Kindle Notes & Highlights
Now, I see the fallacy of Contentment’s only law: To live truly to one’s self. But I did not know why this had grown strange to me.
“Although they are the same size,” pondered my mother as she rubbed her chin between her index finger and thumb, “the eastward path is more tread with deeper groves. We should take the path less traveled.”
I forgot my family. Not that they were forgettable people, only that I was a forgetful child with no room but for one thought in my head at any given time.
I named my stone Religion and I was proud of this name. Religion gave me an odd amount of pleasure for such a simple object. It resembled the stones of my home that had been in Contentment.
I tore down the Fence in secret.
As I wept these, my black tears for myself, I heard new voices coming down the path. I cleaned the distress from my face and I stood to praise myself for being further along my way than them.
“Do not be fooled, Lyric,” said the other, “he does not know of his dangers. He looks only for the ferocity of power. This is not a man with whom you should associate for even as he speaks a Beast has its eyes fixed firmly upon him.
The tooth of the Beast is indiscriminate in its prey.”
They didn’t know how much conversation was taking place in my head.
My head became a hive of rage which was so intense that my face could not hold its ferocity and, instead, created a placid visage.
A piece of me began to die; not because of the loss of someone who I knew full well was not the one I desired, but because of the control which I gave up to the Voices so that they might numb my senses and create a palace of my desires in my conscious mind rather than my subconscious thoughts.
I spoke as though I had great knowledge of the world, when it was a grand display of falsehood.
At the time, I had thought Ϛϖdϖmз something beautiful. I placed on his cheek a kiss and felt a spirit enter my body. It made me thirst for obscurity of the Temple. The spirit had not come from him but from within the darkness. The Voices fed upon this force and they flexed their strength within me. My body was no longer mine.
“Are you so backward? We are in chains! We are not free! We have no freedom here; but in Aeda, we were even free to sell ourselves to this bondage and slavery to evil, though we had a King who owns us. We cannot return to Aeda. I fear we have disgraced our bodies too completely. We will no longer be welcomed in Aeda’s lush fields and golden hills. You have stolen me from my way, for I left myself vulnerable to a demon like you. Go back to the hole from which you first crawled!”
“Can you think of only yourself? You are becoming a changed man even as I watch. I fear you will be lost forever. Do not touch me. I do not want to share in your destruction.”
FreeThinker was funny company. His jokes were simple and at times made me cringe; but his mastery of the vernacular was more proficient than I had yet heard. It was not difficult to see why the erudite were those to join in his rebellion. In his company were three: his daughters Crude and Lewd, and their strange cousin from the East, Mystic.
I learned a much different science having grown up in Aeda for most my life. However, I compromised my knowledge to that of the knowledge of the Desert. I felt quite knowledgeable. I ignored all fallacies because no one seemed to care. Why I should care, either, was beyond me.
My experiences told me this must be a good power. Because it felt good, I believed it good.
Never had an arachnid found favor in my eyes. Never had such hideousness appeared so attractive to me, while still causing me to fear a slow, poisonous path to the hauntingly void trappings of death.
Oh, scrumptious one, you have willingly chosen to lose your path.
“My mind lacks new ways to tell you of your idiocy. You are in no position to lead. She will not make your life easier. No, you would drag her behind you as a chained animal, rubbing her into the filth of the dirt which flows from your every lying word and worse, your false actions.”
You are what most attracts each devil that prowls this land. Yet, they can’t touch you for the powers that protect you. This entire land is one contradiction—goçips, devils, beasts and angels all rage against one another—you, my child, are the most delicious contradiction of all.
You are an Aedite yet have eaten the honey and the milk of that blessed land.
