Grayland
A story about how to navigate in a complex world
Tradition of Change
“White be right and black be wrong, swallow your soup and let hunger be gone.” The spoon was a perfect glistening white and its contents glowed bright as the sun, but still, the pale child pushed it away.
His mother however was not deterred. The ritual of spoon-feeding was one solid motion in three parts — the rearing spoon, the child's refusal, and the spoon's retreat. And this motion had great inertia.
The child again pushed away the spoon, his soft edges and features contrasting with the sharp, straight lines and angles of his mother.
Again she pushed the spoon towards his mouth, for all children must eat.
The child was older, his lines and edges not so soft as they once were, but not so hard as those around him.
Peter and his mother stood at the corner of their home, a square gleaming white dais that hovered over an onyx black oil that forever glistened below them. Speckled across the ocean of oil were other daisies, gleaming white shapes with hard sharp angles connected by bright white bridges.
Their eyes rested on a single neighboring platform, a great octagon. And upon that platform stood a man and his daughter, bright white lines and angles making their forms. They watched the girl’s aged mother being lowered into the onyx black oil, as was tradition. And as was tradition, Peter was to marry her tomorrow morning. A chill ran down Peter’s spine just thinking about it.
Peter had played with her as a child, stacking bricks and rolling balls. His castles and towers tottered and sprawled, and she’d chastise him for his disorder – for she was quite well suited as a bricklayer. Perfect ortholinear towers, rigid and angular. If the block itself was an instruction, she had followed it precisely.
“Mother, why wasn’t father lowered? Or why don’t I remember it?” Peter looked away from the Lowering to his mother.
His mother did not take her eyes away from the scene, “The oil takes us all one way or another.” Then she looked directly at him, “Just as we all must marry.”
“Why?” Peter had grown old enough to know the consequences of refusal. “Because it's been done before? Doesn't that mean nothing new will be done?”
His mother held his arm and looked at the glistening white family on the opposite platform, “No, new things were done before, there is a tradition of doing new things.”
Her son frowned, “But how will we know when something new is to be done? What is the tradition of change?”
His mother gave a knowing smile. She tugged at his arm, trying to straighten out his lines and remove his smudges. Tomorrow he was to be wed. His family's land would combine with his wife's, their children's land would split, and the cycle would go on.
That night he sat, as he would often sit, on the edge of their platform and looked off into the distance at the thousands of gleaming white patches intersected with straight and narrow bridges. But this night he turned his eyes to the gray mists. While the land that they lived in was vast, the gray mists to the north were vaster. All passage to the north was barred by an infinite sea of gray, further barred by great white gates that protected their lands from the encroaching mist.
There were whispers about the gray. None who entered ever returned, and the last to have entered left nearly fifty years ago. It was far too easy to get lost in the great, vast mist. But there were other whispers as well. There were whispers that in the gray there was the center. There was the truth.
At midnight, when all slept, he woke and began to rummage through his father’s old things. There was little left of his father’s possessions: old bowls, strange misshapen carvings, and a walking stick. From afar the walking stick was a glowing white line like all others Peter had seen, but on closer inspection the glow was not so white and the shape not so straight.
He kissed the sleeping form of his mother goodbye, and for a moment the hard edges did not grate his fluid form. He then walked towards one of the great gates that barred out the gray.
The Mists
He stood before the great white gate. There were no hinges, there was no key, no opening. It simply barred. If it had been decided that the gray mist was not to be visited, why have an opening for the gate?
He knew two things: first, he was not able to find what he needed in his home. In this land of black and white, the decision was made before he was born, and the decision he could not bear.
But he knew one other thing. This gate lay farthest from his land and closest to the land of gray. As a child, he visited this gate, to be taught the dangers of the gray, and the pristine sanctity of the white. But he had noticed what others did not, that the gray mists swirled ever so near the white gate. And that in a corner, the mists had crept up, and the white gate's form, shining and pale, was slowly becoming gray.
