Disclaimer: The playground is by Rumiko Takahashi, I'm only swinging on the monkey bars. Remember to leave the grounds cleaner than you found them and please don't feed the Trolls. This story is archived at http://www.kawaiikunee.com/slp/ Release 0.1 (January 15, 2001) ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Ranma and Akane: A Love Story Chapter 7: If You Meet The Buddha On The Road Part A: Without Troubling of a Star ----------------------------------------------------------------------- BGM for this episode is on-line at the kawaiikunee.com site. The URL is http://www.kawaiikunee.com/slp/mp3/Gin%Ye%Kiss.mp3 For no special reason that I can determine, this piece is called "'Gin Ye Kiss My Wife, I'll Tell the Minister". No especial omen-age is implied. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- "One philosopher asserted that he knew the whole secret ... He surveyed the two celestial strangers from tip to toe, and maintained to their faces that their persons, their worlds, their sums, and their stars were created solely for the use of man. At this assertion our two travelers let themselves fall against each other in a fit of ... inextinguishable laughter." -Voltaire ----------------------------------------------------------------------- /All things, by Immortal power,..../ ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Pale blue dot. As the NASA space probe Voyager 1 passed the orbit of Neptune in February of 1990, it turned for a parting look at the solar system that had given it birth. As it rushed on into the outer dark it panned its finest camera through a precise track, locking onto the position of each of the planets that whirl around the Sun in their endless quadrille. And then it gathered up the combined images, each at the maximum resolution and exposure that it could produce, and it digitized them and flung them across 5 billion kilometers of darkness to the planet that had sent it forth. When the transmission reached that distant planet the waiting dignit- aries and scholars were, of course, very excited. Eagerly, they displayed the images that had come so far. And, of course, the first thing they looked for was themselves; their own great, brawling, stinking, loving, living planet. They almost missed it. There, hanging in a passing sunbeam and almost too small to see, was a single pale blue dot. And on that dot were they, and everyone they knew, and everyone they had ever known, and all the history that had produced them. Reduced, in the bigger picture, to a pale point of light. Which is what, in fact, it is. From a certain point of view. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Now imagine that you could see all the quantum particles that go into the composition of that pale blue dot. For imagination's sake, color them pale blue. From a long way off, they all seem to blur into one another. But, from the point of view which is somewhat closer, it can be seen that they are, in fact, not even very close to one another at all. From a point of view which is, for example, their own. If you are a quantum particle, you lead a lonely life, dancing your existence away accompanied by a few companions at a distance, and then, perhaps, by a few more even farther away .... It's an existence devoid of close connections. From a certain point of view. And yet... Imagine that you could see a simple collection of those quantum part- icles, whirling round on that pale blue dot. Let's say a hydrogen atom, because it's a fairly small and simple collection. Three little quarks, huddling up against one another in a tiny sphere. Three more, likewise together, hurtling about that central mass in an even smaller huddle, alone in emptiness. Just so you can see them clearly, color them something bright: red maybe. A brilliant, pulsing scarlet, contrasted against the empty black behind. Can you see them? Good. Now, begin to trace out all the linkages of subtle forces that connect them to other quantum particles, near and far throughout the universe. Trace white lines to show these connections, fine ones to show only a little effect, and work up proportionately. Assume that the thickest lines you trace are thinner than the thinnest spider's web. Assume that the thinnest were much too small to see. And _still_ all that you would see would be white. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Points of view are important things. Crucial, in fact. A point of view is a more than just a place to look _from_. It's also a set of eyes to see with, a filter to separate the important from the unimportant, an interpretation to coax meaning out of chaos, many other things. If you like, you might consider it a metaphor. Or, I suppose, you might consider a metaphor to be a point of view. Every human being is composed of only a few significant elements, but no amount of investigation into the properties of the orderings of the collections of quantum particles which are named (in English) Carbon, Hydrogen and Iron will allow you to understand New York. Or Mozart, for that matter. You can't even _see_ the emergent properties that arise from complex things, unless you look at them from the appropriate point of view. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- /... Near and far,.../ ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Picture a valley. Nestled between two great peaks, beneath the even larger central peak of a mountain mighty beyond thought or dream. It was once a place of pine forests, sloping talus, tumbled boulders naked to the sun and sprays of marigold. That was then. And this is now. Now it is buried under ice and snow. A great lake of ice, filling the space between the peaks, sloping up to the even vaster mountain that blocks the valley's upper end. Cold, remote, pitiless; locked in endless bitter chill and night. On the surface. But surface impressions can be misleading. If you look a little deeper .... Ice is an excellent insulator, and the glacier has been here, immobile, for a long, long time. Conduction and convection have gathered what heat reaches the surface of the ice to its core. Tidal forces have heated and twisted the immobile mass. Geologic stresses, building over years uncounted, have given vent to energy in the valley walls under the ice-pack. Deep beneath the ice, colonies of algae and bacteria have grown. Flourished. Died. Each melting, in its blind, hopeful progress, a small piece of its chilly world. Little by little, piece by tiny piece, centuries slow; heat and growth, birth and death; worrying a hole in the bitter heart of the ice. And below the frozen surface there grew a layer of slush. And within the insulating slush, water dripped. And pooled. And gathered. And began, ever so slowly, to flow. And what had been a lake of ice became a lake of water (very, very _cold_ water), with an icy, slushy, rocky skin. Under normal circumstances, the water would have leached away. Run free of its prison with the spring thaw, fraction by fraction throughout the turning years. But circumstances are far from normal. At the bottom of the valley the mighty stone thews of the flanking peaks approach each other, forming a narrow slot. And, sometime in the past, there grew a plug to fill this slot. If logs floating down a river form a logjam, blocking all further progress, this is a stone- jam. Or perhaps it would be fairer to say, an ice-jam. Or, you could call it a pebble-jam, if you liked. It all depends on how you look at it. The rocky skeleton of the jam is made up of giant boulders, lodged, apparently firmly, one against the other. The boulders are sure (you can ask them if you feel like spending enough time in the conversation (boulders, like most rocks, speak _very_ _slowly_)) that _they_ are the key element, the one thing that keeps their small, frozen world in one piece. The bleak, white skin and frozen sinew of the jam is a thick, hard coating of bitter ice, frozen across and within the whole slide, in places, meters deep; cementing it into an apparently immovable, invulnerable whole. Naturally enough, the ice also is quite sure that it, and it alone, is responsible for the continued order and safety of the small, frozen world that is all the ice has ever known. If you asked the smaller stones and rocks that form about half of the main bulk of the jam, it is somewhat unlikely that they would consider themselves anything more than filler. Although, they might note, filler _is_ important. Why the ice and giant boulders would have nothing to hold onto, if it weren't for the filler. If you asked the pebbles .... Well, even in the unlikely event that you conversed with such unim- portant entities long enough to register their opinion, it is _greatly_ unlikely that any pebble would so forget