User:Yuanchosaan/A Life of Contemplation\Reflection/Seven

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Flight
It’s a long walk home after a sleepless night, but somehow, Noa does not feel tired. If exhaustion has emptied him out, then he feels as if something else has filled the resulting void, a thing of lightness and vitality that propels him on. At the edges of his mind, he feels sleep nibbling, but it is no more a concern, no more close, than the inevitable approach of night at the beginning of the day.

As he crests the cliff that leads to their home, Noa has to duck instinctively as a shadow passes over him. With a joyful cry, Sage lands briefly on his shoulder, gives him a friendly nip, then pushes off again. Within moments, she is carried by the morning thermals high into the sky.

The windows are dark still. It is unlikely that Germain will be awake yet. With only a small hesitation, Noa walks past their home to the edge of the bluffs.

There is a place by their home where the cliffs jut out into a tiny, narrow peninsula, not much wider than Noa himself. Beneath it, the escarpment falls away, leaving only the rocky bridge projecting into air – tenuous, impossible, an act of faith. It is there that Noa goes now.

Now he has been to the shrine at the roof of the world, but he thinks to himself that there is no place where the air is clearer than here, with the Sea of Tranquillity spread out between his feet, the sky above an endless serenity, and when he stands here now on the precipice of infinity, he is standing at the foot of God.

Still standing, moving very carefully, Noa reaches into his pack. He fills his hands with all the gifts that he has collected: a tiny leather bag of dust, a fig, an ancient candle stub, the herbs and resin. He takes a deep breath and then, with a shout that half-prayer, half-exultation, he throws them out into the ocean.

It takes him one step closer to the edge. The tip of his foot actually goes over it.

Noa holds his breath, and feels, for a moment, as if the world does too.

Then the wind rises, soaring upwards from the sea, not pushing him back but holding him so he can take a step forward, and both his feet are on the edge. And he feels in that split-second, with utter certainty, that if he were to step forward he would not fall, that all he needs to do is to have faith. Because the one who controls the winds will hear him and He knows what it means to fly.

Far above him, he hears the cry of an owl, familiar despite the distance. The trance is broken. Noa looks up to see Sage soaring, a pale dot against all the vastness of the sky. He smiles. {|width="45%" align="right"
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Fall
Afterwards, there was silence.

The Mira drifted through space, void within and void without. One could feel the silence within it as more presence than absence; an unearthly silence, reminder that once there had been the endless hum of machinery, the buzzing of intercom orders, commands, conversation, laughter.

All unnecessary.

The realisation had been that the ship was not really needed, never the point at all. It was merely a vessel, better rid of what had been, on reflection, nothing more but grit filling its interior. What had been salvaged was the people who, after all, had been worth saving. Not all of them: but the silent travellers, those not yet born, without destiny written into them from this life.

They would start somewhere better. It gladdened his heart to know this. He could not erase the karma that was engraved into them from past lives, but he could give them a future. He remembered what Bhikkhu Somdej had once told him: there was no greater gift than to give the Dharma teaching. And yes, they would still go wrong, there would still be flaws, but he would be there to guide and teach them.

Did he still think of himself as a he?

Sonthi examined the thought in the great temple of his mind. It was effortless, now, to view the thought within that empty space, hollow without echoes, the thought floating in the middle of that chamber, easily observed without effect or affect. Vaster than the silence that surrounded him was the quietness within him. No longer did what he once thought was his self cry out, dispute, war. No longer did he have to question who or what he was.

He watched himself disintegrate. The very last parts of Sonthi were unravelling before his eyes – not dying, but forming again, the lines of him stretching and mingling with Se’ze to create something new. Something that was not Sonthi-plus-Se’ze, not the parts that existed in the space between them, not Se-Son-ze-thi, but all of these things. A thing existed only in the interactions. The being that was once Sonthi observed the blossoming of its new form.

The lines of possibility grew, blossomed and split. Like branches of a bodhi tree. Like grooves engraved into a computer chip.

In this, it found peace.

There was one, strange regret that remained. The memory drifted through its hollow self, and he could not help but think of a person who no longer existed asking him a question, and it could not explain why he yearned so much to answer it.

Not so long ago and so distant, in a nearly empty cafeteria. Two cups on the table. The shadow of an obsolete vessel upon them. Her unreadable eyes.

The movement of her lips, as she asked him.

“Why?”

Only now did he know the answer. It came to him like a blessing, and the wish to give it to her was so strong that he almost gave in to it. Almost, the last part of Sonthi wanted to seek out the last part of Haruka and tell her:

Because all things change, and we are not one mind, not one self, not one life.

Because this is what I need to become to give compassion to all, to save them.

Because, always, I was looking for Solace.
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