weakness in warfare. Play as the Vaulters, the humans who developed underneath the once-endless Endless? Your missions will help you find rare planets to exploit, including the Endless’s old homeworld you were once exiled from.

Oh, hi Auriga. Fancy meeting you here.

Half of the Endless were “concrete,” lovers of their biological and physical forms. The other half were “virtual,” and essentially chose to become artificial intelligences. They had a civil war, as all sufficiently-advanced races tend to do. And this is what they left behind.

In the universe of Endless Space, it is not gold or the all-powerful “credit” that controls the galaxy. For you, and for the Endless (the once-biological-machine-hybrid race that once acted as the galaxy’s ancient precursor), the only currency that matters is Dust. These nanoscopic micro-machines were created by the Endless to do absolutely everything. And it can be found absolutely everywhere, from growing on semi-biological trees to taking root in the deepest of planetary cores. Dust gives this 4X-strategy game a good reason for being able to “buy-out” ships and buildings: once you have enough of it, it isn’t inconceivable for a mountain of nanomachines to instantly take the form of whatever you want to design. It’s either that, or your “culture” (which is indeed a resource of its own) becomes sufficiently-advanced that your public works projects just appear from the aether like magic.

One of the most fascinating concepts to me about Endless Space 2 are the “lesser races” that you can discover in the galaxy. They may be a splinter group of one of the larger main factions (the adorably-crimson Mavros, a mercenary group of Sophons that embrace conflict instead of science), a species that hasn’t quite fully evolved yet but have a peculiar adaptation to Dust (such as the Deuyivans, a race of insectoids that grew to like Dust a lot), a species created by the Endless for their own mysterious ends (like the Sowers, who continue to terraform planets for their long-dead masters), or even a race that used to be Endless, however indirectly, until something eons ago went wrong (like the Amoeba, long story).

Whenever you incorporate these races into your civilization, they offer specific benefits based on their culture and how fast their population grows amongst your own. That’s right: once you adopt a lesser race into your civilization, they will actually become part of your civilization, with bonuses all their own. This can usually mean a quick population increase for your developing capital, or boosts for systems that are struggling with your population alone (the Epistis, for example, are rocky creatures that grow more food on sterile worlds, which can make all the difference when your people are starving on systems with arctic or barren worlds.) If you’re the xenophobic-type, you do have the option to restrict voting rights to your own people, which can help when choosing a political faction to side with. This is more than a simple thematic choice. After all, you wouldn’t want to start off with a dictatorial war play in mind just to run into a bunch of freedom-and-peace-loving Amoeba and mess that up. Or on the flip-side, if you have a plan to craft alliances with as many players and lesser races as possible, things might get complicated if you run into the Mavros or the Eyder peoples who more easily benefit the conflict-minded. Depending on who you meet, you may have to switch things up a bit. Play your cards right, though, and the lesser races you encounter early on can help you mold your tactics as the game progresses.

The highly-disciplined Yussho increase your available manpower for fleets as well as increase fleet weapon damage and limit troop casualties during ground battles. Of course, this doesn’t help much if you intend on an economic victory. On the other hand, the best defense is a good offense!

I love the idea of lesser races. Not only can they directly benefit your preferred style of play, they can completely mess it up if you don’t run into the ones you hope for. Yet somehow, for how specialized some of the major races feel during gameplay, you’ll never want to say no to a little more manpower when you’re the first to come across these unique civilizations. Sometimes during random missions and side quests, you’ll be gifted populations from a lesser race, and it’s always a good idea to shuttle them to systems where they’ll do the most good. I also love that while a few of the races are wonderful early-game, some of these lesser races become even more helpful late-game, especially if you plan ahead and focus on their development. If you assimilate the Sowers, for example, there is a chance to acquire massive amounts of food on sterile planets (they are considered “soil healers”), and even massively reduce the cost of terraforming planets (they are the Endless’s planetary architects). The higher their population in your civilization, the greater the chance you have to gain these bonuses.

Look at those little Sowers go! Is it odd that almost all terraforming machines in science-fiction are on tripods? Or are, at the very least, very tall towers? Is that just a very science-fictiony-thing? Or are tripod towers naturally good for the environment?

Although you can customize your own main civilization before each game starts, you cannot create your own lesser race to play with (outside of modding, I suppose, which I haven’t looked into with Endless Space 2). But I’ve actually been thinking about a fun possibility. What if there existed a lesser race that practically forced a player to perform a 180-degree turn strategically if they assimilated them at the wrong time? Okay, maybe not 180 degrees, but bear with me.

Imagine a race of crystalline golems. To match the style of Endless Space, I’ll call them: “The Lucidian Remembrance.” Granted sapience through centuries of Dust exposure, these dense and slow-moving behemoths retain within themselves the memories of all the living things that have previously interacted with their unique infusions. Bereft of sensory organs or physical forms beyond their crystalline framework, they rely upon the Dust to relay information to them and affect the world around them. Though the Dust grants them memories and wisdom, it does not provide a clear picture of organic life. Quite the opposite. When interacting with other life-forms, their first impressions of a species’s overall worldview tends to stick in their stoic recollections, and they have difficulty comprehending how quickly squishy minds change. This does not dampen their desire to prove “helpful,” however, as they are rather fond of learning from biological life.

Whenever they are assimilated into a primary culture, while providing a small boost to scientific research, they boost whatever political faction the player holds as their “majority” faction. The longer the majority stays in power, and the larger the Lucidians grow in population, the stronger the majority’s hold becomes. If the player wishes to change majorities mid-game (as a wise player sometimes does), the best way to change the Lucidians’ support is to pair them in smaller populations with your main population during the change. This way, while the Lucidians may take a while to change their opinions, it isn’t too hard to make a serious change when gameplay demands it.

The Lucidians’ true strength, however, comes from unchanging opinions. The longer they remain in a single “majority,” the stronger their bonus to the majority opinion becomes. If your society supports the Industrialists, for example, the longer they support them without changing, the more the Lucidians boosts your overall manufacturing and fleet construction. If your society supports the Militarists, the better the Lucidians become at maintaining morale during wartime and providing defensive bonuses during ground combat. If you society supports the Intellectuals, the Lucidians become masters at scientific research, providing ever greater bonuses as your civilization increases its Dust reserves. For Environmentalists, the Lucidians provide increased approval bonuses for planets undergoing terraformation. For the Religious faction, the Lucidians boost conversion rates on newly-conquered systems. And for Pacifists, big boosts to luxury resource generation the more alliances you gain.

Once a player comes across this lesser species, it would force them to consolidate a game plan and stick with it for as long as possible. Me, being the plebian that I am, would invariably focus solely on scientific research and simply out-science my rivals. In the hands of a better player who loves a lot of micro-play, I could see this being right up their alley.

*Will you choose the more “peaceful” Lucidian?*

Anyway, while I fully admit to having no experience in designing video games (especially games like Endless Space 2 that require the finest of fine-tuning to preserve a fair balance between races), I do love coming up with fun ideas on how to improve a 4X-style game. I love the subtle worldbuilding inherent to 4X games, as well as all the little bonuses that slowly snowball into gigantic strategies that can change the course of an entire game. Lesser races in Endless Space 2 fit that bill perfectly. In the very least, it’s the ideas like these that keep my mind busy while desperately trying to improve my own lot in life.

Never know when a good distraction might transform into something better.

Oh, Focus Why Don’t You

February 13, 2023February 14, 2023 / birdjericho

I actually haven’t talked much about what’s been happening with me recently. Here on the blog, at least. I apologize for that; I have been predisposed by yet another content writing job that didn’t really work out. Put simply, I got very frustrated at my inability to deal with everyday stressors to the point that when anything negative happened, I wanted to start punching holes in my bedroom wall.

By its very nature, online content writing is an adventure in “not having all the information you need to do a good job for your client ever.” I will forever be shocked by the sheer internal fury my mind generates when I screw up a 500-word article so badly that my editor feels the need to toss it back to me saying: “Uh, yeah, we can’t use this. Try again, but I won’t tell you where to find the information you need to get it right.”

I’m not writing this as an attack on my most recent employer. I’m really not. This is only so specific because it is the most recent. Really, it’s just the whole thing. My critique of the whole bottom-rung content writing experience, a decade of work that most college graduates get promoted from in less than a year and move on. In-office or remote, it’s all the same.

I fully realize that this is “just the way it’s done,” where writing, editing, and submitting is performed as if on an assembly line. I am aware that I am far too conscientious to operate like the cog they want me to be, especially as I get older and farther away from my education. The editors (read: quality assurance technicians that only fix small problems) aren’t there to improve the writer’s work, but to perform “maintenance” on the writer-machine until the correct output is produced. Regular employees don’t have to worry too much, unless problems keep happening. For freelancers, this is usually a “two strikes and you’re out” kind of deal: if your article isn’t accepted right away, or after a quick rewrite, that’s it. You don’t get paid. It moves on to the next inexperienced writer to try, no matter how much worrying or how many clarifying emails you send. The writing rubric is simultaneously so vague and yet so complex that I am never confident in my own writing abilities at any time, no matter the subject, no matter the topic. Some clients are given preferential treatment by the writers and editors, and as well they should, given how some have a much larger marketing budget than others. But that doesn’t mean preferential clients have more information that the writers can use to discuss their products and services (I’m not talking about complexity—some clients are just super picky, but this doesn’t mean they’re any better at giving the writers the support they need). The best part? Just because you have fulfilled a massive checklist of requirements that each article must follow precisely (or the software won’t even let you submit it), that doesn’t mean you’ve fulfilled your end of the writing bargain.

Meaning you can still make no “mistakes” and still lose. Thanks Picard, but that doesn’t make me feel any better.

Questions I ask myself a dozen times with every article include:

“Do I match the tone of the article to the tone of the client’s website?”
“Do I use internal sources only (i.e. from the client’s website), or do I search for outside information that I hope relates to the client and their products/services?”
“What have other writers written about the client, and what information have they found?”
“Does geo-location actually matter for the client’s website and their SEO?”
“Should I be concerned with the client’s SEO a little? A lot? Not at all? I got hired for my SEO knowledge, so I should use it, right?”

The answers have typically been:

“Absolutely not. Unless you should.”
“You must only source information that has been provided by the client. Unless they haven’t provided any. In that case, you absolutely must only source information that has been provided by the client. Unless the quality of your writing dips so low from a lack of context that you must use outside information. Just be sure not to reference information that has nothing to do with the client. You know, the client you have no information on, and aren’t sure how they make money.”
“Don’t worry, all of our writers struggle with this client. It never gets any better for us. No, you can’t contact the client for more information. And please don’t bother the account managers, they have a lot of other things to worry about.”
Either: “You need to specify physical location multiple times in your article, and if you don’t, it will be rejected.” Or: “Why are you worrying so much about their physical location? Everybody’s remote nowadays, the search engine doesn’t really care.”
“You were hired because you know what SEO is, not because we need you for it. Stop asking questions you don’t need answers for.”

*Why is there a question mark in this image? Is this even a question anymore?*

I’ll say this again: I don’t mean this as a negative about the people I worked with. Everyone is overworked right now. I get it. Instead, this a criticism of the people in charge who expect writers to flip out high-quality content at the same rate and function as a donut machine. It’s my criticism of a system of work that treats the English language like car parts on an assembly line. If I had gone to school expecting to wield a welding torch to fuse conjugations together like steel, I wouldn’t be having this reaction to the whole thing.

Writing is supposed to be this elegant art style, this romanticized career choice full of philosophy and introspection. At least that’s how it’s sold in universities. I mean, strip down the bullshit, and at the bare minimum, language should be used for the dissemination of helpful and stimulating ideas. But this is decidedly not what search engines are looking for when they rank your website. Oh, sure, there are mathematical patterns in the way humans type “helpful” words as opposed to “unhelpful” ones. Unfortunately, I am in the Aristotelian position of knowing enough about SEO to understand that I know nothing about SEO. I have no idea what the definition of originality is for Google, and I am 80% sure no one else knows either. That’s what kills me about things like ChatGPT—when the tech becomes sufficiently advanced that it produces content that doesn’t get flagged by plagiarism tools (i.e. learns to stop relying on already-existing sources of information to produce content), every college-graduate-level employee will be replaced by code immediately.

Hell, give Google the means of content production, and what will they need the rest of us for?

