trans_9 | Mmm, good Bible.

Entry tags:

Mmm, good Bible.

Daimon had chosen the location ahead of time. The Church of the Holy Sepulchre was sacred, perhaps more so than the Vatican. It was the place where Jesus Christ was crucified and buried. It had also not been descrated.

Many months had passed since Daimon spoke before a group of people. His palms sweat and he wiped his brow. Silently, he asked God for the strength to not simply speak but to speak on behalf of the Lord.

When the time came, he walked up before the assembled, Bible in hand. While he was nervous, perhaps on the verge of a panic attack, his words were strong and passionate and grew surer the more he spoke.

“I recognize that the people on board this ship come from various walks of life. Some of you, perhaps, are not familiar with Christianity. If this is the case, you may ask whatever questions you have and offer me any comments or insights after I have spoken.” Daimon then gave what he called a “brief summary” of Christianity. It was, in fact, very lengthy and detailed and contained heavy praise of Jesus and the love of God. He then moved on to give a similarly “brief summary” of the context behind the Old Testament.

“Some of you are perhaps aware of the book of Job. Job was a prosperous man. He had seven sons and three daughters. He had herds of animals and acres of land. He was a devout worshipper of God. In the story, the Adversary speaks with God and tells him that Job only praises God because he has no reason to blame him. He says that if God takes away from Job all of his blessings, his animals, his land, even his children, then Job will curse God’s name. God answers that Job will retain his faith and permits the Adversary to strip away everything from Job save his health.”

“A series of disasters befall Job. He loses everything, his land, his herd, and even his children.” Daimon paused. “Job is distraught. Throwing himself upon the ground, he cries:

“‘Naked I came from the womb,
naked I shall return from whence I came.
The Lord gives and the Lord takes away;
Blessed be the name of the Lord.’

“The Adversary spoke with the Lord God again. He tells him that Job continues to praise God only because Job himself has not been afflicted. God allows the Adversary to take from Job his health.

“Robbed of his health, bereft of hope, Job laments. He cries out to God, begging for relief, begging for death, and questioning his justice. Each of Job’s friends berate him and encourage him to have faith but Job refuses. Job’s lament continues until God himself answers him. The Lord says:

“‘Brace yourself and stand up like a man;
I shall put questions to you, and you must answer.
Would you dare deny that I am just,
or put me in the wrong to prove yourself right?
Have you an arm like God’s arm;
can you thunder with a voice like his?
Deck yourself out, if you can, in pride and dignity,
array yourself in pomp and splendour.
Unleash the fury of your wrath,
look on all who are proud, and bring them low,
crush the wicked where they stand;
bury them in the earth together,
and shroud them in an unknown grave.
Then I in turn would acknowledge
that your own right hand could save you.’

“At these words, Job kneels and asks for forgiveness. The Lord grants it and Job prospers greater than ever before. He lives to see his grand children and his great grand children and his great great grandchildren. To the end of his days he sang the Lord’s praise.”

Daimon gazed into the eyes of the people before him. “You may ask, as I have, why the Lord would cause a blameless man such grief. You may, as I once did, come away with the sense that God is not just, that he is fickle and cares not for man but this could not be further from the truth. To ask why God could and does allow such horrible events to transpire to such good people would be folly, for it is as the Lord says: we cannot judge him. We cannot know why the Lord acts as he does, nor can we hope to know. We can only have, nay, we must have faith in his actions. For the Lord is greater than all of us. He sculpted us with his hands and breathed into us our souls. The Lord knows more than we can possibly imagine and has our best intentions in his heart, even if it seems to us that he has caused us nothing but misery.

“Why, you may ask, have I told you this story? ‘What meaning could it have on my life?’ And this, I shall tell you. Every one of us on this ship is lost. We have been stripped of our most precious comforts- our home, our friends, our family. We do not know what lies ahead of us. We may despair, we may weep, we may beg for the mercy and guidance of our Lord. On board this ship, even surrounded as we are by each other, we may still feel, as Job felt, alone and abandoned.

“But I tell you that this is not so. You are not alone. The Lord sees you. In your darkest hour, at the hardest time of your life, you must remember that you are loved. You must remember that there is hope, no matter how dire your future seems. Furthermore, I tell you that though you have listened to every word I said and still do not believe, I tell you this: you are still not alone. For though we come from different worlds, cultures, and beliefs, we stand before each other as equals. We stand here together and so I tell you: we are not alone.”

