Fate Is Not My Master!
As we witness the humans in their progress towards a more sophisticated reality, we of ‘Elf, are astonished that even the most advanced or illuminated of your kind, have no understanding of FATE.
In our realm, FATE is mastered by our young and is considered to be kindergarten in its simplicity. We allowed a human to enter our realms and to come face to face with FATE herself, so that he may share his findings and perhaps bring about a change of approach in the future.
I l♥ve you
‘Elf
“It is of utmost importance that you hear what I am trying to convey to you in my feeble words. I am but an ancient ‘Elf and it was not by chance that I stumbled upon that cavern. I do not even know how I came upon it nor how I left, but that is of little concern to me. What did concern me was how much you as a culture in what I call a modern world, are so ignorant regarding fate.”
– Oren Dun
AUDIO TRANSCRIPT:
Please read along as you listen . . .
I found myself entering an unknown world and I must say that as I moved towards the centre of what seemed like a cavern of immense size I was taken by the complexity of its design. Spun across the entire vastness of the cavern, was what seemed to be a Spiders web. As approached it, I could sense the trepidation within myself and the atmosphere around me. The closer I got, the more my heart beat faster and my feet felt rebellious and resisted each footstep that I took. I proceeded towards the epi-centre and I had to stop a distance from the core and as the web, – sticky like nothing I had experienced before, – had formed a gridlock in front of me. I stood on my tiptoes to see ahead and to my amazement I witnessed a Spider … female I think . . . perched upon the web. She was vigilant and her legs were nimble and weaving the web as fast as she was producing it. It was fascinating.
That was until I saw what was actually taking place .. .
I began to see worlds and realities in the timeless air around her, being sucked into the epi centre where she waited. From every direction I saw people, walking in thin air towards her and I wanted to shout at them and tell them to stop and turn around and run like hell. But to no avail! I could not open my mouth to warn them as no sound came from my vocal chords. All I could do was to witness as they saw her and began to panic and back peddle in haste. Nothing worked and helpless people found their way into that web and that all consuming fate.
After witnessing more than I wanted to, I turned my face away and in doing so, I realized that she was the Mistress of Fate. There was a reason that hundreds of millions feared her kind. Not the actual spider or arachnid but what she represented in my unconscious mind. I was terrified of fate and by the way those poor souls were drawn into her web of deceit, lies and trickery, I knew they had every reason to be afraid. I wondered for a while how any one could escape her clutches and I turned back to witness one last time.
And I watched as a man was drawn into a drama that he could not change nor stop and he was not like the others. He did not seem perturbed at all and faced the impending experience with a quiet acceptance of his fate. The spider drew near and lifted a leg to pounce but then stopped mid air. Then she dropped her leg and her thousands of eyes looked away at another poor soul closing in on her position. The man moved on past her clutches and passed out of sight to where fate was a past concern.
He had escaped scot free without fate grabbing him and drowning him in the sticky web of the experience.
I knew I had the key . . . I could not escape any weblike nexus of experience along my path of life but I could pass over it if I did not engage it nor become overly concerned or worried. I had to be vigilant that the dark one did not draw me into her web of lies and choke the life out of me. I knew this counted for any event that crossed my path and if I listened, I would always be safe.
The Atheneum Keeper's Wisdom
Chronicles of the Beginning . . .
‘I was intrigued by the exposure to the Elvar and their days of genesis and especially felt a kinship with Vana Dey. I could not imagine the enormity of her task and what she had set her mind to.’
Shuga would not hesitate to break a bond between Vana and another Elvar if she suspected that it threatened the youngster’s training. And she watched the two of them ascend Vastalon, once a prohibited expanse which reached towards the stars. No one had ever reached the heights of Vastalon, so they knew not of its bounty or secrets or the extremes which encased its heights. (*)
‘Come on Vana . . . I want to show you the Atheneum!’ urged Brio, looking back at his friend, who was labouring under the pace he set. Every time she had slipped into the Atheneum, she had done so at a much slower pace, keeping out of sight of the elves that ascended and descended the tree. Brio was clearly in a hurry to show her what he thought was her first visit to the Atheneum. They reached the great doorway and walked through, entering the corridors contained within the bark of the colossal trunk. They could look out between the cracks in the trunk’s wall, and see far below them the lights of the revellers in the glade. Vana knew by now that most would have forgotten her success, as the Water elixirs created by the Diviners, would have flowed greedily down eagre throats. Drunk with happiness and just joyful at the thought of another Twilight Initiate amidst their ranks, the revellers would dance and drink until sunrise.
‘Come! I want to show you the Water Divining corridor,’ Brio said and made his way down to the left, away from the opening. The Atheneum was a vast labyrinth of corridors and volumes so rare that their genesis was unknown and so were the ancient authors who once captured them.