To me, the whole thing’s a bad joke: the marketing industry wants to be custom-tailored and original so badly, but they want the speed and efficiency of Thomas Ford. And they’ll try to get away with it by giving the client the “cost” and “speed” while demanding the “speed” and “quality” from the writers and editors. Human originality is quickly becoming the last and best thing we humans can offer each other, and we’re throwing it away as fast and rabidly as we can. I can’t tell you how infuriating it is to feel like I’m fighting a war on three fronts, every single time I stare at a blank screen to start writing another blog:

Matching the tone of my article to the client and their audience; despite this being such an important part of being a member of a writing team, 75% of the time, I get in trouble for trying (either by making assumptions about previously-accepted bad writing or trying to sound too “promotional” or “funny”).
Finding enough reliable information to communicate something both informative and “original.” There may be nothing new under the sun, but Google doesn’t know that, and neither do the editors and their plagiarism software. I got pinged a few weeks ago for copy-pasting a list of industry terms that I could not have synonymed or “redefined”. How many times can you write about bathroom mirrors and homeowners’ associations before it all starts to blend on your keyboard?
Fighting off my own insecurities when I inevitably fail to match the confusing standards. I’m sorry, but I have never compared a grading rubric to anything graded with it and agreed that it was being used correctly, in college or in the marketing field. Ironically, I’ve found the more complex the rubric, the faster the editors are expected to perform their work because it’s so “defined.”

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I completely understand where these standards are coming from. I understand the thought process from a business perspective. It looks good on paper. I also understand that editors are people, and that almost everything language-based is going to be subject to opinions and preferences. But you’d think that, by now, I would be able to take a simple topic like “bathroom glass” and run with it. Describe it in all of its forms, succinctly. Follow the rules and guidelines to a tee. Hand in the article, and get it graded as a success right away, on the first try. Operate like a good cog should, no problems.

I’m just so tired. I’m tired of feeling like a kid. Like a college freshman writing bad fanfiction. Like a fry cook at Arby’s, getting yelled at by my manager for not “smiling correctly.” Tired of being treated like someone who should have clairvoyance but doesn’t, no matter how hard I try. The worst part is, the person who is expecting me to have clairvoyance is often myself. And I beat myself into a mental pulp every time I get a prediction wrong.

And this leads into where I’m headed in the next few weeks: right back to therapy.

Yeah. I’m tired. And I’m angry. I’m so angry that I’ve been exercising like a beast. I walk between three and five miles every day. I’ve started weight-training with a friend (which is good, and something I’ve never done before), and I have been sore for the last three days. I become more irritable being sore and uncomfortable, so I go exercise again to let off steam. This makes me more sore and angry. I’ve lost seventy-five pounds since I stopped taking my medicine, using exercise as a crutch instead. And now I no longer know what else to do with this anger.

One of my favorite bands that I’ve come across as an adult is The National. They have a new album coming out in April, and as all awesome bands do, they’ve released a single from the album in preparation for its full release. The song is called Tropic Morning News, and it couldn’t have come out at a better time for me.

Their songs often have a series of lyrics that repeat over and over, not unlike a chorus. But just as often their songs have a series of lines that don’t repeat at all and represent the major theme, either at the center of the song or at the end. For Tropic Morning News, these lines go like this:

Got up to seize the day
With my head in my hands, feeling strange
When all my thinking got mangled
And I caught myself talking myself off the ceiling

You found the ache in my argument
You couldn’t wait to get out of it
You found the slush in my sentiment
You made it sound so intelligent…

…I would love to have nothing to do with it
I would like to move on and be through with it

I cannot tell you how infuriating it is to want to explain how and what you’re feeling inside and sounding 100% nonsensical. Either my words become barren of meaning, or they’re so filled to the brim with meaning that no rational being could be expected to “read between the lines” without a crowbar and a magnifying glass. It’s why cognitive behavioral therapy hasn’t worked for me in the slightest: even in the midst of suffering, I cannot adequately portray what is going on inside my head. It makes no sense to rational people. When I attempt to describe what is happening, the twisted kinds of thoughts that float through my mind, I am often immediately misunderstood. Whoever I’m talking to then attempts to clarify, asking a question to better understand. I may answer the question, but I’ll invariably leave out a key item of information. Every single time. I never do it on purpose. But there is just so much going on in my brain, I cannot grasp the important information when I need to speak it.

Another line of the song:

Got to my feet feeling that I’d let you down
Wanted to say it slow and perfect but it all somehow got switched around
Something went off on its own, my dumb automatic chit chat
It’s not what I meant to say at all, there’s no way you can attach me to that

It doesn’t matter how intently I carpe the diem when I’m so buried. It has become so bad, I’ve been listening to white noise during my walks just to focus on thinking about the book I’m writing. I’ve stopped drinking caffeine completely because of how frantic it makes my mind. I’ve even limited my sugar intake. I deleted my Twitter account a few weeks ago. I’m focusing on good music and positive YouTube videos. I’m even trying (though often failing) to attend church and pray. I’m doing all of the things that a reasonable person would be expected to do to improve my physical, emotional, and spiritual health.

And still it persists. This anger. And this is on top of never knowing what is going to trigger a depressive or manic phase. My last manic episode lasted for four days, and I maybe slept five hours of the ninety-six. That’s a record. At the same time, I am expected to go to work as a writer where it’s almost my solemn duty to misunderstand and be misunderstood in turn. Fail at assembling a bunch of factory-built verbs and nouns like Lucille Ball on the chocolate conveyor belt. Except the work doesn’t feel nearly as well “defined.”

I would love to have nothing to do with it. I would like to move on and be through with it. I’m not strictly talking about the work; I’m talking about my bipolar disorder.

I turned 35 this year. I’m at a point in my life where I don’t want to comprehend going through the last half of my life steadily getting worse than I already am. I cannot face the possibility of being on medicine ever again. I cannot talk through my problems and rationalize a way through this because my problems are utterly nonsensical. I am a child, speaking gibberish and choking on life, not knowing how to ask for the help that I really need. I’m going to be talking to a psychologist and a psychiatrist at the end of the month, fully ready to commit to surgical options if any are available. Not simply because they might be a permanent option, but because I’ve tried all the soft and mushy and feely solutions. And they don’t work. I seriously want a surgeon to open my head and light it up with electrodes like a Christmas tree, because something in there is completely non-functional.

I’ve tried to take my own life once. I am physically struggling and emotionally flailing to stay alive, and no matter what good things I do for my body, it does not want to remain alive. I have so little control. What else am I supposed to do?

I’ll be over here lying near the ocean
Making ocean sounds
Let me know if you can come over
And work the controls for a while

There are lots of people in my life that would take the controls for me. If they could. If they knew how.

Hell, I’m one of them.

My Name Is Lenn (Second Edit Preview)

November 28, 2022November 28, 2022 / birdjericho

Chapter One – Found

Surrounded by a torrent of debris in a storm-swollen river, fighting the freezing water, blustering leaves, and stabbing sticks, I fought to live. My determination was rapidly deteriorating, but fear kept me kicking, flailing. In an instant as sharp as glass, something narrow and frighteningly jagged crawled from my left shoulder to my right ear. The screeching pain removed most of the air in my lungs from the shock. I tasted blood and I felt it cascade into my lungs, even with my mouth closed. I could no longer breathe, even above water. Only by the sheer luck of the current did I drift towards bare rock. Crawling, I turned myself downwards towards the slope, and threw up the blood and swampy water. In the dark, I didn’t understand the full extent of my injury. But the last thing I perceived that night were thick black channels of my own blood drizzling down the stony ground.

In my throws of confusion and blood loss, darkness passed over me. I had no concerns for the morrow. Time abandoned me as quickly as the heat in my body. Dreams floated through my mind. Was I viewing my last thoughts? Either that, or part of me was not yet willing to let go of life, and still dared to hope.

I saw you, Aria. So clearly. Your smile. Your hope. I reached for you. But I could not feel your touch. I could not even whisper your name. Every one of us, every member of both our families was dead, and you would be last. With that realization, my dreams faded and all emotion vanished.

But though I stood knocking on Death’s mighty door that night, begging to be let in, He did not answer.

The very next thing I remember are hearing someone call out, far away:

“Hey, Aaron, wait for us!”

The words did not immediately register; an unintelligible roar. They sounded like my dreams, like the buzzing of flies. Another sound quickly filled the void: the hoof-like thunder of violence pounding upon dirt. It was rhythmic at first, but it quickly filled my ears until it deafened me.

Then, it stopped short, and a small bout of silence led to a single breathless phrase.

“What is that?”

I felt nothing. Even when a very powerful force lifted me into the air and placed me delicately upon my back, forcing my frigid equilibrium to square off against gravity. Not a sliver of reality returned.

I saw daylight without seeing. Strong and terrible, it blinded my still-closed eyes.

“Look, Ian!”

“What is….? Whoa. Whoa.”

“Look, there’s blood everywhere. It must have been attacked by something.” There was a short pause. “It’s… dead.”

I felt a thick dull object compress my chest against the ground, and the intense agony made me clench inwards.

“No, look! It’s still breathing, look. It’s alive!”

I wanted to tell the voice to stop shouting in my ear. But it wasn’t shouting, exactly, and it was nowhere near my head. The sun disappeared from view, overcome by a shadow cast from a strange source, way up high. At once, I knew exactly what had discovered me.

Denvi. And ka denvi at that. Several of them, by the sound of it. I wasn’t yet dead. But I soon would be. And for an entirely different reason.

I opened my eyes. At least, I tried to. Still blinded by the scales of sunlight, I could only see the outline of an enormous figure standing above me. I could see a head, bent knees, wide shoulders. Almost beyond my sight were two similar shapes beside the first, strong ivory towers that reached into the sky. Nothing in detail.

“It’s awake!”

“Chris, stay back. Shh! You’re going to scare it.”

“No I won’t!”

I closed my eyes again. Was I simply going to accept this fate? Part of me must have, as I felt no fear. No feeling in my legs or arms. Despite the warmth of the sun and the bright spring day, I felt winter in my throat and earth in my lungs.

“Aaron, we’ve got to take it to my Dad. It’s gonna die if we don’t.”

“Eww,” said the youngest voice. “I’m not touching it. It’s naked.”

The voice above me made a clucking sound.

“It’s not naked, Chris. It just doesn’t have a shirt. Besides, it’s obviously a little boy. Who cares?”

“We don’t have anything to carry him in. Dad taught me never to jostle a patient, since it could make their injury worse, you know? Do we… have anything I could use?”

“Should’a brought a backpack,” said the youngest.

“Yeah,” answered the voice directly above me. “Um. Oh, hey. Hold on, Ian. Use my shirt.”

At last, a vital spark of fear shot through my heart when another great force embraced my prone body and lifted me straight off the ground. Instead of becoming little more than red splatter within a terrible fist, or the force transforming into a claw to rend me into pieces, I felt myself descend into tender rest, as if placed into a warm cradle. Admittedly, the cradle smelled like someone in desperate need of a bath, but I could hardly complain; for the first time in days, I felt some source of comfort.

“It’s gonna get your shirt bloody,” said the youngest voice.

“So?” came the haughty reply.

“It doesn’t matter. Come on, we’d better hurry.”

I felt a sudden acceleration, like nothing I had ever experienced before. I gasped; it felt as though I had been strapped to a falcon in freefall. I recovered my breath, and began to feel the wall upon which I leaned, heaving inwards and outwards with the effort of a heavy jog.

I didn’t know what these ka intended to do with me. But like no other time before, I knew in my heart that I would never see you again.

* * * * * *

The sounds that echoed around me would have been frightening at any other time: the honking of terrible horns; the rumble of great machines; the delightful songs of birds that would have pried me to death for breakfast if given the chance; the murmur of other denvi laughing, speaking to each other.

One concern crossed my mind: would this ka reveal me to other denvi? Would I ever have freedom again? But then it occurred to me: I might not survive the next few hours. Very little else mattered if I died.

The journey felt like hours, my ripped skin fully exposed to the wind and sun. I wasn’t sure if I still bled freely, but the sapping cold I felt in my extremities told me more than enough.

“Chris! You’re faster than us! Run ahead and go tell dad that we’ve got a dying patient! He should be in his office!”

“Okay!”

“Don’t move him around too much!”

“I know, I know.”

“Your dad’s not home today?”

“No, he’s at work filling out papers and stuff. Hopefully we can sneak in through the back.”

Sneak? Interesting. Was sneaking something these ka usually did? Or did they do it because of me?

I dared to open my eyes again, now that my angle had improved and my blindness somewhat faded. Above me was a horrific view. Beyond a chest covered in gray fabric was the slender jawline of a young ka, his gaze aimed directly towards his travels. A short round nose, messy brown hair, light freckles, green-blue eyes. Everything in the right place, nothing at the right scale. For a split second as his feet rounded a corner, his eyes graced upon mine.

“Don’t worry, little boy,” he said to me, his voice quiet and oddly determined. “My dad’s going to take care of you.”

