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The Song of Aughra
Of the race of Aughra, I, Aughra, am alone, the first and last. Born from the need for rocks and trees for an eye to see the World. The wind blew and the blind trees sang and roots twisted in the dark rocks and the roots sang and the rocks cracked and I was Aughra. This is my song. The rocks willed me to be their eye; the roots willed me to be their eye. Blind rocks that felt the heartbeat of the World; blind trees swaying in the breathing of the wind made me to view for them all the shapes of the World. Slowly, slowly the roots split the rock and I was free. The first age of Aughra was of innocence, and it was long. Then it was Aughra and the race of Gelfling who shared the world. The Gelfling sang and danced for the joy of their lives, and I was a part of that joy.
I spoke, and they listened to me. I spoke of the life within the World and of the light within the Crystal, and from my words they made songs. We shared thought, and I taught them to feel the trembling of the rocks as they sang to the Crystal they could not see. The Gelfling taught me to dreamfast by the touch of hands; then I could see into their minds and they into mine. I showed them the beauty of the Crystal when the light of Suns in conjunction shone upon it. I taught them how one thousand trine would pass before the Three Suns combine to wake the Crystal to full beauty.
I was freed from the embrace of rock and root to witness the World, to share with the rocks the majesty of the Three Suns. I saw the Dying Sun and the Rose Sun and the Great Sun circling our World. And the Dying Sun shone with darkened light, and the Rose Sun flowered in flame, and the Great Sun was the life of all. And I saw that the Suns moved in three paths, and that in time these crossed above the shaft that led to the Crystal. I have seen the glory when the Dying Sun moved across the Rose Sun or the Great Sun. They were the lesser conjunctions. At the small price of an eye I saw the moment when the Three Suns stood together above the Crystal. The dying Sun was dark against the pale beauty of the Rose Sun and the whiter brilliance of the Great Sun.
The Three Suns together in the Great Conjunction were an Eye looking down the shaft to the Crystal. The shaft was melted through the rocks by the Dying Sun, which poured forth its strength that the Crystal might be revealed. And in the Golden Age when the Suns moved in Majesty over the radiant Crystal, it cried aloud a song for each Sun.
This was our world until the end of the trine of Harmony. The Crystal lay hidden in the mountain, but all the creatures of the World knew it was there. When a Sun shone down the shaft of the Crystal, all would touch rock and feel the trembling from the Crystal. The Crystal sang quietly at the lesser conjunctions of the two Suns; but at the Great Conjunction, for which the World waits nine-hundred and ninety-nine trine and one trine, the song of the Crystal resounded through all the rocks and all life rejoiced. But the trine of Harmony turned to discord, the days of innocence were tarnished. I have seen great glory perish, I have seen strength decay and color dim, I have seen freedom lost and wisdom perverted, I have seen the Crystal darken. And at the end of the suffering I saw the Crystal healed and the World restored. Now I can return to the embrace of rock and root, for I have seen the light rekindled and the Quest accomplished.
The urSkeks found me there upon the mountain-top; they healed my burns; but I was now gnarled root and weathered rock; the heat of the Suns had burnt my first growth away. When I was healed, the urSkeks taught me knowledge; they built for me the great Observatory that I might see all the paths of the World. My life was made complete.
On the day I gave one eye to see the splendor of the Three Suns, a new joy came to the World. I lay on the mountain above the Crystal and saw the Three Suns move together. I lay under rocks with one eye open to the light, and for one moment and forever I saw the Eye of the Three Suns shining down on me. Then form that light my eye darkened, and in that moment of light the urSkeks opened the door in the Crystal and entered our World. The pain in my lost eye was joined once to the joy I had in the urSkeks, but bitter, sour, poisoned rock is that joy to me now.
In the days of their first coming there were eighteen urSkeks, and they were full of vigor and the will to change and build. They hollowed out the mountain around the Crystal and built a castle of lesser crystals around the great Crystal. They made the three walls of blocks of crystal, and above the Crystal they made a great portal of three sides. So when the Suns moved over the Crystal. They stood framed in the portal, a triangle surrounding a circle.