And so, as he returned to the great white gate, he saw that edge had been further encroached upon. The indomitable white form, now oozed with gray, he pushed his hand against it, expecting to feel solid resistance, an implacable, immovable obstinance. But instead, it bent and bowed.
The gray moved to his form. He pushed and dug. And slowly, the gray bent around him, and was moved. And a hole was breached in the great white gate.
If his form had been any more rigid, his shoulders would have prevented him from slipping through. He shifted and slithered, his dim, pale form dropping on the far side of the great white gate.
In front of him stretched a formless mass. Gray mists barred his way for what seemed like an eternity. But, he knew. In the gray was the center. And in the gray was the answer that he sought.
He stood before the sea of mists and shivered. He looked up and there too he saw only gray. Peter did turn back to look upon the far side of the great white gate, and to his surprise, the gate shone gray.
He reached his hand out in wonder to touch the gray gate. It felt soft and warm.
He turned back to the mists. His hand clutched his father’s walking stick and gritted his teeth and embraced the tension in his back. He took his first step into the gray.
His march through the gray mists seemed interminable. There was neither day nor night here. And no direction seemed any different from the others. Soon, he was fully lost in the mists.
He was lost. He was lost. He was lost.
The way back to his home was barred to him. And all that he saw was his own pale form. All that he heard was the clank of his walking stick against the ground and the sound of the wind.
He wondered what was happening, back home. Did his mother worry about him? Or did she worry about the ritual of his marriage, and her destiny now broken. Did she think he in despair had thrown himself into the oils? Perhaps his own father had done this very thing and lived out here in the gray.
The pristine white bridges no longer directed his path. The traditions of his land no longer pushed and pulled at him. In some ways, he missed their tug. The cruel inertial regularity of his home gave him heartache. He thought more fondly of his mother's hard lines. He even thought for a moment that, yes, he could tolerate the placid smile of his bride-to-be and her pale, vapid eyes.
He stepped in any given direction and followed his whim. At one point he smelled the stew his mother always made and followed. He caught the glint of white veins in the ground and followed them. And once there was a great black smear in the distance. But each time they vanished as he grew near until he heard in the distance a great murmur, as if many distant voices were asking questions and making affirmations, slowly, carelessly, speaking on top of each other.
“Change… preposterous… fallacy… truth…” They sounded like a great hall filled with professors all trying to teach each other without a single one listening.
The voices drew him in. The mists slowly dissipated, and he saw a strange and foreign land that sprawled before him. There was no bright, shining light, nor black ooze. Instead, there was an undulating plane of gray in darker or lighter hues, speckled with smaller splotches of charcoal or blurred with lighter patches of nimbus.
The inhabitants had not the sharp lines or crystalline form, but instead were more akin to him. Their forms blurred and bent, billowed and puffed, deflated and inflated — ever-changing they were.
And there was not one of them that ceased to chatter. “The evidence is lacking, clearly lacking.” “As you can see if we extrapolate we can reach…” “ And so we did a local experiment giving each man a small carved mushroom.” All around him, he saw them reach up and stroke their chins, point into the air and declare hallowed truths, or slam their fists together as if breaking apart fabled postulates, their eyes constantly sparkling with new ideas.
Grayland
Peter confidently strode up to a group of three, unbothered by their different form and different shades. He had to hear what they were talking about.
The soft click-click-click of his walking stick punctuated the air of murmurs and shadows. Only one seemed to notice, the other two were busy with their ideas.
When he approached, he heard them speak.
“No, no, the center is not there. The center is not where it is darkest or lightest. But, in the area that is the mean, the center of gray!”
“No, no, no. Look at the mists that surround us. Surely they demarcate the extremity of the center. And certainly in the center of the mist must be the center of the centers. Not based on color or some folly as such.”
The two men prattled on. A third listened, either nodding or shaking their head vehemently as their mouth was working on a bowl of gray mush. Peter simply watched. What was this center? And why did they care for it? And which man was right? Both seemed to make perfectly valid points. Perhaps there was some combination of their points that might be the solution.
It was only after minutes of the conversation that they noticed Peter, but only for a moment. One pointed towards the walking stick. “What a strange color.”