‘Little boy’, he said. Kani. I hadn’t been called that since Grandmother passed.

“Is he okay?” asked one of the ka, not the youngest.

He came into view, and looked upon me as one would look upon a corpse. This one’s face was more youthful than the ka that held me, with a thinner build, red hair, freckles from ear to ear. His chest was also blindingly bare, but of course it was; he’d given me his shirt to lay upon. I wasn’t certain what expression he wore from my prone position, but it was apparent that his awe was just as sure as the one who held me.

For the first time in many hours, I attempted to speak. Although air escaped my lips, no sound accompanied it. I tried again. Nothing but a rasping noise, the sound of gurgling saliva and blood. In slight panic, I lifted my hand as best I could to my mouth. I could breathe, but I could not speak. I must have appeared as terrified as I felt, as both ka winced at my reaction.

“No, no, please don’t touch it,” said the ka who held me. “Come on, Aaron, hurry.”

“Right!”

The second half of the journey did not take nearly as long. I looked to my left, and saw for the first time the weight of a denvi hand, slender and enormous. Its fingers curled around me, blocking my view of the road ahead (and blocking others from viewing me in return).

Strangely, the thought hadn’t arisen until that moment that this ka was holding me in the crux of his arm like a newborn child. The black-blue shirt beneath me covered much of the arm, yet within my hand’s reach was a portion of the golden white, covered in invisible hairs and spotted with a single tiny mole. Whether out of curiosity or sick madness, I reached out my hand and gently slid it against the arm. When my hand felt its warmth, I realized that I smeared it with a trail of still-wet blood.

“Hey,” said the panting ka above me with a light laugh, to my great distress. “That tickles.”

I mouthed the word “sorry”, but only breath came out.

The ka denvi arrived at a gigantic building, two stories tall and covered in smooth white clay. Instead of going through the main entrance, the ka passed into an alleyway beside it. I saw power lines above tall wooden fencing, as well as a wide windowless wall of stone.

The ka called the place a ‘doctor’s office’. I knew the phrase, but not in context. I had only known healing through bitter herbs and roots, a chalky denvi pill two or three times when fevers threatened to kill a younger me.

If denvi medicine could cure this, I thought, it would be a miracle.

A door clunked open loudly, startling me, and the sunlight above me disappeared as the ka stepped into the building. Instead of the blinding light of the early morning, the atmosphere was replaced with dim halogen and the scent of denvi cleanliness. The air turned cold, freezing what blood still pumped through my veins. Denvi preferred living in spotless and pristine environments, sometimes disturbingly so; that place was devoid of color, incredibly alien.

Down a hallway, turn right, down another hallway. Past ringing telephones, laughing voices, and the sickening smell of bitter chemicals.

“Dad!”

“I told him, Ian! I told him about the dying patient!”

“What is this about, Ian?” asked a gruff deep voice. It sounded displeased, which turned my stomach. “No. Absolutely not. The clinic is no place for dead animals.”

“Dad, just… just look at him, okay? It’s not an animal, it’s…” The ka shot a glance back down the hallway before whispering: “It’s a little boy!”

“A what?”

I heard a giant rise from a creaking chair.

“What do you mean, a little…”

I may not have been completely naked, but I have never felt more exposed than I did at that moment.

I then stared at the tallest denvi I have ever laid eyes upon, then and since. I thought the ka that held me was gigantic; his father stood over him like a skyscraper. Though age greatly separated the two denvi, the older male appeared remarkably similar to the ka that held me: slender face, round nose, intense eyes, and a beardless complexion. His fatherly frustration melted into amazement as he witnessed me for the first time.

“Wait, wait, wait,” he whispered in shock, turning away. He reappeared instantly donning a thin pair of frameless glasses. “My goodness… Ian, where did you…?”

One of the ka closed the door behind them.

“It was Aaron who found him. We were walking down the canal when we saw him next to the water. What is he, Dad?”

“I have no idea…”

His rough finger touched my stomach, and his fingers gripped my knee. He then felt my forehead, and must not have liked what he sensed.

“I mean, I… I don’t know if I can fix this. Look how deep that wound is.” I heard him sigh. “I have stitches, but… I’m not a surgeon. I’ve never stitched anything like this.”

“Well… can’t you just, I don’t know… bandage it?” asked the ka.

“And just leave a hole in his throat? If the wound is infected, it could kill him no matter what I do.”

“Please, Dad,” the boy continued. “You have to do something, I don’t want him to die!”

Emotion hit me, and it hit me hard. Beside the thought of never seeing you again, I couldn’t imagine a world in which someone besides you would care whether I lived or died. I wanted to cry out, but I only produced a whisper.

The great denvi pursed his lips and looked at me.

“Can you… understand me?”

I tried to whisper: “Yes.” No sound emerged, but he understood.

“If it were up to me,” he told me. “I’d take you to UCHealth immediately. It’s the best hospital here in town. You’ll have the best chance at survival if we take you there right now.”

I shook my head, hard and fast. If I went to a denvi hospital, even if I survived, my life was over. And yours as well, most likely. If the humans learned about me, about us… I would never see you again, and Elder Ordi would make sure of that. The bastard would bury both of us before ever allowing humans to discover our home… even if it meant better lives for them all.

“Are you sure?” he asked. “Now… I’m not a bad doctor. But I’m only human. And I can’t make any promises.”

I nodded, accepting that. Truth be told, it was because he was human that I dared to hope. And somehow, I think the denvi doctor anticipated my answer. He shook his head, and sighed. But then he gave his son a determined look.

“If you’re sure,” he said. “Place him on the table, Ian. I’ll do my best.”

The ka named Ian stepped towards a strange cushioned piece of furniture that appeared to be more of a bed than a table. Though immense pain flashed through my body, Ian took me gently with his great hands, removing me from the warmth and placing me down on the surface. I felt the crinkling of paper beneath my back; I had no idea what purpose it served. I gazed silently at the ka named Ian as he watched me in return, his face flush with concern. Beside him was the ka named Aaron, who tossed the freshly-bloodied (but fortunately dark-hued) shirt over his shoulder.

“All right, all right,” said Ian’s father, sitting back in his chair. “Okay, let’s see. Ian, boys, I need you to stay quiet for a moment.”

All the young denvi took a few steps backwards, and Ian’s father wheeled himself to sit directly over me. Into his ears he placed a strangely-pronged metal necklace called a ‘stethoscope’. Though I would later be informed that every denvi doctor wore such a thing, and that they were quite harmless, I thought he was about to smash me flat with the hammer-like tip of the tool. He pressed the wide circular end of the device upon my stomach and chest, and both the cold and the pressure made me scream. Or, it would have, had I the ability to scream. Instead, he saw the reaction on my face.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I don’t know how else to do this. If you can, try to breathe normally. I have to hear you breathe.”

I obeyed as best I could, drawing in air against all odds; the tool made exhaling easier than it should have been. None of the denvi said a word.

“Okay,” said the father at last, sparing me from the tool. “His lungs sound clear. Only a little rasping.”

“What does that mean?” asked Ian.

“It means he isn’t gasping for air from internal bleeding. It seems like whatever cut his neck missed the vitals… except…”

He leaned in closer to me, peering through his glasses.

“Can you speak?” he asked me. “Can you make any sound at all?”

Again, my mouth opened, and I created the words with my lips. I placed my hand to my neck, being cautious not to touch the torn flesh, and mouthed the words: ‘Neh angia, neh angia’. No sound emerged. It finally dawned upon me why.

“You can’t…” said the father. “You poor thing.”

“What, Dad? What happened?”

The father pulled away from me.

“It’s possible his vocal cords were severed. The wound is certainly deep enough. He’s lucky that whatever caused this didn’t tear open his carotid artery.” He traced the left side of his neck with his finger as he spoke. “I just… I don’t think he’ll be able to use his voice.”

My expression turned dark, and I let my hands fall. I’d never speak again. I’d never be able to yell, or cry, or sing, or read out loud.

Or tell you how much I love you, one more time.

“I’m sorry,” Ian said, stepping towards me. He reached out his finger and gently touched my forearm. “I didn’t hurt you when I picked you up, did I? You couldn’t have told me if I did.”

I couldn’t focus on him. I was too busy trying to process the world. Life, in that moment, what remained of it. I think, at long last, as the cold faded, shock had started to set in.

“Let’s see,” said the father, moving in close again. “Damn it. I don’t even want to try suturing this. Steri-strips will have to do. I’m sorry, little guy, but I have to make sure those wounds don’t become infected. When I put the antibiotic on, it’s going to hurt. Probably… a lot. But I’ll put Lidocaine on it immediately, so the pain won’t last long. Is that all right? Do you understand?”

I didn’t at all, but I nodded as best I could anyway.

“I just hope this works. You said you found him near the canal?”

“Yeah. He probably almost drowned. But it doesn’t matter. He’ll get better,” Ian said steadfastly, bending himself to put me and his eyes on an even level. “I know he will.”

I blinked a few times, and out of sheer hopelessness, I reached out to him. With his wide thumb and forefinger, he took my outstretched hand and most of my lower arm.

“It’ll be okay,” he said. “I promise.”

I’d only known this ka for maybe fifteen minutes. And I didn’t believe him. But tears formed anyway.

Chapter Two – Strange Place, Strange People

“I think it’s better if everyone stayed quiet about this little boy for now,” said Ian’s father, driving a colossal vehicle called a ‘car’. Of course, I knew what a car looked like from pictures. And I had nearly been struck by one on the way down the mountain. But I had never been inside one, much less one that was moving. “At least until he improves. Agreed?”

“Yeah,” said all of the ka.

Ian held me carefully in his arm, supporting me with a thick, light-blue towel. Ian’s father had undersold the truth: putting on those first bandages turned out to be one of the most painful experiences of my life, worse than actually being sliced open. The “hydrogen peroxide”, as the denvi called it, was a clear liquid, clear as water. It was not water. He applied the substance to my skin with a cotton swab. At first, it was merely cold. But within a second, the wound in my neck stung as if I’d been set ablaze. Within ten or so seconds, I passed out. To my shock, I woke to see sunlight shining down on my face, my frail little body once again being carried by the human boy. I reached up, and discovered thick but delicate bandages completely engulfing my neck, my shoulders, and much of my chest, to the point where I could not have raised my arms above my head. The intensity of the pain had been replaced by a strange and pleasant numbness, and I had zero desire to move, lest the burning reignite.

Although I had nearly been consumed by a flood, I’d thrown up quite a bit of what I had swallowed. I was thirsty, very suddenly so. Although I doubted there was anything that could be done about it, I had to let the ka know. Again, part of Ian’s arm was uncovered by the towel, and I gently patted it.

“Hmm?” He looked down. “Oh, hey, you’re awake! Are you okay?”

“He is?” asked Aaron, looking at me as he sat at Ian’s side.

“Can I see?” asked Chris, turning around in the front seat.

I called upon my voice by mistake, mouthing the words ‘I’m thirsty’. Hearing nothing, my hands instinctively touched the cotton muffler at my throat.

“You’re…” Ian said. “I’m sorry, I don’t understand.”

“I think he said… something about being dirty?”

“You can read lips?”

“I dunno.”

They looked back down at me, and I shook my head as well as I could.

“Nope, guess I can’t,” said Aaron with a chuckle.

I pointed to my mouth.

“Yeah, you can’t speak,” said Ian. “Or… something about your mouth?”

I nodded. I cupped my hand and raised it to my puckered lips.

“Oh!” Ian said. “You’re thirsty! Dad, do we have any water in here? Like a water bottle or something?”

The father looked around a bit, despite the distraction of the road beyond the windshield.

“I don’t think so,” said the father. “But I don’t think a water bottle would be good for him anyway. You’d probably drown him. We have an eyedropper at home, that might work.”

“All right.” He turned back to me. “Do you think you’ll be all right until we get home?”

I nodded slowly, closing my eyes. I nearly let my chin lean forwards, but the sting in my neck kept me motionless.

The drive only took a few minutes. But as I watched the landscape beyond the vehicle’s window fly by, tree after tree, sign post after street light, I realized just how far away I was traveling from you. I know our decisions had brought me to that place. My decisions. But I had run out of choices to make. If I tried to return to our village, especially with that kind of injury, I would die within a day. Maybe with the help of these denvi, once I regained my strength, I would have a chance to return to you.

The car stopped moving when it arrived at a well-kept building of white wood and red brick, at least from what I saw from my perspective in Ian’s arms. Chris and Aaron rose, exiting the vehicle without being prompted.

“Remember, guys,” Ian said. “Don’t tell anybody about him. Even Uncle Ty and Aunt Amy. Just tell them I have a doctor’s appointment to go to or something.”