The urSkeks were upright and tall, with an inner light of beauty that streamed from them always. I had from them the understanding of many things; from them the Gelfling learned to sing new songs. Each moment was rich and full, yet the coming of the shining strangers changed our World and our lives forever. I lived all my time in the Observatory, no longer walking and wandering, no longer speaking with Gelfling. I studied the Suns and worlds, and learned from the urSkeks.
These were the teachings that the urSkeks shared with me, Aughra. There is power in the Universe that is there to be used by those who dare control and shape their destiny. There are many levels of power; only the full initiate can wield the fullest power. To gain this strength takes many trine and a great will and much silence.
To take the fist step on the path is to meditate upon numbers and their patterns. Particularly the urSkeks guided me to think upon the first four natural numbers, the four that together make a triangle and a pyramid of TEN. Then they gave me THREE and NINE to understand, and finally the number SEVEN, but of that teaching it is not proper to write.
The thought of the urSkeks was formed in triangles and pyramids, with circles and spheres placed within them; the castle was built as a poem to these shapes, and the movements of the Suns that shone through the portal completed the Harmony.
But in the hearts of the shining urSkeks there struggled two beings living within one body - and for them all things were divided so. Light and dark were for them opposing spirits of the Universe; a mirror held up to light should reflect dark, a mirror in the darkness should give light. And yet they knew so much of triangles, of numbers that combine and do not oppose.
In the complexity of the spiral lay all the meditation of the urSkeks. I was guided to dream through them and to form them in my mind before I shaped them in sand or stone. The full art, which was beyond me, was to carve time spirals, which hold the meditation forever and guide others into the pathway of their thoughts and hold power over all space around them.
My Master taught me:
"Find your thought and place it in the center of a spiral. Let the spiral grow in coils upon itself so that each thought can lie besides its ancestor. Then take another thought into the center of the spiral and coil the two together, carrying both in your mind. Then, when you have though your way back again to the center, take another thought and entwine it into the double or triple coil. True thinking grows into spiral knots that can never untwist."
One thousand trines of the Suns later urZah said to me:
"Look deep into the single spiral, see your inmost being, and follow the teaching. Look deep into the double spiral and see the beating heart of all, the breathing of the Universe. Look deep into the triple spiral and find your soul."
Many, many trine later, as I near the end of my living freedom and long to lie again in the rocks, I can see that in the twisting of thoughts into knots was the urSkeks' weakness, that their sorrow was locked into the spirals.
The urSkeks would never reveal the history of their past or all their thoughts for the future, but I learned more than they thought I knew. I saw that they had left their former world to follow a great design that their fellow urSkeks thought a dangerous folly. They could not use the Crystal that was at the heart of the urSkeks' world, so they came to ours.
They spoke often of the nature of the Crystal: the spiral climbing through its heart, the planes within it; its great size; and of how it could reside outside space, yet in many worlds at once and worshipped in all. Yet only in our World do the Suns shine upon it to cause it to give out light, so that in all other worlds the Crystal glows and sings less powerfully than here. The urSkeks came here to use the power of the Great Crystal; they came during one Great Conjunction to use the next nine hundred and ninety-nine trine and one trine later, to achieve their work.
In the heart of the Crystal they had made a trap for light, a net of crystal and golden mirrors. They caught the light that had passed through the Great Crystal, the light that fell to the Lake of Fire deep within the World. They placed carved mirrors into the beam of light, they shone it into the Chamber of Life. For nine hundred and ninety-nine trine and one trine they had made ready, from the moment they arrived until the moment of the next Great Conjunction. The Three Suns moved over the Great Crystal, the Eye looked down, and the shining mirrors of the urSkeks sent a path of trapped light through the chamber. Then one by one in a long procession, they walked into its brightness.
They entered the bright light each as a single being; but as they left the path of light, each had become two: to the left, the Skeksis; to the right, the urRu. The Great Division of the urSkeks had been achieved.
On that day, the Harmony of the World shattered. The Skeksis woke from the shock of division, and they woke full of violence and anger. They stormed into the Crystal Chamber staggering with the strain of their new bodies, grasping each other in order to stand yet hating each other's touch. There was a loud argument, they stuck blows, on hit the Crystal. A shard broke from the Crystal and flew up the shaft, out onto the mountainside. And the light left the Crystal.
Of the race of Aughra I was alone,
the first and last.
This was my song.
Thra
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