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

And she comes to the stairs: great broad endless stone ones they are, and they pierce down far into the world... The spiral stair is wide enough for ten, thirty, a hundred men abreast. There are no safety rails on the inward edge, and the outward edge is solid stone and earth; at the center of the stair is an empty shaft that runs far, far, far deep down, and there seems to be a dim red glow somewhere at the very bottom.

It's an amazing excavation: by any reasonable standards, something that it seems like it would take the entire course of human history to properly carve out of the ground.

Katara was struck by what she was seeing, but wasn't worried about having no safety rails: Katara had virtually perfect balance, something necessary for lwan expert Waterbender. She descended slowly at first, but after seeing how much she needed to descend, she glided down, anxious to see what the red glow was.

There was little time to admire the decour: there were a LOT of steps.

As Katara heads down the stairs, it seems like every step is ten or thirty or a hundred or a thousand, skipping every step in between in that smooth way that dreams ignore irrelevant details.

As she descends further, the red glow slowly starts to turn white, instead, though it doesn't yet seem any closer—and she gets the very strangest sense of going up, even though she's clearly still heading downwards.

And there was definitely a sense of vertigo here, a dizziness Katara had nevrer found herself facing before as she headed down, up, a direction that made little sense but kept going, trying to look for the answer in the question of where she was going and who she would meet. If she'd ever heard the story of Alice, she would have likened it to falling down a rabbot hole: except no rabbits.

Roxie's world was more than enough of a trip in and of itself.

"At the thousandth step," comes Roxie's voice, filtered in that same half-conscious, half-present way as before, "you'll come to a guardian who you'll have to defeat to continue on to the last step. The guardian always comes from yourself, so I can't help you with this one."

Katara has just passed the nine-hundred-ninety-ninth step, she retroactively realizes; with one more the stairwell will suddenly open into a vast hollow space carved out of the earth, neatly bisecting natural caves and small underground rivers. Though interrupted, the stairs continue downwards, but standing between the downwards path and Katara is...

Katara.

Well, not exactly. The example of herself standing before her is noticeably older, maybe even as much as middle-aged, though the other-Katara hasn't lost any of her natural beauty to age... of her body, at least, to judge by what her fine (royal?!) Fire Nation robes show. But her face is covered by a porcelain mask, though the always-familiar loops of her hair are visible.

"You," she hisses, and there's a rasping to her voice that exceeds what mere aggression could produce.

Katara nodded at the instruction and continued down, although her heart was beating fast. She had no idea what to expect as far as a guardian was concerned, so she readied herself quietly and took the last step to meet whoever was waiting for her. The space was a wonder to behold with its caves and rivers, and she would have happily lingered here if there wasn't an ominious figure blocking her path.

And there she was. She, as in her, a Katara she didn't know who sported a mask that made this all the more eerie. That wasn't as bothersome, however, as the fact she was wearing Fire Nation robes and looked older than her. What was she supposed to represent?

But that question could wait as Katara was not one to back down from a fight. "Me," Katara said, getting into stance.

The other-Katara moves her left hand, just a little twitch-sweep.

A roar of water slams up out of one of the natural streams and towards Katara, trying to wash her away. "You don't deserve to be here!" the other-Katara declares. "You're weak!"

Please. Katara concentrated and moved the water around her and toward her opponent, a brisk business-as-usual look on her face.

"According to who?"

"According to me. To you."

Other-Katara's head moves slightly, tilting, and the rest of her stays totally still. The water splashes against nothing, deflecting over and around her without touching her at all.

"You're wrong," Katara said, clenching her fists. "I have the right to be here. What makes you think I don't?"

She still had the water at the ready, in case "she" tried anything.

Other-Katara's hands come up, fingers twitching like at the strings of a puppet, and the water suddenly crystalizes into an armored figure all of ice, swinging a huge razor-edged frozen sword at her counterpart.

"You don't have the drive it takes to keep the world safe. You don't have the guts."

Katara caught the blade with the heels of her hand, and it turned to water immediately. The look in her eyes were unmistakable: they were the same look she had when she faced HER at Ba Sing Se, and the same look she had when she finally beat the girl in the Fire Nation.

"You're wrong. I've done it before and I'll do it again. I'm you, and you know we're capable of doing it. I'm not scared of myself!"

Why WAS this version wearing a Fire Nation regalia anyway?

"And what about the next time a ruler of the Fire Nation decides to start a war?" the Other-Katara hisses, jerking back. With the movement come a sudden rain of sharp-edged icicles, the water pulled from another of the underground streams.

