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

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Ascension - Song
Sage is an additional burden, now perching on Noa’s backpack with an air of such satisfaction about her that she seems unlikely to ever move from it. He has made a token effort to get her to fly again, netting only a huff from her as she turned her head one hundred and eighty degrees away from him. Noa smiled at that.

He is beginning to regret this, less than a quarter of the way to the third shrine. This particular path is even more overgrown than the others; not even the local fauna use it, so Noa has to stop every few steps to cut branches out of his way. It crawls steeply up the side of the mountain, not so vertical that Noa could easily uses his hands and feet together, but too precipitous to comfortably walk on two legs. The sun lies directly overhead now and a thin sheen of sweat coats the back of his neck.

After a torturous twenty minutes of this, Noa has to stop, puffing, hand gripping a branch overhead to steady himself. “Sure you wouldn’t prefer flying?” he asks Sage. The owl does not move or respond. She has her head tucked towards one wing, as if sound asleep.

Noa suppresses a sigh, then grins. If she is going to pretend to sleep… He takes a deep breath, wincing slightly at the effort, then sings as loudly as he can:
 * “So may we be not afraid-”

Halfway through the first word, Sage gives a sharp hoot of disgust. Noa laughs, and continues to sing:


 * ''“Though trembling is the earth
 * ''Though all the mountains fall.”

Beside his ear, he can hear Sage making churring noises that indicate her irritation with him, though evidently this is not enough to make her budge from her perch. Noa laughs and begins to walk, still singing. It should take more effort to do this, but somehow, it helps. Perhaps it is because blessed are they who show devotion to God, who grants strength…Cleric Stern will be able to put it to him in nicer words later.

He finishes the hymn, panting slightly, and immediately launches into another song:


 * ''“As a hart longs for the flowing streams
 * ''So longs my soul for thee, O God.”

It is not one of the hymns Cleric Stern taught him, but he can feel the spirit of devotion from it. Some strange cousin of his own faith, descended from the mountains and twining with the spirit of the plains and forests. A song from a place of gentle streams, where deer ran through open savannahs and the heart could be quenched with the beauty of horizons.


 * ''“My soul has thirsted for the living God:
 * ''When shall I come and appear before the face of my God?”

He learnt the song two summers ago. Visitors to the mountains are rare, with few willing to make the treacherous, difficult journey, and fewer still manage to encounter the scattered pockets of people living hidden amongst the rangers. So when a group of pilgrims – five families, travelling together, bringing with them a caravan of relics and books and one elderly, nearly blind great-grandmother who had the purest voice Noa has ever heard.


 * ''“My tears have been my bread by day and by night,
 * ''While it is said to me daily:
 * ''Where is your God?”

She taught Noa how to sing the song, prodding him with her walking cane every time he got a note wrong. It was effective and now the words come to him effortlessly, even as he continues to puff up the mountain. They had come, she explained to him after he managed to sing it flawlessly twice in a row, because this was where the faith had been born. This is where they would be closest to God.

The pilgrims had stayed for only a few days, but Cleric Stern somehow managed to get word out across the mountain range. And so, on their last night, Noa’s home became the site of a celebration like he hadn’t seen since he was a child. For the whole night, a fire had been lit on the cliffside, so bright that God must have seen it from Heaven. Cleric Stern and the visiting priest had exchanged parables and books, delivering a shared sermon to the combined flocks who had come from all over Ilocas and far away from the plains. After that had been a sharing of food, stories and song for the entire night, until the sun outdid the bonfire’s radiance.

Even Noa’s father came out to join them. At first, all he did was greet the visitors in a vague manner, the way one would address a slightly familiar horse. When a pilgrim or neighbour attempted to draw him into conversation, all he did was smile at them distantly and utter a few monosyllables in response.

But finally, as dawn began to tinge the horizon with a promise of light, Germain Lentic stood up. He cleared his throat modestly, still looking to one side, as if not entirely sure why he was there.

Then he sang.

