There once was a man. The
assumption that man has always been holds truth in our most basic view of time.
We don’t know why but we know that there has always once been a man. This
particular man lived in a time when stories and fables were nothing more than
yesterday’s happenings. This man’s name was O’ne he was the son of Baree who
was the son of Ah’me who was a direct descendant of the great and most feared
warrior Ma’tu who fought the great eagle of the sea and won with the aid of
Oa’s blessing.
O’ne lived outside of the
village, near the forest of Truths with his two sons, Ma’tu Ru and Ma’tu Nu and
the mother of his two sons El’na. Ma’tu Ru was the oldest and the strongest but
both sons were built very big with muscles and had long locks of black hair
that reached their backs. They lived outside the village and close to the
forest because they were hunters. In the land of Zamu taking the life of an
animal was taboo but not against any law. In fact there were only but three
Laws in Zamu.
Do not
kill, without just cause.
Do not lie,
to cause harm.
And the most important law
of all three the one that all follow and none break.
Do not
steal.
O’ne became a hunter when he
was but a boy. He killed a serpent that swallowed his mother as they slept for
the night. When they awoke and found the serpent lying there, having had its
fill, O’ne’s father did nothing. He said Oa knew what they were doing. O’ne
boiled with fury and rage and grabbed his father’s wood cutting stone and
chopped the head off the beast. His mother’s limp body fell out of the dead
serpent. O’ne cried out in pain because it was too late his mother was dead. In
anguish and pain he let out seven shouts of pain and on the seventh shout
lightning struck O’ne and his mother. It is said that the lightning struck O’ne
because he had committed a taboo by killing an animal but even worse by killing
one of the many faces that Oa wears the ‘serpent’.
And in the epicenter of the
lighting strike something happened to O’ne, what that something is no spirit or
person can actually say.
As the smoldering embers
around O’ne and his mother died out the woman took a deep breath and for the
first time since the birth of O’ne, his father showed real emotion and started
to roll on in the dirt tearing off his clothes. When the dust settle Baree
carried his other into their bed leaving O’ne to burn the serpent and to throw
away the ashes deep inside the Innocent forest, named so because man rarely
ventured there.
And for those that do they
are never to return and for those that do only to be stuck with madness. O’ne
took the serpent and carried it on his back with his stone axe in his hand and
water in his coconut container.
O’ne travelled for five days
and four nights before he reached a large clearing deep in the Innocent forest,
he placed the serpent’s body down and went to gather dead wood for the fire
just beyond the clearing.
Just as O’ne stepped out of
the clearing a big cat creature pounced on him had it not been for the
shrubbery in the cats path the cat would have liberated O’ne’s head form his
body. O’ne tumbled back into the clearing the cat followed with a slow stalk.
O’ne was still on the ground clenching his stone axe and still inching back to
where he laid the serpents body. The cat did not follow, it stop when O’ne
reached the serpents body. He didn’t understand why the cat did not kill him on
the spot.
The cat just stared at him
and O’ne stared back, eventually the cat felt that this was tedious and curled
up into a ball and fell asleep. O’ne was shocked here was an opportunity to
kill a threat to his life. His enemy was asleep. All he had to do was, was to
pick up his father’s stone axe and bring its head down on his sleeping enemy,
but was the cat really asleep? O’ne could not with full certainty know so he
stared at the sleeping cat.
But before long O’ne himself
was beset upon by his own deep weariness and sleep over took and consumed him.
He had restless dreams that night. Dreams of being chased by flying serpents,
dreams of meeting a man with a golden face a face so bright that if you looked
at the man your face would melt and without knowing how he knew he tried his
best not to look at the man.
O’ne’s resolve was wearing
thin and the temptation to look at the man was just too great to ignore for
much longer and just as he was about to look he was pulled back out of his
dream and into life with a terror so strong. He for a second forgot how to
breathe. After a small examination O'ne realized that nothing was a miss.
The cat was awake now and
staring amused at him.
O’ne released a sigh of
relief, and started to chuckle to himself in that moment he was happy to be
alive. He forgot all his worries and smiled as he looked at the roof of the
forest canopy there was a tiny bit of moonlight penetrating the top, he
couldn't see the stars dancing in the sky, but he could hear them dancing their
twinkling rhythm.
But just than he heard
movement from the cat in front of him. O'ne quickly looked down into the
clearing and saw nothing different at first, he almost sighed of relief again
but then he saw it. The big cat had moved closer, not by much but it indeed had
moved.
Closer.
O’ne stared at the cat. Its
big green eyes stared back, it looked like it knew something that O’ne did in
fact know but for some reason could not recall on command. The cat’s breathing
started to pick up pace. It was as if the cat was inhaling air to make itself
appear even bigger than it already was. The green of its eyes started to glow.
The glow was intense jade. O’ne was captivated by the glow. He was unaware,
maybe uncaring to the fact that the cat was moving closer to him.
O’ne dropped his stone axe.
The light was beautiful. The
light was the truth. The light was Oa. It was all the faces of Oa.
O’ne embraced his destiny
and surrendered wholly and holy to the jade light. The boy was at peace.
Somewhere in the conscious
part of his brain he saw the cat leap for him but O’ne had given into his
sub-conscious.
The light was filling his
entire body with a freedom no man before him had ever experienced and very few
since.
The serpent.
The serpent hissed so loud.
The trees in the forest of Innocence started to tremble at the terrifying
echoes that came from the dead serpent.
The mesmerizing spell of the
jade glow was broken. O’ne was back to his scared self. He picked the stone axe
up and without forethought, without reflection he charged the now leaping cat.
