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

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Fourth Station - Prayer
Daylight is dying by the time Noa makes it to the fourth shrine. The temperature has already plunged. He moves through a world of shadows against white sky; when Sage rises from his shoulder, she is almost invisible against the dusk.

Like the others, the fourth shrine is abandoned, and he has to cut through a tangling curtain of briars to get to it. When he manages to struggle through it, he releases a sigh he didn’t realise he’d been holding; despite the surrounding overgrowth, the shrine itself is still preserved. It’s more exposed to the elements than the rest, the most fragile, but has survived perhaps by dint of being the newest.

His father is the one who planted it.

The plants that grow here aren’t found anywhere else in the mountains. Germain planted them long ago from seeds that he and Noa’s mother brought from their old home. For many years, he, Noa’s mother and Cleric Stern had taken turns to tend to it. Then his mother had passed away, and Cleric Stern’s parish swelled as neighbouring priests moved on and new people moved up from whatever calamities were afflicting the lowlands, until only Germain was left.

He very rarely takes Noa with him. There were too many memories, he would say, eyes soft with sorrow even though he spoke evenly. But the times that he had were imprinted in Noa’s mind, the memories sharp-edged. He keeps them that way, going over them in his prayers every Sunday night.

At dawn on each Sunday, Germain would prepare the altar whilst Noa watched. It was a complex ritual which he had brought back from the peninsula, one that Cleric Stern had never even heard of or read. Germain had always put off writing it down for him, demurring that it was something you needed to see done, and that he was terrible at putting it into words anyway.

First was a handful of soil that Germain would bring back from the garden shrine, tenderly packed into a tiny pot made of bright blue porcelain. In it, he would plant a single mustard seed and sprinkle it with holy water. It was the first and least of them, but every day, when Noa walked past, the seedling on the altar would have sprouted a little more.

Second was rosemary, for remembrance. Germain always paused when he placed the flower-studded stem on the altar, eyes closed in memory or prayer. He never said what.

Third and fourth were the resins, myrrh and frankincense. Germain distilled the fragrant oil himself, placing drops of it in small bottles – the myrrh crystalline pure, catching the light with sparks of gold; the frankincense a duskier silver. Myrrh, he had explained once, was for purification of the past; frankincense for times of growth and spiritual change.

Only on the Sunday closest to his mother’s death was there a difference. For that week, two tiny beeswax candles sweet with the scent of myrrh and frankincense stood on their altar instead.

Next, Germain would twist together parsley and juniper berries, forming a wreath in a way that Noa has never managed to get the hang of. The bitter leaves for times of suffering; the sweetness of the berries, for the blessings of God, as unexpected as fruit in the desert.

Last was a humble thistle – simple, but resilient enough to grow from storm-swept headlands across the plains to rocky mountain cliffs.

All of these were placed in an elaborate series of steps, intertwined with prayers, the lighting of prayers, and a soft, sad song without words. Germain has taught Noa some of it, piece by piece, a fragment of wisdom rising from his suddenly like a pearl from the deep. His father promised him that, by the age of eighteen, he would know all of it.

Eight months ago, Noa saw his father make a mistake in the ritual.

It had been half an hour past dawn and Germain had just finished lightning the candles in cross-formation for the step before the myrrh and frankincense. His hand reached out to take one of the bottles – and faltered.

A pause.

Germain’s fingers trembled, hovering over first the silver, then the gold.

Finally, they closed over the juniper wreath. He placed it on the altar, but there was something wrong with the motion, something uncertain and haphazard. It was as if he wanted to be through with the ritual as quickly as possible. His hands wove as deftly in the lighting of the remaining candles as they always did, but when it came to the thistle, he hesitated between the three empty places.

He left the myrrh and frankincense on the benchtop and went to bed again, murmuring something about feeling oddly tired today. Noa tidied them away without a word.

The next week, Noa woke an hour before sunrise, but his father was already away, pacing in front of the altar, a pile of herbs sitting on the benchtop. As the first rays of the sun filtered into their house, he hesitantly approached the altar.

Once again, he stopped.

For a long time, he stood there, as sunlight and shadow moved across the kitchen floor. When he finally moved, his shoulders were hunched – only slightly, and yet he seemed to have aged, moving as if something invisible had been taken from him irrevocably, something too precious to name.

He sat at the benchtop all morning, that day, holding a sprig of rosemary in his hand.

Since that day, Germain does not go to the shrine at all. The garden is left to grow wild, and the last herbs lie desiccated on their altar, forgotten.

And that is why Noa has decided to make the pilgrimage, following the same path his father once took in faith and desperation. It had rained that day too, at the end of it, and the first sky Noa ever saw had been covered by clouds.

