The Fallen One

How can I tell you about my home? I should start, perhaps, with its pillars, but not as you understand pillars. They are set firmly upon what you would call infirm, that is, these great marble pillars which ten men holding hands might surround and make up its circumference, are fixed upon nothing. They do not move, but on these thirteen great pillars, twelve now, our whole world stands, for it is a world unto itself. Like your planet is rooted in nothing but a continual descent toward an inferno, yet you never fall, so my world is rooted in nothing as well, but rooted all the same.

It is a place of light, or so I was told. There is darkness there, I found, terrible darkness at the base of those pillars. It is ancient, too, filled with odd traditions that speak of innumerable eternities past.

But perhaps I am not giving you the idea. This is all too broad a perspective. Let me tell you of where my heart aches. For you cannot truly say that you love all parts of earth, but the parts that are your home. This city, even, though you call it your home, I know you hate certain places in it. It is your home, nonetheless, because it contains what you love.

There is a garden, it was one of the first places I . . . I wasn’t born there, you see. No one is, or few are. You’re selected, groomed, and one day you’re told you can come to this magical place and learn the fullness of the secrets they’ve been hinting at for years. It’s overwhelming, to be told you’re coming, and when you get there. So many decisions that you don’t understand that will make huge differences you can’t yet perceive. This garden, it was the first quiet place I was able to be alone after coming. I just wanted to get away.

And I sat there, in the summer, with the swaying trees and a gentle breeze, and all the air was like perfume. There is a pond with—we’ll call them fish for now—swimming back and forth. Time is different there. I sat beside that pond watching the fish for what might be accounted a year, or a day, to some a mere second, but it gave me strength, renewed me.

When I sigh and look wistfully out the window, that’s where I am, beside that pool with the swimming things and the summer wind and the trees’ gentle whispers. High, high in the clouds, upon the marble pillars. One has fallen, and when the others fall, our world, yours, all the worlds, will crumble away to dust.