At the edge of time is the Eye.
It has no eyelid, it is open all the time. Bloodshot, straining, stinging.
Its Iris is Fire, the fire of suffering is all it can see.
Reflected in its pupil is you and me.
This Eye cannot bear the visions that come to it,
and it lets out a constant stream of tears, each alight with the same fire that burns within the Eye itself. These tears collect and run into a river.
The river is Time, a perfect mix of fire and water.
The water cannot extinguish the fire,
and neither can the fire entirely evaporate the water.
The mixture of smoke and steam arising from this river
irritates the Eye to keep the fire burning.
This continues upward and outward past the Eye, and collects into a terrible black cloud looming overhead.
The cloud, Ignorance, rumbles and thunders a great cacophany of utter chaos,
until suddenly out of nowhere a streak of lightning splits it in two
in a decision of lasting consequence, a choice for light and knowledge.
This strikes the Eye dead in the center, and starts it aflame.
No one knows how this cycle began, as it exists itself outside of Time.
But every age brings about a hero who will end it.
In our age, the hero must confront many demons in order to end the visions of suffering.
The challenges to confront and extinguish the Eye of suffering are nearly insurmountable. The Eye is guarded at the four corners of the world by four demons:
Huma, the bird, who soars through and patrols the blackness in the skies above, picking apart anyone who dares fly at that level;
Therias, the beast, who delights in the earthly spectacle of torment and feasts on those bound to its trappings;
Fossor, the wailing fool, who vomits into the stream of tears;
Nandi, the bull, who feeds off the fires of burning anger below.
The skies are not safe. Only chaos reigns supreme, with piercing talons and beak, to tear you up and knock you to the ground. Judgement to put you back in your place.
The earth will not hold steady, instead giving way to tremble and quake under the lightning and thunder. The beast knows how to hunt you. Guilt and shame overcomes the bravest warrior.
The waters will not lead you there, but swallow and drown you alive. The demented clown will engulf you with fear and sadness.
The fire of passion consumes before it allows action. If you fight the bull you will be speared alive.
The only path that brings safe passage is a perfect stillness, floating along with the flow down the flaming river, vanishing in the distance toward the horizon line between earth and sky.
In this way, rather than fight the four demons obliquely, one at a time,
one confounds them by taking them head on all at once, engaging them in play.
Then before you know it you are past all four of them.
Huma begins to ask Therias how it is that this hero is getting by?? Shouldn't the beast have shamed you from even setting out on this journey? How is it that you weren't turned back by feeling unworthy?
The beast blames the bird back for allowing you to slip right through under his skies! Why didn't Huma swoop down and pluck you out of the water? Was the demon too busy hovering in the dark clouds to look down in the waters below?
They begin to squabble with each other.
Fossor bemoans and wails at Nandi, wondering why he has not angered you, and the bull in turn is furious at the fool for not taking more action in causing you sadness and despair.
Together, the four notice what you have done in getting them all bickering at each other, and they collapse into fits of laughter at your cleverness.
You hail and salute them for propelling you down this path, thanking them for the only passage you could possibly make.
And at last, having passed safely beyond the four dangers simultaneously, the final, greatest danger of all stares you directly in the face.
The Eye, unblinking, unwavering, looking into the depths of your soul. Pure visions of pain. It sees every way you have ever hurt or could ever be hurt. You dare not look back into its empty pupil, for fear of getting lost in unending confusion, of reflections upon reflections. No, that is the surest way to madness. Neither can you afford to glance directly at its burning tears, for the very same (un)reason, compounded with sheer emotional terror. You've braved everything with a still heart and mind until this point, but seeing pure and complete torment reflecting endlessly in your own life would be too much to bear.
So you look away and lash out past the lashes, stabbing blindly with your Truth, a sword of finest steel dedicated to pierce the eye directly in the infinite reflection of that pupil of paradox. One strike, a near miss (an actual hit?? a mere scratch), a second try, perhaps a slight hesitation? Still swinging away wildly and without direction.
And then you take action, you make your decision, dead in the center, you stare it down.
So your third time with firm resolve you stab up at the Eye from down below, ends in a successful CRRRRRAAAAAAAACK, a bolt so sharp and pure that strikes your eye from above, and the lid is scorched away by this lightning, leaving you blind no more, forever to see, burning and tearing up at all the pain in the world, for eternity.
Now it comes to the Eye that the fire was compassion the whole time, the tears a soothing relief to flow and connect and share with others; the air and ground and demons all there as part of the fabric of the beautiful tapestry you've helped weave and been woven into; the judgement a gift to help create the story from and along with the other images; and the tapestry picture so beautifully telling your legend, immortalizing your hero's tale, which once bore the negative image of guilt, when flipped over displays nothing but a rainbow of gratitude. But the Eye has always known this.
