Although the vines continually grew, they never had overgrown the glass windows from the inside. They were thick with blacks and browns and there, below the still greens of those whose herbage re-sprouted, walked the Elemental and I, arm-in-arm within the magic of this refuge.
The glass had been kept polished to sparkling, for a long, long time. Its age was an obvious factor and the smell of the place was of earth. Huge pots contained some of the other plants, and where there were no pots these beings grew from deep, inlaid, garden beds, made to last forever. These were seeded with worms, and other fertilizers that would renew themselves always. The jungle would never run out of nourishment or warmth and the Pool Room would always be muggy.
Our hushed conversation was not overridden by the noise coming from beneath the structure of The Conscious Green but rather, our life systems continued their merry humming’s along, or hissing’s along and their toning’s, each in its own serene sort of way.
On that day, what our own quiet voices needed no measures to speak over, was the vibration that powered the gears that ruled the heating system below. This particular system consisted of nothing more than a small bellows whose only concern was to bellow a constant of 2 pounds of air pressure into a canister, from its homey house under the floor of the pool.
Whenever our bodily thermostats went below the eco-system’s comfort zone, a vibration sang out to the gear system. The gears would then compel the bellows to begin pressing air through a small, aluminum, tube, and this air was pressed into a tiny opening in one end of a canister: an aluminum cylinder.
The canister was about ½ inch across and some less than twelve inches long. One end was intact: it was closed; sealed. Machined into the other end were two holes: one for the air-pressure being pushed into it, and the other hole served as the escape route for any air - above that two pound limit - to softly hiss, up through the water of the pool, and away.
What extra air bypassed the canister went up and cooled the waters of the pool; whatever air passed through the cylinder, heated it. By swimming closer to, or farther away from the waters of the canister, my cold-blooded ones maintained their body heat of choice. Both hot and cold aerated the waters. Through the entire length of the inside of the canister was a triangular hole, which had been machined to some exact measurement and within and along its three corners, the pressurized air was pushed in and out. Whatever air came out was terribly hot.
When the bellows began pushing the pressurized air into and along two - of the three - corners of the triangular paths, that air bounced from the sealed end of that cylinder with every ounce of its two pounds of contained force. This air then about-faced and rushed back through the third, remaining, triangular corner of its path in the cylinder’s machined hole, toward the opening at the other end.
Contained air, brushing against itself in two opposing directions, under two pounds of pressure, causes enough friction to heat an aluminum tube to near-melting temperatures. And with these bellows and these small tubes of friction-heated air, we heat our every structure entirely along with the waters of the pool, hot water tanks, cooking apparatus, waste disposal systems and any cooler air that hasn’t yet risen from heat.
The pool within was fed from without by the way of water from a natural spring, which came up just off to the side of the Conscious Green. Someone, in another life-plane, had worked it into a natural, rocked, waterfall, and had piped the water from this spring indoors to our pool. These fresh waters then ran throughout the length of it, down a nearly imperceptible tilt and out through small exits in several different and very precise locations. These locations were, of course, at the lower end of the pool. This fresh-water feed, along with the drainage, formed a slow twirling effect that never allowed for any settlement.
The escaping air from the non-rusting heat canisters, each did double duty, keep everything warm and aerating the pool. There was never a lack of fresh, oxygenated, water for the fish and the lilies and the bamboo that was contained in deep, cement, beds, and thus robbed of its propensity to take over my world.
There were male ferns, so we had to keep this Stronghold at or above a certain elevation - and much clover for the rabbits had been planted to deliberately overtake most of the dirt space in the giant pottages and garden beds. There are always weeds, I suppose, but these I took no notice of on this day for, when one is in the company of an Elemental, one tends to overlook the weeds.
Jewel pointed out several species of garden snakes; my frogs; my two giant tortoises; my small lizards, all - my birthday presents from those humans who had, once or another made their ways to me as hybrids or EverTame or The Vague and had left as Thorning Purple, and every of these gifts lived happily with me in this place of solace.
