Fractured Paradise (Volume I)
Awakening
Fractured Paradise: A Novel In Progress
by Oliver Smith
OliverSmith@CyberPoet.com
< Addewid Index < Fractured Paradise Index < Volume I Outline
Synopsis : Story
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Fractured Paradise (Volume I)
Awakening Fractured Paradise: A Novel In Progress by Oliver Smith OliverSmith@CyberPoet.com < Addewid Index < Fractured Paradise Index < Volume I Outline Synopsis : Story |
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[synopsis here] |
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"In the beginning Nerth created the sky and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon it. Then he moved upon the waters." From the Canon of Truth: Genesis, A Hebrew Memory. Tippen felt as though she was new. She didn't know why, but she sensed that there was much more to know and understand. She could feel shapes and space all around her. Below her, she released fibrous tendrils deep into the rich darkness of fertile soil. Above her, she extended woody fingers into openness, free to rise and spead with no limit. She reached out, giving rise to branches, twigs and leaves. The leaves breathed in from the openness and sensed the presence of others like her, but she could not touch them yet. From both above and below she felt something that she somehow understood to be the essence of life. She grew stronger and more curious, filled with a desire to know what all this meant and how she came to be. She was filled with a desire to connect in some way with a presence that was all around her, but elusive, at least for the moment. In the ground, she eagerly probed in all directions, gingerly pausing when encountering stones, roots, caverns and bodies of creatures burrowing or sleeping. She could sense that everything was taking note of her presence. Their life force surged into her as she touched them gently, slowly, yet persistently, and they either yielded or allowed her to pass around them. But how far should she grow? What were the limits to her ability to expand and fill the space surrounding her? And what would she encounter when she did? Her spirit was full of the kinds of questions we all have when we find ourselves in a place we have no knowledge of. But she felt strong and willful, intoxicated by the magic of some spirit that overwhelmed her as she thouched and passed through all that was in her reach. It called out to her, holding out some promise of fulfillment if she continued. This spirit entered her at every time, with each contact and from the air and ground itself. This spirit was within everything, and she consumed it with a compelling thirst. A name formed within her consciousness. "Hesbrid" is what this spirit called itself, and Tippen tried to respond, partaking of the energy that she found herself enfulfed within. "Tippen", the spirit said, "you cannot delay. There is a great need for you to join your grove and there is not much time." An urgency descended upon Tippen as she plied persistently through the ground below and the sky above. But she was also confused, because she didn't know what she was rushing towards, or what she would do when she arrived there. What she did know was that in the ground below there were many creatures that had found their way into the web of roots that she had extended deeply and broadly. She was strongly placed within the ground and she felt confident that there would be no instability as her branches made their way far into the sky. Then, when she was truly convined that there would be no limit to her expansion above, one of her many growing leaves touched something else, that wasn't her, ever so slightly. But it was enough to let her know that the "others" were not that far away, and as soon as the contact was made, thoughts cascaded into her consciousness. "Go ahead, grow, little one," said one of these thoughts, "that is your purpose here, to grow and become one of the the Deru, like the rest of us here." The thoughts were clearly within her, but not from her, and it somehow came through the leaf that came into contact with the "other" one. "Who are you?" said Tippen within her own thoughts, but she felt the thought leave her through the touching leaf. Then another thought came back. "I am Hynaf," said the thought, "one of many within the Deru clan of Trees, just as you are, Tippen." "Tippen?" she responded, "You know me?" She couldn't quite figure out how she knew what her name was, but she was as confident of that as anything at the moment. "Oh, yes, we all know who you are. I am your father and your mother is directly in contact with me. Her name is Gwirion and our roots have joined our Spirits and given rise to a new Spirit: you, the newest of the Deru. But you must not waste your time and energy on conversation with us. You must grow, for you are needed, and soon." "But below me there are many things that I touch and I fear that I may go too far hurt some Spirit there," said Tippen. "You needen't concern yourself with the Life you find within the ground. They all know who you are and why you are here. They will make way for you> There is no life would attack a Tree for we are too powerful, more powerful that all of life within the Inoleth except for the Henin themselves, plus the consequences of attacking are dire, for we can strangle the very lifeforce that gives them consciousness." She knew this somehow, but she didn't question it. Her contact with Hynaf had opened the floodgates of history as remembered by all of the Trees and she started to understand all that they knew, and she now knew that they knew all that the Henin knew and that they were entrusted with this knowlege by the Henin and that it was their role within the Inoleth to protect this knowledge, not allowing any other creature to usurp their power or gain