Death After Death PLUS 241-243

Ch. 241 - The View from on High

When Simon finally hiked through half of the Raiden Range and found Mount Elian, he did not go straight up it as he did on his previous ascent. From this direction, the path was treacherous, and it would have been counterproductive. Instead, he circled around it until he reached the monastery that he’d stayed at before, which happened to also be the start of the secret path to the top. 

They showed him just as much hospitality as they had last time, and when they asked him what he was doing so far from Coramin or anywhere else that mattered, he told them the truth. “I come seeking perspective and, perhaps, wisdom,” he explained. 

When he said that, they were no less hospitable, though they were more interested. Mostly, what they wanted to know was how a foreigner had come to learn about Oracle. “It is a closely guarded secret,” the monk who sat with him explained as he sat with him at one of the dirty tables in the cramped courtyard of the fortress-like place. “And no true Ionian would speak of such a thing to an outsider.”

“They wouldn’t,” Simon agreed, doodling in the dust that clung to the varnished wood. “But I felt a compulsion to come here, just the same.” 

It took some time for what he was drawing to become apparent, but once the separated strokes slowly formed into the caldera of the cloud city at the peak of the mountain, the man stopped asking questions. Instead, he told his brothers in a language that they probably didn’t think he understood that he must have been called by the Oracle herself. “Can there be any doubt?” the monk insisted. “Look at what he drew. He must have seen it in a dream.”

“But there is a darkness about him,” another said, gesturing subtly to Simon while he pretended to enjoy his soup. “Surely you can see it too, even without the sight.”

“All I see is a man weary of the world,” the third man said. “He seems a bit young to be so jaded, but I wouldn’t worry. If the Oracle can defend herself. If she finds him unworthy, she’ll cast him into that boiling lake herself.”

Simon raised an eyebrow at that piece of information. He hadn’t been aware that was a possible outcome until now. I wonder how exactly she would defend herself? He thought. In his last visit, he was fairly sure there’d been more to her than meets the eye, but now, he was more sure of that. 

That night, he slept more restlessly in a plain cell that was set aside for travelers than he did by the dying embers of his campfire in the wilds as he waited for someone to strike him down, but no one ever did, and in the morning they gifted him were bread and wander for the long road ahead, though they warned him. “Without rope, you might never reach the top.”

Simon found it funny that they helped him with food but hid the existence of the path. “Maybe it’s just for important people to use,” he said to himself as he veered north to the flank of the mountain in a search for it. “Maybe everyone else has to treat the ascent as a test of endurance or devotion or something.”

That would be fitting. People who wanted guidance had to take the hard way up, but then they could take the easy way down. There was probably a metaphor in there somewhere, but he didn’t look for it too hard. Instead, he used the shortcut and made his way to the top in record time. 

He didn’t recall precisely how long it had taken him to climb up the mountain last time. It had been a week or ten days. When he’d gone down the path, though, he’d made it down in a single night. While he didn’t quite match that pace on the way up, he only had to camp for three nights on the trail before he made it to the door of the outer temple on the fourth day. 

If the priest who met him with a slight bow was surprised that he’d come up the path, he gave no indication. For a moment, Simon was disappointed that Diara wasn’t there to greet him. It took him only a moment to realize that was probably because she was just a kid this time. He’d come here last from level four, which meant that meeting would be about eight years in his future. 

The new priest was just the opposite of the pretty young woman he’d met last time. He introduced himself as Homen and was older than Simon by a decade or two and rather taciturn. He answered Simon’s questions as they walked inside, but even though he was cordial enough, he didn’t volunteer any extra information. Still, he welcomed Simon inside for tea as he inquired about his trip. “Have you been here before?” he asked politely once the tea was steeping in a pot on a low table between them while they regarded each other. 

“Not in this life,” Simon answered honestly. The other man took that surprisingly well. 

“That does happen from time to time,” Homen agreed, though I’m personally too young to have seen it before. Simon smirked at that, given that there was gray in the priest’s beard. “Someone else will decide if you are permitted to meet with the oracle, not me.”

“Permitted?” he asked, “I thought that all who made it this far were allowed to meet with her?”

“You have before, by your own admission,” the priest agreed, pouring them both tea. “No one has said that you may meet with her every life. That is a choice for her, not for you.”

Simon nodded wondering what that said about reincarnation in this place. He knew of no such beliefs among the general public, but took his cup as the man continued. “Still, you have come a long way and are welcome to refresh yourself within the walls of our sanctuary.”

“Is that the name of this place?” Simon asked. 