“You’re not wrong!” Aaron said with a quick smirk.

“See you, boys,” said Ian’s father. “And good job today.”

The doors shut, and both ka ran for the home’s front door and disappeared inside. The car then continued its movement.

In truth, I was becoming a bit alarmed. The deep rumble of the denvi vehicle, the pain in my body, the exhaustion from the entire terrible week, it all conspired against me. The urge to sleep even overrode my desire for water. But if I drifted off into sleep now, would I wake up? And where would I be when I awoke?

Ian noticed my distress. Looking down, his breath fell upon me.

“Are you okay?”

“Let him rest, Ian,” said Ian’s father. “That will be the best thing for him.”

“All right,” Ian said, watching me. “Don’t worry. You can sleep. I’ll make sure you’re comfortable when we get home.”

Trust is a strong word. I wasn’t sure I had much for the boy or his father yet. But his few simple words granted me the permission I needed to surrender. I closed my eyes, and was out in an instant.

The very next something I experienced was a powerful smell. A collection of smells all wrapped into one, in fact. They weren’t individually terrible. Together, they clashed.

One was some kind of bitter cleaning solution, what denvi use to clean their floors and furniture. The second was unfamiliar, primal, the kind of odor that marks someone. I’ve been told that denvi only sort of experience such smells, that dogs are better at identifying people this way. Do you remember when you told me mine was like juniper? I never could help having that dull smell, no matter how much I bathed or what soap I washed with. But this one was thick, the smell of an older child and something buried, like orm roots. The third smell that consumed my senses was by far the strongest: a mixture of savory herbs and flavorful stock.

My eyes opened. A dim white ceiling greeted me first, made yellow by a light source from somewhere in the room. My eyes tracked the ceiling to the far wall, upon which sat two rows of wooden shelves. On these shelves was a colorful assortment of plastic toys and books, well-used boxes with bright graphics and frayed corners, and plastic cases with a variety of English words upon them. Beside the shelves was a wide window framed with dark-red curtains, through which I could see trees, telephone lines, and the light blue of a beautiful spring afternoon.

I tried to lift myself to get a better view of my surroundings, but the roaring pain in my neck pinned me down. I dared not move, but I again attempted to make sound, any sound at all. When I mouthed the words, I could hear the delicate wind of spoken language, but it did not have my voice, nor did it have any great volume. Then, for the first time since, I nearly gagged as the inside of my throat erupted in irritation and pain. After all the blood and damage, it was only natural. If the doctor had been right about my throat, that my vocal chords had been “fractured” by whatever hellish thing I hit in the river, then perhaps it wasn’t the best idea to force my voice to function. I settled back into my light-blue bedding and simply stared.

My ears yearned for recognizable sounds. Muffled voices echoed from elsewhere inside the denvi home, all too indistinct. Every four seconds or so, I would hear a sharp click from somewhere behind me. I didn’t recognize it. It was hollow and tinged, like the metallic ping of a bell. I hated it. With every click, it felt like something in the back of my head was being struck with a ball-peen hammer. But since it didn’t approach, I deemed it annoying but nonthreatening.

Somewhere deep within the bowels of the house, the sound of rushing water echoed. Whenever their plumbing flowed, said the gatherers, denvi would be present.

I decided that the sound was too distant to concern me. Until, of course, I reasoned that distance didn’t exactly matter when all the denvi who lived there knew what I was, where I was, what I looked like, and my current state of health.

I’m unsure how long I laid in that strange rectangular room by myself. For all their faults, I mused, the gatherers had been right about one thing: the denvi adored ninety degree angles. Every room that I had seen thus far had been perfectly rectangular, perfectly geometrical. I didn’t mind it. It had to make their construction projects simple, at least. I knew many who regularly complained about them, though.

Every room is the same, they often said. The only thing different about each room are the colors on the walls and the obstacles on the floor.

If the rooms are all the same, I would always ask, then, what makes them so hard to navigate?

Nothing important is ever on the floor, they would answer. It’s always up above.

I had never been too sure about that. But the gatherers’ toolkit made things quite clear, and never changed: steel grappling hooks, tough leather belts, and as much thread as you can shoulder. Climbing was the only way to survive in a denvi home. Olem, climbing was the only way to survive anywhere. Combined with the ability to remain hidden in the shadows. If a deni had any trouble with these two skills, they were better off staying home.

Like me.

I never was a very physical person. I couldn’t be. You know that. So I taught the deni children how to read and write, content to enjoy the odd scraps of paper the gatherers would bring back. When you convinced them to find some for us, of course. For a few moments, I wondered if I would ever get to teach again. I wondered if I would I ever get to live in a villageagain. Or, come to think of it, would I even see another living deni again?

A sound. The click-thud of a closing door. Footsteps.Big ones.They distanced themselves at first, but then reappeared as deep thumping upon the solid floor nearby.

I froze. Every instinct inside me demanded me to move, to flee, but the pain grew unbearable the moment I even dared to lurch forward. I relaxed, and the pain dulled. Death was just around the corner and I couldn’t move a muscle.

A great door suddenly clicked open directly behind my head, shocking me. I closed my eyes and pretended to be asleep. If the skeletal visage of Death had actually entered the room, I’d never see him coming. Was that better or worse?

Great footsteps on carpet closed the door behind them. I heard the sound of a quiet sigh, and within a second, felt the brush of stirred air as a very large someone strode past where I lay. I dared to open my eyes for just a split second, and I saw the dark-haired head of a familiar ka ignoring me, walking further into the room.

The veritable weight of his presence unnerved me, certainly, but I realized that my position was somewhere high off the ground, as if on some shelf. If I had been lower down, in a crushing position, my psychological state would have been considerably more fragile. Once the ka named Ian passed by, I could no longer see him from within my bedding. He began humming some tune, considerably off-key, and I heard the crunch of metal springs beneath dozens, maybe even hundreds,of pounds.

I didn’t want him to find me awake. But I preferred he didn’t go to bed and leave me in a state of uncertain panic for two to three hours, either.

I didn’t know if the boy would see it, but I had to try. Despite the discomfort, I raised my right arm, waving my hand back and forth to grab the boy’s attention. In that moment alone, I was glad you weren’t with me; you would have stabbed me with your hairpin to make me stop. I felt incredibly foolish. But it soon had its intended effect.

“Oh!” said a quiet voice.

The metal springs complained again, and deep-thumping steps brought the ka denvi into view. I don’t quite know why I expected his appearance to differ from only a few hours before. Though my imagination had turned him into a hideous monster as I slept, he simply… wasn’t. The dim yellow light that shone from behind him cast his massive shadow upon me. Despite this, more than enough daylight entered through the window that I could see him in detail. Bright green eyes, long messy hair that grew past his ears. I could only see his face, his collar, and part of his shoulders, so I knew I must have been quite high off the floor.

“Hi,” he said to me.

I offered a small wave in reply, blinking to make sure this boy was truly looking down upon me and not some other poor fool.

“Oh, good, you can wave.”

I couldn’t nod real well. But I could smile. Slightly.

“How are you feeling? Are you in pain?”

I shrugged my shoulders, which made me wince.

“I’m sorry. I wish I could give you medicine to help. Dad isn’t sure how much we can give you yet. He said he’s gonna do some research about it, though, maybe give you some… relative to your size, you know? Do the bandages help, at least?”

I moved my lips. I think he took that as a “yes”. He watched me for a bit longer than would be considered polite. I even closed my eyes for a second as if tired, just to look back and see he hadn’t stopped staring. I think I glared at him. That gave him the hint, and he shook out of his daze.

“Uh…” The boy chuckled, moving on. “Oh. Hey, do you… want me to get you anything?”

Again, I lifted a cupped hand to my mouth. Recognition lit up his face.

“Oh yeah! Sorry, I forgot! Wait right here.”

Not that I had a choice. Just as abruptly as he had entered the room, he stepped out; the entirety of him suddenly not being in front of me was almost as jarring as him being there. I heard his footsteps travel a short distance, a door open, something clatter, and a waterfall cascade into a hollow bowl. Ten seconds later, the ka returned, closing his door and coming back into my view.

“Here you go,” said Ian cheerfully. In his hands he held a large plastic tube and an even larger vessel filled with pure water. “Drink from this.”

It wasn’t just a tube, exactly; a tube with a plunger within that could fill and empty just by squeezing the plunger through it. Ian brought the tube to my mouth, and as his thumb pressed upon the plunger, my lips immediately met with moisture. I inhaled the first fist-sized drop. Metaphorically. I hadn’t had a clean drink of water in maybe two days; I’d thrown up all the unclean river water I’d dare drink before then. A second drop emerged, and I lapped it up. A third, fourth, and fifth drop formed, and I took my time with them, enjoying every second of the incredible crisp liquid. Finally, I leaned my head backwards as a sixth drop formed. I thought it might spill across my chest. But Ian was watching the procedure closely, and simply by pulling on the plunger, the drop withdrew back into the strange tube as if by magic.

“Is that all?” Ian asked. “Do you want more?”

I raised a finger up.

“One more?”

I pushed my hand forwards a few times.

“Oh. I’ll wait. Sorry.”

He was considerate, I’d give him that. Perhaps I wasn’t an animal to him after all. Once I regained my composure and felt there was room for more, I waved at him.

“Here ya go.”

The tube lowered and produced a droplet, which I sucked up with gratitude. I did the same with a second, a third, and a fourth. I then raised my hand to make the water cease, which it did.

Now, I thought to myself, what do denvi do? Then I remembered; I’d seen it in a picture from a torn magazine once, and I’d seen Grandmother do it a few times. I lifted my hand, formed a fist, but left my thumb extended. I didn’t really know what that meant. But I’m glad Ian did, and a smile formed on his face.

“Yay,” he said. “Good. Good. Hey, are you cold? Or hot? Lift up your arm.”

I didn’t, but the boy took it in his fingers anyway. My left arm, too. It hurt.

“Hmm. What about here?”

He felt my stomach with his forefinger. I lost a bit of air as he pressed down. He then lightly squeezed my right foot. It was then I knew for sure that I had lost my ratty shoes. I didn’t much care; they hadn’t offered any real protection. I was just grateful I still wore any piece of clothing at all (specifically, the pants that clung to my waist).

“Yeah, you’re cold. Do you want me to get you another towel? Help keep you warm?”

My hand waved a negative and fell back down to my side. Despite the blood loss and relative nakedness, most of me was badly sunburned, and for the first time in a week, I felt fairly comfortable.

“You’re sure?”

I nodded.

“Um, let’s see,” he whispered, lowering his eyes to my level.

I turned my head as best I could, and saw the curious light of his eyes not more than a few arm lengths away. I’m not going to lie, it was slightly horrifying, being able to seemyself in that reflection.

“Dad says that it’s super-important that your patient stays comfortable. And he said that sometimes a distraction can help lessen pain. If you want, we can watch a movie on my TV. I’ll watch with you to make sure you’re okay.”

I knew what a “movie” was, if only because of the word. At first, I gave him a halfway shrug. Until my plodding mind comprehended what the boy was offering me. When would I ever get the opportunity to watch a denvi movie otherwise? I quickly nodded to override my shrug.

“Yeah? Cool. Uh, hang on, let’s see…”

Ian looked around his room for a moment, and then stepped outside again. His thundering footsteps faded, then I heard him faintly shout to someone. Everything grew quiet. A door very far away slammed, and Ian’s footsteps rebounded towards me until he entered the room. He passed me by, fiddling with something wooden and metallic. I had no idea what to make of it, so I remained still.

Ian then came into view.

“I got you a chair,” he said. “You’ll have the best seat in the house. Like sitting in your own theater.”

I nodded, not fully understanding. I only knew of “theaters” by the word. But if they had anything to do with movies, they must have been fantastic places to visit.

“Okay, here we go,” Ian said, his slender yet gigantic hands reaching for me. One hand descended beneath my right side, and the other crossed over me beneath my left; I half-expected to be smothered. Instead, I went airborne, descending into that strange and massive room. I didn’t have too much time to marvel at the movement before my bedding and I came to rest upon an inclined surface. Although I couldn’t say so, it felt wonderful to be seated. Ian’s hands disappeared, and there, standing upon its own table, I looked upon the largest and most foreboding black rectangle in existence.

The descent hadn’t frightened me all that much. No, it was the tower of a boy that loomed over me that attracted my horrified gaze. Dressed in a gray shirt and shorts, I could see Ian in much greater detail from my new perspective, from his knees all the way up to his head. It was like looking through some strange piece of warped glass, making the child only appear to stand as tall as a tree. But no. In reality, I was lying prone, under the complete command of this very real denvi.