Noa has never been able to talk to his father about the song he sang that night. It was not a hymn. It contained not a single reference to God. When he asked him in the weeks following, his father would stare at him with his familiar blankness.

But there was a kind of purpose to the vacuity of his gaze – a desire not to remember, rather than a failing to. And there had been something about those words which had struck Noa. When he heard them, it had felt as if his soul were thrumming. Like a roof humming with the beat of heavy raindrops.

So he had pestered Cleric Stern for the lyrics. For once, the priest seemed reluctant to share his knowledge. Even stranger, his reticence did not deter Noa; an inexplicable yearning had taken hold of him.

Only after three months did the cleric finally tell him. One morning, as they worked together in the chapel, he pressed a single sheet of music into Noa’s hand and said simply, “It’s a song your mother taught us. From her old home.”

And then: “Don’t tell your father.”

Noa seldom sings it, for he always worries that the words might carry to his father’s ears. But now, it feels like the right song. Softly, he begins:


 * ''“I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
 * ''And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made:
 * ''Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee,
 * ''And live alone in the bee-loud glade.”

His voice hitches a little as he walks. They are more than three quarters of the way to the shrine now, and the path is even steeper. The lines break as Noa stumbles, more climbing than walking, pulling himself along by clinging to the branches that cross his path. As he has ascended, the greenery has shrivelled from trees to thorny shrubs that he can feel even through his gloves.


 * ''“I will arise and go now, for always night and day
 * ''I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore.”

The shrubbery is now thin enough that he can see the sky above him: grey, glowering clouds that promise a storm. With more gravel and stone under his feet than soil, such a downpour would be disaster for him. A mudslide, a flood sweeping him away, boulders dislodged by avalanche, even just the promise of slipping on wet ground: all of these were part of the treachery of the mountains.

And yet, singing, all Noa can think of is the sound of raindrops, falling to meet that rain-soaked peninsula where once his mother and father came from.


 * ''“While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,
 * ''I hear it in the deep heart’s core.”

And he wonders if, when his father looks into nothingness, the greyness of the mind-fog thick over his eyes, if what he is seeing is not that lake, if what he is hearing is not the sound of water lapping on the shore, and his mother’s voice singing amongst the bees in the glade. {|width="45%" align="right"
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Distance - Anicca
The memories came to him faster now, broken up, more like frames from a film than a sequence or story. Se’ze must have done something – had completed something – something within Sonthi had shifted irrevocably. He knew this. He did not know what.

How?

Why?

The questions were meaningless again. Each was washed away by the more arresting images of his family, flickering past at immense speed, each from a different time and place.

There was his father, always viewed from a distance, his words spoken from as far away as his heart was from Sonthi’s. Se’ze was cataloguing them and now Sonthi could sense this, understand how the Rorqual was categorising them: the gulf between the sincere and the lies and the phrases that had been both or neither, how many had been spoken out of love (more than he expected), indifference (many) and disappointment (each one stung, but at least there had been none from hate), all the stern reminders of discipline, discipline, discipline.

The memories of his mother were always separate from his father, except for the earliest ones. Viewed from his adult mind, through childhood eyes, he marvelled at the identical, determined tilt of their dark eyes underneath hair untouched by grey, marvelled more at the way they smiled at each other. Yet even then, even when they were standing beside each other, his mother’s hand chastely on the arm of his father’s, he saw how strong they were in stance. They didn’t need each other.

Most of the images of his mother could be dated by the position of her desk. It had lasted decades, not because it was beloved; she just never had time for such trivialities as replacing old furniture. His earliest memories had the desk towering above him, as he toyed with some puzzle box on the ground beside it, the legs of the chair and his mother’s calves (crossed elegantly) like tree trunks next to him. As he grew older, the desk became a threat to his head when he stood, then something he had to peek over to view his mother’s work. She seldom deigned to explain, but he had rare memories of her perching him on the tabletop, pointing at the screen to explain some minutia that a child would never understand. He had stared intently at it and tried, all the same.