Even the Elementals tip-toed in talk, around my rabbits and my feral-to-them cats as they made their toilettes in the sand around the dry sauna room where the tortoises lived, for these also were as much a prisoner in this piece of heaven as I. And they knew it as well as I. But the freedom of the birds coming and going as ever they pleased, passing in and out during those moments that were gravitationally safe enough to open the windows, was a subject that was left out of any mention while in my presence. It was a strict taboo for it was a harm at times to know that my gifts and I would never leave this place again.
Over the years, myrabbits had burrowed very elaborately and very extensively beneath the Conscious Green and in this way some of their numbers escaped from all but whichever of my feral-cats had learned their ways through the labyrinth mazes. If one looked closely enough, the ingresses and egresses of all of these, as well as the red-worm’s holes, could be found here and there throughout the entirety of the expansive greenhouse. I have always supposed that, if one listened closely enough, these could also be heard as they fed on the rabbit’s excrement and then excremented out - soil. But then, I had been accused of thinking too much. Many times.
Anyone could hear the voices of one kind of predatory insect or other, as the birds and the reptiles were eating them. But, whatever small sound was taking place, as long as it was necessary for me to keep the Conscious Green’s existence from detection; to keep it bent and folded into its tiny, unbelievably heavy, pinpoint of time and space, there would be no leaving. Those eaters-of-anything-else – would live as I would live and then die, as I would die, by the rules within the expanses of the confines of this place I will ever call ‘home’.
Jewel and I spoke of many things that day but mostly about the deep struggle within each Elemental to choose the side they would surround, for every Elemental is a Circle whose nature it is to gather and focus power. Elementals protect. And those that choose to Circle the Thorning Purple are the safeguards who keep my One, the King, and his Troth-Plight and most importantly, his Shuai-jan, at bay as his war upon us ripens. The Circle, Jewel, remains closed to all but the singular vibration that I have toned within her and my tone will never dissipate until she is time to open and it is at that time… such as time has become…she will direct this power to whatever place(s), person(s) or thing(s) are instructionally toned into her.
I questioned her concerning the welfare and steadfastness of our Champion, my Hero-Judge and also of the progress of the courier I had sent to him with my letter of encouragement and also, the copy of that letter, which I had instructed him to hand to Aubergine. Jewel told me all as we walked through the door, off to one side of the dry sauna, which led us down into an underground and completely hardened, and very homey place.
Upon first glance it looked more like a bomb shelter than the homey house it had come to be. The cement beneath the dirt floor was heated by coils that were embedded within the floors: an idea someone had incorporated upon visiting the truck-shop of a man who had lived, and then been consumed, in that different fold of time. And so our fee, which we had bared to walk the earthen paths of the pool house, were warm and dry. The whole of the Conscious Green was a comfort blanket that all were bundled up and safely wrapped in.
The earth floor of the entrance room gave the false impression of a haphazard place that had been thrown together without thought. But stepping through the archway of that room was where the genius began. The whole of the floors, from that point on, was of Redstone of all shapes and polished to a matte finish. They were perfectly smooth. All about the floor, as though strewn in an offhand sort of way, were river rocks of every earthy color. And the hearth contrasted it all with black rocks that looked like glass. These uncut stones of ebony had been laid in a perfect half-circle in front of the fireplace.
The single stone, jutting out from the others that made up the wall of the fireplace was emerald green with a silver, inlaid, hand-print, on the top and in the exact center of the odd-shaped thing.
This began a soft humming sound as the Elemental drew nearer to it, and mesmerized by the soft invitation it offered, Jewel laid her hand upon it. The sound immediately changed into a song that was reminiscent of a lullaby I had known and long ago, forgotten. The silver of the print drew itself in to fit Jewel’s much smaller handprint, quite exactly. And immediately the logs in the fireplace burst into flames that warmed my heart and filled my soul with every taste I had ever imagined, and it filled those places inside of myself that had seemed so empty for all the folds of all of my Strongholds. Tearing my wondrous eyes away, I turned them toward the wonders of the rest of the room, which had become changed by the light of those flames.