“Is that what you were told on your previous visit?” Homen asked cagily. 

“Well, I wasn’t given a name last time,” Simon admitted. 

“Nor shall you now, I think, this time,” the priest answered with a shrug before stopping to take a sip of tea. “I am not to decide these things either.”

Simon thought about asking who was, but he knew he wouldn’t get an answer to that question either. Instead of asking about things like that, he chatted with the man for a while and then asked for a bath.

While he was led to the same communal baths as before, this early in the day, they were largely abandoned, giving Simon a hint of privacy and all the time in the world to look at the crescent-shaped city that was laid out. All of it was never visible at the same time because of the drifting clouds, and most of it was terraced farm fields, but even so, it was a city of volcanic stone that was lovely to look upon, and Simon enjoyed the view as much as the warm bath waters as he tried to decide what each of the strangest buildings might be for. 

Though the place was dominated by columns, arcades, and peaked roofs, just like Ionar and all the other major cities of Ionia, they were quarried from dark, volcanic stone. They also eschewed the straight roads one would find in Coramin or the upper city of Ionar and focused on trying to fit as many buildings as they could along the winding shores of their steaming lake. The result should have been claustrophobic or even sinister, but instead, he found the patterns very organic and longed for a closer look. 

“That’s not going to happen, though,” he sighed. “Not unless I want to stay for the rest of this life.”

Honestly, it wouldn’t be the worst fate, but he felt like he’d die of boredom from up here. Even if they made him head door greater, and he was responsible for taking people to paths and bringing them food, he’d still spend weeks at a time just waiting for someone to, what, knock? Ring the doorbell?

Fortunately, he did not have to wait weeks to find out if he could meet with the Oracle. When a simple dinner of flatbread and spiced rice was brought to the cell where he was supposed to wait in quiet contemplation, the acolyte who brought it also brought a message. “She has agreed to meet with you two nights hence,” the woman answered curtly. 

Simon didn’t ask questions. He already had some idea that most of the priests and acolytes here wouldn’t be as helpful as Diara had been and that the darker the robes, the lower rank someone was. So, he didn’t wish to put this poor girl in a tough spot. He simply thanked her and ate. 

For the next two nights, Simon stood on the balconies of the outer temple. He was forbidden from going any further into the city unescorted, but as long as he stayed within those bounds, no one troubled him. At first, he was most fascinated by the buildings, but eventually, the waters attracted his attention. Not only were there flickering traces of bioluminescence at night, but during the day, people actually worked the waters to some degree.

They had to be boiling, or nearly so. Still, sometimes they looked to be fishing. He was sure they had to be doing something else, since he’d been told there were no fish in those waters, but when he asked Home about it, he just said, “There are many valuable things in the waters besides fish.” 

Nonetheless, some workers would brave the steam clouds to harvest mussels and other shellfish in the cooler shallows, and others would paddle slowly back and forth across the wide lake to pick up and deliver various commodities. What Simon wanted most was to see those mundane sights and draw them, but he was denied that. There weren’t even any white walls he could go to town on with some charcoal. If he’d thought ahead, he could have brought some chalk and gotten this out of his system. 

Still, all he could do now was wait, and when they finally came for him, he was awake, sitting in the dark of his cell. This time, the masked priests that escorted him didn’t take him down the same winding lava tube they had last time. Though it looked the same, this one was slanted downwards, and there were no cracks that would let him look out onto the caldera. Instead, as they got lower, the stones grew slick, and the light reflected off them strangely. 

When they finally reached the bottom of the thing, they came out onto another cliffside temple. This one wasn’t split in half by a rift that exuded sulfurous fumes. Instead, it was only a few inches above the lake’s surface and half shrouded in mist. Still, it wasn’t hard to make out the familiar silhouette of a woman standing there against a backdrop of the moon and stars. 

He wanted to concentrate on her regal beauty, and the striking place he’d been brought, but unbidden, the words of the monk at the foot of the mountain came back to him, dispelling most of them. She’s not really going to throw me in the lake, is she? He wondered. 

Ch. 242 - Subtle Currents

He didn’t have to wonder long because even as the men that escorted him here retreated, she turned around and gave him a smile instead of an expression that made him fear the worst. He relaxed visibly then; it might have been a ruse, but it would have been hard to fake the curiosity that sparkled in her eyes. 

“So we meet again, Simon,” she said, stepping toward him and taking both of his hands in both of hers. “At least, I’m told that is the case.”

“I kind of thought you’d remember me, actually,” he said, not sure how to respond. 