Desk and computer, always between him and his mother as he grew older. Even when he was tall enough to lean against it, on those nights that he felt close enough or late enough to dare. More often he presented his own research standing on the other side of it, reporting to her partly hidden face, its features always tinged blue by the light of the monitor.

There were few memories of his brothers, other than Rang. Perhaps Se’ze didn’t consider them important enough. Perhaps he did not.

Most of them were of quietness. Rang always preferred the silence and could easily decide to get up and leave if it was broken for him, with no thought for how that might cause offence. He never meant any, so why should it?

That was why his older brother was always kept hidden away, even on official birthdays and holy ceremonies. All his younger siblings, even Sonthi, were given duties that took them away from their home, but not Rangsiman. The world was made to forget about him. As his duties increased and took him further away, Sonthi wondered if they would also prefer that his family forgot, too.

The part of Sonthi that understood why that was, the part that was too much of his family could not help but feel slightly disappointed about his older brother, who would never achieve anything worth writing about in the history books. He would never even amount to being one of the secret aides who were present between the lines in history: invisible, but essential to their greater masters. Their other siblings ridiculed him with their unspoken pity: how could Rang be content with such a tiny, limited life? Their lives shifted and everyone grew but Rang, occupying the room he had always lived in, forever entertained by the same piano, the same books and sounds.

And yet, sitting beside Rang, letting his quietness flow over him, Sonthi wondered Rang wasn’t the one who had worked it all out.

Whenever Sonthi managed to visit him, he would always ask, “Did you miss me, Rang?”

And his brother would always reply, “No. Why should I?”

He hadn’t been brave enough to ask that question before he left on the Caesura. That question now in the future tense, Will you miss me? He knew the answer would always be the same, and his mind understood why, and yet, quietly, his heart refused. A fault of his that he could never entirely eradicate.

The unspoken words chased each other around his head as he waited for their departure. Even with Rorqual technology, every crew member had to be strapped in for take-off as a precaution. Neatly encased in a pod, padded to safety and beyond, Sonthi chafed against the delay, the endless, inescapable distance between ending and beginning. Only his fingers could move, tapping noiselessly against the unspeakably technologically advanced foam.

He did not want to leave. Waiting this long to leave was a torture.

At least, as a concession to his status, his personal pod was granted a “window” – actually, another Rorqual invention, a screen which projected an illusion of a direct porthole to the outside world. Through it, Sonthi could see figures moving frantically around, as distant and ineffable in their busyness as the movement of ants. A few were clothed in the state colours of red, blue and white. If one turned to allow a trace of gold to glint momentarily in the sun, perhaps he could imagine it was his father.

Gradually, the square below emptied. He was alone.

There was no alarm for departure. Within him, he heard the quiet voice of his Rorqual, and softer still, the undercurrent of glee in its voice. We are leaving.

There was no noise, no shuddering. A gentle vibration travelled through his body; that was all, and Sonthi Mahidol left the world he knew behind.

The fact is, I wasn’t chosen, he told Se’ze. He could not tell if he was telling Se’ze now, floating in the void, or if his past self flying on the Caesura had let the thought drift away from him carelessly, unwittingly allowing the alien to read his mind.

Launch site, ground, clouds – all faded, each falling away with his breaths. Eight breaths, and the curve of the Earth’s great sphere was before him, filling up the view from his porthole entirely but for a thin crescent of space at its edge. Sonthi tried to imagine his family that had been left behind, antlike figures diminished to less than specks, but surely, unquestionably, must exist somewhere on that globe – there, perhaps, was the shape of Siam’s coast. There, his father must be ruling, holding those invisible borders strong. And perhaps, there, Rang was sitting and watching his brother fly.

It was impossible. Already, his family felt unknowable and unreachable, like a childhood memory that had begun to tatter, the faces blurring, the voices muted. Like the growing edge of space was folding over them. Like the way space rushed to fill the nullity left by the shrinking Earth, washing into the void between it and the five moons.

Until the Earth was just another dot in the endless aeons. Faded. Impermanent. Like all things.
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