The sitting room was off the left and through another archway. Some of these archways were of a single tree each, which had grown into these imperfect shapes and brought in at some point in time. Elephant tusks of ivory made up the other places of entrance and egress to the expanses of the other rooms of the place.
The wall, which was the outer wall of the room, I supposed, was of paned glass. These large panes were two feet tall, by about eight inches across and they were leaded together into one window, which covered the entire wall. The outside of this window-wall was the greenhouse and pool and it gave me every sensitivity of being above ground once again. And so, I was weeping.
The fires of the Elemental had turned the great draperies that hung and the cords that drew them open and closed, from the familiar things of my everyday life in the Conscious Green, to fabrics and pulls of silver cords. The drapes were become the golds, and the crimsons, and blues of deeper shades than I had ever before seen. The paisleys of the drapes had begun a slow, erotic, dance, which mesmerized me for just a moment. And when the Elemental motioned that I should pull at the silver draw-cords, other chords began to sound, like chords from heaven that I never wanted to stop. And it freshened the air with the smell of ozone as the fire snapped and popped from behind me in the other room.
And I felt my spirit begin to revive within me.
There were wicker chairs and a wicker couch and a wicker rocking chair in that room and although the patterns of the handcrafted furniture were of different thoughts apiece, the padded coverings matched each other and it was nothing less than lovely. Coneflower Blue backgrounds; the muted shades of the Sunflowers, yellow. And as each chord sang out, they came into full bloom before my eyes. There were low stools, also of wicker, and these had been covered with white rabbit skins.
These contrasts against the soft Redstone of the floors beneath it all, raised within me the thought that I never wanted to leave that room, which before the fires began to sing, had seemed nothing more to me than a place to meet for the formalities of the Ranking Purple. But the chords of the fires had turned it into a room that was alive, and i was compelled me to stay there forever.
It was with resting minds upon the couches and elevated feet upon the rabbit skins and with souls being nourished by the sounds of the fire, that the Elemental began. Her discourse was of those things now happening past, and of those things now happening to come, and of those things that, during the folds of the times and places that were much, much lighter in weight than the weight of Conscious Green, happened all about us as we spoke.
As I opened my psyche within that Circle: the Elemental; Jewel, our thoughts became – not as one – but as two, swirling around and about each thought and emotion, each fear, each sorrow, and every joy that comes about upon the meeting of likeness of one’s own soul.
Jewel had requested that one of the hybrids come before us as we reclined and read to us a sealed package, which he had retrieved from the still living skin of what he believed was a courier who was in the final stages of consumption. When he stood before us, no longer hybrid, but having gone Stone, he was now one of our Untriggered Rogue, who would wait until we nodded our permission to unseal, and then begin reading.
My ears could hear only the silent wailing of my heart upon hearing my own written words, which the courier had failed to deliver both to the people and to Aubergine: “…Be subtle! … Sun Tzu”
My eyes dared not blink loose my welling tears, for it is most unwise to allow Rogue, even those hybrids who were now Untriggerd, hence now our own, to experience the vibration of emotion of any kind.
As he read aloud in that room, the magic of that most bedecked of halls wrestled with my own decorum, which I struggled to maintain.
Our Untriggered Rogue, now friend, read aloud with a voice filled with only those practiced emotions:
"To Aubergine and my Dearlings all - The Thorning Purple:
I write today, from my heart, in truth as always, well guarded, within this fold of time that is called the Conscious Green, as I continue to recover from the wounds and injuries inflicted upon me, nearly a year ago, by the hand of my One; my Rogue-love, the King.
My healing is progressing very nicely. My physical strength returns and, because my mind has never been at risk, I fight in new ways by which I have the ability and the means of keeping steadfast. And from this place in my life I will show you, my people, how to overcome your One, as I have done, and thus: Rogue entire. And once they are overcome, and those Shuai-jan and those Troth-plight and those who the Thorning Purple refer to as the Loathsome Fringe – and all who envy us our success - are exterminated, we will be even more respected and the Purple entire will continue afterwards powerful, secure, honoured, and happy once again.