Great swirls of energy and sparks erupted from some of their pages and random tomes moved a little, as if to entice the visitors to grab a hold of them and open their pages. Vana and Brio ignored the silent pleas and moved down corridors that Vana had slipped down on numerous occasions. She said nothing to Brio, who thought he was showing her the universe for the first time and they stealthily crept away from the Keepers and their lamps. They reached the Water Divining part of the Atheneum and Brio ran his fingers over the spines of the tomes they saw before them. The rows of tomes and chronicles were arranged in neat rows that reached from the floor reeds to the branched ceilings.
‘I had to learn from these tomes the first sun cycle that I was initiated,’ shared Brio and he nearly tripped over an iridescent leaf bug working its way along the floor. Vana smiled bemusedly and went to pull a tome out of its position and Brio grabbed her hand, ‘ . . . you cannot . . .’ and then he stopped. He realised that Vana was indeed able to look at any item that she chose now that she was a Twilight initiate.
‘Apologies Vana . . . I must still get used to your success tonight,’ he muttered.
But Vana did not hear him. Instead, she was reeling from his brief touch and the searing heat she felt on her hand and she looked at him to see if he felt it too. Apart from feeling embarrassed, he did not seem to register the same smarting tingle that she felt and she said nothing.
Shuga noticed and she frowned slightly. She knew that if Brio were to become a distraction for Vana, she would have him sent to the Gold Fields for an indeterminable length of time. She would not hesitate.
Brio, ignorant of how affected Vana was, grabbed a tome from the shelf just above his head.
‘Look Vana!’ and he opened the tome randomly and the image of flowing water, once confined to a page, flowed into mortal reality. Water literally fell from the book onto their feet and Vana laughed as it tickled her toes. Droplets sprang free and landed on her nose and Brio brushed them off with a chuckle. The effects of the tomes was common knowledge to all elves and if a tome was removed from the care of Vastelon, the effects disappeared. It was this certainty that allowed all elves to know of the mysteries of the Great Shepherd. The tree itself, would never allow any stranger upon its branches and those not of elvan blood, were especially forbidden to even touch Vastelon. (*)
‘Let’s go see the Twilight Corridor,’ said Brio, and he took off down the corridor of high books and he disappeared out of sight. Vana followed immediately but she soon lost sight of Brio and she was lost and going down corridors that she had never been down before. For what seemed to be a long moment, Vana took turn after turn and tried to call Brio’s name, but the Atheneum in the bark of Vastelon had a strange sound proof effect.
Long before she felt a panic, the sound of the Bao Horn was heard, booming out into the night and Vana knew that she was needed down below. She knew too, that the crowd would be looking to see her and as she was the guest of esteemed honour, her sojourn into the Atheneum was over. As fast as she could she slipped down corridors feeling assured that she had taken the right one but the more she turned right and then left, the more frantic she became. She had never heard of anyone getting lost in the Atheneum as all initiates were requested to attend an induction before they used the mighty library. The pathways and how to use the library were explained and each initiate had placed in their care, a crystal, which could always lead them out and onto the descending walkways. Vana did not have one and each of her prior visits were taken along a known pathway each time. She never ventured far from that corridor – ever, and now she was lost.
Vana could hear the singing and the calling of her name, as it got ever louder and more urgent. She felt an urge to bring tears down her face but she knew that while it worked for some circumstances, this was not one of those. At the peak of her anxiety, she felt the presence of the same benefactor who had assisted her in her dreams when she was training and she drew a deep breath in.
‘Initiate . . . follow the blue glow at your feet and you will find your way!’ came a gentle but firm instruction. Vana whispered a small word of gratitude and saw at her feet, an iridescent blue glow and she went where it lead her and it was not long before Vana emerged on a walkway from which she could witness the gathered crowds far below. With speed and agility, she made her way down, taking care not to slip on moss and eventually, when the crowd was near frantic with anticipation, Vana emerged from the forest and made her entry into the clearing. She could not see Brio anywhere but the crowds enveloped her and she all but forgot about her friend.
‘Vana! Where have you been?’ yelled a near drunkard friend named Heli Bayo, a fellow Woodland Elf. Vana shrugged and laughed away the question and danced away from the beady eyes of the intoxicated Elf. She was touched on the face more times than she could recall, as was the custom of the Elves when celebrating a fellow Elf. She personally did not enjoy it and never had, but custom had it that she had to gracefully accept it. To refuse a touch on her face by an Elf, would bring about a Council of Grief, lodged by the well wisher and they would have enter a dialogue to discuss the enmity between them. If it were solely on one side, then the offender had the right to know the reason that they had been refused. Usually, these Councils cleared away any animosity and in the rare occurrence that they could not resolve it, the two involved would spend three moons in solitude in one of the hollowed out tree trunks in the Grey Mountains. They were littered with thousands of grey hollow tree trunks, remnants of trees who were struck by lightning fire in the great Chaos Cycle and their eerie statuesque forms arose from the earth as monuments to the eons behind them when life was at its primordial beginnings.
 They would spend this time together until they reached an amicable resolution or place of forgiveness. They would then meet with the Council one last time before returning to their enclaves.