The Green Spire

Nature sat under a grand-outreaching tree whose branches seemed not to end but to connect into the starry mass of gála above. Was he imagining it, or was the night sky brighter, more purple here? Everything was rich, fertile, plump, and glowing. So very bountiful was the fruit of this world, yet still it remained loyal to hunger-lust (or so he assumed), and now he knew what to call it: Empyrean. Alternatively, Heaven or Elysium would do.

Such a comforting tree, like the roof of a circus tent under which miracles came true, at least in the eye of a child. Was it a bodhi tree, a tree of life? He was not sure, but he did know that it was not the tree of knowledge of good and evil. It was nice to be able to sit out here in nature without it attacking him or demanding of him.

How easy the Buddha had it! Nature felt that if he put his mind to it, he could achieve Nirvana in a few seconds flat. Though, wasn't that the whole problem? You remain in Samsara because your mind isn't put to it. And indeed, Nature did not plan on changing that, because if he left Samsara now, Zealless would win. Out of spite alone, he could not let him win. Was that tanha? Yes, and he felt no shame for it.

Nature's neck reminded him that it could still ache even in Empyrean, so he instead looked straight across the endless plain to the seemingly infinitely distant so-called 'Green Spire.' As it appeared in his vision, it had the width of Luna at the horizon but tapered off until halfway up the sky where he assumed the top was, if it had one. It glowed with a pale lime-green light and he thought he could make out a double helix pattern on it that tapered as the tower did. The natives of this place all walked towards it every waking hour of the day, and so he joined them, because it was a nice goal to have. That word, 'nice,' was it what drove him now? Just adopt whatever he deems a nice idea and plop it down somewhere in his vacuous schedule? He could walk, walk, one step at a time, with a staff in one hand and another intelligence's hand in the other, like Abraham following the call to Canaan. Except it wasn't the God of the Old Testament that called these people to the Spire. No, this god, whoever He was, was benevolent, truly benevolent, in that naive, saccharine way that is believed to exist by those who have never known a Golden Path. And who's hand was he holding? A friend's? No, it was something more than that. A lover's? No, he had never been a romantic.

Staring at that who-knows-how-distant Spire, Nature's legs urged him to stand and walk, even though he was not of this world's nature. Usually, one should listen to such clean and basic instincts, but he denied them a return to their vacuum state because he would not leave the others behind. He had chosen them as his, and he would follow them, even when the honeymoon phase was over. Hopefully.

"Nature?" came Shavra's voice from behind him.

"Yes, child?" Not really a child by human standards, since he was newly an adult and remembered all his past lives stretching back hundreds of years. He remembered them! Human individuals didn't have that kind of rebirth, only an amorphous stretching out of humanity across generations. Did he envy it? Eh, it was different, that's all that could be said for sure. But compared to himself and many others in Empyrean, those hundreds of years seemed little more than a debut.

"It's about Raulo. Me and Raulo." Nature had known that this conversation was inevitable, but not that it would be taken up with him. It made sense, though. He had chosen the name 'Nature' as a loose symbol, but Shavra seemed to have latched onto it as his literal identity. Was he really the embodiment of lust? No, his ultimately powerless self could never claim to be the God-King of the Universe. Then again, was lust not also powerless in face of Zealless? Either way, Nature's true identity was not what the child needed to hear.

"What about you and Raulo?" Shavra walked to the right of him and sat down, first clearing the area of golden glowing blossoms that had fallen from the tree. He took special notice of one which contained an especially ripe fruit, picked it off, and put it in his mouth to eat. It did not strangle him. Shavra's coat of fur reflected the golden light, creating a kind of yellow-blue that was not green. He was humanoid, but larger than Nature to the extent that anyone lurking in the shadows beyond the golden light of the tree, seeing only their silhouettes, would likely guess that they were not the same species. Meanwhile, Raulo, who had not come here with Shavra, was only a bit smaller than himself.