propriety as to deem itself of any merit or worth in the great scheme of the jam-as-a-whole at all. And yet, if you could see the forces and linkages that actually define the great blocking mass as a whole, somehow spread out before you in one wide canvass .... ----------------------------------------------------------------------- /... Hiddenly, .../ ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Look down from above on that pale blue dot, and focus in. Farther. A little more. From close enough, it isn't a dot any more. Nor is it pale in color. But it _is_ still blue. On the day side it is the deep, frozen blue of ocean, stippled by the spreading stringy white of clouds. On the night side it is deepest midnight, marked by the splotchy diffuse lights of the civilization (self so designated) that likes to think it owns the place. But always blue. Pick it up, this pale blue dot, this beautiful blue jewel. Pick it up in a mental hand and hold it. Take it away from its endless whirling waltz and freeze it at one single instant in time. Hold it in your hand and reach inside and spread it out, like a map. And focus in. Look closely at one thin slice of time, one tiny mote, one note in the endless symphony. Pick it at random, for example's sake. Let us say, (to make a (completely) random selection) a certain period late in the afternoon of a day perhaps a week after a certain kami had gotten himself blotto and (most unforgivably) missed his cues. A period about ten seconds long, just at the end of the school day in a certain highschool. A period in which, in the greater scheme of things, from a sufficiently remote point of view, _nothing happened_ .... But the connections that exist, the chains of causality that spread across that map, and around it, and outside it ... the chains of interlocked events that spread back into the past and forward into the future .... If you tried to see all the links between that infinitesimal moment on that tiny dust-mote colored blue, and everything which that moment reaches out, in one way or another, to touch ... if all those chains were colored white ... all that you would see would be a wash of glowing, shimmering lines, like threads of bitter ice. In situations such as this, it is useful to return to metaphor, and take a look at things from a more easily comprehended vantage point. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- The rock-jam at the bottom of the valley has been there for a long time, and the reason for that fact is not hard for even a casual observer to see. Just a casual glance is enough ... because it's all a matter of geometry. From a certain point of view. Or, it might be better to say, _geometries_. Geometries of forces. Arcs of possible motion. Tangents of pressure. Coefficients of friction. Points of stress. The bulk of the jam is small rocks and pebbles, which certainly would be easy enough to move, if they existed unaccompanied. But they don't. The binding, cohesive force of the jam is provided by a thick mass of glacial ice. The ice is strong and enduring, but far too thin to plug up the immense forces behind it, if it were holding the gap alone. But it isn't. The jam is shaped and given form by a number of immense boulders, but boulders (be they never so immense) have been moved by lakes of ice and rivers of water before now. These would move likewise, were they encountered in isolation. But they aren't. As things stand, however, the ice binds the rocks and pebbles into great solid masses around the boulders. The boulders press against each other and the bedrock at the bottom of the gap, and the outer sheathe of ice ensures that the necessary components of the whole balancing act stay in place. A build-up of pressure behind the jam presses it more closely into itself and into the bottom of the valley. A shift in its internal structure will collapse it into itself more tightly. A sudden leak of icy water will but freeze immediately, strengthening the grip of the ice. Over time of course, the character of the jam does change. Over time it weakens, as the forces behind it strengthen. One day it will crack. One day the creeping warmth from behind will melt free enough ice to begin to leech rocks and pebbles away from the fill. One day a pocket of rubble will migrate too near to the surface, to be freed when the summer sun weakens the ice-face just enough. One day a combination of forces will begin to press one of the great boulders not _in_, to its fellows, but _away_. One day the ice will crack. One day the jam will fall. One day. But not today. It is _very_ unlikely that it would be today. And this, from the point of someone _outside_ the valley, is a fairly important thing. There is a _lot_ of water and ice and loose stone built up in the ice-lake behind that natural dam. And all that mass is standing at the head of a _long_ downhill slope. Physicists have a word for this. They call it *energy of position*, or *potential energy*. And if, just if, that great mass of water and ice and stone ever _were_ to get free, it would go the way moving things tend _to_ go on a long slope, with only gravity to call the tune. It would go _down_. Physicists have a technical term for the process that results: they call it _translating *potential energy* to *kinetic energy*_, or _transforming *energy of position* to *energy of motion*_. People who live in the paths that great masses of ice and snow and such might travel if they were to do so _also_ have a technical term for the process. They call it an _avalanche_. That's a _big_ lake. When it starts to fall down it will go a _long_ way. From the viewpoint of the people living near the valley, or the people who hold the people living near the valley to be of interest, that ice-jam is an important thing. And this is a thing that the ice-jam knows (if a complex of ice and stone can be said to 'know' (and why not? Complexes of water and carbon compounds are said to 'know' all the time.)) And the rocks and the pebbles and the ice know, too, each in its own, limited way. Certainly the boulders know; and they know, too, that when, one day, the jam breaks, and the lake becomes an avalanche, that they will still have a role to play. An important role. Carvers of channels they will be, and breakers of dams. Over-setters of barriers, smashers of blockades, destroyers of all in their path. As long as it's the _right_ path. Until, eventually, the fury ebbs, and they become dams in their own right, and shelters against the storm. At the right place, at the right time. And each has its own opinion of where that place, and when that time, is. In a way, they're even looking forward to it. As long as it happens in the right way, at the right time. One day. But not today. It's very unlikely that it would be today. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- And this is a metaphor? Well .... Yes. And also no. It depends, as many things do, on your point of view. On where you stand. And where you look. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- /... To each other linked are, .../ ----------------------------------------------------------------------- From certain points of view, some people look like giant boulders. For instance .... ----------------------------------------------------------------------- There is a place which, depending on your point of view, is either very far away from the blue dot or right next door. As a place, it's not much to visit and living there is right out. It's dark there, and very cold, and the only source of heat and light and life is very small and far away. In that place, lying still and silent amidst the frozen Methane and Carbon Dioxide above the miles thick sheets of water ice, there is an artifact. If you looked at it from a functional viewpoint, you might call it a house. A house. A repository of knowledge. A fortress against the dark and cold. A shelter against the endless years. A dwelling place of power. A protector of forbidden secrets. A safe storage for wonder and mystery. A house. Many things and many names, but a place of residence for only one woman. And of the names that she would use it is very doubtful that one would be included; it is very doubtful that she ever would call it home. For the moment I will not say her name, although I am sure that many of my gentle readers have already deduced it. Instead, I will call her the Woman in Black and White. A name which is appropriate for much more than her usual mode of dress. For, indeed, she seems a creation of primary colors: yellow of tour- maline, blue of sapphire, red of ruby, green of jade and purple of amethyst. But only the deep and heavy colors: deep green of emerald, dark red of garnet; and above all others crystalline white and obsidian