In the dusk, he bends to harvest the parsley, now tumbling wild over the edges of its patch. The mustard has long gone to seed, and he easily shakes a handful from the pods. The thistle takes some effort from his knife but cannot pierce through his gloves.

By now, it is so dark that he finds the rosemary more by fragrance than by sight. The soft flowers brush against his face momentarily. Then he walks, hands outstretched, to press against the first of the three trees his parents planted together here, so close that they have nearly intertwined.

It is the dense shrubbery of the juniper that he feels first. His grasping fingers manage to curl around small, smooth shapes – the berries. The next two are trickier; he has to wait for his eyes to adjust to true darkness before he proceeds. It is difficult to cut the bark of the myrrh and frankincense trees and then catch their resin, dark and colourless in the night, in the small jars that he has brought. He hopes he manages to collect enough.

Now, his new supplies a comforting weight in his bag, Noa climbs the myrrh tree to the platform his father once built. It is bitterly cold at this time of night, worse in a tree; but, he reflects positively, that will make it easier to stay awake during his vigil. He shifts, trying to get as comfortable as one possibly can kneeling on an unprotected wooden platform halfway up a tree.

Noa prays: artlessly, resolutely, knowing that he will do this all night. Silently, he speaks to God.

''O Lord, hear your child, alone in the night. I know that you are listening. You hear all our cries, especially those that come from your children who do not sleep, who are driven to cry out for succour in the darkest depths.''

''Lord, I do not ask for myself. I pray for my father, who has been Your faithful servant for all of his life. You can see into my soul, and see that I speak no lies. Not that I could lie to You; I am too simple for that.''

''There are mornings when my father looks at me, and he does not know my face. That is not what I fear. I do not remember my mother’s face, and yet still I love her, so I know that even if my father forgets, his love for her will remain. But sometimes, when I look in my father’s eyes, all I see is a terrible blankness. A veil has fallen over his eyes and neither of us can see beyond it.''

''I believe that beyond it, my father remains. But how much worse for him, to be locked behind the veil, unable to call, unable to respond to me. Can You reach him, O Lord? For it is my fear that he will forget Your face, that slowly the sun will recede from him, and he will never see it again, nor remember the feel of sunlight.''

''Please, O Lord, hear my prayer. I call to You out of faith and love; I feel them burning within me. Bring to us on Your winds Your pity. Let us be lifted by Your grace. May my father bask in Your radiance again, and do not let him fall.'' {|width="45%" align="right"
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Fourth Sutra - Dukkha
Once you let go, it was easy.

Around him, the alarms sounded. Sonthi did not need to care about that anymore. It was exhilarating, this freedom, this perfection he had always sought. How long had he thought Somdej’s descriptions of tranquillity nothing more than an empty promise? How much had he dreaded it? Now it was his. Immaculate. Untouchable.

The outer chaos served only to emphasise the calm within him. Sirens from different parts of the ship reached his ears in discordant rhythm, swelling and fading as each sector lost communication. Even on the Mira’s bridge, they were plunged unpredictably into the dim red of emergency lightning. On the screens in front of him, he watched the Caesura fall to pieces: failing life support messages flashing across every window, demanding attention; the schematics of the Caesura’s compartments, its lights for each crew member, flickering and fading out as each sector was lost, and everywhere on the surveillance screens, people running, shouting, tugging at controls that no longer responded. Frantic movements that amounted to nothing more than a frenzied wringing of hands.

Sonthi stood and watched. A part of him effortlessly absorbed the information; it hardly felt like it was passing through Se’ze to him now, so deeply were they entwined. The greater part of him marvelled at the gap between his responses and those of the Caesura’s crew. Had he once been like them, moving in useless spasms, consumed by panic? He had been right to make the decision to merge; only by distancing himself from them could he respond as situations demanded. Only in this way could he save the.

So many of them wept as they realised they were abandoned. So many screamed in anger. Sonthi felt a gentle swell of pity towards them. Their mission had never really required their survival to succeed, and yet they were tormented by the loss of mere lives. He wished he could comfort them, reassure them that even now, thousands more slumbered safe within the Mira’s berth. And, besides, all things were impermanent.

That was dukkha.

He had never had to see it much, really, as a prince in his old life. The expressions as they died showed him more eloquently what it was than any text he had ever studied. This was dukkha, true suffering. It was what they deserved – if not by their own actions, then by the weight of all the karma the world had accumulated, all those decades of human and Rorqual war, pointless conflicts, countries turned to ash, a true history of misery.

In the midst of his thoughts, he did not notice that his mother had ventured onto the bridge until she was shaking him. “Sonthi, you and Se’ze need to take direct control of the ship.”