By many acts - Civil War has been declared upon us. Of a certainty, war is about us all. Ferocious murders, slavery, abuses, which are not even understood by those replicated beings themselves (which, in the common tongue are called, Rogue) thus no other mortal could ever hope to find their meaning. Hence their reasoning’s have become immaterial.
Until now, my friends, we were forced to war as passing shadows. Our Vague, the friends who we find in the most unlikely of places, war with us - from within the more secret digs, as fleeting as rumors.
This is a war of nerve. And so, once again my people I remind you, let us make sure our nerve is made strong by the deepest convictions of our hearts.
Today, I share with you all that which I have written, and sent by courier, to my Judge, who the Thorning Purple consider: our Hero; our strong protector; Champion of Armies.
“Your Honor,
You are my Hero and Champion of my army, because when you could have ignored my injuries, you raised your strong arm, you granted me the means by which I would disentangle myself from my One, a large male, even the King, whose intention was to disappear me back into his Darken once again...and I would not go.
One common and effective ruse of these (who in the common tongue are called Rogue), which I endeavor to expose to all at this time, is no more simple a thing than this: acts of humility and peace toward us once we have made our escape from them. Our warders then speak sweetly to us with their lips; feigning help; and thinking to benefit from you, Your Honors, by bringing a real tear to the eye in an unshakable performance of remorse for former abuses. Seeing through this, you give us the way of our escape from Darken. And for this, we love you with a perfect love.
The motive of my One, has instilled the same motive into his Rogue entire - to further enslave and do much harm by making our former returns to them a point of contention with you, my Judge, because is it not written, “Who pities a snake charmer when he is bitten, or anyone who goes near a wild beast?”
But you took pity on me, Sir, using much wisdom in not taking this common ruse into account when I brought this Rogue-love of mine before you: for as a Judge; you are absolutely fair and very hard and thus you have won my loyalty and respect and, as a man - you care; hence you are very often in my thoughts.
My Judge and Your Honors of the State, I am the mortal descendant of the first Wild Human; a woman formed of earth, as are all of the women and men of The Thorning Purple. We all are flesh, body and blood. We all breathe the kindred air.
Our hues of Purple arose because we all have nurtured an adversary with constant care, as though they were babes in swaddling, and yet they boldly fell us, and that; with much laughter.
For by the ways of their seductions; through the course of capitalizing on the many loopholes in the laws of the State; and by the means of continuance after tiresome continuance they wear Your Honors out. Using this deliberate methodology, they make certain that the sound of our wailing at their barbarous cruelty and at their infinite wickednesses, and at their inhumanity, has become no more than a common utterance in your ears; thus do Rogue become more bold; hence they laugh.
You, my Judge, and my rulers of the State are our far-seeing help and I speak for all of The Thorning Purple in giving you freely of our sincere gratitude and deep appreciation, for doing all that is possible for you to do for us. You judge our freedom from within the stench of entangling ground; searching out a needle hidden within a mountain of needles; where these Rogue’ and their Defense have laid many nets by which they ensnare.
My people and I recognize that your positions, Your Honors, require constant examination of yourselves in order that through you - good may triumph over evil. We recognize that you, also, search the depths of your own souls and find that, in the secret places of your centers, your own sorrows are the very same sorrows that we all share, alike. We have appreciation for what you find there; that you, yourselves, have had no different origin or birth than we, even would we have been born kings and, that in one same way is the entry into life for us all; and in that one same way, even a king - will leave it.
Most excellent women and men of the State; I lead my warriors to think of Your Honors with reverence because my Sovereign has seen fit to raise you up to a high station throughout the duration of this single slot of time you are given to live out; which energy we are each given to tremble-out from beginning to end; you fairly and sternly judge us all before you face your last end.
My Judge, I beg you to consider what I report to you now.
I come before you humbly and uninvited, bowing myself freely before your authority over me, and your authority over all of my Purple, whose insignia is a purple ribbon worn in the hair, or a thin braid of hair, dyed purple.