black. But no grays. No grays at all. In her dwelling lonely amidst the deep dark and the eternal cold she is sitting in a chair before a table, and on the table is an implement. Something like a crystal ball, and something like a magic mirror, and something like a scrying bowl, and nothing like any of those things at all. It is a device for showing things that are far off. Call it a television. She is looking at the image displayed in it with a terrible and ferocious intensity, because it is very important to her. Look for yourself. Can you see the crystal city? It seems to be made of silver threads as fine as spider-webs and diamond crystal as delicate as snowflakes and it is very beautiful. Beautiful, but remote. Seen from far off, as though beyond a thick, cold, diamond wall. A small, chill, perfect image. And yet it is not a city to be seen from far off, if you had the power to choose from whence you would see it. It is a city to be seen from close up. To be walked in, explored, wandered at, woken up in, gone to sleep in, rambled around, loved. It is a city designed for people, and yet no people can be seen. Nor is this a paradox. The city is too far off and remote for any people to be seen, and there are no people to see in any event. The people who will be born, grow up, grow old and die within this city cannot be seen, for they have not yet been born. The city is a city that _will_ be, if the Woman in Black and White has anything to do with it. And she does. She does indeed. For a thing that can be seen is a thing that, in some sense, exists. And the Woman in Black and White can see the city. She can see it very well. She has been seeing it for a very long time, rushing forward into a future that _pulls_ her into creating the things that she has, her- self, created. It is her duty, her honor, her reason for existence. For the last four thousand years or more it has dominated her world, asleep or awake. There have been threats and challenges, but she has overcome them. No doubt there will be more. But she can see the crystal city, and nothing else matters. As long as she can see the city, everything will be alright. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- There is a place, that from _any_ point of view is both very near to anything you might name and, _at the same time_, as far away as it's possible to get. As a place, you _really_ don't want to go there. It's _very_ dark and _very_ cold, and the only source of light makes it darker and colder yet. He sits at a desk that resembles (in certain respects) a solid slab of black-anodized titanium, as chill and empty as his own spirit, and the beauty and the light of his presence fills that distant, nearby realm, and makes it twice as dark and cold as if it had been a bottle of hard vacuum inside a light-year thick shield of neutronium; an immense boulder of bleak hatred more bitterly cold than any ice. On the desk is an object, similar to what humans call a Newton's Cradle: a line of balanced balls, arranged so that each touches the other, depending from a frame. The balls are made of something that is almost certainly metal, almost certainly in the shape of distorted, tortured skulls. The effort which would have been required to have made it of _real_ skulls makes that possibility impractical, and hence, unlikely. Probably. As one ball at one end of the cradle falls against its neighbor *tak* the ball at the other end swings out and then stops and falls back *tak* to send the first ball swinging out again. As the balls swing they seem to squirm and writhe with silent screams; an effect that is probably nothing more than an illusion. *tak**tak* Probably. *tak**tak* At his side is his personal weapon, an implement which, when it bears a shape that a human mind can comprehend at all, exists in the shape of a long, undecorated steel rod. *tak**tak* It was made from the tortured and broken remains of an entire legion of demons of rank. Its powers and abilities are too many to mention and too terrible to discuss. *tak**tak* He rarely bothers to use them, preferring methods and powers both more subtle and dangerous. And, more important still, more ... personal. *tak**tak* Its name, in the language he created for his servitors to speak, translates as 'The Implement Which Is Too Terrible To Mention', and of all the many terrible things relating to that monstrous weapon, the most terrible is this: the name represents neither a mistranslation, nor an untranslatable concept, nor a failure of imagination. The name sounds as tacky in Mabrahoring as it does in English or in Japanese, and _on purpose_. *tak**tak* Because he prefers it that way. *tak**tak* He is sitting in his Executive Throne (Which is made of obsidian (or something similar) and carved into a hideous shape (probably carved). It swivels back and forth. The back adjusts. There is a headrest. And, located somewhere deep within it's structure, is a small device with only one function: if you rock _just_ so, (say, while some poor minion is waiting in front of the desk, or in the outer office) it will make a small, absent sounding, but very, very distinct *creak*. (No minion has ever stood at the foot of the desk, nor ever will; no one but the being sitting in the chair ever comes here, for he considers this place to be his refuge against the cares of an unfair and inconsiderate world. That's _not the point_.)) and looking ... away. He is not looking at the cradle, nor at the weapon. He is looking at ... well it _might_ be the wall. Or it might be the Woman in Black and White. Or it might be the crystal city. *tak**tak* Or it might not. *tak**tak* On the wall, approximately where he is looking is a picture, in a frame. It is a writhing tangle of ... cables. Most of them are chains, and the rest seem to be changing into them. Mutating, so to speak. *tak**tak* Almost imperceptibly, but apparently inexorably. *tak**tak* Perhaps he is looking at that. *tak**tak* Perhaps he is not. *tak**tak* Whatever he is looking at, he is smiling. *tak**tak* From a certain point of view. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- There is a place which very little to do with darkness or with cold of any sort. It is not, in any sense, a physical place, and hence describing it is somewhat ... difficult. But ... imagine a breeze. A breeze out of the end of spring, just before summer. It smells of pine-sap, and flowers, and good, clean earth. It wants to have butterflies and floating flower petals. Imagine a ridge, dreaming sleepily in the warm (but not too hot) sun under the clear cerulean sky. Imagine yourself, waiting quietly on the top of that ridge, looking out upon the wide, wide world. You can cross your legs and sit down in the grass, which tickles a little. There's a smallish boulder with a dry, mossy top, just the right height for a stool, and you can sit on that, if you like. Or, you can lean up against the small shade tree and brace yourself up against it in that suavely unconcerned pose that always looks so cool (or, you could sit down on the tree's broad, flat roots, and brace your back against its trunk and look up into the sky through the rustling green leaves). Or, you can lay down in the grass and cross your arms under your chin and watch the ants and things going busily to and fro in the grass. Or, you can just cross your arms in front of your chest and stand there and let the wind blow through your hair. Whichever. Behind you is a long, grassy slope, leading down into a valley in which is contained every good and wonderful thing and every source of delight. In front of you the slope is much steeper, with tall rock- faces and scattered bushes mixing in and out of the dense, low-lying forest that climbs about two-thirds of the way up. Away in the distance in front of you, is a dark wall of storm-clouds, reigned in over the part of the world that deserves their presence. Low beyond them are the permanent smokes and fumes of war. If you happen to be feeling a bit obstreperous, you might choose, in a while, to go down from the ridge towards the war. Or, you might not. That description resembles the actual place in almost no respects, of course; but it sort of implies what it is _like_. Metaphorically speaking. From a certain point of view. Standing on the metaphorical ridge, and looking down the slope is a being. Celestial spirits (humans call them kami, or angels, or demons, or gods) aren't actually possessed of gender unless they try really hard, or it's very important to them, but nonetheless the figure is (sort-of) male. His name is Michael. Or Mik-a-el. Or Mych-el. Or similar. It means: The One Who Is Like God. He is, among other things the Warden of the North, the Guardian of Israel, the Lord of the Hour of Noon, the