“It won’t work. The other two ROCs are on the Serenahd.” He could see the smaller ship through the window, already visibly shuddering. Through Se’ze, he knew that was only a forewarning. It was already lost.

His mother let go of him almost immediately, switching her attention to the flashing displays, almost all of them covered in error message after error message. Her rapid stream of commands to him was slower than the dance of her fingers across the control board. “Sonthi, I know the whole of the Caesura wasn’t meant for just one ROC to manage, but we have no choice. I have faith in your ability to at least hold it together until we can better stabilise. Then we can think about what options we have to finish the mission.”

“The Caesura will never reach Sabik.”

“That’s not the issue right now,” she snapped. “First, we have to focus on getting the hell out of here.” Another flurry of code, and she managed to quieten the wails in one engine room.

It was impressive, but there was a limit to what she could do as a human. Sonthi made no effort to help her.

“Are you listening? Just do exactly what I say.” More code, more tapping, with greater desperation now, tightly controlled. “First, interface with the remaining auxiliary engines and have Se’ze link them with mains A, C, and D. These are still largely functional. Siphon the most badly damaged mains favouring the port side and jettison them. If you can then hold these as Se’ze analyses each area for structural integrity and designs appropriate escape paths-”

“We won’t be saved by your panic,” he interrupted her calmly.

“I am not panicking. I am fixing this.” Never once did her eyes flicker from the screen. Despite her efforts, he could see another two sectors collapse. Main D was beginning to show damage.

“That won’t work. You aren’t a ROC.”

“Yes, that’s right,” she said through gritted teeth. “I’m not a ROC. You are. In fact, you are the leader of this ship, so join with it and save us.”

“I am saving us. Wait.”

“We don’t have time to wait.”

He couldn’t help but marvel at his mother’s aptitude; knowing that the ship could only be controlled by ROCs, having seen it only through what Se’ze had let her glimpse when he had been her interface, still she grappled with the controls. With those memories, she guessed at Rorqual logic, improvised slapdash solutions to allow her clumsy human fingers access into what only a neural network could hope to command.

“The seeds are still on the Mira. Only the crew are left on the Caesura now. And the Serenahd-” and Haruka and Yuichi and Seungchul and “-is lost.”

“You can help or you can be quiet, Sonthi.” And yes, she was beautiful; he knew exactly now how his father could have fallen in love with her and why Se’ze had deemed her worthy, but it was not enough. One could not save a person from the weight of their karma.

“You know there is a way in which we can preserve the children and the Mira, at least. The mission could still succeed.”

“The same to you, Se’ze! You know that’s not a solution any human will accept, and I’d rather listen to my son spouting nonsense than hear another one of your usual plans-”

“Not everyone gets saved,” he interrupted as gently as he could. “We must act for the many and prevent the negative karma of the few from polluting their fate.”

He was expecting the slap and did not flinch from it. “How can you say that?” she demanded, finally turning towards him. A bad sign, he noted. She had almost accepted that the ship was lost, even if her conscious mind still rebelled.

“That is dukkha.”

She stared at him, realisation replacing the horror in her expression. “Se’ze?” she whispered. “You are not my son.”

“It’s me, Mother. Sonthi. Of course it is. Not just Se’ze now. I have decided…” he trailed off, struggling to find the words. They were so much clumsier than thought. “I have decided: we must care for each equally, without attachment.”

His mother’s face contorted with grief. How much he had always wanted that…but it didn’t touch him now. It was much better to be beyond grief, such a negative emotion. He expected at any moment that it would twist into scorn – anger was always the result when one was attached to an image that proved erroneous.

But what she said was: “I’ve always cared for you, you stupid boy. Your father, too.”

He felt a strange cry deep within him, swiftly drowned.

Too late – she was gone, running back into corridors of the Caesura, trying, as she always did, to bravely, stubbornly, impossibly save that which was already lost. Too late - the Serenahd was already burnt-out husk, escapes pods falling from it like fireworks trailing droplets of gold. If he did not do something soon, the Mira and Caesura would soon follow.

Sonthi rested his hand on the disengage switch, applying gentle pressure to it without depressing it fully. Through the window, he could just glimpse the moon of Sabik: serene, tantalising, forever out of the Caesura’s reach. On the dashboard was the light that represented his mother, fluttering about the Caesura’s bridge. Against it, a thousand others slumbered safe in the Mira’s hull.

Let it fall.

All it took was one tiny, effortless motion, one shift in weight, and the Mira snapped free of the Caesura. Rapidly, the bulk of the main ship fell away from its child. The lights on the panel flickered and blinked out.

That was all. One button press, to save the ones who deserved salvation.
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