Peter looked down towards the stick, and indeed the color did look strange. A bright white against the background of gray. Even against Peter's own feet now looked gray compared to the stick.
The men took a moment to look upon the stick, and then pointed their gazes back to each other to resume their discussion. Just before they began to speak, Peter voiced his question. “What is the center?”
“What is the center?” The men looked at Peter. Their eyes seemed hungry for questions.
One stepped forward to answer, “The center is, of course, the source of truth. It's where all things come from.”
Another responded, “No, no, no. The center is truth itself. Everything is based around this center. We can only measure how good or bad things are relative to the center…”
The third man nodded and stroked his chin. Both men were trying to explain their versions of the center to Peter. But Peter only heard one word, which was truth. “How do you know what's true?”
“How do you know the truth?” Both men laughed. “How do you know what's true? Look around you. Truth is here and there. All you must do is simply measure.”
The other man interjected, “No! The truth is relative, of course. Your measurements could be different from my measurements. Or, you see, your light could be my dark.”
Peter shook his hand. “What I meant is, is there a right answer?”
Both men nodded in agreement, “Well, of course. In Grayland, we are looking for precisely that, an exact and precise answer to all questions.” The man’s hand shot up in true pontification.
Peter gripped his walking stick tightly, he knew coming here was the right idea, and this confirmed it. All that was left to do was ask. “I have a question, then.” He took a deep breath and continued, “There's a girl back where I am from, and my mother says I should marry this girl, and I'm not sure what I should do…” All three men nodded. This was a problem that they could to solve.
“Well, do you love this girl?”
Peter's head turned. “Love? What do you mean?”
“Do you feel for her? Do you want to be with her?”
The other man shook his head. “No, no, no, it's not if you want to be with her now, but do you want to be with her forever? For your whole life? Will you want to be with her in the future?”
Peter's grip began to loosen on the stick. “I don't know. I don't want to be with her now, but maybe in the future I could…”
“Well, the answer to this certainly lies within. You must self-examine. You must look at yourself.”
The other man shook his head. “No, no, no, the answer lies without. It lies with her. You must get to know her. Spend your time posing questions to this woman.”
Peter lost his focus on what the men were saying and cast his eyes back to the gray mists. This got him no closer to what he was looking for in the first place. Either of these men could be right, and either could be wrong.
Then the third man spoke up, “You can always, of course, ask the Great Empiricist.”
All three men nodded.
“The Great Empiricist?”, questioned Peter.
“Yes, the Great Empiricist”, the third man cast his eyes down as if invoking a diety. “He alone can help you find the truth when the truth is dim. Some even say that he is the center.” Though all men including the speaker shook their heads at that.
“No, no, no. That is not true. The true center is not in the man.” One man grumbled.
“So, what does this Great Empiricist do?” Asked Peter.
“He measures your soul. He has measured the souls of many millions of men, and knows the parameters of the universe. Given all this information, he, of course, will know what the right answer is. He resides there in the tower.” All three men pointed at a distant point. And indeed, Peter could see it with his naked eye.
Unlike the rest of Grayland, the tower looked straight and well-made, with precise little battlements thrown out against the gray. It was two or three levels high with a great open door at its base. As Peter looked upon it from different angles, it looked both a bit lighter and darker, than the rest of the land of gray.
Peter thanked the men, who immediately began another argument on the nature of natures, and began to walk to the tower.
As he approached he saw more and more groups of grey men, all deep in conversations revolving around the center and truth, ought and ought not, and shoulds and shouldn'ts. He found, as he pushed closer towards the middle of Grayland, that voices spoke more in unison. Instead of crowds of three, there would be crowds of hundreds, each speaking with unanimous voices, arguing the same points, going back and forth.
It would have been easy to get lost in the crowds. Peter squeezed past hundreds of gray shoulders and hips and bellies and hunches. One gray was arguing against darker hues when on one side of a crowd, and when he was pushed into the other side he began to shout, “The paler, the better in Greyland!” Peter kept his eyes up and focused on the tower until he looked upon the great door that led to the Great Empiricist.