I respectfully speak on behalf of my army consisting of Wild Humans and Feral, of our many Elementals, and of all those gone Stone, in solicitation of your benevolence toward the EverTame: those slaves and prisoners we now rescue; those we remind of the strength that lies within them, so that they will draw on the courage it takes each one to stand, individually before you and before the strong arm of the State; these scattered, and these injured-become-poor, who we provide for from our own wherewithal.
I implore you to take most zealous offense when you are confronted with those whom the EverTame bring before you to judge; those Rogue who, while enjoying the many benefits of their slavery sorely abuse them - if for no other reason than this: because, whether you show these Rogue mercy from your benches and give them release; whether you give to them your most severe censure; or whether you punish them to the fullest extent of the law; I speak as the winter to Your Honors – there lives nothing within Rogue but to either curse you. They mock you and they laugh you to scorn to their Trothplight and to their Shuai-jan and to their Loathsome Fringe and to their captive Tame.
More especially do they laugh you into the faces of the EverTame; because EverTame are easily kept quiet and, at the same time, are anxious not to err in regards to their One, for fear that cruelties should be inflicted upon them again; or because they fear being laid low again when their naïveté of their own imminent danger is at its highest; or because they fear their own terror so greatly that the only way to escape it is to turn the mind away from it; thus, they are forced by their One to tell themselves lies and then to believe those lies from their encampments; and taking these lies into their secret hearts, which lead directly to their Inner Temples; then are they gone into Darken.
I beg you, in addition, for your leniency, for your clemency, for your easygoingness, when one of my people under my direction brings before you their One which has, beforehand, forced one of my people, under threat of further torture and of death itself, into having broken the laws of the State – believe me you, that when my people are forced by their One to commit acts of lawlessness they do so only in lieu of extreme torments. This is one of the shared methods of instilling antipathy of my people within you, Your Honor.
This method is the first torture inflicted by Rogue on the slave for the reason that - it is the simplest way to keep them. If One’s slave shall be forced in any way to be incriminated before you, my Judge, and thus; discredited before you Your Honors of the State; this Rogue can then keep human beings, bond and free, living in fear of you, because in this country, such is the way slaves are made. And none, thus silenced, suffers more for any of it than EverTame whom my One, the King, is thus empowered - by you - to keep.
By the use of these same Darken punishments - too often inflicted upon them - my Tame ones go Feral; thus do they flee to me and hence, we The Thorning Purple bring Rogue before you my Judge; by The One and The One and The One.
And so I implore you; when we bring such as these before you, who are cloaked as a replica of you; with the audacity of obvious lies; and with the lying witness; and with perjury in their heart; these Rogue who appear before you boldly, and with them their Defense of their violence - and their Defense of their lawlessness - and this: for no other reason than gaining the apathy of Your Honors of the State because that is all that is necessary for them to keep their slaves and prisoners…I, your Honor, Purple Van Winkle, a Fully Wild Human… I want you, instead, to make them fear you.
My Judge; the Champion which my army sets such great store by – I pray that from your very nature, you will become more and more well disposed towards us so that we may, once again, become the peaceable folk we would all like to be.
There is medicine for this malady, it has not become incurable; Rogue have merely made the sickness difficult to detect by the means of strong libretto: they make their crime universal so no one can see it by doing no more than turning their backs on those who oppose; then when confronted they ask us the question, “What’s wrong with your mind?” But now it happens that in this affair of the State this evil has now been seen (which it is only given to a wise man to see) and can be quickly redressed as you, my Judge, have so wisely redressed it my own case.
Because, one change is always the toothing for another I do not ask, necessarily, for lengthy incarceration, for the reason that, it would tax the State, which is already in recession. I do want you, my Judge, to be terrible in your onset, and prompt in your decision in lawfully exacting of them the maximum fines legally payable to the State. Moreover, I want you, my Judge, to grant my people full restitution any time and every time One is brought before you because of verifiable injury and/or ill treatment of your servants, the EverTame, who they have self-assuredly, enslaved.
