Can you see him? It requires a shift in perspective to see him, but can you do it? Can you shift yourself from your “normal” expectations of what you think ought to be there and instead see what is there? If you can, count yourself among the lucky. And if you can see him and those like him without being told where to look, count yourself among the blessed who have the sight. They see without the interface so necessary to most people.
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| One of the helpers. |
He is out and about now in the dark half of the year, and
there is no need to hide in the forest anymore.
The sun will not notice the tearing down of things now; he is far too
weak. This is the time when the Piper
must be paid and the gold must be returned.
These are the beings who ensure it.
We might look the other way and tell ourselves that it’s all in our
imagination. We might tell ourselves
that the gold is ours to keep forever. We
might pretend that this is not part of the bargain. But in the end, we know we are wrong. The accounting system is perfect. The invoice is exact. The reckoning is always near.
The old dam crumbles slowly and he helps it along. Leaks have sprung everywhere, and most of us
have forgotten the reason the dam was built in the first place. Perhaps when it is finally destroyed we’ll
remember again. Maybe then we’ll come
back and chase the destruction back into the forest. Maybe we’ll build it back up strong and sure
again, so certain in our knowledge, so haughty in our wrongly perceived ability
to control the force of Water. Maybe we’ll
pretend that everything in the world just falls to chance, that there is no
rhyme or reason.
But those who can see know the rhyme by heart. It’s a simple one, like hopscotch to a
child. The rhythm is in their
blood. They hear it even when they do not
want to. They shift naturally from this
state to that. They know how things build
up and they know how things are destroyed.
And they know why. They know that
out of nothing comes something and that the something always returns to its
origin. They know that the gold is held
in a trust fund, and the beneficiary waits in the forest. Still.
