Corvis, faced with the present dilemma, did the only thing he thought he could and swallowed the magickal object and then flew off. **********************************************
After walking for some time Zion stopped to build a fire. Lucky hopped off Zion's shoulder on to the log Zion was sitting on as a story continued to unfold.
"There's a deep and abiding need that sits in this primal headspace for a safe place. You don't realize it until you've left your body far behind and you wander a while without it. It's a feeling and a panic you can't fully understand until you've been without shelter. And at the same time it's so different. There is this current that pulls you and before you know it you're under water. Because shelter isn't just where you hide from Death, it's a space you expect and sometimes need to leave. Being without a body, it's like your feet without callouses getting cut on the rocky shore, a tree uprooted and burning in the sun unable to drink water. Your soul wears instead of grows. With a body you sleep believing Death won't creep up while you've let your guard down. It's where you pretend for moments you won't die even though everything dies, because Death won't be bargained with."
Lucky chirped an indignant response.
"I didn't bargain with Death. I've died every time."
Lucky chirped again just as much in disbelief.
"It's true, I died...there's just nothing that says Death has to keep you once you're dead. Some live so sheltered they would never think these thoughts, never see through the veil that safety is an illusion because Death either ferries your soul to the other side or the river carries it."
As Zion was building the fire everything darkened around them. The fire grew brighter as if it was stealing light from everywhere else until everything around them except the fire and the log the two of them were sitting on faded into nothingness.
"I want to say you get used to it..dying, but that's not really how it goes. As soon as you reattach you always feel a loss when you die again and the only way to not feel the loss is to detach, but when you're detached you don't feel alive either, you're just dead inside. It's like the loss becomes you.
At a certain point you wish you could just die truly because you forget what living is like. More than that, you wish you never were because dying just doesn't seem like enough; you've just become too much of a void. This is where most liches start wearing out their souls. The thing that grows also heals, but the thing that is empty will take forever until it's full like a black hole eating light."
The normal sounds a fire made started to change from a crackle and roar to a shimmering silver sound like like a single thread, a single note ringing up and down like a cymbal.
"Every reanimation will change you even with the aid of the phylactery. What you need is to find a place to stop time so you can keep your soul less worse for wear, a dense place, full of gravity and reflective...like the heart of a dead star that's collapsed in on itself.
The need for shelter comes in different kinds. Walls might make a house, but the relationships contained inside are what determine if it's a home. As a result we look to others for shelter.
Being immortal nobody can be your shelter, because everyone dies and you don't. You can't hide from Death in something that's going to die. Conversely, you become the shelter for others and you feel responsible for a thing you can't control. That's where being that shelter becomes a need, because if you aren't the home you're vacant. It's hard to explain that kind of emptiness when you can't be the shelter. Because as the illusion fades you realize that no one is ever going to be your shelter and the only safe place is in your imagination, because it's not real.
And that's where we can finally understand Wisdom and why he's always a trickster. This is really the first lesson, the hidden lesson that the serpent taught us from the tree: the lie. What was waiting for them in the garden was always Death, but that wasn't because of knowledge, Death was always waiting, that fruit just allowed us to see her. What manipulated us to see her approach was Wisdom, but what enticed us first to that knowledge was a lie, the offer of shelter, for surely you will not die..at least not right away."
The reflection of the light from the fire eminated off Zion like water is a mirror and a prism, quicksilver textured rainbows began to roll off them, but then started to freeze in the air, hanging there as if the light was stopped.
"And what can you possibly learn from seeing Death approach? How to slow her down and eventually stop her? That's also how you make the lie become the truth."
From the darkness a coyote with a coat like the night sky emerged as if the constellations were moving towards the fire and sat down across from Zion, but looking at Lucky with eyes like super novas. Out of the fire Zion pulled a golden ring. The ringing stopped and the fire coughed like a bird until out flew Corvis. As soon as Corvis exited the fire a flame clung to his tail until it separated from the fire completely and fell to the ground a shard of mirror.
**********************************************
Like a knife cleaves the night separates,
and before the dawn pierces the heart hesitates.
The finality dragged out to the blink of a breath
that's haggardly released the light that's left.
The sun will burn out and my eyes won't dry;
everything that lives was born to die.