The hardest part was staying quiet for so long… but it was worth it…. Now, given this courage to tell this story relieves a burden that cannot be buried. Before father’s back weakened, across a snowy thicket there is a memory of a trace of gray wind overtaking hawks in the sky, cast by ghostly arms in the open space above the land. I was still a boy then, not tall enough to peer over brush. When the moon carried the sun this mind could not close so the body sank like a stone in sling, and these gray streaks floated like blood in water. From the tree line my eyes did not mark the beginning’s edge if it is known. These eyes were emplaced by mother, taken out the skull of the desert tsupuki, growing as I grow into father’s shadow. There is no flaw with this sight, as the túvupi know, giving us their strength before the moon empties into the waters above. Yet the longer I watched, in the eye’s glow, the white in my view faded into black, and the ancestors hid beyond the wade, into nothing, leaving a gray fog pulsing into a blindness that broke the ground within suppressed violent illusion. Figures emerged, erupting with the voices of birds, pulled into the stretches of the spirit realm far beyond the distant mountains from which we came. Bitter gales replaced breathing, bouncing between bones, wailing furiously; this ascended into an overwhelmingly discombobulating cacophony. I went blind but sensed the world fall, and my spirit was transported into a land of death memories. From the void echoed a voice that spoke with the belly of the sacrificed, expiring with the weight of hope. A storm had appeared in mind without being seen, a slash of lightning cracked without sound, and a fire whipped under my feet to a frozen numbness. I had been cast out of this world. This moment was tied to another moment far ahead of me, as if two fires burned from the same spark, or a river split in two, with one leading back to the start.
Without a bridge to return me to this life, I awakened to understand nothing on this rock had changed. There were already stories of our siblings lost to madness during ritual, having planted fear in my spirit since the last hotoa’e left our plains. It was not my role to rejoice in such knowing, and there was no ground to realize my path had been carved. I kept this tale in my throat, fearing it meant they must burn me for rains – yet sickness fell in the headwaters even with a sister given to the ancients, justifying incredulity to the judgement of the elders. A boy can’t understand why those uninterpreted are replaced by plumes of smoke, especially as plagues took both the young and old.
The more I awoke, as my stride widened, I could remember more, but sleep-seeing ceased without availing return. With every hunt my sight evolved superior and committed. Seasons expanded no matter the cycle, bending with twilight cast upon the forgotten. Our children were not enough for our numbers, signaling that we, too, were not enough.
Now only the brothers and sisters remain; we approach wisdom at a steady rate, hands like stones with grooves deeper than the valleys. Three cycles of suns ago we laid our last son to rest. On that night of his goodbye, weeping in a cave, I kindled a humble ember, cogitating the spirit’s need to traverse the far lands. A gust was expelled, and abruptly there came the gray wind one more time, as though it were searching for my soul, pulling away with the ferocity of the nahkohe fighting capture. My songs brought them to me, a vesper dancing as our ancestors’ fires swelled larger than the sun. A somber blue rippled in the waters above, unveiling a beast made from the sun’s light, as if it had been boiled to thicken, barely forming. This beast bared the body of an elk, with his hair growing where the tail sprouts, as black as an empty moon, and where the elk’s neck should rise there was a half man, strong and lean, wielding his own bow. He began to illuminate at a limit of radiance that made his shape indiscernible. As his shape held in my mind, he changed again – into a great man with eagle wings, beak, a crown on his head, and the bodies of snakes laid across his shoulders. Then once more did it transform, melting into two smaller beings now. With less detail observed, due to its size from such a distance, about as far as arrows unbound, I made out its shape as a small animal, purely creature. Here in its final form to my witness, it became a wolf and a fox.
Welcoming these spirits, I was ready now to embrace their story, to know these truths. And they did come, with swiftness, their shoulders down, with each of their legs beating murder into the ground, a stampede even with just two. Their tails whipped like loose bowstring, their ears folded backward with their wills directed toward me like river fish leaping beyond grip. Even without thrashing waters, my world became fluid, but I kept my feet. What possessed me then cannot be named, only felt – their force moved through me and became my own vehemence. Within a wing’s flutter I found the youth to sprint without warning, without cause, without projected purpose, predicting the truth that would come to be, as it always was. I know that I’m absorbing every consciousness that falls, and exorbing every essence of a fog. As we united, the spirits of the wolf and the fox leapt through my chest, exiting behind. Turning around, their light faded away until the light became sound, a single voice, in strange song. The light declared “Valen” and nothing followed, penetrating ambition, summoning request for alliance. Something pulled the force away from me, then pushed forth. With initial ambivalence, I was to walk alone for one season, learning how with the Wolf, learning why from the Fox. Sometimes thoughts arrived that were not born in my own head, and I could not tell where they came from, only that they left me more awake than before. The spirits guided me to walk between planes, on these plains, for the flesh from which I grew. Mimicking the beauty that gleamed that night proved unlikely, practicing the light’s song for my walk challenged the dedication.