“And I might, in time,” she agreed confusingly. “But with you, the waters are always muddy, aren’t they.”

“Ain’t that the truth,” he sighed, eventually forced to turn away from her bottomless gaze uncomfortably to gaze out over the caldera. “But I guess you’re used to that sort of thing here.”

“On the contrary,” she smiled as she looked around for something. “You haven’t gotten a close look at our lake, or you’d never say that. The waters are usually quite clear.”

Simon walked to the edge of the slick promontory and took a look for himself and was surprised to see he could see the bottom, several feet down, even by the thin light of a half moon. The mists that covered it made it look murky, especially from a distance, but if you looked between them or fanned them away, he could see the craggy bottom sloping away from him down to several feet. He wondered idly how far he’d be able to see down in the daylight if he used a word of disperse wind to sweep away a whole portion of the mist. 

Before he could go too far down that road, though, the Oracle thrust a palm-sized rock into his hand and said, “Visitors are rare enough, but repeat visitors to this place are almost unheard of.”

“Because it’s forbidden, right?” Simon asked. 

“Because all who come here know that it is hubris to ask for wisdom a second time and that the judgment may face for that hubris could be fatal,” she answered, apparently unperturbed. “It has to be that way. We can’t have a line of Ionians stretching from Ionar or Coramin to here. The world would grind to a halt.”

Simon tried to picture that and found the image quite amusing, with whole lines of people going all the way up the giant mountain waiting their turn for some imagined enlightenment. Rather than crack that joke, though, Simon asked, “I assume that doesn’t apply to people who haven’t visited you before in this life, does it?”

“You and your kind are a bit of a gray area,” she agreed. “But you are obviously weighed down by many things, so this time, at least, I will help you.”

“With a stone?” he asked. 

“The stone’s only purpose is to be thrown by you into the water,” she said with a smile. “Be careful not to burn yourself.”

The caution gave Simon pause, and after a moment, he decided to throw it a few feet further in the water than he’d originally intended. It landed with a terrific splash. That much he’d been expecting, the glowing maelstrom of aqua and teal light was more unexpected. 

He’d known about the bioluminescence, of course, but seeing it feet away with all its chaos and nuance was a lot different than viewing it from a balcony hundreds of feet away. They stood there together in silence, watching the swirling, hypnotic patterns, and it was only when they began to muddle and fade that he said, “So I’m the stone? Causing chaos wherever I go? Is that what I’m supposed to get out of this?”

“That would be a fine answer, too. Though, despite the darkness that surrounds you, you don’t seem to be sinking to me,” the Oracle smiled. “No, you are the water. You cause change and leave glowing trails through history in your wake, but even when they fade, you leave murky water behind and make it difficult to see exactly what it is you’ve accomplished.”

That was true metaphorically, of course. He was more surprised that it was true literally. The water was clouded with sediments now, and he could no longer see any details between the gaps in the mist. It was nothing but a muddy, uniform midnight blue for a dozen feet in any direction. 

“I see,” he nodded. “Things take time to settle. That's why you brought me down here.”

Simon was surprised that she’d cut so quickly to the core of the issue, but he supposed that he shouldn’t have been. She’d done pretty well the last time, too. The Oracle was more than she seemed, and even if she wasn’t a Goddess, she was something close to it.

“Down here?” she asked. “Oh, did we meet on the terrace before? That would probably be the right thing to do for some version of you. I’m afraid I can’t take you there right now. You have too much darkness in your soul. You’d have to come back more unburdened in another life if you wanted another glimpse of the things that may yet be.”

“Well, truthfully, I didn’t find whatever that was nearly as useful as the conversation I had with you, but—” he started. 

“Then you didn’t think about them enough,” the Oracle interrupted. “Those vapors are… powerful. They should be; they are not of this world.”

“Be that as it may,” Simon said, continuing the point. “I just… I could do anything. I could be doing anything right now, but I’m not sure what I should be doing and… I don’t know. I came here looking for perspective.”

“That is a dilemma that every man and woman faces for their whole life,” she nodded sagely. “But in time, most find something they have a talent for and use that to help others.”

“That’s just it, though,” Simon insisted. “I have many talents. I could fight a war or overthrow a kingdom, but how do I know that it would do more good than harm in the long run.”

“Each time you muddy the waters, it is difficult to say what the results will be when they clear,” she agreed. “You could, perhaps, try not killing or overthrowing anyone at all.”

