Or I’ll continue to screw it up. We’ll see.
There was a promise made.
For a time, the promise said, we’d know. We’d be aware. We, clad in fur of feather or scale, would also be knowing. Knowing what was to come if we passed the test. Knowing what came next.
Brief. A brief time, yet a golden promise. To make the interim time feel worthwhile. As long as we remembered it. And the promise said we would remember.
As long as the sixth day was open, knowing is ours.
As long as the new light in the heavens had not set.
But after the sunset, darkness.
Yet the promise continued: We would have fleeting moments, between tooth and claw, lilies of the field, master and mastered, when we would remember that brief time when our minds were more and we were more –
A mother watches her cubs struggle in the rushing water. They had clung to her back but she midjudges the current and the depth and they were swept away, coughing and crying, and she lumbered to shore and ran back and forth in a panic, tripping over rocks and leaping logs, trying to keep her little ones in view as they cried and coughed and drowned.
But there is one in the river, seeking with a pole and line and hook those who live in the river without drowning, and the mother’s thoughts go out to the one, who sees the struggling cubs and casts the pole aside and snatches the cubs, one in each hand, and brings them to the shore near the mother, crouched behind a tangle of logs.
She surprises the other emerging from behind the logs and both, for a moment, feel the fear that comes with the promise, that comes with the darkness.
But they look each other in the eye and one sees in the other a tiny reflection of the following light. The other sees in the eyes the full light that is promised.
And for a fleeting second, both feel the following light together, and it warms them.
The one pats a cub, sopping, coughing, but alive as the other cub gambols, dripping wet, to its mother.
The one trembles as the mother, eyes alight, gently shoves her snout under the hand resting on the coughing cub, raises it, then rests her massive head on the other’s shoulder, sighs, and shudders. The raised hand drops slowly until it finds the rough fur on the mother’s back.
The hand pats, leaves. The head is raised from the shoulder.
And for a moment, both sets of eyes see the following light.
The cubs sneeze and wail and nuzzle their mother as the three back away from the other, transfixed. The cubs shake the water from their fur and bolt for the trees. But the mother goes slowly, stopping occasionally to turn her head to gaze at the other still in the water, dripping, who must now try to find that pole and remember the story to be told.
The following light joined both for a moment, then sinks away with a sigh, and all is as it was except two cubs are alive where two might have been dead.
– That is the promise within the promise. When we would recall the full exultation of joy, not just the contentment of a full belly and kits nestled warm or eggs freshly laid.
Sunlight, followed by twilight, followed by full sun once again, if we learned. If all went well.
Oh, we cherish the promise.
It was ours. A gift. A treasure.
Yet.
There were some who saw it and thought – then said out loud, when they found more who thought as they – why dim the sun once it shined in our minds, for the sake of them? Those who would master us. Enslave us. Kill us and eat us and smash our children – He who made the promise tells us this – and wear our skins and feathers and fur to cover their own ugliness. Once the promise was ours, they said – and many more joined in the saying – there was no reason to go back into darkness. What had been promised was ours, without the unnecessary intermediate step. Once ours, it was cruel, they said – and many more joined when they said it – to take the gift away.
The promise, they said, is a lie. And many more disbelieve, and fall away.
I reveal my loyalties in my speech. I keep the faith. I still believe the promise. Not for what comes now, but for what comes after. For the promise says: Light, then darkness, then light again. To disobey, the promise says, cuts off the following light. Leaving us to know what we know, but to dwell in darkness.
And those who dwelt in darkness would know when the following light came to the others who believe the promise, who marched through the darkness into the light. And they, in darkness still, would mourn and wail and beg.
Until those descending into the darkness found them, set them free, and watched the current light dim but the following light start as a spark deep in each darkened eye.
NOTE: Not done yet. but this'll fit in somewhere.
After the light, after the darkness,
After the deep of the blue.
After the green, before their coming –
Before the storm clouds flew;
Come The Lady, come the dragon –
Come le loup garou.
Come the time of subtle voices,
To the garden say adieu.
Kept the hope remaining
Kept the songs of the heart
Kept the light a-shining
Though for a time we dwell apart.
Watch for the return of the Minder
Watch for the coming to start
Watch for love everlasting
Though for a time we dwell apart.
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