All that was learned may remain beyond me – most wise, and calm, ironically the same traits they called it corrupt. Retelling the stories warranted angry thoughts of the confused. They had no place for the great beast with the bow, without ritual this meant I was cursed to see these visions; suspecting a plan to delude, exile set my fate. Sparing did not symbolize mercy, but exhaust, because all our young were already gone, satisfying too much death. I walked, alone, chanting “Valen” frequently, reticent to my people but invited into a new world that I did not understand. No matter the heart behind the chant, an echo felt far, or in schism, breaking and trying again. At least, there existed comfort to knowing this was my wisest life, the most honest and brave.
We left as one, carrying each other as mothers clinging to a cub, nurturing our awareness, ability, and compassion. Age slowed me even if it did not slow them, affecting vigor and morale. My belly pained me more now than early childhood; only a wet cloth roasted on fire aided me, much harder to heal without my brothers and sisters. Still, we walked, unsure where, but the land became muddier, with rain that hung in the air. The woodland became dense, and eventually we sheltered with welcoming families. It was these people that listened to my stories, believing some truth. Conceptualization of the Wolf and the Fox may have been too potent for them, and I no longer felt him inside of me, after I found this warm embrace. I do not know if he returned to my mind, to the sky, or the land beneath us. No matter, without feeling, it is known they remain in some realm, waiting, or watching for darkness to provoke their light.
When my hair reached my belly, and the black had paled into ash, one child recounted a great beast made of light, with four legs under two arms, his hair wrapped, long where his tail should sprout, wielding a bow. The tribe thought this was myth, an imitation of the guiding spirit because I told them only about the Wolf and the Fox. She didn’t lie, they didn’t know the unfathomable nature of the other creatures, so I feared expressing that truth. I asked if chanted that same song, the one of strange voice. Instead, the world felt much larger – she said the beast stood back on its hind legs and smashed his hooves into the dirt, sending a rippling wave that dissipated the beast itself, leaving an echo of a new song. She tried to sing it, but only uttered “Chiron.” Her attempt was awkward, reminiscent of a bird with punctured throat in midst of call. She forfeited poorly what could make any sense to us, as the vision does not translate very well or practically.
And now, as I lay dying, I begin to understand a love never imagined. Its name was Valen. It was not a message, not a song, nor a greeting. It only wished to let me know its name, clear now that was all it could say. Valen fractalated in fragments, and I helped him find his way. We guided each other to where we belonged. But, as the very nature of this, beneath a paradox lies the magnanimity of its pursuit. Although the track dragged throughout wonders of untouched dirt, to have filled my late life with such liberation reminded me that the mind alone is imperative, the rest is petty and trivial. All that could be, without the senses, exists in permeating the mind and spirit because in the end there is nowhere to go and it takes forever to get there. If man does walk his path, with only the ambition of a dream he created himself, he will find his virtues were left behind him. The vision will come to you, and you will dissolve, time will erase your predictions if you do not listen to the calling. Wait until the heavens crumble and shatter the waters above, you will interpret the truth of the land from which our memories are relived for eternity, across a time that cannot be foreseen. A second moon falls and folds the hills, divinity unparalleled will nestle, with this land made fallow. Yet new hills will rise along the rim, with the vision’s reach blocked by acidic fog that pools incessantly inward. It will become the edge of our world, on boundary with something hidden that should not be. Those who pass beyond the Rift will leave behind what is most dear to them, in pursuit of their ideal. They are mountebanks, betraying their mothers and fathers, having turned into the mindless hive of flies that feed off death and wretched filth. The amoebal novitiates will teach themselves, feigning specialization all while assuming they are the last generation and will begin a journey as vast and inefficacious as the outer celestial bodies, forever spreading into nothingness. Negating all external influence and optimism, they will proclaim themselves rulers of a realm before accepting helpful truth. If you remember your home and love, you will have find bliss in this eternity, fallible to precipitate forgiveness peremptory for the envisaged.
There’s no doubt about it now… this is Valen’s Rift.