access to this knowledge. The flood of information invading Tippen was overwhelming. In order to accomodate it, she grew, both into the grond below and into the sky above, and as she did so she came into contact with her mother Gwirion and other members of the Deru clan of Trees. And with each new contact her knowledge grew. Beneath her, she spread roots in all directions, and just as Hynaf has said, the ground itself, the stones and all creatures within the ground gave way to her and she breathed in what she now knew was the life-giving essence found within water, that was the means by which Hesbrid's spirit was distributed throughout the Inoleth, and she was only just beginning to understand the true extent the Inoleth, for it contained all that could ever be. One of the first things that she became aware of was that the Deru lived on top of Cuniliad Mountain in the Athivon a range of mountains on Inniscren, an island in the middle of the Biola Sea, and that the Biola Sea covers the Sevid, which divides the Inoleth. All that is above the Sevid is called Addweid and all that it is below is referred to as Annwn, but once again she was getting confused with the amount and depth of information that was descending upon her and she needed to work back to the beginning and see how all of this unfolded, so that she could understand how all of this relates to her and why she was brought forth by Hynaf and Gwirion. She soon came to realize that she was able to move back through the memories of the Trees to the time when the Trees were first created and even before that, for they were given the combined memories of the Henin themselves, which allowed her to see even to the point where the Henin emerged from the Inoleth. Before the Awakening of the Henin, she learned, the Inoleth was a single, unified mass of chaos. And that was the way it remained until Ruvel woke up and cried out, and that, as it turns out, is the great Mystery that is spoken of within the Darogan, the Divination system given by Resam and Dothen to Merca, the first Woman, when Cren placed her and Gure, the first Man, into the Cavnod, but she was still trying to straighten all of that out in her understanding of things. She desperately wanted to know what caused Ruvel to wake up, because that is what started everything, but there was nothing in all of the Tree memories revealing that, so she started with that moment and worked forward, but even that turned out to be rather difficult, because the earliest memories where garbled with irrational efforts on the part of the twelve Henin to speak as each of them were awakened by Ruvel. The confusion continued until one of the Henin, Amser, spoke to Cren, the Henin of Creation, and asked her to create three daughters ( Cinta, Aron, Divola ) and a drum with a mallet. With the mallet, Amser struck the drum with a regular beat and instructed his daughters to take control all of the moments that could ever occur within the Inoleth, for they were all occurring at once, without order. Initially, all moments were given to Divola, who then would release one moment of time with each beat of the drum into the control of Aron, who held it until the next beat of Amser's drum. At that time she would release the moment into the control of Cinta, who would maintain control of all moments that had passed through Aron's control. Before Amser did this, all moments within the Inoleth were occuring at the same time, so there was no way to separate what was happening between the Henin into any order. But with Amser's daughters and his drum, all moments within the Inoleth could only actually occur one at a time, and only one time. With this, the Henin were able to speak in sequence and understand each other, and from that time on, all of history could be remembered in a way that could be understood and preserved, which is how it was eventually passed on to the Trees. Tippen was quite pleased with herself for figuring out the origin of time from the huge volume of information passed onto her, but now her curiousity was bent on piecing together the earliest interactions of the Henin with each other, and how it was that the Trees themselves, came to be, but first she wanted to learn more about this Cuniliad Mountain that she was on and everything else around her. By feeling her way through the dark depths of the ground in which she grew, and by stretching her limbs as far as she could into the openness around her, combined with what she was learning from the Trees, she discovered that she lived on the edge of a clearing in the Deru Grove that she was a part of. In the clearing itself there were numerous mounds scattered on the ground, each with twelve stones buried within them, most of them being in existence for many Anad. Now, the word "Anad" related to time in some fashion, and she did have an instinctive sense of it, but she was perplexed by the it nonetheless. So she went back into the Henin memories to ferret out the origin of this measure of time. Not long after Amser and his daughers established the workings of time within the Inoleth, the Henin themselves realized that it was no only time that needed order, but also the themselves. They derived their life from Hesbrid's Spirit and found that they each needed to breath into themselves her Spirit" at regular interval in order to stay conscious. Without her Spirit they would slip back into the chaos that existed before Ruvel's awakening, and since none of them were interested in allowing that to happen they decided to ensure that they all would be infused with Hesbrid's coninuously and the way they did this was to synchronize their breaths together to the beat of Amser's drum. They would all start and end their breaths at the same time. This cycle of breathing is called the Anad Cycle and one Henin breath is called an "Anad". |