I was right about lower altitudes, but perhaps not about him.Contrary to every tale I had ever heard about them, this human named Ian didn’t pose a threat to me. He didn’t intend to, at least. His size did, sure. But his demeanor did not.

He crossed the room between me and the rectangle, taking some device in his hand. The pitch-black rectangle suddenly gave way to a pair of bright blue words that I couldn’t pronounce. They made no sound, but the two words then became a blue illustration of a television that playfully bounced back and forth across the screen. The television was active and ready.

“Okay,” Ian said, stepping towards the shelves that hung next to the window. “I’ve got a couple of movies to choose from. What do you think? Star Wars? Lord of the Rings? Maybe a Disney movie?”

I hadn’t the slightest clue what any of those words meant. Without any hint of preference, I almost shrugged again, but then an idea popped in my head: I had a very important question (a number of questions, really), and without a voice, there was going to be only one way I could ask it.

I raised my hand to stop the boy. Before he could ask why, I pressed my fingers together and wobbled them back and forth against the palm of my opposite hand. I watched Ian’s face for any sign that he understood.

Ian cocked his head to the side.

“You want to… write something?” he asked. He then smacked his forehead. “Oh! I’m so dumb! Why didn’t I think that you could? Hang on, let me find something you can use.”

Ian stepped away from my view, and the sounds I heard resembled rummaging through a filled drawer. The silly boy mumbled to himself in the meantime.

“No, not a pen. Too big. Nay, pencil’s too big, too. Maybe if I snap it in half, I dunno. Marker? Eh, they’re all dead. And you can’t write with a cray… Ah!”

Something snapped, surely too delicate and light to be a whole pencil. More rummaging. Then the boy reappeared, kneeling before me.

“Here you go.”

His hand hovered close, and between his fingers was a short gray stick a bit thicker than my thumb and twice as long as my hand. I recognized it immediately, as I had used them all the time: it was the lead of what the denvi called a “mechanical” pencil. I took it gladly.

“And here, you can use these.”

With his other hand, he placed a thick pad of light-green paper up to the edge of my lap. I’d used these as well. They called them “sticky notes”. People in the village generally used them not only as writing material, but as a source of adhesive that comes off easily enough with a thin knife.

I began writing my question when there came a knock at Ian’s door. I panicked somewhat when Ian said: “Hi.”

I looked; a familiar face looked back.

“Ian?” asked Ian’s father. “Is our patient awake?”

“Yep,” Ian said. “I was going to watch a movie with him, but guess what? He knows how to write.”

The denvi’s face brightened.

“Really?” he said. “That’s wonderful! I’d love to join you. Is it all right if I come in?”

“Is that okay?” Ian asked me.

Despite the water I just drank, my throat ran dry. But I nodded all the same.

The denvi opened the door and stepped into the room, and I imagined him hitting his head on the top of the door frame. I’m exaggerating, obviously, but I had never seen someone standing so tall before. I’ve never asked him to know for sure, but the good doctor had to stand more than seven feet tall, at least.He carried a large wooden stool in one hand as if expecting to enter whether I liked it or not. After placing it beside me and sitting down, Ian leaned backwards and plopped to the floor on his bottom. With both of them seated, I felt considerably less intimidated.

I pressed my hand against my forehead and closed my eyes, thinking for a moment. It would have been so much easier with a voice. I then pressed the graphite to the paper. Aware that the denvi would likely not be able to read my regular handwriting, I struck out my first words, rewriting them as large as I dared. It took me a moment to get used to my seating position, but I soon found a way to scribble without too much discomfort. Finished, I tore off the paper from the stack and handed it to Ian, who took it expectantly.

He squinted at the note, and for a moment, I thought I might have to rewrite it.

“Why would…? Because you were gonna die, silly.”

“What does it say?” asked his father.

Ian handed the note over.

“It says, why did you save me?”

The denvi above me placed a hand to his chin, and seemed to understand the intent of my question a bit better than the boy.

“Something tells me you don’t have very much experience with people like us.”

I shook my head.

“What do you mean?” Ian asked.

“Well, I’ve never seen someone like him, have you?” Speaking to me, he said: “You probably didn’t expect to be found by the boys, did you?”

I paused, and wondered if what I wanted to say would get me in trouble somehow. I carefully traced letters to paper anyway, pausing for a moment when I realized that they wouldn’t be familiar with my language. I pulled the note from the stack, and hesitated on who I should hand it to.

Ian’s father reached out first. He took his glasses from his pocket and studied my writing.

“My family,” he read. “…is dead because of humans.”

Ian’s eyes opened wide.

“…seriously?”

His father remained impassive when I nodded.

“You have every reason not to trust us, then,” he said.

I looked away.

“…but your whole family?” Ian asked, pulling forwards. “How?”

“Ian,” said the father. “I don’t think that’s our right to ask.”

They looked down upon me, and saw me busily writing. Mother, Father. Han and Sareil, the little brother and sister I would never know. Most of my students. Grandmother, your father Andre, and your brother Xande. I had already mourned for those I loved. As for the rest, what little grief I had for them was spent, and I could write without emotion.

I know this was always difficult for you to understand. But you, the children, and Grandmother were the only people I even wanted to care about. As for the rest, well… they could all go to hell. Writing about the dead wasn’t terribly difficult when most of them had made it very clear and public that they hated me.

It’s not the most satisfying form of revenge. They died, and I remember. But it has kept me warm some nights: I can remember them however I want.

I handed my response to Ian’s father.

“’Mostly sickness,’” he read.

I wrote another.

“‘Bad water and food.’”

“’Accidents. Animals.’”

“‘It’s not your fault, though.’”

I wrote another; despite the pad of paper being nearly as wide as I was tall, my arms were short, and I had little energy to say everything I wanted.

“’You are better than my family ever was,’” Ian’s father read. “What do you mean by that? I’m sure that’s not true.”

“Yeah, all we did was pick you up out of the canal and patch you up,” Ian said.

I frowned. I wrote more.

“‘You don’t know my family’.” The father shrugged. “Oh, well, I suppose we don’t.”

Ian squinted, wrinkling his nose.

“Were you running away from home or something?”

I wrote.

“They threw me out.’”

“Why?”

“Ian,” his father growled, scolding.

“…what?” he whined back.

They didn’t need to know everything. I put pencil to paper.

“‘My leg doesn’t work well’.” The father frowned. “Hmm. I did notice something before.”

“You can’t walk?” Ian asked.

“‘I can walk slow.’ Do you know what’s wrong with your leg?”

I wrote.

“‘I became very sick.’ When?”

I wrote again.

“’As a baby’. Both of your legs? Or just one?”

I held up a finger. Then two, wiggled my hand, and shrugged.

“Hmm. Does your knee bend normally? Or is it a little crooked?”

I wrote.

“No. Very crooked.”

“Do you mind if I lift up your pant leg and take a look?”

I wobbled my head, motioning down. Ian’s father gently grasped my wretched left foot with one hand and lifted up my pant with the other. I watched his face as he examined it.

“Can you keep it lifted? By yourself?”

I did my best, but my leg immediately began shaking from the strain.

“Whoa,” Ian whispered. “It’s like… his knee looks backwards.”

“Hmm. Atrophy, too.”

“What’s atrophy?” Ian asked, peering down at my leg along with his father. His breath hit me immediately as he zoomed in; he was so close, I could have kicked his nose.

“See the muscles of his calf? And his thigh. Compare the two. See how much more developed the right is than the left? Oh, here. Sorry.”

He gently took my leg with his thumb and forefinger. I nodded, grateful for the relief from shaking. My instincts told me to be worried about how closely they were examining me, but at that point, I preferred someone tear off my bum leg altogether and save me the trouble of hauling it around.

“See? It’s atrophied, which means the muscles have shrunk. Or just never grew strong.”

“Atrophy.” That was a new word to me. Now I could describe why my leg was ji kalok ys nanol. So skinny and bent.

“It does look like it bends the other way… May I?”

At his request, I quickly shook my head and twisted to pull my leg away. I could hardly bend it myself without discomfort, I didn’t want a denvi to do it for me.

“Sorry, understood.” He seemed to ponder for a second after releasing my leg. “Have you ever injured your back or your neck? Broken any bones? Or was it just from falling ill as a child?”

I shook my head at the mention of broken bones, and simply shrugged off the rest.

“Interesting. I wonder if it was something as simple as polio.”

“Polio?” Ian asked. “What does polio do? Isn’t that gone?”

“Nearly gone, yeah. Before immunizations, it used to kill thousands of children a year all over the world, and often crippled those that survived. Now it’s nearly eradicated from humanity, but… maybe not from his people. Polio and meningitis can act just like this, with muscle weakness, paralysis, genu recurvatum.”

“Genu wha-huh-tum?” Ian asked.

I would have asked the same thing.

“Genu recurvatum. Hyperextension of the knee.”

“Oh. That’s the technical term?”

“Yep. Although, maybe it’s not as bad as it looks.” He looked to me. “You can still feel your leg, move it, and bend it. Right?”

I nodded. I’d never heard of polio before. Or “genu wha-huh-tum.” Or “hyper-whatever-he-said.” But I knew the word “paralysis.” My left leg had never lost all of its feeling, or its ability to move. It was weak and misshapen, though, and it had been for as long as I could remember.

“How do you move around?” Ian asked me. “Hopefully not just limping.”

Instead of writing it, I extended my arms (wincing at the pain) and pretended to walk, making motions as if someone had placed sticks beneath my arms.

Ian’s father nodded.

“Crutches,” he said. “Hey, whatever works, right? You’re a tough one.”

I wrote three words of doubt.

“Hey, I don’t doubt it. I know a tough guy when I see one. You’ve got the upper body strength to prove it, I can tell.”

He poked me in the chest, and I offered him a small grin in return. There really wasn’t much muscle there either, but it was a nice thought.

“Wait…” Ian said. “With the rain last night, you weren’t actually trying to swim in the canal, were you?”

I shrugged. I had only really intended to follow the bank of the river in the direction it ran, but the slippery mud and gravity conspired against me.

“You can swim? With that leg? Wow.”

“It’s all in the arms,” Ian’s father said, flexing his own. After a chuckle, he pointed to his neck and asked: “Do you have any idea how you got hurt? Did you hit something? Or fall?”

“Yeah! Or did a cat get you with its claws or something?”

I wrote many notes in a row. Ian’s father gathered them all in his fingers.

“‘No animals. I fell into the water. I hit something sharp, metal maybe. Couldn’t breathe. Threw up blood and passed out.’” Ian’s father nodded. “We’re definitely going to have to keep an eye out for infection. Canal water is dirty stuff, but it’s worse if you hit something rusted. If you get a fever or start to feel nauseous, you tell us right away.”

“But he can’t.” Ian said, scratching his shoulder. He paused. “He can’t tell us.”

“Hmm. And it’s hard to hear someone shout on paper. Maybe we can find something he can use to make sound with. Like a bell, something he can hit.”

“Good idea. And I’ll listen for it if he needs anything.”

“Does that mean you’re volunteering to be the night nurse tonight?”

Ian sat up straight and offered me a mighty salute.

“Yes sir! I’m at your command, sir!”

I laughed. Tried to. Though my lack of voice should have been expected by then, it wasn’t. As the two denvi motioned to stand, I closed my eyes. I dug deep and forced a growl, demanding it emerge from wherever it would. It actually did. Though filled with mucus, blood, and (for all I knew) gravel, my upper throat could still make a hoarse rasping noise.

I sighed; it was something.

“Oh,” said Ian’s father, standing immense over me. “You know what? We’ve been incredibly rude.”

“Huh?” asked Ian.

“We’ve completely skipped introducing ourselves,” said the father, placing a hand on Ian’s shoulder. “I’m sure you know this little scamp by now, this is Ian. My name is James. James Petersen.”

“Oh yeah. Sorry! I didn’t even think about that.”

“Can we ask you your name?” James asked.

I nodded gratefully, and wrote it in English. Ian took the page from me and read it aloud.

“‘Lenn’. That’s a cool name. Can I call you Lenny?”

I raised a dull eyebrow at him. It made him giggle, for some reason.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Lenn,” James said, playfully prodding his son’s head at the odd joke. “When my wife gets home, I’ll introduce you. I hope we’ll be able to help you, I really do.”

I didn’t thank them, then. I should have. They had given me medicine, a bed, water, and kind words. Only two other people in my life had ever done likewise. One was long dead. The other I had left to endure misery alone.

Gratitude never was my forte.

Quantum Plasma Rifle (“Mojave-Rust” Custom Paint Job for the Fallout Plasma Rifle Prop)

November 1, 2022November 1, 2022 / birdjericho

Quantum Plasma Rifle (“Mojave-Rusted” Custom Paint Job)

This is a project three years in the making, because I was too scared that my inexperience in paiting props would screw it up. I finally gathered my courage and rusted/battle-scarred this thing last night.