She laughed at that, and he joined her for a moment. “Building things would likely muddy the waters of the future as much as breaking them,” Simon said after a moment. 

“Sometimes,” she agreed, “But they take place in a slow, predictable way. They unfold over time without splashing the waters too much. In much the same way that fish swim without leaving a trace.”

“Isn’t it a waste for a hero that could save a people or win a war to spend their time baking bread or building houses?” Simon asked. “It feels selfish to me.”

“Perhaps to the people that were not saved,” she agreed, picking up a small flat stone. “But to the people that live in those houses and eat your bread, you will always be remembered well. You, like everyone else, can be whatever you want, but you cannot be everywhere at once any more than this stone can.”

As she spoke, she took her stone and threw it in a side arm grip, making it skip across the water. Simon lost it in the mist immediately, but each place it struck the water it left behind a burst of aqua light before it leaped into the air again. With each small splash, it left glowing rings behind that widened even as they faded, leaving a complex pattern beneath the patchy mist before it faded to darkness. 

He had nothing to say to that as he struggled to understand what meaning she was trying to give him. Finally, as if she’d sensed his confusion, she said, “Perhaps it is merely that you do not see things as you should. You wear quite a funeral shroud this visit, but I do not think that is what is blinding you.”

“Blinding me?” he asked, confused. “I can see just fine. What’s unclear is—”

“That’s exactly what I’d expect a half-blind man to say,” she said before continuing to study him silently for almost a minute. 

“You have a fairly mature soul,” she said finally. “Such things should not be beyond you, and yet… Is this something she did to you?”

“Who Hela—” Simon asked before the Oracle brought her finger to his lips. 

“I would appreciate it if you did not say her name here,” she said. “Did she give you any gifts or boons?”

“I mean…” Simon hesitated. “She gave me a little help with the language and, of course, the mirror, but…”

“Ah, the mirror, that’s right,” the Oracle said as if remembering something. “I recall that. Could you call it, please?”

The request made Simon feel weird, but not as weird as the idea of actually fulfilling it. He’d never summoned the mirror when anyone else could see or hear it. No one had told him he had to keep it a secret or anything, but some part of him felt like he did. 

Still, because she already seemed to know about it, he considered it. “Have you met other heroes in the Pit then?” he asked. 

“Do you think that you are the only one of her chosen ever to find this place?” she asked, amused. “In the same way that other me’s have met other yous, in other lives, where you are someone else entirely, I have met and guided them too, though not as well as I would like to.”

“I see,” Simon said, turning toward the water. “Other mes and other yous, huh? Well, mirror, why don’t you join the conversation, too. Make it a real party.”

‘Hello Simon,’ the glowing blue writing appeared on the water in a cyan that was only a few shades brighter than the bioluminescence that swirled there earlier. In places where the fog covered it, the writing appeared blurred, but the words were still legible. 

“Hello, Mirror,” the Oracle chimed in. “It is nice to see you again.”

‘Hello, Oracle,’ the mirror responded. ‘’You are looking well.’

“I am well,” she agreed. “Could you please show Simon the current state of his aura?”

“My aura?” he asked. Before she responded, his reflection changed. It was hard to make out all the details on the misty water, but as he watched, a darkness wrapped around him like a cloud of smoke. The Oracle changed, too, but she only continued to brighten as she stepped away so that her reflection would not distract him. 

Once her light was gone, though, he was left as only a man-shaped shadow. He couldn’t even make out the robes he was wearing, and though he was sure that if he looked in a mirror in a room with better lighting, he’d see more, it was still disturbing. 

“Okay, mirror, you can stop now,” he told it. The image began to fade, but he didn’t watch that. Instead, he turned to the Oracle in surprise. “How did you know to do that?”

“Simon, I can see the world like that without your little toys and tricks; I just happened to know that’s one of the ways it worked. What do you use it for if not to see into yourself or others?” she asked. 

“Uhmmm, mostly for stats and experience,” he admitted, feeling a little weird about sharing that. “It's sort of my personal library, too. I record things in it so I can look them up later.”

“Well, that’s clever,” she said with genuine enthusiasm. “I’ve never met someone that does that before.”

“Could we get back to the part about you seeing auras?” he asked. “That’s something I’ve wondered about for a long time. I’ve known and even been killed by other people who could see them, but I’ve never understood them. Are they connected to using magic, or…”

“So, at last, we stumble together toward your question,” she beamed. “It turns out that all we had to do was wait for things to settle so the truth could be revealed.”

“I suppose we did,” he agreed halfheartedly. 