The Great Empiricist
The tower's form had looked regular from a distance, but as Peter had approached it, he could see the irregularities.
The color was not pure, and the form was not ortholinear. There were curves when there should be straight lines, and straight lines when there should be curves. And the reason it looked both darker and lighter from a distance was because it indeed was. Part was darker, part was lighter, and they blended well into each other.
Peter watched a man leave the tower and yell to his friends. “Yes, yes, the empiricist measured me, and I found the right answer. I found the truth.” The friends’ heads bobbed up and down. “Yes, yes, what is your truth? What is it?”
Peter clenched his walking stick. Yes, this was the place. He was to find his answer here. He went into the tower and walked up the many flights of stairs. On and on they spiraled, sometimes left, sometimes right, with only a dim gray light guiding his way. The stairs increased in height and sometimes decreased. Peter had to be careful lest he would stumble in the house of the Great Empiricist.
At the top sat an old man, his form a bit more definite than the rest, but still gray. However, he opened his eyes, Peter could see they were lighter than those of the typical inhabitant, though not so bright as his walking stick.
Peter felt almost at ease in this man's presence. His grip on his walking stick lessened and his back and shoulders hung loose. Whatever happened here, Peter was ready. He was ready for the truth.
The man looked at Peter for more than one moment. His eyes squinted as he looked at Peter's walking stick, still shining. “Another has come to seek their truth.” His voice was nasal and crackled a bit as he spoke, but the words came quickly from his mouth.
He approached Peter. He held out his hands, putting them upon Peter's shoulders, upon his head. His fingers felt cold, but they were strong and practiced. They danced over Peter’s body and made strange symbols in the air. The old man would mutter to himself, “16.7 here, 32.4 here…”. He held his fingers up to Peter’s eyes, and watched them dart back and forth. He pulled out his tongue and flicked it. He looked intently between Peter’s toes. And then with a snap of his fingers, the old man was done. He sat down and said to Peter, “Yes, I have measured your soul. We may now begin. What is the truth you are seeking?”
Peter shifted the walking stick from hand to hand. This was it. He had found the truth. He had found the center. “I want to know whether I should marry?”
“Hmm, Do you want to marry?”
“Oh no, I don't think so…” The man raised his hand and stopped Peter. Peter waited.
The old man lowered his hand. “Yes, I have measured your soul. And yes, I see. Your best path, your future, your truth is that you should not marry.”
Peter was shocked. That was it. He was done. He felt lightheaded and his hands lost their grip. The walking stick tumbled down, clattering on the floor.
“Where did you get that?” The Great Empiricist narrowed his eyes.
Peter sat on the ground to steady himself. “This?” Peter reached over and picked the walking stick up. He noticed how it shone. So bright and so pure, against the backdrop, and even against Peter’s own hands. For the first time since he arrived, Peter looked down at his own body and gasped. Peter was nearly gray himself.
“Yes, now tell me, where did you get that?”
Peter looked down upon it and sighed. “I’m not from here. My land is white. ‘White be right and black be wrong, we guide your path, so doubt be gone’. There, everyone knows the same truth. Everyone but me…”
The old man, whose eyes had been narrowed, now had eyes that were filled with tears. “By the white, you are real!” And he cried. And he cried.
Peter went to the old man and carried him back to his chair and left him there and waited for his tears to dry. “I too, am from your land.”
“What?”
“Yes”, the old man said. “I too, am from your land. I came here seeking answers. And I found, to my dismay, only those that were seeking the truth.”
“To your dismay? How can this land, full of truth-seekers, be a tiring sight for a truth-seeker like yourself?”
The old man shook his head. “No. They don't seek ‘truth’. You see, I don't measure a soul, I simply ask to find out what they want and tell them that that is their truth.”
“What do you mean?”
“What I mean to say is that those that believe the center is in the darkest part of Grayland live in the darkest part of Grayland. I mean that those that believe the truth is carried by those with the most number, have the most number. I simply said your truth was what you wanted. I did no measurement.
