Paścima - "The Father of the West

How, and does one “see” when there has never before been something called “eyes”? Paścima opened his, newly formed and evolving into place, and he saw a shifting miasma of diametric opposites above and surrounding him. He felt, and with feeling, reeled at the onslaught of becoming. The word for “Father” then came to his consciousness.

Other thoughts were trickling into his mind, just as emotions, senses, and sentience was fractally easing into what he now knew as “himself.” His first thought, given life, was that he would, and could now, blink out of existence again as well. This thought brought his first emotion: fear. It was a state that could not have vexed him wherever he was before. He was now alive, and for that, the fear was joined by anger, swelling within him. The color of the surrounding vision of brightness took on a new tone… red.

There were other things forming around him. He turned his attention to his position in the Real, and saw the everything to his right was an explosion of misty brightness, almost painful in its aspect. His place, atop some promontory, was now more distinct in his vision. He could make-out shapes, and weaving waterways far below. The sudden understanding of this height clenched his belly, but just as quickly, it left.

He turned from that overwhelming brightness and found that he also carried his own glow. He lifted his arms, thick as they were, glowing from within. New sinew and venous pathways continued to form, thicken, and congeal into shapes. His hands shone like torches against the Eastern gloom.

He lifted his new eyes and saw, far across a gulf of twisting mist, a shape, like him, but softer, darker, and quite lovely. The distance from it made him sad.

“Sister,” the voice just over his head breathed. “She also comes to being.”

Paścima said nothing but watched. Across the valley, he met her eyes. Purples, deep blue, and absolute black surrounded her aspect there. Her face, mysterious, sometimes indistinct, and then clear, and it seemed to change as she watched. First, newborn, a child, then a maiden, and into a crone, then back again. A fresh face, but the eyes, never changed, never moved from watching him. They were not altogether obsidian, but flashed here and there, with sharp jagged bright jabs out into the darkness around her.

“Sister,” he thought. “Family. Twin!”

Then came the thought, or sound, or whatever Father used to communicate to him, “No. You can never know her, or her tribes. To meet her, is to battle.”

He closed his eyes for the first time. The purple behind his lids was comforting, and somehow familiar, nostalgic. His new mind began to flood with understanding, and the growing familiarity he needed to navigate this Universe.

“Why?” he asked the void above him.

After a moment, the knowledge came to him, but no voice split the whispers, and silence on the mountain-top.

This thing. The thing that had brought him to consciousness he called Father. It was nothing, and everything at once. Paścima, and whomever She, across the space between them was, Sister, opponent, same and yet opposite, She was there to observe Father, to give It, or Him, a reflection, and a being. Father was… it seemed to him, lonely, and desperately sad.

“To know her, and to make peace, would be the collapse of Me.” The thought-voice placed in Paścima’s head. “…and then, the collapse of everything that appears here in this realm. You, this mountain, Me, the winds, and her. There would be only what there was before there was anything. There would be the Void.”

Paścima’s anger grew. He had not asked for this pain in his being. He had not even asked for this BEING. He felt his chest, to see where the aching came from. He gently tapped at it. His chest was harder than the rock on which he stood. But, no. No, it was not his chest, it was…

“Thṓraks” the thing wrapped around his torso hummed, rumbling deep into his chest and up, up, bubbling through his neck and thought, into Paścima’s ears. “Nothing comes past me. I hold your heart sacred. I protect. I show it to no one.”

The wrapped bronze plate felt suddenly warmer, comforting.

“We need no one else.” it purred.

Now, in his left hand, growing, it seemed, into the air, it erected into a sharpness against the sky. It needled into reality, and Paścima felt the heft of it grow in his palm. It whispered, as a spear sometimes does, “Doru,” came the sound in his ear, like a secret.

“I find the truth. I enter the secret, weak places, discover the chinks in the metal, cracks in the wooden slats…. past the defenses, and past the lies. I find the hearts of those who would harm you. I touch them, enter them. Explore their every chamber. They do not escape me. In the end, they always accept.”

Another thing, a lump, beneath the belt of his tunic, lay, tucked in his girding, with nine, small spikes bouncing gently as Paścima turned away from the dark, and toward the bright again. All of this was far too much for him to take in at once. And still the world was redder than it should have been. Still the anger grew within him, as did the loneliness at the thought of knowing that he had a sister, and in the same moment, know that she was his enemy. If this was “being,” what good was it?

He screamed in growling frustration, across the gulf, and at the moving sentience above him. He held the spear over his head, pulled his arm back to throw it far away from himself. It was then that the rush of raw energy buzzed though his body, beginning at his feet, through the straps of his sandals, and up, and into his back and chest. Power, like he could have never imagined struck his head like a cool, blue wave. Something like confidence swelled in his chest, hunched the ripples of flesh on his back, and he felt tingles all over him. He was also aware that he was glowing, much brighter, as sparks issued from the tip of the spear.

He smiled, giddy with this energy. Perhaps there were things to explore here. Perhaps there was another way to solve this conundrum. Perhaps he could know his twin, and perhaps he could convince this Father. And if not, perhaps Paścima could defeat Him.

Everything was possible. Anything was probable. HE was the captain of his fate, not any voice in his head, and certainly not the implements at his command. He was everything. Knowing this as clearly as he could know anything, he quickly stepped down to where the light was ebbing in the West, calmly excited in his own thoughts to explore this new world in which he found himself.