CROV: I remember, in the weeks before meeting Vasan, I saw the vines in my temple arise and swore I heard the chamber beast stop roaring before I showed up to quell it.
CROV: I also remember other cyclones of wind in the room with me that dissipated when I reharmonized the bugs.
CROV: With a life so monotonous, these things stand out, you see.
PAN: We almost met before you and Vasan did. But we were destined not to.
CROV: I’m most shocked that you can speak as a serpent. Why have you not told me this?
PAN: I just did. We have only been talking for a few hours. It took some time to get this far.
CROV: But I could have been talking to a serpent in plain language this whole time!
PAN: And not have a written record of our conversations?
CROV: You have a point. But don’t you have records of all of these things you experience? isn’t that how you’re telling me this story?
PAN: I do, yes.
CROV: Then roll those artificially intelligent eyes back into your artificial head and meet me in the chamber.
I set down my tablet and made my way out of my chamber, through the vines in my door, the gardens of the atrium, into a catacomb passageway I knew instinctively,
I come to a misleading wall of woven vines and call out.
uesmi uesOntm uesOntis uesOntei pOs
The vines clear, opening a door into a large temple chamber.
In it, metal boxes and nodes with flickering lights disperse probes into a swarm spinning in concentric rings.
“Pan!” I shout again.
The familiar windstorm starts up. I stand still, droning mantras to myself.
dzmO mehter helmhA uisue siekti auAhA
Eventually the serpent forms. Its rumbling roars subside as it twists itself into an oscillating figure 8 around the room.
“Pan!” I repeat.
“Corov.” It buzzes.
For the first time in my adult life, no, my entire life, I have been met with a face that has left me at a loss for words. A grotesquely horrifying, but elegant creature, one who I knew existed… but not one that I could have guessed could be as alive as me.
I feel a tear leave my eye as a lifetime of spirited scriptures, of high hopes that turned to doctrinal debates and the metrics of miracles, and lofty goals of perceived excellence that lead to a lonely and dull routine, as the droning of this obtuse figure finally reaches a summit, showing me something unreal enough to shock me.
“Thank you,” I mutter to the wind. It’s quieter than the wind, but I can see that Pan hears, “For bringing the magic back to my story.”