Presenting the Quantum Plasma Rifle with a “Mojave-Rusted” custom paint job. I think it turned out really well. Now to learn how to create a custom soundboard, save up the money to buy the parts, and slap a bunch of fun circuits on this thing.

See, the truth about the dead light… I didn’t do a good job with the wiring on the inside while changing out the LEDs. My one regret. But sometimes they flash on and off a bit, so I’ll say that’s part of the “age” of the gun. Can’t wait for next Halloween when my vault suit is finished.

Not Good for the Heart (?)

October 9, 2022October 9, 2022 / birdjericho

I’m not a huge fan of confrontation. Or stress. That’s probably not surprising for anyone who knows me. If you don’t, you may wonder why I wandered into the depths of politics and religion with the last two articles I wrote. I’m a glutton for punishment, I guess. Nothin’ like “a waste of time” to get the blood pumping. I always find a way to stretch the barriers surrounding my own emotional containment. I’ve been told this is a good thing, but I’m not too sure about that. I feel like I’ve learned a few things this week, though, and I thought I’d share (if only to help me process my own feelings).

Hemingway once said: “There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.” If that’s the case, then writing is a biopsy, and the reader is a doctor. Deep inside, you hope the reader is trained to process the results. You hope the reader has a decent bedside manner. You hope what you have isn’t terminal.

Oop, it’s terminal.

It’s the big word in the middle, it’s wonderful; I’ve never had someone critique my work with something so specific before. Kind of exciting, actually. I was looking for “preachy”, but “tendentious” is fantastic. At first I thought he misspelled “tangentious”, like, going off on endless amounts of tangents. And boy, do I ever (I love parentheses). But no, that’s not what the word means.

Tendentious: “expressing or intending to promote a particular cause or point of view, especially a controversial one.”

Thank the Lord, someone actually recognized what I was doing! It sounds like I’m being facetious when I say this, but I’m not: I’ve been waiting years for someone to give me feedback that’s so specific. I’ve spent the last ten years of my life working for marketing agencies where the only feedback I receive is if the details of the content I write need clarification or correcting. And if they do need correcting, I don’t often get specifics about adding things so much as deleting. Having worked for the last two-and-a-half years as a remote freelancer, I don’t get to discuss content writing much with people who do the same work, since, well… I don’t have co-workers.

I’m pretty used to being wrong, though. And I’m very used to being boring.

But “tendentious”… I never get to be tendentious, much less get recognized for it.

Hypocrite? Well, yeah, I mean, I mentioned that I was in the article. I usually assume everyone is, but it’s good to play it safe. I mentioned the possibility of being wrong many times, too, so I’m happy to get confirmation. The review even made it to the last line in the article, too, which makes this even more exciting; I only ~~mentioned~~ invoked Reagan’s name once, and despite agreeing with the sentiment that he was an evil hypocrite (just as every mortal who ever lived in this world is), I still believe the quote is useful, if not an actual truth.

You know how many times I’ve told myself that I’ve been wasting my time, though? That’s old news, my man; you and my brain both. And not just here, on this blog. I’ve mentioned in the past how I’ve felt about my own work, how none of the hundreds and thousands of pages of content I’ve written over the course of my life will ever be seen by human eyes. Even now, the words I’m writing amount to a fart in the wind. Nothing besides a bit of traffic from URL bot trawlers on search engines and blog scammers.

To be honest, though… I’ve never really had anything I’ve wanted to say before. Not really. I’m strange that way. I’ve been writing since I was a little kid, writing silly stories for myself and never for anyone else. Only in the last few years have I reached out to my own family members to see if I had anything worth saying. Not until early 2021 did I realize how hard it was to love writing while being too scared to show people the metaphorical blood on the typewriter.

When I chose “atheism” and “religion” as two of the keywords that would be attached to the last blog post, I knew what I was doing. I knew the kind of people I was inviting to the party. And I want to thank him. Honestly. Your feedback, while not the first deconstructive criticism I’ve ever received, told me more than I ever hoped for about an article that I knew was a throwaway from the start. You recognized I gave it effort, you recognized its purpose, and you read it to the end. Not a lot of readers have given my work that much attention, much less that much recognition.

Okay, it was… mostly a throwaway. I don’t enjoy writing things that aren’t meaningful to me, in some way (it’s why I didn’t get my bachelor’s, after all). Like I’ve said, thinking gets me into trouble. No matter how heartfelt I start things, the more I bleed across the metaphorical page, the more I realize that I’m just making a mess, and not a pretty one.

But, as a writer, I am duty-bound to bleed. And the more time and effort I waste in this profession, the stronger I become as a writer and as a person. Now that I’m no longer shackled to my medications and caffeine, I am able to accept unwarranted (and delightfully-specific) heat when it comes my way. And that is a wonderful sign of progress.

This all being said, however… I’ll take my refiner’s fire by degrees, thank you. I’m still a wuss. A wuss in remission, but still certainly one.

Something, Not Anything, and Especially Not Nothing

October 7, 2022October 8, 2022 / birdjericho

*These words have power, even in fiction. And they’re worth holding on to.*

A video appeared in my Facebook feed recently by Brad Stein entitled: “Ricky Gervais Atheism Rebuttal (Part 1)“. And it got me thinking. I know I get in trouble when I think out loud, but I can’t help it. So I’ll throw my two cents out there, mostly to help me form my own understanding.

One of the main points of atheism that I understand the least is the desire to throw away all of man’s collected theological arguments, philosophies, and development. Just get rid of it, they say. All of it. Immediately. We don’t need it anymore. If the world could just “get over” God completely, they argue, we might actually start making sense to each other. After all, now that we have the scientific method, what do we need faith for?

The thing that gets me is that they speak as if a religion-less world would solve more problems than it would cause. You know the phrase, “throw the baby out with the bath water?” To get rid of all religion and God, you might as well be throwing the whole bathroom out of the house. Yes, the bathroom often smells bad, and yes, it needs cleaning more than most other rooms in the house. In fact, sometimes the sewage comes back up and explodes out of the toilet, and sometimes we have to call the plumber or even the disaster clean-up crew to come take care of things.

But no one would argue that building a house without a bathroom is a good idea, at least not in the modern world. Even if it’s an outhouse on the property, outside of the house of society, it is something man can’t do without, and to say that they can invites trouble.

But there’s more to this analogy than comparing religion to waste disposal, because the bathroom is used for much more than this. The bathroom is where man comes to become clean. It is the one place inside the home where man is renewed, when man begins and ends each day, mostly out of necessity, but sometimes… just because. (Apologies if this overstretches the analogy. But really, what parent hasn’t retreated to the bathroom for a moment of solace?) A home without a bathroom is a miserable place, and even if you’ve chosen to build your home without one, there is somewhere in your home that you wash yourself and do your business.

If not, well… I hope you use dry shampoo, at least.

Hopefully you’ve noticed by now that I’m not really talking about the optimal type of bathroom, whether you should have tile or hardwood floors, or whether a bidet is preferrable to toilet paper. Which religion is true isn’t the question here (although, due to my inexperience, my argument is from the Christian perspective, as it is the one I am most familiar with). It’s the question of, on a societal scale, whether religion is preferrable to none at all. And, like it or not, believe it or not, religion has been an absolute necessity in mankind’s development, and will continue to be, so long as man requires a source of moral integrity.

And I submit that he does.

(Yet another aspect of atheism I don’t quite grasp. They insist that man is capable of being a moral creature on his own, that left without restrictions of belief, he could make manifest a modern and moral society. All I ask is: moral to who, exactly? The greatest amount of us, or a select few? The society that accepts stories such as The Lord of the Flies, 1984, and hundreds of other godless dystopias as societal possibilities states this “fact” with a straight face, and that has always confused me.)

Let’s be fair: if it wasn’t for the very Christian founding of the United States that believes that speech is a sacred gift that ought to be protected, even if the speaker is factually or morally wrong, there are a lot of other discussions that we wouldn’t and couldn’t even be having right now (as an aside: you can, in fact, shout “fire!” in a crowded theater, especially if the theater is actually on fire, in which case you probably should, and remember to help everyone find the right exits. In fact, to expand on this analogy, in my opinion, it is the sole purpose of the religious to shout when they see fires, i.e. moral dangers, stamp them out when they can, and help the weak and downtrodden escape with their lives, sometimes quite literally.) I submit that the very site that hosts this blog and others like it would not exist without it (the fact that there are countries that block Wikipedia, of all things, or at least interfere with the free editing of its content, is astounding to me. But not unexpected, and telling of cultures and, yes, religions that do not agree that you can simply say things).

The scientific method and all the vaunted sciences which atheism loves so very much were developed by God-fearing men and women who sought to understand all the facets of creation, and might not have done so with such feverish dedication and curiosity had they not felt a moral obligation to do so (a moral obligation that arose, I might add, often because of their faith, and not in spite of it). From the ancient Greeks to the Islamic Golden Age, from Galileo to Sir Issac Newton, the search for knowledge and truth has never been separate from faith and belief until these most recent two centuries. The Renaissance, for instance, was financed and forwarded as a whole by men of faith; only now, in these days, would we question the worthiness of a scientist by his belief in a higher power. Even men like Richard Dawkins and Stephen Hawking would not have been able to perform their work without standing upon the moral foundations laid by men who at least publicly believed in God.

Yes, men and women are foolish, and very imperfect. Petty, often, and gullible. We always have been and we always will be. Man’s religions especially so. But we would not be as “advanced” as we are without them, and, in my humble opinion, we would be dramatically worse off without God and religon existing within our societal framework. Indeed, God and religion is the framework we build on, and to rip it out and start from nothing would be both ill-advised and (in my opinion) probably impossible anyway, so long as people exist in this world who seek to help and love others.

That’s not to say that atheists are incapable of love or giving to charity. But I am saying there is a correlation between goodness and religion that is undeniable.

An article entitled “Can societies abandon religion and continue to prosper?” was written for MercatorNet by Michael Kirke and lays out a few points of evidence for this. I’ll highlight this main point:

“In a world where people often lived near starvation, religion helped them cope with severe uncertainty and stress… as economic and technological development took place, people became increasingly able to escape starvation, cope with disease, and suppress violence. Does this, however, mean that their faith in a higher power was necessarily illusory?

“…if the overall thesis is that the only factors governing the future of mankind are those recognised by the materialist modern mind, then it is a very limited one. Uniting good political science and sociology with the entire corpus of theology and Christian doctrine as it has developed down through two millennia will give us a much more useful reading of what the future might look like than will a Babelesque go-it-alone mindset. The corpus of the Judean-Christian Scriptures — with their prophesies, parables and accounts of historical events — still gives us essential resources for interpreting and coping with the events, and follies, of our times.”

In my opinion, it couldn’t be less illusory if it tried. That starved, desperate, violent world is the world that our modern one was built on, and if popular media tells me anything, it’s the one we will return to if society should ever collapse under its own weight. And, in the end, you can’t get away from that. You accept the most good that you possibly can, remember it in the history books, and move on, else we go back to square one with nothing and repeat the suffering in ignorance.

Perhaps the most common argument for atheism I encountered was the argument that man is never more bloodthirsty, murderous, and trecherous than when serving a god. And yes, it’s true: under the banner of religion, man has murdered their fellow man in untold numbers, from the days of Babylon to the planes that struck the Twin Towers. But it wasn’t until we managed to get God out of the way that man made murder an industrialized endeavor. From the Holocaust to the Holodomor, from Mao’s glorious revolution to the killing fields of Cambodia, man gets awful good at killing other men and doing terrible things when they put God aside, often with the aspirations that life will be better once the undesirables are gone.

Because the first undesirable removed, inevitably, is God Himself. And that is hardly God’s fault.

The silliest argument I’ve ever got into with someone about the intrinsic value of religion was about the total death toll of the Crusades, how the conflict that spanned two centuries would not have happened had God and religion not been involved.

Such a simple theory of a simpler time, as if the greater religions of politics and desperation were not as active and far-reaching.

At the time, I didn’t have the numbers in front of me, but here they are. They’re rough, of course; anywhere from one million to nine million soldiers and civilians dead due to the 200-year, octuple-pronged conquest of the Holy Land. It’s impossible to be accurate these days, but even with rough estimates, and with all due respect for generations of people that died under terrible and barbaric circumstances, these are baby numbers.

The Third Reich was able to kill just as many people in a period of ten years. The Soviets’ five-year plan did it in a single year. Mao did four to eight times more, in only four years. And without a god to be found.

