Ahhhhhh.
The water had been placid for a thousand years. Deeply placid.. There was a certain excitement of giant fish, but they were giant because they had lived a long time and learned for every snare of the hunt. They had no interest in humans and avoided them, which is not a senseless policy for sentient beings in general, humans included.
Sometimes they’d pop out of the water, once or twice, just so watchers could say they’d seen a great Sea Monster, whom they named Noah, claiming that he left the Ark and decided to swim, and The Name punished him by turning him into a fish.
This is both ridiculous and heretical, as well as being untrue; that’s a triplicate of madness, which is why so many Humans chose to enjoy beiving it. So it goes.
But the water was truly peaceful, even relatively calm in the middle of great storms. It had ma’at.
We need to not speak to you if the advancement of the surrounding peoples’ architecture, their tools, their knowledge, all of which we’ve learned in part, which permits us to explore even…But that’s not a wise pathway to go down, never mind.
It was in the last 100 years of relative order, or was it 1000? People counted differently then–it was not long before that Something came out of the Deep. Most deep, standing water has something dangerous within, far more dangerous than a seven-hundred-pound carp or two.
It is popular to the picture as Tiamat as a dragon with nine heads, which is an underestimation. I hope you have never been in near great waters in a time of turmoil. I have. Ways that once might have been your friend as you splashed around its surface and a few feet underwater, now housed fear, and even more, they spoiled, and this is how so many real Sea Monsters came to be in that lake near you; read your Gospel of Thomas to find out more.
Why did she come? This is simple. She can speak if she wants, but she did not. She did Appear in a form well suited to her. Instead, she spoke through the races, and people lived and marveled that, from faraway, she destroyed Atlantis with the focused, chaotic liquid somehow. Obviously the message she left sliced across the city by huge waves as they focused in one place instead of simply overflowing the city, as we are told.
The message was this: If you love Order, you must respect Chaos.
The fact that Atlantis was shaped rather like a snake with a huge coil is no interest to anything and certainly doesn’t relate to anything else we’ve written.
Atlanteans had the hubris to believe they’d created a perfect society and it would last forever. Perfection is hard for humans to attain, and the only things that last forever are those which adapt to the times; because change is inevitable, and thus, perfection, or even attempts thereat, must bow to change as well.
Remember this. At moments when your life seems most perfectly in place, or completely without any sense at all, remember that you are all part of the Balance, and the balance is not homeostasis. The Balance is always changing, as are our ideas of how this works.
Heed the lesson, friend. Or don’t, and enjoy the consequences; if you won’t listen, I won’t care. I am old and I have little time left to do great things or make huge mistakes. I’m off to try to do the other, fully aware of the consequences of both.
Life is a snake, cold-blooded, uncaring about anything but your direct actions and its own territoriality and appetite, or its own fears.
That’s okay. You’re warm-blooded, and therefore capable of passion; and passion drives every greatness of Humanity. If it sometimes drives insanity and death instead, it’s still a worthy trade-off. Would I trade the conquering of Rome for Michaelangelo’s brilliant ceiling? I would not, but this is Life; we make choices, even decisions; but we do not make Life. Life makes itself, guided by the Snake of What Might Be.
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(This is a standalone piece of my Goblincore novel. For more of my books, check Amazon or Audible, if you’re so inclined.)
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