Winged Defender, the Being First-created and the Archangel of War. Michael, Who Is Like God. His figure, like that of most Great Celestial Powers, is a somewhat frangible thing. If you look at it closely and squinch your eyes _just_ so, you might see another image there. Another one of the many forms he has held, another of the many things he has been in his long, long existence. Stacked invisibly and intangibly atop one another, their potential lies dormant within his tall, burly, hawk-eager form. There are Dragons lying there; serpents many colored and swift-winged. There are warriors of many races and soldiers of all nations from the beginning. There are housewives with frying pans and bland and honest clerks. For no readily apparent reason, there is a Hyacinthine Macaw. There's even the proverbial Mad Quarter-Bloke. Lean faces and burly, quiet forms and those quivering with energy. But all with that same hawk-eagerness, the same badger-stubbornness (Though those descriptions are invalid, really; Michael isn't eager as a hawk: hawks are as eager as Michael. Sometimes.). In his right hand is his favorite weapon, an axe. And this, tradition- ally, would be the place for me to emote for the next several pages on the sheer wonderfulness of this axe, how it was forged by a legendary craftsman, and what miraculous materials it was made of, and how sharp it was, and its fell and wondrous powers, and so forth, and so on. It's an axe. It has a sharp end and a spiky end. The top of the pole has a spiky tip, too. The bottom of the pole is chisel pointed, like a crowbar. It's made of metal, or something analogous to that, and the haft is wrapped in something that approximates shark-skin, except it works better. The sharp bit is appropriately sharp; the spiky buts are appropriately spiky; the metal is appropriately strong and hard. Michael threw it together one morning a little while ago, but he's been using axes for a _long_ time and thinking about how they work and how they should be made. He figures he _almost_ has it exactly right. A few more million years, maybe. A billion at the outside. If you showed it to a marketing professional of twentieth century earth, he or she would probably call it a Multipurpose Alloy Material Alteration Tool. This is because marketing professionals, on Earth in the twentieth century, tend to be paid by the word, and it rubs off. If you showed it to a procurement officer for the military of any Westernized nation on that twentieth century earth, he or she would take their cue from the Marketeers, except they would use more words and the words would make less sense. The word 'Unit' would certainly be one of those used, unless he or she decided to use 'Implement' instead. (It's not so much that Military Procurement Officers are better at getting paid by the word than other professions as that some people must, ultimately, tell their audience _something_ about the thing they are describing, whereas others are not so limited.) If you showed it to a Skald of the Norsemen of the Tenth Century, he would probably call it (in Norse) a 'Wound-wolf', or a 'Corpse-finder'. Skalds in the Tenth Century also tended to be paid by the word, but they weren't as good at it yet. If you showed it to one of the many people, down through the years, who have actually had to _use_ an axe for a living, they would probably say, 'Wow! Nice axe!' Michael is standing on the ridge, metaphorically speaking, and looking down towards Hell. Down there, underneath the storm clouds and the smoke and the fumes, there is something nasty brewing. Well, technically, of course, there's almost _always_ something nasty brewing down in Hell. It's what the place is all about, after all. But this ... this is different. This is _old_, and very, very nasty. Malevolent nasty, intentional nasty, gloating nasty. _Personal_ nasty. The kind of nasty that implies someone knows _exactly_ who they're being nasty to, and _exactly_ how to be as nasty as possible to them. And then took that information and used their imagination. Nastily. Michael has sensed that kind of nasty many times before. He is quite familiar with it, but he has never understood it. But Michael, for all his age and power, is a fundamentally simple being. Michael _knows_ the truth; he knows the rules; he knows what's important, as least as far as Michael can see. And, to Michael, what is important is what is (or what _becomes_) real. From the very beginning, it's been what he _does_. Other Seraphs, the Celestial Servants of the Truth, have and do specialize in other things; in _seeing_ the truth that exists, in _judging_ what is truth and what is not, in _revealing_ the truth to others. Michael, from the beginning, has _made_ the truth; separating the light from the dark, what is from what is not. Cutting truth from falsehood. With his axe. So, to Michael, the important thing is _how it ends up_, because that determines what has been caused to become the truth. And what has been caused to become a lie. And, to Michael, the only _really_ important thing is what side you come down on. Whether the side of the truth, as the creator decreed and he has established, or ... on the other side, which is a lie. And Michael _knows_ that you can't _make_ a person choose, one way or the other. They choose for themselves, and for themselves alone, and attempts to slew the choice one way or the other backfire more often than not. Michael's seen it happen, and he knows how it works. So, the concept of making life miserable for someone, not because it will help your position, nor because it will prove a point, but just because you hate them is a mystery to Michael. He never really will understand. Which is, in the end, probably for the best. For Michael, Who Is Like God, is the Archangel of War. When nasty things come down the road from Hell they must first pass the defenses of Heaven. And there it is Michael's duty and his honor, his pleasure and his joy to bring his Angels and others to the War. And to meet those things also himself. In person. With his axe. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- While other people, from the perspectives by which some people seem to be mighty boulders, seem to be minute pebbles. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Look down on that pale blue dot from high orbit, and it suddenly changes color. If you look down from the darkened side, most of it becomes deepest midnight blue, cut across with the faint grey of cloud. Once, the few parts that aren't ocean would have been black at night, but now you can see them too, and trace their outline by the city-glow. You would think, from the outside, that the people who live in those cities must never actually deal with the dark. That, when there is no sun to light their way, that they must produce many smaller suns to take its place. To some degree this is true. To some degree it is not. Consider, for instance, a group of rooms, and the people asleep within them. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- The young woman is short, with a thick mop of close cut hair. Her face and arms appear perfectly human, but are marked by unusual dark shapes, slashed across (or perhaps just under) the skin. The rest of her body is _not_ human, but shining metal and dull, flesh colored plastic. From the way she is twined about the shortish, slightly pudgy young man who shares her futon, it would not appear that either of them care. From the plain and sparse but well-kept appearance of the rest of their apartment, it might be that they are somewhat short of money, which might have caused an unreliability in their air conditioning on this warmish, slightly humid night in late spring, which might, in turn, explain why they have dispensed with both night-clothes and bedcovers. Or, then again, it might not. She is a Battle Angel, once her world and time's last word in living (or mostly living) killing machines. Once upon a time, she went to war with blade and gun. Now she is a restauranteur, a chef of ground beef and onions and many other things. He was a dreamer, a budding genius with an eye for machinery, science, philosophy and art. Which, come to think of it, he still is and probably will always remain. It's been a long road and a strange one, from where they started to where they are now, but Gally and Hugo have won their war. One would be forgiven for thinking that they would now much prefer a quiet, uninteresting life. One would be quite correct. A quiet, uninteresting, untroubled life is what they want. And, contrary to most expectations, it's exactly what they have. And what, for quite some time, they will retain. Sometimes quiet, uninteresting and untroubled lives can have great impact on the grand, overall scheme of things. And sometimes, happy endings can go on for quite a while. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- In a pair of dissimilar but connected rooms, a pair of dissimilar but connected young women lie in something that approximates, for Cthuwulf Iczer class battle units, sleep. A somewhat troubled sleep, it would appear. For an Iczer, the most important thing to have is a Partner. Another with whom to interface. A moderator and governor for their powers and skills. Someone from whom to gain, and with whom to share, emotions. One used to have a partner, but now she doesn't, exactly. But humans are ... confusing. Two has never had a partner, which is a large part of her problem. But humans are ... interesting. Both of them are here because they believe that, if they stay around humans for awhile, they will get their wish fulfilled. As it happens, they are both precisely correct. It is said that you should be careful what you wish for. And this is, in fact, perfectly true. But you should also be careful what you _don't_ wish for. Sometimes, when you get the thing you've always wished for, it turns out to be the thing you always _should_ have wished for. Eventually. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- In another bedroom the covers and nightclothes are also off. But it's not because of heat. Not that there hasn't _been_ heat in the near past, no. But that's not why. She has had ten thousand years to sleep without being able to see him ... touch him ... hear him ... sense him. Ten thousand years, in the opinion of the ancient and terrible killing machine named Ifurita, is more than long enough. She intends to spend the _next_ ten thousand (or so) with her sensors open. Seeing him. Feeling him. Sensing him. Smelling him. Hearing him. Tasting him (when appropriate.) Ten thousand years is time enough to sleep, and more than time enough. For now, she is content to remain awake. Content to share his life. Content to live. It may be a peaceful life, or it may not. As long as it is shared between them she does not care. And it _will_ be shared, for however long they last, for the last obstacle to her goal has yielded to her power. It required a sacrifice, but not such a large one, in her opinion. She has already spent twenty thousand years without him, and she has no desire to do it again. No desire at all. There are still many things that confuse her, despite the memories he has shared, and many things are strange. As time goes by she will find more, as well as several things that are very familiar indeed. But for Ifurita and for Mizuhara Makoto, as it does for a fortunate few, the happy ending has become a happy beginning too. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- And this is a bedroom which can only be described as normal, for a bedroom in Japan. Normal, apparently in every respect. Normal also, in every respect is the man who sleeps here. He is middle aged: not old, but not young anymore, either. He is medium in height and appearance. He would pass unnoticed on any street or subway in the nation. He is of medium weight, not really fit, but not more than a bit pudgy, either. His hair is thinning, but he is not yet bald. He has a normal wife, who sleeps beside him. He does fight with her more than a little, but he mostly listens to her, though he disappoints her in the manners in which Japanese men normally disappoint their wives. He goes on the normal number of business trips to Taiwan. He goes to the usual bars. But he doesn't beat her, or leave her without money or honor, and he buys her presents as and when he can. He has two children, a boy and a girl. They don't respect him as much as he thinks they should, but they don't drive him as crazy as they might, either. They get good, but not exceptional grades, and will probably go into a good, but not exceptional educational program and get good, but not exceptional jobs, just as he has, and just as his father did. He works for an organization which is a normal part of Japanese life, and he occupies a rank in the lower part of middle management, which he has achieved by a policy of years of assiduous normality. It is un- likely that he will ever lose his job, but it is equally unlikely that he will ever reach any higher position, either. But when he dreams, and when he wishes, what he wishes for is not normality. What he wishes for is excitement, and power, and rank, and riches, and authority. To have all men fear him, and to have the girls desire him and hang off his arm, fighting for a place in his regard. And these, too, are normal. Dreams dreamed and wishes wished, with allowance for gender, by most of the world. Tomorrow he will have an ordinary day, in the course of which he will make a mistake, and then another. The consequences of which mistake will eventually lead to his attainment of his every wish, just as he had dreamed. The circumstances of which attainment will prove, once again, that being careful of what you wish for really _is_ important. Because, someday, you _might_ receive it. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- And here is a small, plain bedroom, in which sleeps a small, plain man with small, plain dreams. He is a competent craftsman, skilled at what he does, but he has no importance in any conventional scheme of things. He has no wife or children, nor does he feel the lack. He has few prospects for organizational advancement, and would probably reject such were it offered. He has never considered wishing that he were important, or anything more than what he is. Tomorrow, he will take an action, and the next day another. He will take them in his usual manner, with consideration, and to a calculated minimum result. He has never wanted to rock the boat. But sometimes the balance of things is such that you rock the boat whether you want to or not. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- And _this_ is a bedroom, too. Fairly luxurious, for a bedroom in Japan, with a western bed, and a desk, and a door with a lock. And on the bed a girl (or young woman) with long, dark hair, and scars around her left eye. Recently, she has achieved her fondest dream, and gotten everything she ever wished for. And now, her darkest nightmare is that she must lose the things that she has gained. Tomorrow she will make a mistake, and the consequences of that mistake will seem troublesome tomorrow, and the day after escalate to dire. But chains of consequences do not end tomorrow, or the day after, either, and when (as it will) her nightmare comes to pass, she will eventually discover that beyond the nightmare lies a future beyond any dream she ever dared. Because, sometimes, it's not so much what happens, as what happens after that. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- /... That thou cans't not stir a flower .../ ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Now consider the distinction between the boulder and the pebble. From one viewpoint, of course, it's an _easy_ distinction. Easy to make, easy to see, easy to defend. Boulders, after all, are large. Heavy. Resistant. Massive. Possessing great inertia. While pebbles, of course, are small. Light. Inconsequential, so to speak, in the overall view of things. An easy distinction. From one point of view. From another ... not so easy. From _that_ point of view ... they're the same thing. More or less. When you consider the case properly. That is to say, first of all, that they are both varieties of rocks. They are both made of the same things. They both take the same shapes. It's true that one is large and the other small, but from the right point of view a pebble might loom larger than a mountain. Or a boulder shrink smaller than any grain of sand. When you come down to the things that really matter, the difference lies in how hard they are to move out of the way, and on how hard they hit you if you happen to wander underneath them. Which factors, in turn, are dependent on the one hand on how balanced the rock is, and on how much you have to move along _with_ it. And, on the other hand, on how far they've had to fall. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- For example, (just taking an example at random) the ice-pack in our valley contains several boulders and, of course, large numbers of pebbles as well. And, by the criteria mentioned above, it can, indeed, be difficult to tell them apart. From a certain point of view. Because ... well ... look closer. No, closer. There, do you see the patterns of stress? Can you see where the key-points lie? Because, if you do, then you see that, just at the moment, the key to the existence of the whole slide lies in four pebbles. The red, round pebbles that look like drops of blood. _There_, and _there_, and _there_ and _there_. Those. And, if, just if, those pebbles were to move, then those rocks _there_ would be free to slide down _there_; and that, in turn, would release those stones _there_ to go _that_ way; which would, of course, cause _that_ whole section of stone-slurry to fall down and out the face of the slide, and then _those_ two boulders wouldn't be supporting each other any more, and the pressure of the rock and ice and slush behind them would drive them out the face of the damn and down the valley. Just as though they were no more than so many pebbles. But, fortunately, _those_ pebbles are quite securely fixed in place. Fixed by an ice sheath yards thick, fixed by stone about them and above them and underneath them; stone that bears on them securely, holding them in place without placing too much stress upon them, so that they are much, _much_ more difficult to move than mighty boulders. Held in a frozen, stony sheath that would laugh at dynamite. Fortunately. Much more difficult to move than boulders. Why I'd imagine that they were completely impervious to anything less mighty than, say, a butterfly. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- You know ... a butterfly? Chaos theory ... butterflies flapping their wings _here_ and causing tornados _there_ ... kind of thing? Well ... there were these scientists you see, and they were trying to predict the weather, and they had a computer and all, and they had a model, do you see, of how the weather, under any particular circum- stance, should act. And what they thought was, they would plug data on what the weather was like _now_ into the computer and it would predict what the weather would _do_ in the days and weeks following and then they, the scientists, would take the predictions and compare them to actuality, and try to see where they were different. And _then_ they would refine the models, and make _new_ predictions with new data for what the weather was like, and so on. The only thing was, it didn't work out at all. What they found was that their models were mostly accurate for a little while, but then ran into wild variances with reality. Wild variances, moreover, which were not, in themselves, predictable. It was as though the models had a setting for #length_of_accuracy# and it was permanently stuck on (ONE_WEEK). Or something. And this seemed to them to be interesting. And so they investigated what might be causing this effect, and some of them were pretty good theoretical mathematicians, who looked at the consequences of making small changes in the initial data that the models ran on, whereupon they discovered a curious thing. What they discovered was that certain causal sequences, when suffic- iently complex, would exhibit areas of outputs which could be wildly variant over small areas of differing input. And when they went to explain this discovery to other people, the other people looked at them blankly and said, "Huh?" So, as people in such situations are wont to do, they fell back upon metaphor and told the other people that when something was as complex and subject to as many influencing factors as was the weather, then a difference in beginning conditions equivalent to a butterfly flapping its wings somewhere in the Mongolian desert six months ago can result in a difference in ending conditions equivalent to a Force ten Hurricane rolling over the Carribean tomorrow. And then the people to whom the scientists related this metaphor said, "Oh," and went off and printed up T-shirts with butterflies on them, and also made many fairly dumb jokes about tracking down the butterfly in question and making it stop flapping its bloody wings already. And the _reason_ that the jokes were fairly dumb is that in fact that's not precisely how it works at all. What _causes_ the hurricane is solar energy effecting the currents and jet-streams over the Atlantic Ocean. The butterfly has an _impact_, sure, but only a small one, and so do all the _other_ butterflies in the world. Not even mentioning all the other things that might, 6 months before the hurricane, have moved a butterfly's wingbeat worth of air (or more) _here_ instead of _there_. Which is good news for everyone. Or _some_ kind of news, anyway. And, anyway, flapping a butterfly's wings and causing hurricanes is much more difficult than you would think. You have to take the _exact_ positions and vectors of _every_ molecule in the atmosphere _and_ the ocean (which is just the part of the atmosphere that's mostly lower and wetter than the other parts of the atmosphere anyway) _and_ you have to precognate _every_ movement of _every_ self-mobile object on the planet even to attempt it respectably. And this is much more difficult than it sounds, even for a butterfly. If you take a poll of the world butterfly populations, in fact, you will discover that the feat has only even been attempted four times in the past century, and only one of those succeeded in causing any kind of weather pattern at all. And that one was the freak storm that dropped in on some of you the last time you went on a picnic, and that put mud all over the roads _just after_ you washed the car that time for the rest of you. And _that_ was a dead miss. The butterfly in question would like to apologize, by the way. She wasn't aiming for you at all. She was trying to drop a tornado on the house of a farmer in upper Cumbria, who had plowed up her favorite field of milkweed, and, as near as she can figure, missed the downbeat by less than .8 nanometer. If it's any consolation, the butterfly is pretty upset, too. It was her _favorite_ field. He _plowed_ it. Right under. So, if the _butterflies_ can't do it .... ----------------------------------------------------------------------- There is a place, Gentle Reader, where you and I have been before. A place where there is nothing, except for the things that those who go there bring. The things that they bring, and the Ocean (which is not an Ocean) and the Shore (which may, or may not, be a Shore, but where no- one ever goes, so it hardly matters). If we go there now, in this, our story, you may go to the Shore where no-one goes, and I will go beside you, and we will listen to the waves roll in. The water (which is not water) of that Ocean (which is not an Ocean) does not foam in whitecap nor breaker. It does not show green and foaming in the sun, nor would it, were there ever sun that shone in that place for it to foam under. It rolls in long, slow, low'ring swells, without crest or foam, and it runs up the pebbles (which are not pebbles) of the beach with long, near-silent, shushing hisses, and then withdraws, as though it was unwilling to part with any of itself, unwilling to subdivide its mass to go upon the land. If you cup your hand and scoop it up, it flows out of your grasp smoothly, but while you hold it it is clear, and very cold. If you thrust your hand into its flow, it is as though it drinks you down into its velvet midnight blue, and the ripple of your passing is swallowed in moments, without a sound, without a trace. The pebbles of the beach (which are not pebbles) are small and hard and irregularly oblong and white. They have fronts and backs, tops and bottoms, eye-holes and nose-holes and teeth. But they are not skulls either. Skulls, for one thing, would be of different sizes, and these are all the same; mouse and horse, hound and hawk and human, wolf and deer, iguanadon and tyrannosaur. Also, skulls are hollow, and hollow bone as small as this would crush easily beneath the heel. Whereas these roll hard and ever-so-slightly slippery beneath one's feet, and keep their place grimly and only grudgingly give place to footfall; and behind the tracks one leaves the little, constant wind that runs down the beach moves the pebbles, little by little, one by one, and the tracks one makes are filled. Erased almost as one leaves them behind. As though no one had ever walked there at all. And the sound that the pebbles (which are not pebbles) make as the little wind rolls them about, moving one pebble at a time, is a tiny, tiny, scrabbling *tik*, that comes from all around in waves of faint sound to run together and form a staticky *hssssschhhhss* that is fainter, quieter than the *shuuuusssssshh* of the waves, but constant. Endless, eternal background hiss. So not skulls, definitely. They just _look_ like skulls. It's probably very symbolic. Of something or other. Very definitely symbolic. The beach (which may or may not be a beach) runs away from the ocean (which is not an ocean), but it does not run forever. Only a little space above the highest reach of the waves, there rises a cliff. In sharp contrast to the somewhat debatable status of the beach and the ocean, the cliff is most definitely a cliff. It