The White Path of Silk - The First Path of the Senses

General Summary

He awoke with a horrible cough, his awareness focused from the wracking pain of simply attempting to capture a breath. On his knees, he retched, the cracked rock underneath his hands burning hot to the touch. The pain of singed flesh on his palms pales before his need for oxygen. With great effort, he suppressed his coughing and stands.
All around him are glowing canyons of red. Though hidden from his direct view, he knows that this cracked and scarred land is made of a latticework of flowing lava rivers. The juts of rock, like the one he is on, are islands in this miasmic delta. As far as he can see, all that exists is an endless sea of black rocks with glowing red cracks, those cracks closest appearing as great chasms, those miles distant looking like the red veins of peeled back skin on the background of the darkest ebony. Before him is the only structure on this scarred plain – a single windowless tower of white grayish stone with but a single dark entryway in front.
He begins to approach the tower but is halted by a child’s voice from somewhere deep within the structure.
“Why do you approach?”
“Where am I?” he asks.
A laughter, that of a child, yet unnerving in the way it portends a knowing quality of mocking. “You are where you are at. One would think you best not go where you would not where know you are at?”
“Where am I and how did I get here,” he asks again.
And again the laughter, “You came here. Intentionally I suppose as you hailed us by name when you first intruded into our home.”
“Your home – the tower? Who are you.”
“Have we not said you shall have all your answers.” A giggle, this time from a different child.
“Please, I recall not coming here or where I am at. I need shelter, the air is burning my breath.” He began moving toward the tower.
“To enter the tower a second time is death, you were warned of this already. Best you be on your way.”
Halting, he paused, “Please help me, I promise I mean you no harm, I only seek shelter from the heat. It is most unbearable.”
“You came to us, you hailed us. ‘Oh Capricious Ones, grant my one request. I bear the gift you require.’ Those were your words. We have accepted your delicious gift and now you must return the way already come, but by different paths.”
“But I don’t know where I am at.” As soon as the words left his mouth, he remembered with the sudden burst a vivid but fleeting memory of this place. Except in his memory, he viewed this location as if from a great height, looking down on the magma scarred plains, the cracked rocks now looking like the cracks of dried mud. “Where am I,” he pleaded again. A giggle, then a sharp bark of laughter from many children. “Right where you are. Your kind is always asking why, where, how, but always so blind to the truth. You are where you are, how much more does anyone need to know?”
The man, now having gotten more control of his breathing, takes stock of himself by looking himself over. At his belt is a leather drinking pouch, full by its shape. Opening the cork he drinks, and as he does so he considers.
More talking to himself, he says aloud “I don’t know where I am, so where did I come from.” At this point, panic sets in, for he can’t even remember who he is. His first memory is waking up here. Fighting the urge to both run inside for shelter and just run away and cower, he steadies himself.
Looking at the tower and mustering some confidence, “ You say I came to you, what gift did I bring?”
A pause, a long pause. Then a thinly sounded harrumph, an older child this time. “I told you he had mettle. Answer him.”
A voice, that of a kid just learning to talk, speaks in a high pitch sound, “You gave us what you did. You came to us saying “Oh Capricious Ones, grant my one request. I bear the gift you require.” The gift you intended was not the one we wanted, so it has been discarded. But yet you did have your gift for us. We decided on you, for who you were. We took your past as your gift.”
“And that is why I don’t remember anything?”
“Yes.”
“Who are you, who are the Capricious Ones.”
“We are some of the first to awaken, we will be some of the last to sleep. We have seen all paths, and have yet to see them fulfilled, but all paths are in our memory. We exist, have existed, and will exist for the sole purpose of existing. That is who we are”
Thinking this over, the man then asks, “Would you at least give me back my name so I might know who I am.?”
“A gift, once given, should never see the expectation of return. We give you what you asked for, so we suggest you depart else our reward is wasted.” Now there is the laughter of several children, at least five or six of them.
“But if I can’t remember, how can I not waste my reward. What did I get, what did I ask for? Please, if you have taken my past, I am an adult and certainly, I was at one time purposed enough to make my way to you, so surely you have gained much. A few words can’t hurt.”
“You presume a lot, you are not all you think you are or were for that matter. Your memory and past are as nothing, for it is no longer yours. Be happy with the gift we have given.” This from a young boy, in a voice trying to explain to a parent why their grand scheme will work.
Now a new voice of an older girl speaks, a girl who has established dominance over her playmates. In the voice used by all such girls as they attempt to emulate the authority of adults, she said, “You have your reward, now go and earn it. Boring us is one thing, annoying us another, but angering us is quite another matter altogether.”
Taking a stance of stubbornness, the man stands there. “Since I know not who I am, and know not where I come from, I know not where to go. It seems to me that if I asked for a gift, that it would be tied into those things.”
A thought occurred to him, Did I seek this, did I want to forget my past. But if that was so, he was still in just as much confusion for having made this realization, so that was a pointless path to ponder.
His last statement earned him a little respite, for one of the children inside said, “His kind is always like this, it would be a wonder to meet one who actually knew what he wanted. Why is it your kind is so terrible at determining what is best for you? You live from one folly to the next, thinking paradise is around the next corner without ever pausing to simply exist where you are at. It's not like you have a choice, but you act as if choices are all that exist. Very well, I will give you this, your request was this, “I seek to know how to gain the heart of my beloved." You did throw a trivial name in there, one we disregarded. And what we granted you is your desire, for we saw the intent of your words far more than you ever did.”
One of the other children said, “I think we didn’t take enough – maybe we expected too much from such a simple creature. We left this poor creature with too much, how can it understand with all these distractions. Look down before your feet, tell me what you see.”
Looking down the man saw a glowing white symbol at his feet, a circle with a triangle in it. Inside the triangle are two curved lines meeting in the form of an eye. It had not been there before, but now looking down it looked like someone had long ago etched this symbol into the ground eons ago then recently painted it with a fresh coat of white paint. “I see a circle, with a triangle inside, and inside the triangle is an eye. And it’s all white.”
A giggle, “Maybe there is hope for you after all, pathetic as you are in your reasonings. What you see, remember it well, it is the symbol of the first path. Your reward shall be a series of paths, 13 total paths. This is the first path, the white path, the path of Silk. When you understand, you will be onto the second path.”