Simon’s mind still hadn’t quite resolved the dilemma of what he should be doing and why building might not be as impactful as destroying, but he could ponder all that another day. If the Oracle was going to give him even a sliver of insight into the nature of magic, then that was worth pursuing. 

Ch. 243 - Learning to See

As hopefully as that conversation started, though, it came to an abrupt end when she said, “Unfortunately, that question doesn’t have a simple answer. At least not one that you can hear right now.”

“Pardon me?” Simon said, trying not to become annoyed. “I can use all sorts of magic. I—”

“You can,” she agreed. “I can see the scars it has left on you too. You’re definitely getting better, though, and I don’t mean to insult you, so please don’t take it that way. Magic is a tough thing for mortals to learn, and you know that better than most.”

“So then why can’t you answer my question?” he asked, only slightly mollified. He didn’t care if she insulted and belittled him as long as he got what he needed. Unfortunately, she was a lot kinder than Helades as she didn’t offer him sweeping pronouncements that left his ego bruised. 

“Because some things must be experienced, not explained,” she said. “Fortunately, we can help you with that, too. It will just take longer.”

“How long?” Simon asked before quickly realizing it came out the wrong way. He didn’t really care how long things took anymore, but he didn’t want to make it seem like he was in a hurry, so he added, “I— It’s just that I thought that you didn’t let people stay unless they never left.”

“These rules are in place for reasons related to secrecy. Mortal men and women must stay for their whole lives to ensure they tell no one what they know. That hardly applies to you.” the Oracle nodded. “Men like you, well… You already have plenty of secrets, don’t you? What’s one more? You will stay for as long as you need to stay and go when you need to go. Even if we killed you, death could not hold your tongue. You would just come back and take your revenge.”

Simon wanted to say that he wasn’t the revenge-taking type, but since that wasn’t true these days, he pivoted and asked. “So I stay up here for a month or a year or a decade and do what exactly? What is it I need to experience?”

“Before any of that, we must first help you to still your waters and make them clear,” she answered evasively. “After that. After you have sufficient clarity, we will see what we can do to help you see without aids like your mirror.”

Simon tried to ask the question a few other ways, but the Oracle shot him down, effectively ending the conversation. It was gentle, but it was firm, and at an unseen signal, a white-robed man with a lantern appeared to escort him back to his room. At least, he thought they were going back to the same cell he’d left in the outer temple. Instead, they took him somewhere further down in the city. 

Had they been listening to the conversation, or did they somehow know all of this in advance, he wondered. Simon had seen no definitive proof that the Oracle could see the future. The strongest proof was the circumstantial evidence of Elthena’s own prophecy, which was to keep her son’s father close. 

One more piece of evidence was put in the she-knows-what’s-going-to-happen-next column when they arrived at their destination, and he found his few meager possessions there waiting for him. The room wasn’t any fancier than the one he’d left behind. If anything, it was smaller, but it had a sleeping mat instead of the crude palette he’d slept on in what he’d come to think of as the guest room. 

“So what do I do now?” Simon asked. 

“Sleep,” the masked man answered. “Morning comes early, and we wake with the sun.”

Simon thanked the man before he left and plunged him into darkness, but mentally, he shrugged. He’d been through enough that being made to get up early was hardly the worst fate. Still, sleep was more difficult to find than it usually was, as his mind buzzed with questions. 

He didn’t even notice he’d drifted off until a gong sounded somewhere nearby. It was too close, close enough that he could feel its vibrations as much as he could hear them. 

Simon rose, along with dozens of others, noticing that as the tide of people came out into the sunlit arcade, they all looked fairly uniform. It was only the colors of their robes that varied from dark gray to light. As he was swept along with the tide of people to what he assumed was breakfast, he noticed two things. The first was that there were no white robes among the crowd. Even very light gray seemed rare. The second was that the robes he was wearing were the darkest of any he could see. Though not quite black, they certainly marked him as an initiate in all of this. 

They weren’t going to eat, though, as it turned out. Instead, the path they followed led to the caldera’s edge, and one at a time, they disrobed and leaped off a small cliff into the steaming waters below. That confused Simon a great deal because he was fairly sure that water was hot enough to boil them alive. One of the men in lighter gray robes saw his confusion as they approached their turn and said, “It will be fine. If you’re nervous, just swim toward the colder water. Most do their first time. There’s no harm in it.”

“Cold water?” Simon asked. “I thought the caldera was boiling.”

