Chapter 84: Duel Under The Raining Skies (VI)
His home that was in flames, his parents that were searing in torturous pain, and his own inner and outer world that was burning in misery, had taken a pause.
All of the fires that burned stopped then started to dim, as the bodies of those two scorched figures placed themselves around the youth, wrapping their child in their burnt arms.
Surprise took him first, followed by hesitant acceptance of what was transpiring.
Zan felt the rough sensation of char and ash on his skin, but to him, it felt like the softest of silks, it was the familiar comfort of home.
All that he knew at that moment, was that the emotions of intense grief and pain had disappeared, replaced by their warm embrace.
Yes, it was warm. When he closed his eyes to fully enjoy their intimacy, their bodies were not blazing hot to the touch even though they were just aflame, nor were they cold like the absence of life that left their bodies. Instead what Zan felt, was a gentle but powerful warmth. It was that same sensation…that seemed to also be an emotion—?
…It was that same feeling that he could not put a label on.
First that feeling made him feel safe and protected, but as their embrace lasted longer and tighter, and as the fires became totally extinguished, new sensations started to appear from out of nowhere.
Mysterious emotions and concepts found itself in his chest, and then in his heart, and then into his very being.
The first set of emotions and concepts that appeared were the ones he resonated with the most. They were of courage, fearlessness, strength, and power.
Then, he sensed a set of new emotions that were harder for him to decipher.
Zan still had no idea what was going on, but faced with the sudden influx of new emotions, the boy’s mind grew curious.
The youth tried his best, and he was able to unearth their essence, labeling them to be logic, intelligence, strategy, wisdom and…something else he found even more difficult to decipher.
The emotion/concept he tried to identify, stumped him. It felt like he sort of knew what it was, but it was hard to label. The youth shut his eyes even tighter, as if he was trying to look at something within that darkness.
He leaned into those emotions more intensely, like jumping into a pool of water so he could feel what it was like to float and swim. But more specifically in this case, it was like fully taking in the warm light of the sun.
Zan felt as if he had just barely scratched the surface of that complex concept, but very loosely he was finally able to put a label on that otherwise mysterious essence. and in the end his own answer surprised him.
…Compassion? Why were all the other emotions things like intelligence and wisdom, but in that same breath of emotions he found the concept called compassion?
While he was pondering on his confusion, the first few emotions he resonated with returned, and they came back stronger and more complex.
He still felt those concepts called strength, but now he felt vigor, vitality, fullness, abundance, grandeur.
Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
Some of those concepts stayed the same while others evolved, and some other concepts that seemed to be unrelated, like inspiration and confidence, were added to the mix.
They kept on coming even though Zan’s vocabulary and understanding were already long inadequate. Concepts and emotions appeared that confused him, for he had never seen them before. The experience he was having right now and the things he felt within himself, it was similar to laying eyes on colors he had never seen before.
Vaguely however, he could feel that the mysterious qualities he sensed were inextricably connected to each other.
Like strength was connected to fullness, and fullness was connected to abundance and power. Or how strength and power was vaguely connected to vigor and vitality, in the sense of having a body full of energy and life was bound to be quite strong/powerful.
The connections he made were faint, but he knew them to be there. Maybe if he had a better understanding of the concepts, would he more easily be able to connect them.
In that same line of thinking…was wisdom somehow connected to compassion?
The boy pondered on what could be called “philosophy,” but his line of thinking was interrupted once again. Suddenly, the sensation of safety that he felt from his parent’s embrace changed.
It started to transform, and it grew into this familiar emotion he had long forgotten. The boy searched his mind for a word that would describe that feeling, but in the process, rogue memories started to flood his mind, stealing his heart.
The emotion he was currently feeling right now, had appeared in the past when his mother tenderly cared for him when he was sick.
It was something that rose in his chest when his sisters latched onto him asking to spend time and play, or when he found that they created drawings and silly art pieces of him whenever he was too absent from their life.
That same feeling filled his heart, when his drunken father put the liquor down to read to him from a book, even though Zan said over and over that he was too grown up for such things.
The story was a "tale of epic proportions," his father said, and the man continued to spit and babble about the story until he had fallen asleep first.
In the end the story he told was pretty shit, but at the very least the sentiment was there.
Fully embraced by those memories, the emotions he found mysterious and hard to describe grew stronger and ever more profound. Surprisingly enough, he found that he was able to make another, more recent connection.
This feeling…it was the same sensation/emotion that Quin once gave him the first time he had those dreams. That white light that made him feel vast, and endless. Like he was expanding without limit.
Finally, an epiphany finally crossed his mind on why it was so hard to identify the emotions/concepts he was feeling.
He was trying to find labels for things that were abstractly divine. Searching his mind for words and symbols to place on things that existed before human language even came to be. He was trying to put a label on things that were eternal and ever present, through the limited lens of his human experience. That, was why words were not enough.
Of course, Zan did not label the emotions as abstractly divine, he did not know what the word abstract even meant. His mind worked on an intuitive level rather than a linearly logical one. What he did know now however, was that there was more to life than what he had seen, and what he knew was not enough. There were layers of unknown things that hid behind every corner of the universe, waiting to be found, waiting to be seen, and waiting to be felt.
As Zan was embraced by the two scorched figures, and as he let those mysterious emotions and concepts expand into him, the black darkness that he saw whenever he closed his eyes was illuminating into an endless expanse of white.
Zan opened his eyes. Where they were once filled with darkness and confusion, they were now infused with clarity and light. Consciousness shined its radiance and brilliance on the shadows of grief, pain and trauma, and the unwanted things were neither banished, killed nor conquered. Instead, the light gently embraced the shadows, and that which was labeled as darkness did not run nor fight, but they themselves became the light.
The boy observed his surroundings and found himself outside of his home once again. The sky was not red but blue, and rather than harsh hot winds the air blew a gentle pine breeze.
In his vision the old cabin home presented itself to him, undestroyed, eternal, and welcoming.
The youth promised the old thing that he would come back.
He then looked to his left and right. The two figures of ash and char had disappeared…but Zan mysteriously, could feel the presence of the two still wrapped around his arms, giving him tenderness and care, and giving him strength and the determination to move forward. In fact, he could vaguely sense that they wanted him to move forward.
The youth turned his back on the old cabin home, and carrying their love for him in his heart, he placed his sight on a familiar, beaten dirt path. The same humble path, that led to the mountains and rivers, out of his village and into the larger world.
Zan did not have to walk it. A red glow emitted from his left eye that grew more radiant and brilliant as time gushed forth like a raging river, indifferent to the emotions of those who it pushed down its stream.
The red glow became as bright and expressive as a miniature sun, and suddenly cracks started to grow on the glass surface of his reality. They expanded out from a single point where his red glowing eye focused upon, until the entire world was covered in mirror-like fractures.
In the next moment, a sound akin to a thousand strikes of apocalyptic thunder rang out, and Zan's ears were assaulted by the deafening sound of reality shattering like glass.
There was a direct reason for that specific sound phenomena, and if those Seekers from the Temple of Silence were present, they would explain that the world and reality Zan was just in, served as a mirror reflection of his inner being.