Book of Recitations Chapter 3:
Once, a traveler with an onyx sword came to the drinking hall of Laan, now passed. She was clad in a cloak of stars and her feet stepped twice for every stride. The attendants of Laan’s corpse, understanding this was an important guest, brought her plates of hahnu and strong drink. In time, the voice of Laan, a sage of many hands, came to drink with her.
“You wish to understand our departed lord.”
The traveler nodded. She wore the Crown of Kings on her forehead, so the sage understood her to be one who appreciated knowledge.
“What is the distance between men?” the sage asked. The traveler frowned at this question and shook her head.
“We sit mere feet apart,” she said.
The sage smiled, shaking her head.
“The distance between us is infinite, a thousand horizons stretching forth. There is no amount of distance you can travel that will allow you to arrive where I am. We exist alone, inside ourselves.”
“We can speak. Communicate. We aren’t alone, even with such distance,” the traveler replied. “My words can reach you.”
“But we do not understand each other. We transcribe meaning into words, an imperfect medium carried by imperfect messengers, to what we imagine our fellows are, hoping it will make them understand. I can speak of the great tree of Sil, but I cannot make you feel what I feel. I cannot make you understand. You will never see the tree I see, in my mind’s eye. The vision in your mind will, at its best, be only what you imagine me to be.”
The traveler grew agitated, taking another bite of hahnu and not responding. The sage bowed, glancing at the onyx blade on the traveler’s back.
“You are wrong,” the traveler growled. “There is another. The one I search for.”
There was silence as the sage considered this.
“You do not understand her,” she said, the traveler standing in a red fury, Kein’s flames lashing across the table as the sage raised a hand.
“Nobody can breach the gulf between souls. There is no distance you can run, no number of horizons to strike down that will allow you to stand in the mind of another. No mastery of word or tongue will give you the words needed to be understood, or understand.”
“Then what is your master, then? What is the point of the Titan of Love, if not to understand?” the traveler hissed back.
“Laan. Want,” the sage replied. “The Titans are words. Laan means to want, but the second meaning is just as important. Question.”
The sage gave a weak smile as another plate of hahnu was brought to replace the one burned.
“You, who seek to strike the horizon, to love is to question. Fools believe they understand those they love, that they have done all they had to do. That they can rest in their perfect knowledge, until the person they thought they understood is no longer recognizable as the one they once saw. To love is to see the false image in your mind for what it is, and seek to correct it, again and again..”
“…But you can’t,” the traveler said.
“Of course not. But you must try. You can never reach a horizon, but you rush towards it regardless.”
The traveler stood, bowing. And with that, she was gone.
Master the storm, destroyer of stagnation.
Strike the Horizon.
Strike The Horizon 