But, naturally, when you use the word “conquest”, it makes it sound so one-sided, when it was very much not. In fact, most of the “crusades” were failures, and overall they certainly were. Could I just submit the possibility that such a conflict was, in fact, not ordained of God? That, in fact, the majority of reasons the conflict began actually first conflicted with the very commandments God gave His followers, namely “thou shall not kill”? That it was men and power, not religion, that was the problem? Because, again, let’s be honest: even some Christians thought it wasn’t a good idea to continue sacking the East in 1114, and Christians were slaughtered for getting in the way. There’s a reason they started, though, that wasn’t “because God told them to”. The First Crusade began because Emperor Alexios of the Byzantines (who was not Catholic) no longer had control over the region and asked Pope Urban II to intervene, which they might have done anyway because of the massive military victories made by the Muslims in Spain in the mid 1000’s. There’s a board game about it, for Pete’s sake. Europe was in trouble, and needed to stand up for themselves. Too bad it took eight crusades to realize they didn’t need to take it that far; by then, it was just a thing to do to prove yourself a decent Catholic ruler.

Of the ten worst genocides in modern history, only the genocide that took place in Bangladesh in 1971 was committed solely on the grounds of state-sanctioned religous bigotry. All the other man-made cataclysms were performed with different primary motivations in mind, many of which were actually state-sanctioned genocides of specific religious groups, or became worse for those that followed a particular belief system.

Is that fair to say? Even as I write this, I know how complicated history is, and how uneducated I am. Even now, I have trouble believing that someone would care so much about the things I believe… that they wouldn’t merely prefer I didn’t exist, but would go out of their way to kill me, my family, and everyone who dared to share my worldview. That if I were Jewish in Poland in 1942, an SS officer’s first reaction to learning of my existence would be to reach for their gun and not shrug in indifference. That if I were Muslim and living in Cambodia in 1975, that the first reaction of an agent of Khmer Rouge to seeing me across the room would be a knee-jerk execution by machete and thrown in a mass grave with the bodies of my friends and loved ones. After all, I’ve been told so often that it’s the religious people that love killing people so much. Why would a non-believer act like this?

If this sounds naive, it’s because I’m being so on purpose. That’s my point: people are awful anyway, no matter what they profess to believe.

Yes, people are terrible. And people with power are even worse, especially when made desperate. But that does not mean the whole of the system of belief that a powerful man holds is a net evil, especially when the system is judged only by the actions of those in power.

So what is religion, then? Is it opium for the masses, like the Marxists say? Is it merely an allowance, a shield you can wield against all forms of criticism, especially if you’re able to fool enough of those terrible people? Is it an oppressive and unnecessary system of rules and regulations that forbid you from thinking for yourself? Is religion merely “the effect of a frenzied mind… [a] derangement of your minds [that] comes because of the traditions of your fathers, which lead you away into a belief of things which are not so”?

If that’s all it is, there’s great news. The philosophers have spoken: “God is dead, for we have killed Him.”

But what would you put in His place?

The haughty answer is: “nothing.” I think the honest answer is: “anything else.” I believe the more complicated answer is: “everything else.”

How long will that last, do you think? In this world of popularity contests and symbolism, how long can you hold together a world of people with “nothing”? With “anything”? I know from personal experience that “everything” can distract for a good couple of years, at least. But is that all I get in return? A distraction?

You’ve got to be able to make us all some promises with your “anything” and “everything else”.

If we dropped everything we believed, right now, would fewer of us die in the short-term if we followed your “everything”? And I do mean all of us, all people living right now, because that is the endless demand I hear. How about long-term? Would fewer of us encounter a broken heart, or heal from heartache and separation faster? Would fewer of us have to suffer from depression, sadness, and doubt? Would your “anything else” make us all less lonely? Would your noisy “everything” help us find meaning in our existence in this staggeringly uncaring universe? Could it protect us from hopelessness? Could it save us from sorrow? And if it could not, could it at least explain why we are destined to live in such conditions?

In my own life, I have felt abandoned by those who shared my faith. When I was at my lowest point, I did not know how to ask for help, and they did not know how to give it. But it is a commandment in my religion to “mourn with those that mourn; yea, and comfort those that stand in need of comfort”. Yes, those that share my faith may have failed to follow that commandment sometimes, due to inexperience or insecurity.

But they succeeded far more than they failed. Nothingness didn’t have an answer for me. Atheism doesn’t care if I attempt suicide again. My one small life means nothing to nothingness, and it means much less than that to “everything” and “anything”. But my faith tells me that my God does care. A lot, actually. And because of that, I am still here.

Does your belief system compel you to act the same towards others? Does it urge you to reach out the those you love, even when you don’t know how? Or even to reach out to those who mean nothing to you? It’s likely to. If so, where does the system you follow originate?

Just as the worth of a man’s thoughts are best judged by what he thinks when he is alone, so too is a man’s beliefs. Therein lies the difficulty, because although religion and faith affects the whole fabric of society, it is a very personal thing, a very individual thing. A difficult-to-control thing. A difficult-to-explain thing.

But none of these traits make religion wrong. Or even useless. Far from it, actually. It’s only a shame it has taken this long to reach a view of individualism that we can have honest and peaceful discussions about what makes our beliefs different. And it’s a greater shame that believers are often shamed for doing so (and I share these examples because of how easily I can see them being mocked on the social media cesspool that is Twitter; I have no desire to look up examples).

Talk about “comically” missing the point. The artist has proven only that he has made the slimmest of mental effort, throwing away the whole of “white American Christianity” by lumping them with terrorists, murderers, and child traffickers. I don’t care how you feel about any of the groups portrayed, though, honestly: caricature and mockery like this removes our willingness to understand each other. Be they enemy or friend, saint or sinner, 85% of the population of the world affiliates with a religion. Like it or not, believe it or not, you do yourself a disservice by ignoring and discarding it without learning why.

Whether you believe in God or not, you must acknowledge that everything we cling to, everything we love, and everything we consider beautiful stems from something: a system of belief, a tradition, a source of morality. Even if you don’t believe it, it’s likely someone you love does, and it’s likely they were taught by others that believed. If a man removes from himself a fundamental source of morality, he allows for his children to believe in anything.

And “anything” is one of the most terrifying things someone can believe in. This article, entitled: “Believing In Anything” by Dale Ahlquist, is a wonderful read, as is G. K. Chesterton as a whole, if you ever get the chance.

I’m not asking you to believe in the Tooth Fairy, or Santa Claus, or the Flying Spaghetti Monster. I’m not even asking you to believe in the god I believe in, really. I’m only asking you to watch your child’s actions and behaviors if they do believe in the Tooth Fairy and Santa Claus, and ponder what use that belief serves. I’m only asking you to judge how the man who believes in the Flying Spaghetti Monster lives his life, and if he and those he associates with are all the better for his mockery.

I’m only asking you to judge our society and people the way my God did, and if any of it has value, to not discard the whole of it, and ask why:

Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles?

Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit.

A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit.

Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire.

Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them.
Matthew 7:16-20

That’s why I can’t throw it all away, like the atheists tell me to: because there is goodness there. It is personal. It is difficult to explain. It’s also why I don’t blame those that have, if that is truly what they have experienced. But, as the Gipper once said, freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. And like it or not, believe it or not, faith is an inextricable virtue of freedom. Square one is not a place I want to raise my own children, no matter how flawed the people who stand on square forty-two might be. Because, for all I know, those strange people with strange thoughts on square forty-two might have something of real value.

If you’ve got a bridge you’d like to sell me, I’ve got a bathroom remodel I can offer you in return. All you need to do is ask.

The Price of (My) Education

October 1, 2022October 8, 2022 / birdjericho

Sorry if politics isn’t your thing. But this really gets my goat. My gander. My dander? I can’t remember the phrase, but this grinds my gears.

This opinion article by Deseret News recently appeared in my Facebook timeline. It’s titled: “President Biden forgave my student loans — I wish he hadn’t“. It really hits on how I feel about the U.S. government’s attempts to provide “charity” to its poorest citizens (or so our political leaders loudly insist).

I’ll be the first to admit it: I am on government welfare. I am on Medicaid, as I have a mental illness that has severely affected my ability to live, much less hold a job and pay my bills. I am not on food stamps, and never have been, despite my attempts to ask for it. I am not a wise person when it comes to money; I have filed for bankruptcy in the past, and I get the feeling that even if I was rolling in funds, I would be spending more than I would be making. If I were to win the lottery, I would be one of those fools that would manage to blow 500 million dollars right out the window (and having researched examples of lottery winners who lost it all, I don’t hesistate in saying that my 20-year old self would have done the same).

Yes, I am a fool. Yes, I am a hypocrite.

But, for all my faults, my country’s current leaders are making me look good.

One commentor on Facebook mentioned: “Well, what have the republicans done to improve the price of education? Haven’t they made the problem worse?”

Uh-huh. They did. It’s why the Republican party is no better than the Democratic party when it comes to forcefully funding “help for the poor” initiatives. They do it just to look good. There are no frugally-fiscal Republicans (none who would who use such a title), and very few fiscal conservatives. Look at me, becoming a fan of Ron Paul. Who knew?

Either way, I fell for the scam and made poor decisions, taking out loans for a degree I couldn’t finish due to poor health. And even if my health would allow it, to be honest, I refuse to finish it because my liberal arts English degree is taught only by communist quacks (yes, even at UVU/BYU/BYU-I, in the heart of supposedly-conservative Utah and Idaho). I didn’t want to learn about postmodernism, race theory, gender theory, or the dozens of other -isms and theories that liberal arts proports to make the college seem more scientific when it is ANYTHING but. I just wanted to learn how to write. And nobody suggested I learn how any other way (praise God I’ve been able to start my career without it).

Do I value my post-high-school education? Sure. Was it time well spent? Not really. Did it teach me to think critically? You could say that, yes, mostly about how crappy my overall experience was. Mostly about how I should have gone to a trade school and become an electrician. I love electrons more than I love Foucault, Derrida, and Marx, that’s for sure. By far, the most important lesson I learned in college was that some teachers just don’t give a damn, no matter how much you want to learn from them. No, I’m not going to name the teachers. I doubt they even know who they are, and that’s fine. Let’s just say, if you’re not the favorite, your will doesn’t really matter, no matter how expensive the tuition. The student is the servant, the peasant; feudalism hasn’t gone away, it’s moved to academia. You’re just another face in a wide sea of faces. And woe to you if your face becomes recognizable. Hell hath no fury like a professor scorned.

I’ll give a more concrete example.

One of the things about college education that really gets me these days are attendance rules. The worst class I ever attempted (yes, worse than postmodernism) was an HTML class that said, in no uncertain terms, that if you miss three days of class, even nonconsecutively, you fail, no questions asked. Well, I couldn’t find the damn class the first day, so there’s one. And then my illness hits me, as it tended to do, and there went two more. The class was held Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, held throughout the semester, so it wasn’t one of those fast-track courses that had only seven classes total or something. I might have agreed that missing MOST of a class would outright fail you, since you can’t learn anything in that case.

Worse, the class was not difficult. At all. It was a 200-level HTML class for liberal arts majors, and I had already done HTML and CSS the year previous, as I had changed my major from digital media to English. Just my luck that the credits didn’t transfer. I had even done the assignment that was due the day after my absences. But despite even attempting to communicate with the teacher why I missed those three days, the teacher wouldn’t accept my reasons, my completed assignment, or my attendance in his class. He wouldn’t even discuss the possibility of me staying, and he wouldn’t sign any papers that would let me drop the class to save money (I ‘failed’ the class well before midterms, but after the date that would allow classes to be dropped). He said: “it wouldn’t be fair to everyone else in the class.”

Oh. I’m sorry, I wasn’t aware that my education was anyone else’s buisness. I wasn’t yet aware that college was a communistic affair. Now I know better.

I get that an employer would have fired me for three “no-show” days. But I submit that a good employer wouldn’t have cared had the work been done on time and correctly. Besides that, I feel like some teachers and professors create unbreakable, unbendable rules that sound good on paper but leave no room for the possibility that someone who might break them is still capable of learning.

…did I mention this was an HTML class? It wasn’t Hemmingway or Shakespeare, missing three out of the thirty-some-odd classes wouldn’t have set me back. I was taking the class in person like a lemon because they didn’t offer the liberal arts version online… because of course they didn’t. Not in that major. Not before the pandemic, though I’ve heard that covid-19 has made university attendance policies somehow less amenable, not more.

By the end of my college experience, I became too scared to attend class. Part of that was the illness, but part of it was the realization that no one cared that I was there, especially not the professors. Sad that these sentiments are the great-big asterisk hovering above my college days.

