Corrupted by the Children

Corrupted by the Children

By Apeiroschima:

 

My desire to die here had been corrupted by the children. I had now wished to live. The face of Steep crafting their first tool from nothingness, astonishment, was frozen in my mind as I became decrepit here. It was such a simple thing, a sturdy rod pieced together from the lazy metals; those which could be mustered easily and alloyed together without fail. It had taken three cycles of the light for it to become nothing longer than a grip. But once it had formed past the boundaries of the palm it began to blossom into curves and edges that served no utility nor hearkened no style. The amazement was palpable from Steep. The ease at which an uncontained object might grow became second nature once one had the experience of building something within constraints. But to build something limited by function was a different exercise than creating from the mind’s wanderings. It had become a point of frustration for me, as teaching the inexperienced inevitably arrived at this point. For the unburdened child, like Steep, -- a child who had not grown up in the burrows, or suffered much time in the sea -- this new form of freedom was abstract, was unappraised, was sanative. It was expression. And to see the first understandings of expression bubble up inside the mind of a child was like no other sensation. There was nothing quite like seeing a person become...a person. For the canvas of suffering and tumult, that so could describe this life become denied and its power be subsumed, expressed as the unique and the individual.

But this was not always the reaction that I would see. For there lay an experienced life much more permissive in those I taught. Those that would turn this same exploration, this same step into the water of creation into something entirely different. Those children and those learners that had lived, that had suffered, in the burrows and had been cast in the sea had a different reaction to freedom. It was immediate, as it was with Steep. But in place of astonishment and amazement it was a more harrowing value. The face would contort, and the mind would dive into the sands of anxiety and guilt. If it had been this simple to collect and form these metals which so casually lay about into a twisted homunculus of a structure, how easy would it be to move a pile of sand and dust? How easy would it be to reinforce a soft mound into a sturdy wall? How easy would it be to clear the air of particulates and breathe freely? How easy would it have been to clear the pile of sand and dust that had slid down that night burying my father? How easy would it have been to provide the burrow with sound structures that could survive the Storm? How easy would it have been to make it through the Wind outside and to find the lost partner when the Rage had become too strong? Those same children and learners come to the same conclusion. It would have been easy. And they begin to think of all the shapers and the artists who they must have seen come and go from the burrows in passing. How casually these people walked through life without fear of suffocation, collapse, or simply the air. And now they were one of them, and the weight of changing and righting all that pain belonged to them. It was too much for a mind to handle, especially a young mind. This stark understanding of life was something that had to whittled on to a person, one mark at a time. But there is always a point in learning how to mold that the mind makes this leap. That sky which so brutally covers the horizon opens up, and what rolls back is an eye that stares down at the bare emptiness of this life, unnoticing and omniscient, uncaring and all seeing. That makes a person feel small, and weak, and guilty of being complacent with the limits of their size, unable to grow beyond the bounds of one’s own mortality.
But, it’s the role of the teacher to lesson that blow, to translate and to encode a message that is not so painful to hear. Because surely there is, within everyone, the power to find these truths about being given enough time and trekking. But it is in this self-discovery, unmanaged and unmitigated, that it explodes into meaninglessness and becomes unlearned, misunderstood, and unraveling. And to lose the Chance to change that again is death. And I had now wished to live.