Vasan was given a living quarters in the same wing of the massive cathedral complex as Jaquel. The grackle expressed interest in making Vasan a successor, but this was more of an excuse to allow them to confer in private more easily.
Vasan may seem rather simple in operation. A “Yessir,” as my past Earthen colleagues would have called it. However, Vasan isn’t stupid. They know how to deny things and steer situations away from how they’d be disparaged. They are not devoid of inhibitions, but are close to devoid of the kind of arbitrary inhibitions that most mortal minds meet when getting hung up on the minor inconveniences that come between them and a net positive.
Vasan understands that to move in a straight line through happenstance, one must follow its grids. These grids are absolute, with harsher angles and turns that may be jarring to one that doesn’t expect them. Situations where the signal is stronger seem safer, and more suitable than the uncharted cloudy noise in the gaps between.
Vasan learned more about this aspect of themself over the course of that initiation, and introspected on it the simplest way any other soul would. Drawing the distinction between themself and their surroundings.
It may be that they are fine with dramatic shifts because they assume impermanence. But what about Raptor? Raptor’s aura seems to be made of impermanence, singing leading tones, but they seem to prefer to whisp themselves away into the unknown noise rather than down the trodden paths.
Jaquel seems to be tied to these trodden paths, though begrudgingly. Jaquel seems like someone who will follow the safety and stability of one certain direction even if it impedes their mobility on the grid.
Vasan settles into the nest in their room. They breathe in an ordered pattern, one that they were taught during the initiation to promote thoughtfulness and introspection.
The same bag they got from the lower village had stayed with them through their travels. They empty it onto a desk to take inventory. All of the fruit from their first excursion was gone, besides some of the tougher, dried preserves. There were a few sticks, gems, and charms picked up along the way. There were smaller sacks of dried herbs that Raptor left with them, and a larger sack, holding three more truffles.
Raptor said something about not taking them too often. Time seemed to blend together in these spaces, though. It dilates in this tree especially. Days last forever, as the phases of activity throughout the temple shift endlessly. There’s a considerable amount of commotion for a place supposed to be so stable. The deep catacombs that Jaquel is nested near are a quieter corner of the complex, but the roar of rancorous drek above still rumble through its rigid roofs.
Vasan misses blank meditation, without the rules and instructions and patterns and mantras. They miss the quiet. As time goes by while Jaquel tends to their daily duties, Vasan is left to meander the many halls.
This becomes a routine over the course of the next few days. Worship happens over the catacombs, Vasan leaves to find silence at the edge of the tree. They return and skim the abstract recommended reading tablets that the church leaves, often obscure tales that densely veil the subnature Vasan is already attuned to.
One particularly silent day among the blur of days, they find the path that Raptor took, that opens up to the air with a view of the islands below. The loudest thing here is the distant winds beyond the fringe. The roots around the opening shade from direct sunlight, but the stillness of the air near the opening holds the warmth.
Vasan begins meditating here, and we begin having conversations again.
There’s a different tone to their voice when we speak. Before they may have wondered how much I was capable of. Now, while the thought may remain the same, the angle of that thought has switched polarity.
I’ve learned much about this society. Jaquel was lost in an obsessive interest once we settled, which resulted in many long talks between the two burning away wraps of leaves in outdoor frays not far from their tree.
The interest was the compound nature of the self, and the ways we recognize the blurrier forms of nature against the pristine patterns predicated on partitioning “proper” from “peculiar”.
Jaquel has been doing their duty in the doctrinal discourse on defining the undertones, the roots of the subnature, that drek think through before arriving at their individual self.
They say an old colleague of theirs was a usual companion for these kinds of talks.
There is a system of identification, similar to Earth’s concept of gender.
They just call it “MKS”. M for mens, mind, K for krēps, body, and S for speis spirit. Identifying words are built from these consonants, alternated with the vowels I, A, and U, the primal vowels in phonology, indicating what I would equate to Feminine, Androgynous, and Masculine respectively.
Then the syllables are arranged in order of priority.
I listened to these conversations idly, until a question was posed from Jaquel, “How would you MKS PAN?”