is made of rock that is unquestionably rock and that has been, in fact, unquestionably rock for a very long time. Along its face run vines of ivy and wild roses, and these are very definitely vines, and very definitely possessed of thorns. It is high, it is slippery, it is full of cracks and crevices. You could climb it, if you had to, but you probably wouldn't _want_ to. But, for now, _we_ need not climb it, Gentle Reader. We need only walk along beneath it, beside the sea. Only a little way, and there rising from the upper heights above the cliff, but easily visible, there rises the first signpost to the thing that we have come to see. A tree. Yea verily and indeed, a _TREE_. With asterisks, and exclamat- ion points and little moving lights, and neon signs. It rises straight and glorious from the top of the cliff, the great- great- great- grandmother of all ash trees, and its trunk is like unto another cliff itself, a cliff of bark and furrowed wood, and even its lowest branches are too high above to be visible. But, glorious though it is, it is but a signpost, for we have not come to see a tree. Below the Tree, its roots spread out from its trunk, running over the top of the cliff and down its face. And below the furthest reach of the lowest roots that run over the edge there is another root, much larger, that has burrowed its weary way down through the rock and out the cliff face. This Root (which _is_ a root) turns away from the clutching frivolous mass of its companions. It does not seek blindly along the face of the rock, nor does it seek the soil at the cliff's top. No, it runs a little closer to where we walk along the rock wall, but mainly it runs down. Down, along the crevices in the rock. Down, through the ivy and the roses. Down towards the beach (which may or may not be a beach) and the ocean (which is not an ocean). Down. And there, Gentle Reader, it will find another place that Thou and I have been before (do you remember?) Nestled in a sheltering pocket of stone, protected by walls on five sides of an irregular hexagon and mostly roofed as well there lies a deep and still spring of water, which is not a spring at all. For springs, you see, are _natural_ (for whatever good that distinction may be, here in this place) and this was _made_. Not a Spring and not a Pool. A Well. And into this Well dips the Root of the Tree, and drinks deeply of the pellucid midnight depths. (Do you remember? Can you see?) Can you see the Root, even now thick as the torso of a strong man, reaching deep into the water? Can you see the rough, grey granite walls, shot through with veins of other, more colorful, stone, redstone and greenstone, onyx and marble, amethyst and Iron Pyrite glittering brightly from the dull background? (Or ... but no, it can't be _real_ gold ... can it?) Can you see the moss that hangs in profusion from the walls, emerald and jade, touched by sparkling diamonds of dew? Can you see the circular steps, half worn away, that run up to the lip of the Well? Can you see the runes carven deep into the lip of the Well itself, shadow geometries of time and chance and fate and luck and will? Do you know at what you look? Do you understand? Of course you do. I doubt not, in fact, that the majority of my Gentle (and Most Learned) Readers knew the Names quite some time ago. But I must beg, of your favor, an Indulgence. Know the Names, yes. Understand the Names, and all that they imply. But do not speak them; not here, not now. Names have Power, or so it is said, and _those_ names, here in _this_ place, have far too much power even for such Puissant Champions as my Gentle Readers to safely meddle with. For now, the Tree, the Root, the Well. (There's a Squirrel around somewhere too, but we will not dealing with _him_ today (And a good thing, too; have _you_ ever tried keeping a thirty foot squirrel in nuts?)) And again, though the Root and the Well are awesome and beautiful, they are but a backdrop, for we have come to see a Well no more than to see a Tree. What, then, you ask, _have_ we come to see? I will tell you. We have come to see a Butterfly, and a Woman in Flames. But we need not search the shore or the cliff to find them; in this place they will come to us. Turn around. Look out, across the yellow-white skull-pebbles of the beach (that may or may not be a beach), across the long midnight combers of the Ocean (that is not an Ocean). There! On the horizon, the light! Do you see? Let your viewpoint follow mine, out over the waves (which are, of course, not waves at all), and we will see what we will see. What will we see? We will see the Woman in Flames walking towards us, with something held before her in her clasped hands. She is beautiful of face and strong of figure, this oldest and youngest of all things that are beneath the One. Her cheekbones are high and patrician and her nose is an eagle's beak and her hair is bonfire red, and oh! Gentle Reader be thankful that we are here only as viewpoints and not in person, for her eyes are a snapping, crackling black, and it is not in us, or in any thing made, to stand for long un-broken beneath the heat of that regard. Her body is strong and athletic, with the shoulders of a power-lifter, or of a warrior, and legs like polished pillars. It is covered by a linen shift and tunic, but it covered more by the flames that burn forever around her , turning Then into Now into Then again in flames. The sound of her passing is an endless *hssscrackleshhhhh*, and her bare feet (walking calmly on top of the waves (that are not waves)) leave footprints burned three inches deep into the water (which is not water) of the Ocean (which is not an Ocean), and the footprints are filled with flame until the deep, midnight waves roll over them and take them back (slowly, so very slowly) into their trackless expanse. Now (swift her passage) she reaches the surf-zone and walks up the beach (which may, or may not, be a beach) and beneath her burning tread the skull-pebbles blacken and melt, leaving behind footprints of pebbly, black glass, and the little winds run up and down and the little pebbles roll, and slowly, slowly the strand returns to its pristine state. Unheeding, the Woman in Flames walks directly to the steps below the Well and mounts them, to stand tall and straight before the low well-lip. And there she stops and stands, staring down into the sapphire depths of the Well for a long time. And then she unclasps her hands and what had sheltered there rests shining brightly now in her cupped palms. It is a butterfly. A butterfly made of gold and steel. Its wings are copper and gold, spanning perhaps as much as six inches. Its body is chrome steel with silver accents and it is very lifelike. It should be, for it is the work of six millennia, and the Woman in Flames regards it gravely where it rests as though prepared to flutter its wings and fly away. It may be, perhaps, that the barest hint of a smile creases her lips as she regards the fragile vessel of her last hopes, or it may not. Beyond it, in her mind's eye, who knows what visions lurk in opposition to its fragile grace. Perhaps the bright darkness in his executive squeaky chair, perhaps Michael on his bright slope, perhaps a crystal ball in which the Woman in Black and White can see a Silver City. Perhaps not. Certainly it is an ironic sight, this tiny creation of gold and steel, standing in for the Woman in Flames and her sisters. A frail reed, to set a task that once ... well .... But that, of course, was then. And this is now. Once they could have decreed, and none could stand against them. But even they had limits, and the consequences of their actions could not merely be set aside. And so, in time, they had learned a bitter lesson, that Power, _in general_, does not necessarily equal the ability to get what you want done, _in specific_. And their options dwindled, and the paths of probability darkened. Still, it doesn't matter so much how many ill fates may be lurking about the box of shining hope, so long as at least one hope remains. Never let it be said that they could not learn. It was a hard hope and a fragile one, and the path would be (had been) painful in the extreme, but they were beings of many qualities, among which were both great patience and a certain necessary ruthlessness. It may have been only one hope, but one was all they needed. If they had made their plans correctly. If they had seen the future clearly. If six thousand years of patient effort, atom by atom, hammer-blow by hammer-blow, had been done _exactly right_. If. And at the end of the day, that was the greatest irony of all. For all their careful planning and effort, none of them could wield their tool in hand. No, when the time was right, at the end of the road she would have to open her hand. And let it go. But first, there was a small task. There is a certain etiquette, as binding as natural law, which obtains on Great Workings of Destiny and Fate. One aspect of which is this: You Have to Tell Them. With a smirk, she Told Them. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- And in her Fortress beneath the ice, the Woman in Black and White shook her head irritatedly at the image that had momentarily obscured her vision. At least there hadn't been any effect on the important vision, so it wasn't something she had to worry about. She shook her head again, angrily; she was steering the future, she didn't have time for butterflies. And in his executive squeaky-throne behind the vast desk, a being narrowed his eyes and began a serious data search. What was an image of a butterfly doing floating around the ether, anyway? And on a wind-kissed slope in Heaven, Michael, Who Is Like God, raised an eyebrow. Interesting. He'd have to keep a look-out for this. And in separate bedrooms in Tokyo, several people smiled at the pretty butterfly in their dreams. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- / ... Without Troubling of a Star. / ----------------------------------------------------------------------- It was time. She smiled sadly, opened her hands, and let it go. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- On the heights above the valley, louring above the Icejam, it is bitter cold, and the wind is near-eternal. But life is a tenacious thing, and once upon a time a seed, blown from who knows what source, landed there and managed to find a crevasse and soil. And now, far above the bitter chill of ice there grows a solitary, twisted plum tree. There are no other Plum trees within miles, its fruit have never been fertilized, its line will not continue. But ... But, it is said, the Plum tree stands for courage, that puts forth blossoms even in the Winter's chill, and each year the tiny tree likewise answers an ancient genetic call and produces a single, small, straggling white flower. One Flower, blooming for a short, bitter time amidst the wind and the biting cold. One Flower, to see the morning sun and catch the dew. One Flower, to pin the hopes of everything. But what can one flower do? ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Silver and Copper. Chrome and Gold. Dancing on the convection currents the Butterfly falls slowly (so slowly) towards the Well. Each scale on each wing disturbs (ever so slightly) its path. Each flutter retards (ever so gently) its fall. Each air molecule it bounces off pre- calculated. Each tiny rotation foreseen. If all the calculations match. If all the possibilities were correctly foreseen. If every atom of gold or copper or silver was correctly placed. If it hit the Well at the right place, at the right time. If. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- A gold winged butterfly slips gently beneath a sapphire surface. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Dew weights down the flower's fragile stem, but the wet scent of Plum perfume drifts downwind, faint and almost lost. Almost. Who can tell what wind had borne it up and whirled it away, that great Orange-gold Monarch butterfly. Suffice it to be said that, fluttering desperately, it crests the bitter wind and dives for the source of the delicious welcoming scent. Gently as ... well ... a butterfly, it lights on the flower. But even that gentle touch dislodges most of the flower's gathered dew, and sets the weakened stem to frantic rocking. Below it, two drops of dew fall unnoticed by the butterfly. Quickly it feeds, draining what little nectar the flower holds and brushing slight grains of pollen from its fur. One strong flap of its wings, fueled by rejuvenating nectar, launches the butterfly back onto its journey, caught immediately by the wind and swept away, leaving behind it a tree and a flower and two drops of dew and a curlicue of tiny vortices, the wing-beats of a butterfly. One drop of dew falls only a short way, splashing on the edge of the crevice that roots the tiny tree. There it breaks apart and is quickly lost to sight, but it has, nonetheless, an effect. Tiny colonies of lichen, clinging to the surface of the rock, receive a bath of nourishing moisture: ever so slightly, they begin to grow. The rock itself, already chilled by the incessant winds is chilled further in one small area: ever so slightly it contracts, ever so slightly a tiny crack, a weakness in the living rock lengthens. Tiny vortices of wind run counter to the prevailing blast: it isn't much, but an effect is there. It will take time, no human eye could catch the causal link, but a storm is slowly building. One drop of dew falls freely, past the rock walls, down into the bitter cold. Where it hits is determined by several factors; tiny currents and counter currents tug it hither and yon, gravity tugs it down, updrafts send it back. Heat radiates out from it into the biting air, from the outside it freezes towards the interior: it wouldn't take it long to freeze into a little ball of ice, but then it doesn't take it long to hit the ground either. As it turns out, the ice it finally hits absorbs the small impact and shatters the thin ice coating the droplet; the impact flexes it slightly in a particular pattern, the tiny spray of water freezes almost immediately, changing the overall temperature of a tiny area of the ice-surface a fraction of a degree. An overall pattern of stress is nudged the minutest fraction. Small things, tiny changes. But tiny changes can cause great ones, and some times it's the small things that count. If you move the right pebble at the right time .... ----------------------------------------------------------------------- By the Well, the Woman in Flames smiles sadly and turns away. Quickly leaving the grotto and the Well behind, she sets out across the beach (that may, or may not be a beach) towards the ocean (which is not an ocean). Behind her she leaves her footprints, burned black into the skull-pebbles (which are neither skulls nor pebbles) and the waves (which are not waves). And a butterfly, made of Gold and Copper, Silver, Chrome and Steel, hanging gently in the air above the Well of Ymir, which feeds the taproot of the Tree called Yggsdrasil. And as she passes swiftly across the low swells, she stops briefly, and glances up and ... away. Not at the Tree, nor the Well, nor the cliff, nor the sky, but at something ... else. And she smiles a true and gleaming smile. Because you have to Tell Them, but you don't have to Tell Them _what_ you Told Them. And the word gives meaning to the event, but a smart person cheats. And a century ago a man named Francis Thompson had been ... induced ... to write: /All things, by eternal pow'r,/ /Near and Far,/ /Hiddenly/ /To each other linked are,/ /That thou cans't not stir a flower/ /Without troubling of a star./ And behind her as she goes the little wind blow up and down and the low, long combers sweep in and out. And the water (that is not water) rushes in and fills the fiery footprints, and the little skull-pebbles (which are neither skulls nor pebbles) roll over and click and hiss. And all traces of her passage fade away. And on a rock-face above an ice-pack, a small and twisted tree huddles grimly above the broken remnants of its single flower. A twisted wreckage, now, that would attract no more butterflies, even should another appear. Soon, a fallen wreckage. But at the base of its stem, a small swelling is growing. And Elsewhere, in the bitter darkness, in his executive squeaky throne, the being who is called the First of the Fallen, the Lord of Lies, the Prince of Darkness, the Master of Hell, the Light-bringer and the Beautiful One uses all his resources, but can discern only the image of a butterfly and a broken flower. And there is trouble in the heart of the Morning Star. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- It's important to remember that there is no more such a thing as "one change" than there is such a thing as "two rabbits". Changes _breed_, changes _snowball_, and under the right conditions even the tiniest, most invisible of changes can produce results that are very visible indeed. Given enough time to grow. Enough time, in this case, is about two days. And it's also important to remember that, in the end, it's always the pebbles and the butterflies that have the final say. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Next time: when the avalanche starts, it's the pebbles who get the deciding vote. Ranma and Akane: A Love Story Chapter 7: If You Meet The Buddha On The Road Part B: And Bless the Falling Leaves -----------------------------------------------------------------------