I want you to impose sentences of minimal jail terms, Your Honor for this reason; because one commonality by which Rogue often escape more evenhanded verdicts, is their boast to you of their typical, excellent, work ethic; so let us, by imposing the least restrictive means, allow them to retain their employment and, by all means, to continue to acquire wealth. Thus it is plausible for them to continue on with uninterrupted, monthly payments to their victims and to the State for their injurious behaviors to both.
Your Honor…forage on their monies in both of these ways and you will be praised. You will not be blamed but rather, you will be ennobled; because in this way, since my One, the King, cannot be reasoned with, my Judge, you will lessen his ability to harm us and thus: you will enrich the State and by enriching the State, you cause it to happen that you are even more loved.
And as my army provides our own acquisitions, we consume no income from the State and thus, the State is not injured; our war will never turn into a loss, but the more will the state of my One, the King, and thus his kingdom entire, be brought back under your control.
My Judge, of a truth, my Warlike hues of Purple, I have not attained, nor are they altogether defined by necessary genius nor of fortune but rather by – my awakening out of Darken into a happy shrewdness. I war against all Rogue with a shrewdness as that of a ship traversing the heaving waters of the sea, but there shall be no path of my keel in the ocean waves; I war with the shrewdness of a stream that abruptly overflows behind me after I pass so that no trace can be found; as that of a bird flying through the air; no evidence of my course is to be found but the fluid air, lashed by the beat of my pinions, and cleft by the rushing force of my speeding wings, is traversed.
In this same happy shrewdness do my Sylphs, the living clouds, go forth before me to confront and consume these Rogue by their own lusts and then; as a tempest at my rear they winnow them out entire and afterward, no mark of my passage is ever found.
My Judge, be my weapon also. Determine within yourself to be to my soldiery as an arrow from a well-drawn bow and as from a sling; well aimed, shot at and leaping to the mark. I want you to draw such wrath down upon Rogue; as a millstone you hurl about their neck after which - the parted air straightway will flow together again so that none discerns the way you, Your Honor, allow my people, my EverTame first, to have escaped through.
Because: by the means of violence they overturn your benches and your bars and the laws of our State; the whole universe wars against them. The universe fights on behalf of the just! Creation, serving her maker, grows tense for punishment against the deceptive and against those who lie in wait, plotting harm.
High Wisdom is the kindly spirit that all of The Thorning Purple serve. We serve Her as prudent slaves and the wise man does not complain. Her universe is relaxed in benefit for the slaves we seek to rescue and toward the Purple who war against these Rogue. And because every Rogue is an ingrate who has no hope - my Sovereign laughs them to scorn. And we will watch as their hope turns to thistledown and is borne away on the wind.
Hence the times dictate I should come now, bowed before you, albeit uninvited, with this request: Now that you are hearing what is happening to my people, I entreat you: become an amazement to the Rogue! Stifle their laughter! Cause them to be overcome with fear and trembling when my people, downtrodden, bring them before you! Scatter them in all directions so that they flee along every road, both through the valley and in the mountains; those also who are stationed in the districts around our encampments – put them to flight and give us back the power to overwhelm them and hence, make an escape so that we are then free to simply ignore them as we wish to do!
You do have this authority.
I lead my army to choose to believe that good still triumphs over evil. An army should believe this. This is a thing worth believing in. You are my Hero and the Champion of my army. And we choose to believe that you, my Judge, are still worth believing in.
I am Purple Van Winkle and I am a Wild Human. On behalf of my Sovereign, I say:
To the Garrison: Give safe passage.
To the Slaves and Prisoners: Flee! And do not, for any reason, go back!
To our friends, the Vague: One time more I ask you to Conceal them.
To my Judge and to the State: I await your return.
To my army, The Thorning Purple entire: Hold.
To all: In War: Resolution.
In Defeat: Defiance.
In Victory: Magnanimity.
In Peace: Good Will.”
And as the hybrid gone Stone handed me the urn, which contained the dust of my courier...
I grieved.
....to be continued....
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