Untitled - 02

 (Published 09-Nov-2020 23:41:38)

The leaf, owned by none, fell and rose with the air and the tide. Swiftly floating, then dancing, then falling, then gliding, it traced a path of effortless indifference from tree to tree - never selecting a home, never quitting the flit, never erring the side of release, but simply dancing.

The stone. It fell. Hard. On the ground. It bounced, once, for form's sake. It moved not after.

The fire, it raged, from branch to limb, finding new food to quench the need, a fiery rim-shot, seeking only food and breath; animals ran as it sought their perch, their home. Not seeking the animals but not stopping when it found it - they were but unhappy fodder for its incessant need to feed, to eat. It stopped, like a purely-natural Ouroboros, when it began to feed on itself. And as quickly it had begun to rage, it just as quickly quit.

Crash. Crash. Waves, effortless, source-less, bodiless, came and went, as dissipated pats on an endless back. Foam and sand erasing its own history, the beach spoke to endlessness of eternity and the feeling that things with beginnings have endings but the eternity of the cycle of water was always but a snapshot of a portion - no observer dared capture the entire thing because there were no observers sufficiently long-lived. Even the moon was but a temporary visitor to the crashing of the waves. Forever and never, endlessly cycling.

Each element tells a story - but told, without an overlap or transition, each form has a limitation - the immediacy of fire is superseded by its tendency to devour itself. The perpetual presence of water erases its own existence - for as long as the waves hit and the sand erases the tide, there is no record - save for the observer. The stone provides a record of its position - but holds no answers for the cause. And the air is flighty enough that it laughs at the apparent need of the others for permanence - worse yet because it is the most mobile, needing no medium for transmission - and thus the least compassionate in appreciating the need for history.

The secret, of course, is in the observer. If the elements are considered as the story-telling medium instead of the record, then each has the capacity to provide a disparate collection of emotions befitting the corresponding nature of the element. And thus, the narrator selects the element that best captures the desired emotions.

And at the end, anthropomorphism is the rule - for we are consumers of story.

Perhaps that's the root of the fantasy aspect of magic. The need to be able to tell stories not bound by the elements we find ourselves railing against daily; so, we invoke magic as the excuse for justifying the impossible. Oh, it's just magic.

Can't walk because of the accident? Let's make a creature who cannot be harmed by the same.

Can't survive cancer? Let's make a human who can heal from anything.

Can't exist with loneliness? Let's create someone who can.

At the end, we get to ask our impossible questions - but if we rely upon magic to ask the hard questions, and rely upon magic to provide an answer to those same questions, we will inevitable refuse to move past the magic. For it is tasty.