“I found my way here looking for the truth. And when I did not find it, I tried to find my way back. But it was impossible. Navigating through Grayland and through the mists was too hard. I would always find myself back here. But maybe…” The old man shook his head.
“What?”
“I brought no part of my home with me. You brought your walking stick. Perhaps in some way, that relic, that which does not belong here, can be used to help guide you back.”
“Guide me back?”
“Yes, guide you back. There is no truth here. I've spent my life in this land. And with my cunning and guile, I've been proclaimed the wisest man in all Grayland. But despite that, I've still not found the truth. If you wish to remain, you may. You may even become my apprentice. Become the next Great Empiricist. But if you do, know this… Your life will be a constant search for truth. And in your heart, you will know that you can never find it.”
Peter felt again the longing for his home. The longing for the careful bridges and raised platforms. The longing for knowing what should and should not be done. He bade the old man goodbye. And Peter walked towards the mist.
Emergent
Peter took a deep breath and plunged into the mist. He heard the clamoring behind him, the many voices arguing over the truth, trapped in their own cycles, almost like a ritual of his own land.
At first, the sound of the clack, clack, clack of his walking stick hitting the ground was faint, but then, as the chatter behind him diminished, the sound of the clack grew louder and louder, until it was the only thing he heard. And unlike before, the stick was the one thing that Peter could see, could disambiguate. His hands no longer shone, his feet were no longer glowing, instead, it was but his walking stick, a pure white line shining out in a sea of gray.
Peter pushed forward. What he sought was not here. The truth could not be found in Grayland, even if the center were there. Peter knew in his heart that he'd rather be roughly right than precisely wrong.
As he wandered into the gray, his mind started to wander as well. He thought of home. He thought of what he would tell his mother. He wondered whether he would wed, or whether he would break with tradition. His mother's hard, straight lines and blinding white form, in some ways, comforted him, but he longed for something more. He just knew not what.
As he walked, he thought he saw a white in the distance, yes, to the left, and he turned his direction and started walking towards it, but slowly, as he moved, the white flickered away. Then he thought he heard the soft sound of the voice. Yes, it was to the right, and he moved to the right. Constantly the fantastic lights, dark specters or strange murmurings would catch his attention and lead him astray.
He wandered and wandered, wherever his whim would take him, and suddenly, the mist abated, and he was back in Grayland.
What? How did he wind up back here? Hadn't he been walking away from it this whole time?
Again, he plunged into the mist, and he wandered, the gray enveloping everything that was. His mind wandered and lost itself as well. He would turn and bend and twist, until finally he wound up in Grayland.
Again and again he tried, and to no avail. He was trapped in Grayland.
As he returned, he looked into the distance and saw the tower of the Great Empiricist. He thought of returning, becoming that man's apprentice, living the rest of his life here. It would not be so bad. Eventually, the murmuring would die away. But had it always been so bleak here? Had it always been so gray?
As he thought back to the old man, his mind wandered to something the old man had said. He looked down. His walking stick gleamed a brilliant white. Yes, perhaps that was the answer. But how?
He plunged into the mists again, and he focused on his walking stick. It clacked, clacked, clacked. Would it tell him which way to go? Would it guide him? He stopped and listened. Did it speak out? Was there a shadow? Was there anything about it that would point the way? And in minutes of standing and staring, there was nothing. The old man was a fool. The walking stick was but a stick. It had no soul. It had no will. It had no truth. It was useless.
In anger, he took the stick up and cast it away. Clatter, clatter, clatter. And all around him was gray. He knew if he let his mind wander away, he would wind back up in Grayland. It was all that was left to do. He could do no more.
He started to let his mind wander, but out of the corner of his eye he saw a glow. A white glow. Was this but the mirage that he had seen before? No. It was his stick. Off in the distance, softly glowing. He started to walk towards his stick.
A thought crossed his mind. Was this the right way? How did he know that his stick was thrown in the right direction? That it would lead him out of here? He was almost to the stick again, and he stopped. And at that moment, the moment the stick came into view, he finally understood.