Katara's face looked grim. "Then we fight, like we always do. Aang will do what he has to do, but I'll be there right alongside him. That doesn't change."

She walked up to the other Katara, her face set. "Now get out of my way."

"And what about the time after that? And that? How do you know the world will ever be any different?" the other-Katara hisses, mask leaning in. "How do you know more people won't die because you didn't do enough in the first place?!"

Katara closed her eyes, but she didn't waver. "Because there's a difference between what I can do and what will happen. I'm not going to blame myself for what I couldn't control. I have to do my best, and I have make sure I don't lose sight in what's important."

She looked up. "I will never, EVER turn my back on people who need me. So I'll do everything I can. You move out of the way."

And as she looks up, the Other-Katara is... simply gone.

The stairs wait before her to continue downwards.

With a single step (that seems to span a thousand more, somehow, all at once), Katara steps—

into a city, the entire structure of it upside-down even though every room and surface is facing the right direction, with spires that stretch out from the ground (an endless ceiling overhead) down towards the sea of stars below. She stands in a building-size alcove with further stairs that lead down into the city proper, but from up here the graceful reverse struts and towers and connecting paths can be scene. It's all very disorienting—it's as if she just climbed out of a hole, except here the ground is up and the starry, moonless sky is down.

Katara was glad that the guardian was gone, but had to wonder what that deal was all about. Why show up looking like her in the first place, and really, why with the fire nation regalia in the first place? It was all so surreal.

In any case, she continued down the stairs, or at least thought she was until the one step she took brought her to the strange upside down city. She is definitely put off, but decided to continue down the stairs to see what that would change.

"You'll have to come to the central square," comes Roxie's voice again from nowhere in particular, whispery and faint.

Fortunately, the city is fairly straightly laid out, spiraling out from the center—the emptiness of the dry stone and metal might be a little disturbing along the way, but the walk brings her down broad avenues and cross-streets that don't take much effort to properly navigate.

One might wonder, though... just who lives in this place? Who could live like this, with an eternity stretched out underneath them?

Katara heard the voice and followed the direxctions, not stopping to wonder how Roxie was still able to talk to her. Instead, she concentrated on getting to the central square. She wished could have taken her time, but she really did want to see what Roxie had to how her. The city had a stillness and a sort if absurdity about it, but that didnt prevent her from seeing its beauty.

She could also think about that other Katara encounter later. That had been a little too weird. She wondered if it was possible she would see other people she knew in her life here for some reason.

As Katara finds the central square, she finds herself crossing a hanging bridge, below which the entire sky hangs like an endless ocean (http://z-e-r-o.up.seesaa.net/image/Hubble_Ultra_Deep_Field_Black_point_edit.jpg). It's simply beautiful, as bizarre as it is, and the starlight casts low shadows upwards.

And waiting for her is Roxie—sort of. Her hewn out of star-stuff, again, with the shining discs of her eyes. But she's taller—taller than Katara, even, and shapely. Adult, definitely. And solid, it seems, with the way she leans against an elegant fountain large enough to swallow up a whole city block.

"How have you liked it so far?" she asks, and there's a warm two-tone echo to her voice, chill and friendly all at once.

Katara greeted this "other" Roxie as if she were her friend: because really, she was in their world, and what was the point of being afraid about it? The landscape was beautiful but unfamiliar, and she was sure that what had just happened with the guardian was something she might have to think about more.

"I think I'm beginning to understand why Roxie is the way she is," Katara said. "I wondered why she contested what the preacher said before, but I think I know now. The job of a spiritual person isn't to just love their god and say he will solve everything: a god also gives you personal responsibility. The decision to go the path that's familiar, or to try something different, and see where it takes you."

Katara bowed. "I am honored to be here. I want to learn."

"Good," the strange womanly version of Roxie says in that double voice. "You're in the middle of a dream right now,

Katara
child

. How about you try to make it yours instead of

mine
hers

?" The way the double-voice desyncs for particular words is strange...

Katara blinked. Was this what Aang dealt with when he was in the spirit world? Not that she was surprised, although the double voice was a little off putting. But the words: what did they mean? She could actually make this her dream? Her heart rose a moment, thinking of what she would want to see in a dream.

"How can I do that?"

"What would you like to see most?' Roxie asks, and she sits--on a bench that wasn't there before, but now that it is, it's as though it always was. "Focus on that. Try to picture it all in your head. Then you just need to make it happen outside instead of inside."

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject