PART 1

CHAPTER 1

NESANS

In a specific but unremarkable pond, next to a particular but ordinary stretch of creek, where a plain mixed forest and a fairly boring grassland meet, there is a salamander. This salamander is a kind of salamander that’s kind of like an almost-legless and wet ferret, with more tail than body. All that being the case, it is a salamander, so it is quite comfortable in this unremarkable pond, next to the ordinary stretch of creek, where a plain mixed forest and a fairly boring grassland meet.

Until very recently, this salamander was a very normal salamander, lazily sitting at the bottom of its pond, or under a rock by the surface. It would spend its days happily eating worms, snails, slugs, beetles, spiders, flies, and on rare occasion a very small fish. It even managed to fertilize some eggs, once upon a time. But something changed, very recently.

This Salamander had a thought, a very novel experience for most salamanders. Not the kind of thought that’s just an emotion, like “hungry” or “scared”. The salamander thought “I wonder why my pond has a top and bottom”. Then, the salamander realized what it had done, and thought about the thought it had. With that thought about the thought, the levees broke, and the salamander’s mind was overcome with Thought.

Thoughts about the pond, thoughts about the creek, and what may be beyond them. Thoughts about these thoughts, and thoughts about why it was thinking, and why it had never had a thought before. The salamander was so taken by these thoughts, so thoroughly overwhelmed in the rapturous onset of awareness, that in a way it died and was reborn as something new, all in the span of about 30 seconds.

Were there an outside observer, the salamander would have appeared to suddenly seize, then go limp, and float belly-up to the surface of the pond. Minutes later, it would shudder back to life, and swim to the edge of the pond – “my pond”, thought the salamander. It stared into nothing for minutes, attempting to come to a reckoning. The salamander had never come to a reckoning on anything before, so didn’t know where to begin.

The salamander lay on the edge of the pond, tail in the water, pondering. What a thing to do, to ponder! Never before had the salamander considered itself, or the pond, or the creek it sometimes ventured into. “I’ve never considered at all”, thought the salamander. Then another thought occurred to it, about that thought: “How do I know words to think in?”, and another thought on that thought, “how do I know that it’s strange for me to think in words?”.

A shadow streaked across the salamander’s meager vision, and its weak ears heard a familiar and terrifying sound. For the first time since it began to think, the salamander acted without thinking. It scrambled backwards into the water and swam to the bottom in an utter panic. A familiar angel of death: An eagle, gliding towards it, just above the water. Its winged silhouette swooped over the pond, aborting its attack after the salamander’s narrow escape. The salamander kept to the bottom of the pond, the thoughts suppressed for now, buried by fear.

The salamander wanted to think about how it knew what an eagle was, or that the thing was called an eagle. It would have liked nothing more than to sit on the side of the pond and think these new thoughts which it was so unfamiliar with. But there was a terrible beast afoot, and for now, it was tired. The salamander squeezed itself between the rocks at the bottom of the pond, where it knew it was safe, and where it knew it had hid many times before. It curled itself up, and it slept.

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This process repeated for many days. Wake in the pond. Search for snails, worms, slugs, bugs, tiny fish, and any other living thing the salamander could swallow. Venture into the creek if need be. Cower from the shadow of death, the eagle that soared the area. From time to time, when swimming in the creek to search for food, the salamander would see another salamander. The first few times, the thinking salamander tried to express its thoughts, in hopes that it could find kinship. But the other salamanders were normal salamanders, simple creatures of eating and sleeping.

Whenever it thought on this, the salamander was filled with sorrow. It had never felt sorrow, so this sorrow was the greatest, most all-encompassing sorrow that it had ever experienced. In these moments of sorrow, the salamander wished that it could be a normal salamander again, because it wouldn’t need to feel these things. “Damn these Thoughts and Thinking!”, it thought. “So terrible and cruel! To be made able to suffer! To be aware that I am suffering, and to know I didn’t always!”

If the salamander had tears to weep, it would have wept a sea. If it had a voice to cry, its wails would wake the rocks and clouds and stars. And all without a shoulder to lean on! The salamander was alone, and it knew it was alone. After staring into the still, blank eyes of other salamanders, and being met only with instinctual threat displays, it was clear to the thinking salamander.

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In the nearby creek, there is a kind of snail that likes to bunch up with other snails. They grab onto one another and form balls of around a dozen or so. One day, when the salamander came across a cluster of snails in the creek, it had a thought: “I wish this bunch of snails were close to my pond”. And the salamander was struck by the profundity of the following thought: “I can make it so!” What joy! Joy, joy, joy, grand jubilee and celebration within the salamander’s head and heart, at the image in its mind of a cluster of snails right in its own pond! But imagining and being are very different things.

After eating its fill, it grabbed the remaining snails in its mouth, just barely. It kept grip, but as the salamander began to swell with pride in its accomplishment, the snails let go of one another, and fell from its mouth. The salamander watched, shocked, stunned, horrified, downright offended, as the snails slowly drifted downwards and away, pushed slowly by the creek’s current. Anger welled up in the salamander’s mind. “You bastards!” It thought of the snails. “You’re going to die anyways! Why must you push my buttons!?” The salamander paused for an instant, confused as to what a button is, but kept its focus. Two snails remained in the salamander’s mouth, and it was unsatisfied.

Two by two, the salamander gathered up 7 of the snails before the current carried them all too far to bother. One by one, it set them just out of the water, in a cranny between three rocks. Then, it began to think. “I’ll just take two and come back.” It first thought. It began to reach to grab two of them, but paused. “What if something else steals my snails while I’m gone?” Again, it was tempted to stop and ponder the idea of “stealing” and the snails being “mine”, but it retained its focus on the problem at hand.

“If I take two at a time, that means I need to go back and forth 4 times, and the last one will only be one snail. Then, something could steal the snails from my pond while I’m here, or steal the snails from here while I’m at my pond.” A conundrum fit to test the wisest of salamanders. The unprecedented complexity of this thought was not lost on the salamander, but still, it kept focus. It decided that it would indeed carry two snails at a time, as it could not carry more. It steeled its heart and mind; “I will carry these two snails in my mouth, and I will put them under a rock in my pond, and I will return for two more, and I will do this until no snails remain.” And with that thought of resolve, it began its Work.

Cupping the snails in its mouth with the firmest of toothless grips, and beating its tail and body with all its little might to swim up current, the salamander made its way home to its pond. With every flex of its tiny, mighty muscles, every great kick of its diminutive feet, every bit of buffeting and turbulence of the creek against its body, the salamander was filled with ever-growing joy in its exercising of agency. “I am the master of my own fate! I forge my destiny! With these two snails I lay the foundation of my eternal reign!” It was filled to bursting with power, of confidence. In its single-minded focus it nearly passed the entrance to its pond.

After depositing its bounty of two snails under a rock in the bottom of the pond, the salamander surfaced and pushed itself onto land. “Glory! Glory to me! Victory and triumph!” the salamander thought. It raised its open maw to the sky and hissed, declaring to the sun and sky its mastery of nature. “Behold, you lowly heavens! This salamander has overruled your will! I spit on your natural order! I claim as my domain this pond and creek, and all that happens here is by my will! I AM THE NEW GOD OF THIS WOR-” The salamander’s internal diatribe was interrupted by a passing shadow and the subsequent instinctive panic to get underwater as quickly as possible.

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After calming itself from yet another brush with the Feathered Death, the salamander returned downcreek where it had piled the extra snails, only to find a terrible transgression on its newly declared kingdom. A large mantis had found the snails, and was idly eating one. “What impropriety! Such villainy!” cried the salamander, to itself, in its own head. “Do you not know the property of your King? I will eat you for this!” and so the salamander resolved to defeat this foul beast in combat. The Salamander swam to the rocks it had piled the snails on, and where now the mantis was poaching the rightful property of the salamander.

The salamander opened its mouth wide and hissed at the mantis. “You! Green and brown demon of the land, chitinous wretch!” thought the salamander, silently, in its own head, at the mantis. “You who have transgressed my Will and my Order, who has stolen what is mine, how do you plead?”

The mantis said nothing.

“So be it then! Today you shall DIE!” With all the might and muscle its small, wet body could muster, and with all the purchase its vestigial limbs could grasp on the mossy rock, incensed with the fury of the righteous and the just, the salamander thrust itself at the mantis.

With toothless maw agape, with wind in its diminutive lungs and fire in its minuscule heart, the salamander made its first act of knowing violence. As with all its other thoughts, to hate was new, so the salamander had never felt such hatred for anything more than it felt for this mantis, who dared to steal the snails the salamander had labored and toiled so hard to gather. The mantis, for its part, dropped the snail it was eating, and raised its bladed forelimbs at the charging salamander. “You mean to resist your sentence? You raise your blades to the king of this creek? Have at you then!” The salamander bit down, hard, intent to crush the mantis in one fell blow…

And missed. But not entirely. The salamander managed to crush both of the mantis’s left legs, and crippled the beast.

“Ha! In your folly you have only lengthened your suffering! Orb-eyed beast of thievery, who steals the snails of others, bow your head now and your life will be spared!”

The mantis, of course, said nothing.

“Whether by courage, honor, or foolishness, I respect your resolve, Mantis! I will sing the praises of your warrior’s spirit as I eat your corpse!”

The salamander lunged once more, and this time caught the mantis by the abdomen. The salamander bit, pulled, shook, and finally, wholly engulfed the dying mantis. It swallowed, and the inferno of rage in its belly was, at last, quenched. And with the dying of this furious light, the salamander was exhausted. It had never once so exerted itself, never before had it engaged in combat with a beast so fierce. It lacked even the strength to carry two more snails back home. Soreness in its entire body, belly overstuffed with snail and mantis, the salamander returned home to its pond, settled at its usual spot, and it slept.

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