“Again, I don’t understand, I need more.”
In an annoyed voice, a child he has yet to hear, possibly a boy, says “Enough, you are very stubborn. Tell me, what do you see.?”
Frustrated, he yells out at the tower, “I see a circle, a triangle, and an eye. That is all. The eye has no pupil if it should matter.” Sarcastically, the same boy responds, “Very apt. No pupil for the pupil. It is a beginning and so shall it be with you.” The man is struck blind.

. . .

The man falls to his knees, grabbing and rubbing at his eyes to no avail. He pleads for his sight back but gets no answer. For several minutes he yells and screams, but receives no response. Determined to provoke the only people he knows of, he crawls toward the tower, but as he crawls, feeling forward with his hands, he can’t find it.
Eventually he reaches the edge of the rock he is on. As his hand reaches over the crack, he immediately jerks it back from the pain as the rising steam burns it. Setting back, rocking and sobbing, he holds his burned hand to himself.
Now he is blind and injured in a cruel land where even a single misstep means a fiery death. This is not a land of second chances, it might not be a land of any chance.
How long he sat there, he doesn’t recall, but eventually his resolves hardens. He must begin moving if he is to ever make his way out of here.
Feeling at his belt, he takes another drink from the bladder. Water enough for a day maybe. Feeling around his pockets, he finds a soft cloth. Inside is something made of cool metal but he can’t make out what it is. Grimacing that he has no other sustenance, he comforts himself in the dim knowledge that when stranded and water might be scarce, it is preferable not to eat as digestion takes water and only further dehydrates the body. Without food, the body will go weeks, without water, he will last only a few days. In this heat, he might have a day or two at best.
The comfort of remembering something, the idea that just because he has lost his memory and past doesn’t mean he has lost his knowledge of how things work is balanced by his fear that if he had any chance of getting out of this place alive, that chance disappeared with his sight.
Standing up, he laughs. There is a way out he realizes. He could jump in the lava below. It would probably be so quick he wouldn’t even feel the pain. He idly wanders, would jumping into molten lava be the same as jumping in water with him immediately sinking or would it be solid, as if he had landed on a boiling hot rock.
Despite his peril, he grins. He now knows more about himself. He apparently isn’t a complete dolt, he knows a little of survival, but he also has a cunning mind, or at least hopes he does. What kind of mind wonders with thoughts about the consistency of lava during a suicide jump except for a creative mind and one that knows how to handle danger, a mind that doesn’t freeze up with inaction.
With some positive attitude affecting his thoughts, he begins to concentrate. How to get out? The mental image he saw from above looking down on this plain comes into sharp focus again for a split second. Why he would see this place as if from a great height is a question to be answered later, but from it he gleans one useful bit of information. In his memory, he sees this lava plain continuing on in all directions except for the direction behind him. If he walks in the direction opposite from where the tower is, there are foothills out of this hellish place.
How far, he couldn’t tell. His memory was a vivid memory, yet not a map. His perspective had been looking at the plain from a great height coming somewhere from around the hills.
His first task is to figure out how to move with speed going that direction. When concentrating, he believes he can actually make out a path toward the foothills. Walking based on that memory is too unreliable, he would only walk off the edge of one of the rocks into one of the lava flows.
Unable to think of anything more than actually just crawling and feeling along, he begins to shift his weight in that direction when his knee painfully bites into a loose stone. Picking it up in anger, he flings it away from him to hear it skitter along the rock top.