It was not as if the stick would show him the way. He had known the way out. He had known if he was able to walk straight, to walk away from Grayland, he would make it out the other side of the mist. The problem was once you were in the mist, everything was gray. Your mind would lose track of its surroundings. And slowly, you would start to walk in the direction of your whim. Your twisted, bent body would lose its way in Grayland. And for some reason, the whim and the want, and the mist, would always lead you back towards Grayland.
As he found his walking stick again, he bent down to it, picked it up, and cast it in the same direction he had thrown it before. And then kept walking. Yes, this was the way to lead out of the gray. He would ignore the fantastic lights he saw or the dark specters. He would ignore strange murmurings. He would ignore his thoughts. And he would follow his walking stick. He would follow the way that had been laid down before him.
The journey continued. His soft steps made no sound. He would approach, approach, approach, reach out for the white light, and then cast it further in front. He would hear the clatter. And he would repeat, again and again and again. This simple process, repeated for what Peter thought was forever. And then suddenly, as he walked towards the white light, the mist abated. And he was free from the gray. Peter found himself not in the gray, and not at his home.
Inversion
He stumbled towards the bright white walking stick. As he bent down to pick it up, his head felt woozy, and his legs felt weak. The mists were gone, yes, and so was the gray. But before him was not his home. Before him were not the towering white gates and gleaming white platforms, but instead a pitch black, ebony surface. And the gate, just as black as the oils that surrounded his gleaming home. Peter fell and as he did, he thought he saw in front of him another shape, another figure.
When Peter woke, he did not know how long it had been. His eyes fluttered open and tried to adjust themselves to the light. He couldn't tell where he was.
Everything around him was once again black. The sheets, the room, the bed itself, pitch and dire black. He cast the blanket off.
His arms trembling, his gray form twisted and bent. He rolled off the bed. The floor felt hot to his touch. He was trapped in some unearthly prison, a hell. He crawled, making it to the door, and pushed it open to reveal a nightmare landscape. A large black platform as large as the one his home was situated upon. But this time, surrounded by white.
He crawled. All he had to do was make it to the edge of the platform to drop himself in. He felt weak, didn't know how long it had been and how much more he could endure. And as he finally got to the lip of the platform, he was able to see the white with more clarity.
It was strange. Yes, it was a bright white, but it looked strangely like the oil that had surrounded his home in the past. A slick, slimy surface that almost looked jagged like a sea of knives. He needed but one more heave. He could make it.
Yes, he could. He pushed his arms against the black platform. With a strange lucidity he realized it didn't feel hot. It just felt solid. And threw himself into the water. Into the oils below. But not before he felt arms on his shoulders, wrenching him back towards the black platform. His eyes fluttered again and he passed out.
The next time he awoke, he was in bed. But this time, the sheets were more tightly bound. And this time, he saw a figure in front of him. Not completely pure black, but close. A gentle ebony. She looked young, like him. And her form was solid, untwisted, and unbent. Her form was none of the straight, stoic lines that had defined his childhood or his bride-to-be, but instead gentle sloping curves.
She held before him a bowl of soup, it seemed. But neither bowl nor spoon, nor liquid was the pure white he was used to. Instead, they were all deep black. She pushed the spoon towards him, as he weakly pushed it away. The spoon retreated, but then slowly advanced back towards him. The process repeated again. The ritual, once started as a child in his home, was finished as a man abroad. And slowly he began to eat.
He didn't speak. Not for a while, at least. He would eat, and exhausted, he would pass back out. He would awake to find her sitting at his bed again. The ritual would again commence. Eat. Eat. Eat. But this time with less fervency. This time with fewer retreats. Until he would eat on his own. Eventually, he was able to sit up on the bed. And eventually, she took him outside.
He sat on the edge of her platform. In some ways, it was similar, and in some ways, it was different. The platform was pitch black, yes. And its edges were round. The neighboring platforms were ellipses and circles or strange shapes bounded by curves. But there were similarities. The platforms hovered above an evil surface. But this surface was white, bright white.