One of my favorite lines from a Medium article by Elliot Swane, speaking of Foucauldianism (yup, that is an ugly-ass noun): “…because affirming pointlessness, and then just doodling words around on the page and drawing faint connections and dropping them, is pointless, and pointless shit is pointless, ad infinitum.” That’s how it felt to take my postmodernism class. And I took it twice, from two different teachers, because I just couldn’t handle the bullshit. And each time, someone in class would ask: “Why are we learning it if everything is meaningless?” And each time, I would fully agree, and walk away.

Don’t even get me started on Derrida. That guy couldn’t philosophise his way out of a wet paper bag.

I couldn’t afford school at 18, I can’t afford it at 34, and now that the government has assumed complete monetary control over education, even if I wanted to, I don’t think I can justify taking out another set of loans to try again. Morally, I can’t do it. Otherwise, I’m going to end up forcing my friends, my family, my acquaintances, my enemies, and all the other American taxpayers I don’t know to pay for something I don’t really even want.

Maybe I’ll be one of those centenarians who goes back to get their degree. With how the future is looking, though, I doubt it. I wish I could refuse this “help”. I really do, even in my financial state. Great Lakes (the originator of my loan) does not give me the option to refuse, because they’ve already taken the money. But, then again, maybe Biden was aiming at me when he decided to spend your billions of dollars.

In that case, I guess I’m flattered. But I’m still not voting for him in 2024. Sorry, not sorry.

The Folly of the Almuftari – A Dragon’s Keep Tale

September 25, 2022September 25, 2022 / birdjericho / Leave a comment

Jin Concept Art, generated by Midjourney

* * * *

Yarmaz Yln-Tapal. A khine of great strength. Resolve like the heat of the midday sun, pride powerful enough to shatter the salted dunes a hundred times and again. His memory, faded, conceals his form, leaving nothing more before you than a spectre, a trace of sandalwood and charred jasmine. A shadow, hoarse, ever-present on the edges of your memory like the scraping of tanned leather on a hunter’s knife.

He looks nothing like you. Nor do you look like Mother.

“Tell me the tale of the Almuftari again, please?” you say, in Khinazhi. Excited, young, not yet cognizant enough to realize what you are asking.

Yarmaz peers down at you, the scowl writ plain upon his featureless visage. You remember this annoyance well, despite the six long decades dividing you from its last occurrence.

“If I must, Muswah’tif.”

Ah, yes. You remember what he used to call you. The twisted child. Grotesque. Disfigured. A descriptor you would soon take advantage of, as fate grows darker. Yet now, you think nothing of it. The other khine tif would point and laugh at you when they said those words. He never did. For better or for worse. Though he was the originator, your hate was not yet directed at him.

With a sigh, Yarmaz sat upon the rock, opposite you from the glow of a warm and gentle fire. His eyes, cowled deep within the depths of time and the hooded dulband he always wore.

“The Almuftari,” he begins. “Existed in the age before sand, in a time when the sea and the land were one place beneath the pale moon. The Alkawnum was not yet safe to live upon, as all the earth and fire and water roiled together within a chaotic storm. The khine who lived within the chaos found shelter upon islands of stone that floated upon the deep, and they huddled together for warmth, naked, fearful, for there was no comfort to be found in the world.

The Almuftari was born among them. From the moment he departed his mother’s womb, he was a marked being. Different from the khine of his village, in mind, in temperament. Of them, but not. Few descriptions of him remain, save for a single deta-”

“His horns, right? Abu?” You say, cutting him off.

“Yes, his horns,” Yarmaz states. “Don’t interrupt, Muswah’tif.”

“Asuf,” you whisper timidly in apology.

“His true name has been lost to history,” your father continues after a deep cough. “Though if it could be remembered, all faithful sons and daughters of the Seleph’en—the Forefathers—would do well to erase any trace of it that could be found. For when the Almuftari came of age, his people realized that what made him different was not merely his slow steps, nor his rambling, mumbling speech. Whatever he desired, he could command the elements to grant him, and they would answer his request without hesitation. His mother and father, his brothers and sisters, scraped algae from the bark of rotting juniper to calm the pain in their bellies, and struggled to weave the barest threads of the luna moth to clothe themselves.

Not so for the Almuftari.

Upon a whim, he reached out to the nether, and upon his shoulders rested the finest garments of magic-woven gold and inle cotton. When he grew hungry, the very aether afforded him a veritable feast of the finest and most delicious victuals one could imagine. At first, he shared with the others the gifts the intractable Alkawnum granted him. But he soon grew fat, selfish, insistent that he alone deserved what the chaos provided, for none of his family or his friends had such command upon the elements. He alone could form from formlessness, so he alone would benefit.

Foolish and cruel, the Almuftari used his power to enslave his people. Though he had the ability to create food, raise the earth, and even conjure constructs and shelter, he fed only himself, clothed and housed only himself. He claimed the very island upon which his family subsisted and demanded they build for him a temple in which they would worship him. When the people told him they had no stones to build such a thing, with a wave of his hand, massive stones appeared with but a gesture. He demanded their labor, and they gave it, when he might have simply manifested such an edifice with but a single thought.

And so the Seleph’en suffered and toiled beneath the heel of the Almuftari. Every square inch of their island was soon covered by the temple stones he summoned from the aether beneath them. They, and their children, worked unto death, even as the corpulent Almuftari grew bloated, gluttened upon the endless feasts that appeared before him whenever he wished. An untold number of years passed until at last the temple was completed. A beautiful and horrific monument to greed and avarice, every glyph and design that adorned the primal rock venerating the Almuftari. So large was the structure that it could not be admired from the outside, for there was no earth beyond the island upon which one could view it. Never once did the Seleph’en rebel against the mad tyrant, even as they buried their children and their fathers beneath the cornerstones of that wicked place.

At last, the Almuftari gathered the remaining Seleph’en together, demanding that each of them kneel before him in obeisance. Each and every one of them did so.

Save one.”

“Azana,” you whisper.

“Yes, Muswah’tif,” Yarmaz continues, only a hint of irritation in his voice. “Only the child Azana stood, even as her kin knelt before the Almuftari. As the Almuftari had been marked from the womb, so Azana was also, her shining skin bescaled like the Basilisk of Mudradrih. At birth, her mother had hidden her in the crevice of the temple’s first lain stone; the Almuftari had grown so fat, he could no longer move from his great chamber-bed at the centerpoint of the temple, and so he never learned of her existence. Though not more than four winters of age, when she first laid her eyes upon the tyrant and heard the Almuftari’s demands, she was filled with a righteous yet quiet anger.

At the sight of the child, the Almuftari did not speak for a time. He did not know what to say, as he had never once been disobeyed by anyone or any thing. A second time, he demanded the little khine girl kneel before him.

‘No,’ she answered him.

Again, the Almuftari did not speak. He could not even be angry, as something as simple as refusal did not make sense to him.

Out of instinct, the Almuftari set aside words and drew instead upon his eldrich powers of control. To his horror, not only could Azana refuse his supernatural command, her very essence did more than deny his reach. The more his will stretched out to force the child to kneel, the more he felt the mass of his own body drag him down, until at last he managed only to topple forwards and fall upon his belly before her.

The Almuftari, so engorged from the endless years of eating and devouring, and so weakened by an era of motionless sloth, could not so much as roll over to recover himself. He had forgotten one simple truth: despite his boundless powers of creation and enslavement, he was a khine still, a creature bound to the laws of nature. And khine cannot live without air. Suffocating beneath his own girth, he could only ask Azana a single question, with the last of his life’s breath.

‘Why?’

Azana did not answer him. She did not owe him the kindness.

The Seleph’en survivors did not bury the Almuftari, choosing instead to roll the putrid remains of the tyrant off the edge of the island and into the swirling and twisting elements that he had once so easily commanded. Had they known the consequences of such an action, they may have given this a second thought and simply buried the corse beneath the stones of his own temple. For where the khine horde wealth and sustenance from those in need, there the Almuftari’s essence remains.”

“But what of Azana?” you ask your father, breathless, although you know the answer by heart. “What happened to the Seleph’en after that?”

“The details are few,” Yarmaz says with a simple shrug. “With Azana leading her people, the stones the Almuftari created served as stepping-stones that the Seleph’en then used to cross the boundless deep, where they discovered untouched islands of stone, of wood, and iron. When the eons passed and the chaos of the elements grew calm, Azana led the children of her people to the edge of the distant sea. Separate from the waters, she gifted the khine the endless sands, and all the jewels of the mountains, in restitution for their suffering. Some say she even taught the children of the Seleph how to tame the first great titan lizards upon which they traverse the wastes to this day.

Satisfied that her people were safe from both chaos and fear, Azana departed into the wilderness alone to fade into the sands of time and reason. But before she did so, she granted one last gift to the children of the Selaph. Do you remember what it was?”

“The stars!” you exclaim, pointing to the sky.

“Yes,” Yarmaz then says, gruffly, pointing upwards as well. “But which stars?”

You pause, peering up into the night above you. You are unsure. He has never mentioned this detail before.

“I don’t know,” you answer honestly, your gaze connecting with his. “All of them?”

“Stupid boy,” Yarmaz then says, sharply. “Look.”

You do so, following the direction of his finger directly into the heavenly sea. All at once, you are no longer a boy who is blind. You are a man, a tired, elderly man, a khine who had seen far more winters than your father ever did, whose eyes had become attuned to the celestial array now set before you.

Rige. Bellafon. Alni-Alnan-Mintan, the triplet sisters, your mind reels at the sheer depth of the scene before you, desperate to remember the names of the constellations being set in front of your new eyes. The horizon dips before you, the shadow threatening to overtake your vision, but the view recovers as if propelled by the wings of Lendys Himself.

Saiphis. Wix. And finally, Arneb and Nihal. As the distant siblings pass, you are greeted by a familiar view: a massive stone in the shape of a paladin’s hammer. Beyond it, rushing as fast as the winds of Leshal, numberless mountains and valleys open wide to reveal a distant shoreline, an infinite expanse of sparkling water as far as your eyes can see, reflecting the star-filled sea above as flawlessly as a gilded mirror. And before the ocean, just before the stone meets the unblemished reflection, a single vertical sliver of white intersects the boundary between the finite and the plane above.

The sliver stands leagues above a metropolis of sandstone. The parapets of silver and porcelain, while glorious and glistening in the starlight, are as matchsticks in a child’s sandcastle by comparison. The sliver, to your surprise, is cold, painfully to the touch, an unnatural monument in the midst of a flat, unbroken skyline.

And then, all at once, you are, once again, a twisted child, sitting across from your father as the heat of a gentle campfire warms your tattered robes.

Yarmaz stands. Kneels before you. Takes you by the shoulders and leans in close, in a way he never did, not once.

“Your Selaph’i is there, Muswah’tif,” he whispers. “Best not make him wait.”

* * * *

Jin woke with a start. Blinking, the elderly sorcerer sat up, groaning, confused. Despite the sharp detail of the shadows that surrounded him, they were paired only with dull shades of featureless gray. He shut his eyes for a moment, comforted by the blindness of his eyelids, before returning his gaze to the world. While he could see his companions quite clearly in the pitch-black night, sleeping peacefully beside him, he was not yet accustomed to the gift Tamara had bestowed upon him. It was strange, almost distracting, compared to the blissful distortion of his natural sight.

So distracting, in fact, that he failed to hear a very distinct sound calling very softly just behind him. He turned, and beside his pillow was his father’s astrolabe. In stark contrast to his twilight vision, the device was softly glowing a pale blue light, each of the stars inscribed in the brass plate within sparkling in rhythm to the celestial cadence above. The brass plate spun slowly within the antique iron frame, squeaking with every rotation.

As he reached for the palm-sized device, Jin stared up at the sky; he had never seen such beauty displayed in the heavens before, especially with own imperfect, physical eyes.

Still quite tired, Jin rested back down. As his head laid upon his pillow, he watched as the spinning plate of the astrolabe began to slow of its own accord. The light of the metal-inscribed stars fading, until the device at last fell silent and still, the color vanishing into the monochromatic shadow.

“Your Selaph’i is there,” his father had said. Your forefather.

He pondered the thought for a long moment, wondered at its meaning. But then, like the distraction of Tamara’s gift, his father’s parting message had distracted Jin from something much more puzzling. Yarmaz had indeed told Jin the tale of the Almuftari. Many times, in fact, when Jin was yet young. But the way he and all his fellow khine used to tell it, the tale had ended very differently. He had never said a word of Azana. Indeed, Yarmaz had died long before he could have ever known the Sieve or their god.

And as Jin returned to sleep, he wondered, bemused, at which detail was more important.