The Mystic's Understanding The Mystic's Understanding
Schala
She looked carefully at the myriad of her stained-glass window.
Why she had one, she could never figure out...there had never been any sunlight to bring out the bright colors of the glass.
Or perhaps she had been saving it for the day when the light would finally shine through it...
She turned her gaze back to the room. So dark, her room was...save for that bright ball of light which could become a Time Gate.
She turned around and faced out once more. That one window was her link to the outside world...One small window of communication...One small portal to the War.
Was she afraid? That was it. Did she have the courage to face that which she did not yet understand?
True courage is facing the unknown despite the fear in your heart. True courage is continuing with life even though death seems to be the better choice.
Death...
There are some things that should die and remain dead...Not return to life and haunt you for all time...Not remain in the back of your mind and come back like zombies. For some memories were like that. Over time, they changed and shifted, becoming discolored or perhaps more brightly colored, until the memories were actually just shades of the original events. They still had the skeletons of what had happened so long ago, but the flesh was often stale and rotten.
Her thoughts were rambling, confused. She felt dizzy.
Then she started as a new one came to mind.
It was the lack of understanding that she feared. That was why she had stayed away, to understand herself before venturing onto new ground. But how could you understand something if you did not put it to use? And that was what she was doing. She was shutting herself up, away from everything, thinking that solitude would help her understand.
But slowly, slowly...her powers were ebbing away...along with her sanity, her grasp on reality...
The stained-glass window...broken bits of glass, rearranged into a different design...
What had she told Kaitlin? That every experience shattered us, and we try to pick up the pieces of who we once were?
Once a person is shattered, she will never be the same again... But, like the stained glass, you can use those bits of yourself to create a new person, one who is as beautiful as the old one...only in a different way.
For now the various parts are put together differently. People are puzzles; they have many pieces, but every piece is constantly shifting and changing, so that there is more than one way to complete the puzzle.
But even so, the solutions were still difficult to find.
Sometimes you didn't understand the changes, but it would all make sense in time.
Time...that notion of perfect timing...
Knowledge given too early was dangerous...But knowledge that came too late was also dangerous...
And in the interval was incomplete knowledge. And what you did with that lack determined how you would live.
Would you always live in that shadow, live in fear of that which you did not know?
Or would you go out and try to comprehend?
She realized that the way in which she was dealing with her lack of understanding was destroying her, rather than helping her, as she had thought...
She straightened up.
"Jaana," she called out into the night.
"Dark Lord, wherever you may be...
"Northern Paladin...
"...Thank you all..."
"...You have helped me to finally see what I was doing to myself...
"You have helped me to finally understand..."
From far away...a bright circle spread its glorious golden light over the darkened land.