The Three Perfections

Ch 1: The Petalisms

“Because there is a word for perfection, people will always imagine that they know it.”    ~ Idries Shah, Reflections

Chapter One: The Petalisms 

NINE WEEKS EARLIER.....

I am not perfect.  I will never be perfect.  Yet, perfection is exactly what will be expected of me. It is what is required of all of us now, since the end of the Scourge, when a plague and war changed everything.

We will be leaving in a week, whether we want to or not.  None of us will have a choice, because no one is exempt from the Petalisms.  No one.  Not for any reason.

The law was established over eighty years ago, and it has been followed without pause since its inception. The unwavering mandate states that all seventeen year-olds will enter the annual Petalisms, and it makes no mention of any exceptions.  Able-bodied or not, able-minded or not; it will not matter. Every seventeen year-old will face the Petalisms, along with me, and only the fortunate will succeed.  And as much as I would like, no amount of prayer will make the Petalisms go away.

I turned seventeen six months ago, and I have been in a state of denial since.  From the moment I blew out the candles on my cake, I have been trying to convince myself that it won’t happen.  But now that the day I have been dreading my entire life is only a week away, I can no longer pretend that the Petalisms don't exist.  Now it is all that I can think about, and it keeps me up at night.  There is nothing that I can do to prevent it, and I am terrified.

Feeling powerless to escape the inevitable has to be one of the worst feelings that someone can experience.  One of the worst feelings second to gut-wrenching dread, that is.  Tonight I lay awake, feeling both. Just like the night before, and the night before that. When sleep finally comes, the nightmares will consume me, just as they have every night for the past week. The lack of sleep is beginning to affect me.   

The inhabitants of the city of Tamil, where I live, are called the Taleio, and the Taleio do not receive citizenship as a birth right. Citizenship in Tamil has to be earned. In order to become a permanent citizen, individuals are required to attain the Three Perfections – strength, wisdom, and beauty - and the process of pursuing these perfections, is called Ascension.  Ascension sometimes takes many years, and some are capable of it given time, while others simply are not. I believe that I am one of the latter; one of those incapable of Ascension, and I have felt for some time now that my failure is certain.

Every seventeen year old's fate, including my own, will be determined by a group of Taleio called the Petalists.  They determine during the Petalisms, whether or not the first year entries are capable of Ascension. Individuals believed capable of Ascension are deemed a “Seeker”, and are allowed to remain in Tamil and continue training for another year before entering the Petalisms once again.  Those individuals believed incapable of Ascension are sent to live in the province of Piraeus, never to return to Tamil.  When Abram became a Seeker last year, I was overjoyed and filled with relief. I hadn’t really doubted that he would succeed, but a small part of me had still been filled with fear at the thought of losing him.  

How could I possibly succeed? I am not like the individuals who have gone before me and succeeded; those individuals who have passed the Petalisms, and become Seekers.  I am far from perfect in almost every way.  I am not like Abram.  We are practically polar opposites.  We share childhood memories and a close friendship, but that is about all that we have in common.  Abram became a Seeker last year, and there was never any doubt that he would pass the Petalisms.