The platforms were also connected. There were arching bridges that connected each. Upon each platform, a family would reside. And he had a feeling that these families would marry, combine, birth and split just as they did in his home. And that process would go on forever and ever.
At first, he was uneasy. The pitch black sometimes reminded him of the oil that had surrounded his original home. And he would recoil. But slowly he learned. Both she and the land with their soft, curved lines grew on him as the days went by.
“Peter.” He looked up from his soup. She seemed more serious than normal. “How did you get out of town? There were very few that could open the gates. My family is one of three. And after I found you, I went to the other three families and none had their child missing.”
Peter gave an answer that was neither black nor white, “I slipped through a hole in the gate. As the gray mist had encircled it, a hole appeared.”
“But why? Why did you leave?”
“I left to find the truth.” Partially true once again.
“And did you find it?”
Peter didn't respond. He left his home to find an answer to his question that was still unanswered. He found no center, and he found no truth.
But here, slowly, he began to share more. And she began to listen. He shared his travels. He shared of Grayland and the strange, inhabitants that resided there.
She nodded her head. “Yes. You looked just like one of those creatures. At first, I thought you were some monster. Some evil form that comes to haunt us out of the gray.”
And then he told her of the Great Empiricist. He eventually confessed that he had run. He'd fled because he was to be wed to someone with whom he had no love. Her eyes did not narrow in suspicion but instead cast themselves down in acknowledgment. “Yes. Some of our ways might err. Sometimes, we only see one right answer.”
As he ended this story they laughed. He smiled. He told her stories of his childhood, and his bride-to-be, changing details ever so slightly.
She never once asked him about his family and where they resided.
Until today. As he awoke, he found her sitting on the edge of his bed, though this time with no soup. Instead, she had brought before him an object draped in a black cloth.
“Peter, I trust you. I do. I feel like you've been telling me the truth, mostly. But there's one thing that you can't explain. Or you haven't yet.”
Peter looked confused. His heart trembled. He was sure. He had told her almost everything. Everything except for the land he came from.
Nostos
How could she guess? How could she know that? The black cloth was in the air for a moment. From behind the cloth shone his bright white walking stick. And Peter wondered whether it always shone in such a menacing way.
“Where are you from, Peter? I believe I deserve the truth.”
Peter reached out to the stick, and upon grabbing it, he noticed his hand was no longer gray, and it was no longer white, but instead it was a smooth, deep black. As he touched the stick, he almost recoiled as if it were hot, but he forced the thought out of his mind and took it up once more.
“The land south of you is a land of glowing white platforms, sitting atop a black oil, as evil and as repugnant as your glistening white oil is here.” He told her the full story. He told her of where he came from, of its traditions and customs, so alike yet so different. He told her of his mother, of what she really looked like, and he told her of his bride-to-be. He told her how worried his mother must be, how afraid, as nothing like this has happened before, and she was such a creature of habit. And perhaps his bride-to-be, perhaps she was saddened as well.
He cried.
He liked it here. He loved being with her, but he missed his mother. He missed her stew. He missed the simple way she viewed the world. Most of all, he missed her love. She listened, thoughtfully, and at the end of the story, he silently watched her for a while, and then she reached out her hand. At first, he took his hand to grab hers, but she shook it away. She wanted the walking stick.
Peter reached out to give it to her. Her hand was trembling. He saw her clench her teeth, as if waiting to be shocked. He gently placed the walking stick in her hand, and she did not drop it. She held it steadily.
“This is where you come from”. Her eyes were no longer averting from the light, but instead looking deeply into it.
“Yes, this is where I come from.” She put the walking stick down, and embraced him. He embraced her back.
Later that year, they married. It was strange, as only her side of the family was there at the wedding, but they accepted him nonetheless. Very few of the people in this land knew his story, and Peter preferred to keep it that way, fearing what might happen if people knew of the land to their south.
The years passed, and she became with child. Peter’s smooth dark hand felt the small kicks as he touched his wife’s belly.
They were happy, but with increasing frequency, Peter found himself going towards the old trunk that stored his walking stick, and gazing upon it. He took it out of the chest, and talked to his wife.
“I promise to be back before the baby is born.”
She gave him a deep frown. “That's hardly a promise that you know you can keep.”
“Have I broken any promise yet?”
“No, but nor have you made one so foolhardy.” She gazed at him, towards the walking stick and towards his eyes. She could see a small glimmer there, a small sparkling of white.
“Keep your promise.” She said with steely resolve. She did not trust the place he hailed from, despite trusting him.
“I will. I simply have to let my mother know that I'm alright.” She opened the gate, and he stepped into the mist, casting his walking stick in front of him.
Peter's mother stood at the side of her platform. She looked across to the one of her son's old bride-to-be. That platform had already merged. She had taken another man, and upon the platform she saw a young child, scampering to and fro.
It was not always the case, but this time she cried. Peter had disappeared the day before his wedding. At first, they thought he was hiding somewhere. But then, as the days turned to weeks, to months, and to years, the gradual conclusion became clear. Peter must have thrown himself into the oils that surrounded the platforms, as some youths had done in the past, and some would still do.
But she still grieved. She grieved, not only for the loss of her son, but for the small hope that he was alright. For the small hope that he would come back.
“Mother.” She heard and started. She almost turned around, but she felt a strong hand on her back. “Don't. Not yet.”
“Peter?” She asked.
“Yes.”
She didn't recognize the voice, not fully. Partially, it did sound like him. Older. Huskier. Grown. “Peter?” She began to cry in earnest.
In front of her, she saw an object. Something that was thrown by the man behind. It clattered to the ground, and then lay silent. It was Peter's old walking stick. She'd recognize it anywhere. The not-solidly-straight lines. The slight bow. The small nodule in the middle.
Peter frowned, unsure of what to say, “Hey… I can’t and I won’t stay long. But I had to let you know that I'm okay. I found a woman. And I love her. And you’re… Well you’re going to be a grandma.”
His mother couldn't keep the tears from her eyes. She wept and wept.
“I have to go though, I promised I’d be back and it’s not safe for me to be here. I just…” Peter exhaled deeply, “I just I couldn’t let you think that I was dead. Or you’d done something wrong… It was just time for me to make a change.”
Peter's hand lifted from her back, and turned away to go. His mother stopped crying and looked over her shoulder at him. Her mouth gaped. Her hands trembled, then stopped. She pointed at him.
“Monster.”
Peter had known this might happen, he was nearly pitch black. “No. Mother, it's me.”
“Monster!” She called out, trying to get her neighbor’s attention. He tried to settle her down. He reached out. He wanted to embrace her. She recoiled.
“Please, it's me. I'm still the same.”
She backed from Peter until she stood at the edge of the platform.
“Mother, please.” Peter took another step forward and tried to grab her. He lunged.
He embraced her for one moment before she threw him away. He toppled and teetered on the edge. “White be right, black be wrong, my Peter is already dead and gone.” And she pushed. Peter fell, toppling into the black oil.
He plummeted down, his heart racing. The weight of his decision to return pulled him down. And then, the oil embraced him.
It did not burn, nor sting. Instead, he felt warm. He felt like he was returning home. His head ducked under the oil and his vision went black. He thought he might suffocate, but he felt strangely fine with holding his breath.
Suddenly the peace was interrupted. He felt the walls around him spasm and push. He was being forced out. In sudden agony, his warmth was interrupted and light filled his vision. Where was he? He cried out.
Then just as suddenly a dark warm blanket was wrapped around him and a smooth hand held him aloft. A black curved face greeted his, and he smiled and laughed.
But as he grew, something about the smooth curved lines and the all too black forms grated on him. “Was this all there was?” He thought as his mother tried to spoon-feed him.
“Black be right and white be wrong, swallow your soup and let hunger be gone.”
This is awesome Nate! I didn't realize when you said you were gonna write things that includes fiction. Great job!