Smiling, he feels around for a rock and flings it gently in front of him listening as it tumbles along. Feeling brave, he takes a few steps in that direction, reaches down to find a few more rocks, then starts tossing them in front himself and listening. He quickly begins moving toward where he believes the foothills are. When he hears the rock suddenly stop making sounds, he assumes that he is near a ledge. Going to his knees he crawls forward finds the ledge then redirects himself.
When he finally feels the ground grow cooler, and feels the hard rock of the basalt change to a soft soothing loam, he collapses exhausted. His water ran out what seemed days like ago, his throat is parched, both of his hands are burned. He knows he needs both water and sustenance but is simply too tired to move. Before passing out, he removes the torn cloth from his cloak which he had wrapped around his burned hands so they might feel some of the coolness from the surrounding air.
He wakes, his face wet. Feeling around, he discovers he is lying in a field of grass wet from dew. Turning over onto his belly, he begins licking the grass for moisture and soon starts pulling blades up to chew on, trying and get at their moisture. Swallowing the grass in a futile attempt to ease his hunger, he then sits up.
A voice nearby says, “I was wondering when you would wake up. If I might say so, you seem to be in a terrible state. I wouldn’t normally expect a denizen of the courts to allow himself to exist so ragged.”
With a raspy voice, the man says, “Water, do you have water?”
A gentle laugh from the man. “Sir, you are lying but five feet from the stream I have been fishing in all morning, can’t you see it?”
“I am blind as well as exhausted.” Gathering his strength, he pulls himself forward on his belly till his hands reach the edge of the stream. Pulling himself up to his knees, he sinks his head into the water for a second, glorying in the coolness of the water before taking long drinks.
Once he finishes he lays back on the ground. “Thank you for the water.”
“Wasn’t mine to give. Though I guess I did possess the knowledge. So you are welcome for a gift that you yourself could have gained with a little patience and listening.”
“Would you have any food by chance.”
Another calm reply, the humor easily heard in the voice. “For you, my odd blind friend, I have fish. Already caught five. Can you skin them? While you do that I will get a fire going and maybe even catch a few more.”
Shaking his head, “I am blind, how am I to skin a fish.”
With doubt in his voice, the fisherman responds, “Well I have known many blind men and women before. Well, actually not so many, but a few. They were all somewhat self-sufficient, at least, enough to attempt skinning a fish. A kid I might understand, but someone being blind and making it to adulthood is another matter. How have you gotten by if you can’t even skin a fish?”
“I just became blind.”
“Really, I am so sorry then. Well, let me ask you this, how long have you been blind.” “Just days, I think, maybe not even that long.”
“Hmmm, and how did you get blind?”
“I was blinded out on the nearby magma fields.”
“Sir, I am not familiar with such a place.”
“Running lava in great rivers, dry and hot as can be? Not a place for anything alive.”
“Nope, nothing but green pasture and rolling hills for as far as I have ever walked.”
The man frowned, that seemed wrong. But yet right, it felt right anyway. The fisherman was telling the truth, there were no lava fields nearby. But then how did he get here. The man scowled to himself, no matter, he would figure it out in good time.
Something about mysteriously changing terrain felt normal and didn’t require answering.
Meanwhile, the fisherman continued as if he hadn’t been distracted by the missing lava fields, “So, I ask you, when you could see, could you skin a fish?”
Thinking about it, the man had to reply “yes, I could. I definitely could.”
“Well, did you just wake up here, or did you walk,?”
“I walked mostly, crawled quite a bit.”
“How did you walk? Being blind and all.”
“I have been walking most of my life”
“But when you lost your sight? You still walked?”
“I lost my sight, not my legs.”
“Hmm, did you lose your hands then, that you can’t skin a fish?”
Giving up, “Ok, give me a knife and a smooth rock, I will see what I can do.”
“That’s the spirit, you’ve relied on sight so much, you forgot that is only a component of your abilities, not a requirement for them."
The man heard the ting of metal hitting a rock at his feet.
“I just tossed you a skinning blade and to your left you will find the fish. Just by them, you should find the nice stump I usually use to skin the fish. In fact, it was the first stump I ever recall skinning a fish upon. Let it be yours too.”