This sudden burst of randomness stunned the cat perhaps more than the hissing
of the dead snake.
For the first time since the
glowing started O’ne had control of his own consciousness.
The eyes. The eyes, go for
the eyes.
O’ne leapt into the sky with
a power and a will he did not know he possessed.
Freedom.
This was pure freedom. Being
able to be conscious and still see outside of oneself.
O’ne plunged the stone axe
in the right eye of the cat while holding on to its right ear with his left
hand.
There was a connection
between the two as he clung on top the cat's ear. Their roles were now and
forever reversed. O’ne was the hunter, O’ne was the cat. He felt the cat’s fear
surging through his left hand.
The cat groaned and moaned
and shook its head so violently and so hard that O’ne was flung high in the
air. He had some of the cats whiskers in his left hand and as he plunged back
to the hard earth. O’ne saw the cat run back into the forest of Innocence.
Somehow O’ne landed on his feet.
Gentle, graceful and unhurt.
O’ne was still holding the
cat’s whiskers in his left hand and the now bloody stone axe in his right. The
blood on the axe burnt hot. So hot that the stone axe was scorched black and
turned into a black crystal and so were the parts of his right hand. But he
felt no pain. He felt strength from both the burn on his right hand and the
whiskers in his left hand.
O’ne dropped the stone axe
not because it was heavy or that it was too difficult to hold but because he
had no use for the weapon anymore. He knew without knowing that no animal in
this forest would dare to attack him.
O’ne stood in the dark
clearing. It felt brighter to him now than it had when he woke from his dream.
Yet there was no light source. Except for the faint glow of the now displace
jade eye of the cat and the penetrating moonlight. He walked to the jade eye
and he picked it up.
O’ne stared into the eye and
he could see Oa as they stared back at him. O’ne ate the eye as if it were an
apple. It was his final rebellion against Oa. Still chewing and eating the eye,
O'ne walked to the dead serpent and stood infront of it. O’ne finished his jade
eye apple and tied the whiskers around his waist like a belt. He sat down in
front of the serpent.
‘Speak’ O’ne insisted
without reason to the dead serpent. Moments had passed without him moving or
without the serpent speaking.
How many moments?
Only Oa knew.
O’ne got up from his seated
position and went a few steps back to pick up his stone axe. This time he
looked at the transformed stone axe it wasn’t stone anymore it was crystal like
and so sharp that it cut O’ne’s finger as he ran it across the crystal
blade.
O’ne was amazed.
He went back to the headless
serpent and started to skin the serpent. He knew what he was doing even though
he did not know.
O’ne consumed the serpents
body for seven days and for seven night. Each time he would prepare a meal he
would say these words-
‘I consume you to make me
stronger’
Once O’ne’s feasting came to
an end. He put out his fires and collected his serpent skin in a bundle and
headed back to his village.
The trip back only took him
a day this time because he had no dead serpent to weigh him down. When he
reached the homestead of his father O’ne was met with fright because they
thought him to be dead in the forest of Innocence never to return.
Instead here stood a boy who
now resembled a fierce and powerful man. O’ne’s clothes did not fit him anymore
it is as if he had grown years in a matter of weeks.
Baree tried to stop O’ne
from entering the house but the man O'ne had grown up to fear and respect
seemed like a bothersome fly to him now. O’ne found his mother sleeping and he
woke her and at first she did not recognize him to be her son for a moment she
thought that it was her father that came to wake her up but after a few silent
moments she realized that it was O’ne her son.
‘How long was I asleep?’ She
asked trying to understand why the boy looked like a man.
‘I do not know the answer to
that question mother.’ O’ne could see the confusion dancing in her eyes, but he
was unsympathetic to it.
‘You, woman you owe me your
life.’ There was silence.
O’ne unwrapped the bundle of
serpents skin that he had tied with one of the seven whiskers from the cat he
had and gave it to his confused mother with all the whiskers and said ‘Make me
new clothes with these, and make them fast. I do not want to be here when the
sunsets.’
The woman looked at the
skins in awe and said ‘This will be the finest clothe my hands shall ever
make.’
O’ne stayed in the room as
his mother made the clothes. He stared at his hand, his now blacken right hand.
It felt heavy like stone and it was a shiny black the kind of black that light
dance off of, he clenched and unclenched his right fist. All the while his
mother worked and sang songs of mourning as if her son had just died.
The new clothes fit O’ne
like a glove. She had made him shoes, trousers, two leathery shirts, a hat and
even a quiver. Exactly what O’ne wanted she knew this without knowing it. There
was even enough left to make him a water skin and a knapsack and some leftover
that he put into the knapsack.
That was the last time he
saw either of his parents.
He went back into the forest
of Innocence and would only return many years after the death of his parents to
seek out a wife. No one knows what O’ne went to do in the forest for so many
years but all they knew is that since he killed the serpent life has never been
the same.
Boys and girls all around
Zamu upon hearing his tale started to explore more.
They started to question
more.
It was a new age and O’ne
was directly responsible for it. They tried calling him O’ne the heretic, O’ne
the destroyer, O’ne the unholy and even O’ne the coward but the only name that
fell through the annals of history without being added to or subtracted from
was O’ne the bringer of knowledge.
I
am a writer with a dream of just writing. I am currently in the process of
writing an epic that may or may not involve space pirates, mind bending
witchcraft, teenagers filled with angst, malevolent forces, rebellions, world
wars and some immortal vampires but above all the gimmicks there will be people
in my stories. People that, hopefully, any well-adjusted human being will be
able to relate to on an emotional level.