Vasan hung on that question. They asked me for input, but at the time this question seemed not applicable to me, as an inorganic being.
Vasan answered “Makasa?”. Jaquel tilts their head, asking for more, “That’s just because. They’re mind first, then presence, then experience.” Jaquel nods, following. Vasan continues. “But the vowels? They think differently than we do, you know? They’re made of bugs.”
“Aren’t we also made of bugs?” Jaquel posits.
Vasan and Jaquel have the unique experience of peering under their subnature, but the doctrine also describes and teaches of the many tiny cells that make them up as being a harmonic swarm of holy bugs. Both of these facts meet to void Vasan’s point.
“I guess.”
“Why default to A?”
“Because it seems like… a centerpoint.”
“To you. You’re a Kasama.”
Vasan takes the focus off of them, “What do you see PAN as?”
Jaquel thinks, but shakes their head and responds, “I don’t have enough experience to read them like you do.” they turn away, lighting something new and taking a drag off of it. “But I would say Musaka.” They inspect the rolled herbs closely to make sure the fire doesn’t burn up one side too much. Then they pass it to Vasan. “But that could be because I’m a Misaka and I just see the contrast.”
“I’ve never worried about someone who hasn’t just told me what they are,” Vasan exhales, “I don’t get why Pan needs a gender. Bugs work differently.”
“Do you think beings like Pan don’t have their own system?” Jaquel tries to rebuke Vasan’s dismissiveness. “Their own way of recognizing the palette of their polarities?”
“Why would they need it?” The pigeon finds a dead end to crash that conversation.
The two drop the topic and smoke in silence. Jaquel changes the subject to the kind of herbs and what else to try when they run out. Their conversation meanders and dithers. Vasan didn’t pay much thought to it at the time.
But what they were reminded of was Raptor, who also has a strange fixation on, and maybe a fear of, people’s internal machinations. Raptor was the last person to have this conversation with Vasan. “Nobody needs to say the vowels,” Raptor once mumbled in a tired daze, “People look at you, hear you, see you, but make up their own mind what you are. We just arrange the sounds to make it seem like we have a say.”
Vasan thought something similar. And with Jaquel’s observation, it made sense. Maybe evereyone sees through a tint of their colors, and can only make out what contrasts with it.
This is something the doctrines beat around the bush about as well, subjective experience. It can acknowledge it all it wants, but it never addresses how incompatible the concept ultimately is with objective definitions. The church is built on the strong roots of their eternal metaphysical language. It defines all things, all harmonics, from their relation to an initial root.
The roots of a drek’s experience are colored by the body they’re born in, the experiences they collect, and all the things that nudge them, propel them, stop them, steer them, bend them, break them. The song of the church does not like to move its root.
Vasan has gotten used to the root being in other places. Their life has been constantly reharmonized, retuned by the tug of worldly tides and turbulence. They never found root in any single state of being, they merely dwelled in whichever situation they found themself for as long as they had to. They wind up in the middle of things.
With weeks of introspection, a roll of the last of Raptor’s herbs on a smoke break, and a meditative stare at a setting sun from of the frayed-root fringes that the starling escaped through, Vasan finally found the root. I feel a buzz go off like a light above their head.
Their vibrations tell me without words. There is luck that went into this universe. The fractalized ferns had fortunately found a way to form. The friction in the firmaments of shifting skies against each other sparked sentient songs. Slow, simple shapes assemble cells scrambling to sing in stable sequence. And every spark, every speck falls into place miraculously. Over and over again. The roots split into their controlled, characteristic angles and sway around Vasan. The woven walls and railings sing out and resonate the same kind of order everything around them so naturally arrived at. Luck is when something falls into an unlikely beneficial circumstance. Vasan, as any being, is built on, and made out of, all of the luck that has lined up so far. These temples are the Drek being cells and choosing to further this luck. To weave branches into scripture like their cells, their holy swarms, weave bloodlore. These massive temples were woven by drek, who every day make their choice to spend their time and effort and focus on the temple.
Vasan is a drek who is made up of just as much luck as any other, with just as much choice as any other, with just as much, if not more, influence to their actions as any other.
And they made the choice to fly.