“It is,” the other acolyte agreed as he pointed to a pool up the slope. “Everywhere except for near the spring. It brings fresh water free from sulfur to the fields and kitchens, and the overflow comes out here.”

“Alright,” Simon answered with a shrug, “But why are we bathing here and not the baths?”

“You’ll see,” the man answered cryptically as he stripped and leaped into the water. 

Simon did the same thing and stripped but hesitated a moment as the crowd continued to flow around him. First, he looked at all the discarded robes and tried to figure out how anyone would ever find their garments again. After that, he watched the swimmers for a bit. 

It seemed a strange ritual, and he hoped he wouldn’t have to do it every morning even though he was pretty sure he did. Still, bathing in a hot spring wasn’t the worst way to start the day. After all, no one so far had screamed in agony. The other swimmers were taking a variety of different paths across the water. Most seemed to take a middle path across the small bay that divided this cliff from its twin on the other side, but others swam diverged further toward the caldera or further toward the gushing waterfall that came from up above them. 

Eventually, with nothing left to inspect and the numbers behind him dwindling, Simon leaped into the water and began to swim. It was a strange experience. When he landed in the water, the first thing he noticed was that the temperatures were not in any way even. Because of the irregular flow of splashing cold water into the superheated lake, he experienced layers of temperatures that varied from frigid to much hotter than he was comfortable with. Worse, the mixture of hot and cold made it feel like he was being scalded as his body struggled to make sense of the strange sensations it was trying to process. 

Still, he didn’t complain or cry out. He just started to swim to the opposite shore to get this over with as quickly as possible. It was then that he discovered a second problem. A straight line exacerbated the issue. While he moved directly via the shortest path, the water temperatures weren’t nearly as cooperative. 

Sometimes, he splashed through sections that were almost hot enough to burn him, and other times, he found completely frigid currents that had not managed to mingle with the hot water at all. It was a miserable experience, and when he dragged himself out of the water on the far side, he was surprised that he couldn’t see any obvious burns. 

“What the fuck is going on?” he wondered. Simon had been absolutely sure that he was going to have to use a word of lesser healing on himself, but there seemed to be no need. 

He didn’t find out the answer to that question until after breakfast, which didn’t happen until he’d gotten dressed. On the far side of the area they’d just swum across was a set of stone stairs carved into the basalt, and on the landing above them were piles of towels, along with brown robes, sandals, and the breakfast he’d been craving since this strange ordeal had started. 

It was a simple meal of yogurt and some sort of mixed fruit preserve, but as soon as he’d put on clothes, he ate it greedily. As he did so, he noticed that he was one of the few people who had bothered to dress and definitely in the minority of people who were already eating. Almost everyone else was sitting there, meditating, either naked or wearing only a towel. 

Great, Simon thought as he took another bite, I’ve joined a hippy cult.

He spent a few minutes trying to decide if that was better or worse than joining the Unspoken had been. It wasn’t until the same man as before found him and sat down beside him wearing a towel that he finally started to get some answers. 

He explained everything, though not necessarily in the order that Simon had asked his questions, which was an annoying habit. Simon might look younger than him, but he was centuries older at this point. 

“The swim is, as you’ve said, more complicated than one would guess,” the acolyte agreed. “The currents are ever-shifting but not nearly as hot as you think. I’m no sage or naturalist, so I really can’t explain it, but by some quirk of anatomy, if the skin feels hot and cold water at the same time, it thinks it's being exposed to scalding water, which, in this case, isn’t true. You’d have to swim quite a ways out from the crossing to get seriously burned.”

“So the point is to make us endure suffering?” Simon asked. He had no idea if what the man was telling him was true or not, but it sounded right.

“At first, perhaps, but as you grow accustomed to it, the task is more about learning oneness, in a way, as you seek clarity and understanding,” the acolyte explained. He went off on that point for quite a while, but Simon started to tune him out for a while as he waited for his turn to speak. 

Yup, he decided. Definitely a hippy cult. It was better than cutting out his tongue, but not by as much as he would have hoped. 

“So then, what, you sense the currents or foresee them or whatever and have a less painful experience than I do?” Simon asked. 

“Some mornings,” the acolyte agreed. “You saw how everyone took a different path to the shore? They were all following their own intuition. I confess I’ve never gotten particularly good at this part of life here, but in time, I hope to.”

The conversation continued then, but before he could find any real answers about the nudist sunbathers or why everyone was waiting to eat, it was announced that work shifts were going to be filled. With that, talking came to an abrupt end. Suddenly, everyone was getting dressed or grabbing some food before they were told what their assignment for the day was.