At first, he had some difficulty, but skinning a fish came back to him quickly. He wasn’t great at it, but he seemed to have done it enough to be proficient even when blind.
His new companion then cooked the fish up, spiced them with a tangy coarse spice the man didn’t recognize. Maybe it was the hunger or his lost memory, but this had to be one of the best meals he had ever had.
They ate in silence, then the man asked, “My good host, friend fisherman, I know not your name?”
“Oh that, I am a no one. My name is Torim Rae. The village calls me the Torim the Fish, because that is about all I do. I come out here and catch about twenty or thirty fish a day, sell those I don’t eat, And that is how I live. So whom do I have the pleasure of cooking for?"
“I don’t know, the beings who took my sight also robbed me of my memory. You said, or called me rather, a denizen of the courts. Of what do you speak.” Torim started to speak, then paused as he considered his words. “You feel different. When I am around someone from the court, they make me feel like I don’t belong here where I am at, but that I should be leaving with them. It’s that same feeling you get when you are at a gathering of people but know you are the outsider, not really one of them. You make me feel that way, like an outsider – but at the same time there is a tugging, like I need to go with you and that I might belong as long as I am in your presence. Can’t explain it any better.”
The man nodded. “So, I have this aura around me. Well, if I am a member of this Court, just what is the Court.”
“Not right sure, you guys started coming around a few years ago – some say you heralded the fall of the Famine King before he made it over to these lands. Generally, we give you, or the Court, credit and praise for saving us. Rumor is we are under the protection of Mistress Auspice, royal consort to Baron Precarious. We have never seen any tax collectors or ever seen a single soldier. All we get is someone like you coming through every couple of months.”
They talked for a short while longer before they fell silent, listening to the sounds of the flowing creek and the occasional splash as a new line was cast into the water, the fisherman seemed to lose interest in the conversation as the morning wore on, similarly the fish seemed to lose interest in his repeated castings.
When the temperature started rising, the man began to get a little anxious and stood up. “I probably best be on my way, it seems the day is reaching its peak for it is getting warmer. I would like to make a town or something before nightfall.”
The fisherman chuckled, “The day is only just beginning, my new friend. The sun is but rising. We have been night fishing I fear, it is the only time the oil fish feed. But you are right, I have caught little in the last hour and we best be going. I have a pond I fish at during the morning hours, you are welcome to come with me, your company is quite appreciated.”
“I need to move on, I feel quite rested and refreshed. This oil fish of yours is quite filling.” Feeling his face and then touching his hands, he realized that his burns and healed also. “I think there might even be some magical properties. Do these fish have curative powers?”
“Not so much the, just the circumstances. This place has had curative powers since the coming of the Courts. The longer you spend here, the more comfortable and sedentary you are likely to become.”
“All the more reason for me to move on. I may not know what my purpose or quest is yet, but I don’t believe it is to be found within a fishing hole or two.”
“You might be surprised, very surprised. But alas, if you need to move on I understand. I won’t be going with you, but I walk the way enough that I have created a path of hardened earth long ago.”
There was a rustling sound and then a large clack of something hitting the ground before the blind man’s feed. The fisherman then said, “At your feet is my walking staff, it should help you make the town. The path is only a few feet behind you, follow it. Eventually you will hit a stone road, take a left and it will take you on into the town of Misty Forge. Not sure what you will look for there, there are no temples or officious buildings. There is a common ale house of no name in the middle of the town, however, and your destiny might reside there.”

Report Date

21 Oct 2018