The Story of Earth

by Kari Risher

Sophia looked within herself to find that she was disintegrating. Just an instant before she had been longing for communion, to share herself with others, though she couldn’t remember ever having known anything other than what had always been, herself, hanging in a void, eternally. But now this. The ecstasy was something she would not have expected. She didn’t know what was coming next, but she smiled anyway, having faith that an adventure was opening up within her, from beyond this lonely void…..

This is the story of a village called Earth, from its birth to its death, and the great, unprecedented adventure it lived out, quite possibly the most amazing adventure that ever existed. It is the story of existence itself, of reality, of the emergence of something called space-time, of something new, something that grew from the seed of a flash of longing in the heart of beauty herself. You’ve never heard this story, but something in it will echo in your bones, an echo of something whole. So listen closely now, and let it ring through to the bottom of your soul.

The village was hard at work, existing. They worked as they always had, focused on subsistence. Life was monotonous, day turned to night, then back to day again, and nothing much seemed to change. Everything was done in the service of their mother, whom they did not know, but their ancestors claimed that reverence for her was the greatest thing; indeed, it was everything. She had paved the way for them, and so they existed. They didn’t think about why it was that they lived, or even how it was that they lived. They just lived. Although for them, living in a perpetual present, a unity of dependence on one another for survival, life seemed to be always the same, there was a creeping change coming upon them, unfurling from their depths like a vine from the earth. It was so slow and surreptitious that none of them noticed that as the days and nights cycled by, the temperature of their inner awareness rose bit by bit.

One day, as the sun rose, it illuminated a new configuration of reality. Now the villagers had joined together, virtually all of them, into small clumps. And life began to be different. But still they didn’t notice. Somehow they knew how to live life differently. They began to live out different purposes. One group would be drawn to another, and they would join, forming a unique identity, while another group might eat another so that it could live. Each group developed its own identity. Each slowly crawled throughout the village, drawn mysteriously in the direction determined by their communal desire. Many different groups formed and lived into their greatest potential, burning bright, and then ceased to exist. As the groups interacted, some of them formed for specific purposes. And as the sun set and rose again, it continued to rise on yet a more diverse panorama, as the groups joined and thrived and lived out the purposes that seemed to be stamped into their interiors.

One day, on the surface of it just like any other, several particular groups throughout the village were drawn to one another in a new configuration. Mara was a part of one of these groups. Mara had been through change after change since the beginning of change in the village, but had never considered it, having simply followed the overpowering wind of instinct that carried her in the direction she was to go. There was nothing special about this change. It was simply another overpowering drive to sweep into union with several other groups. She joined with others into a new configuration, led by the mysterious, as yet unappreciated spirit that directed such experiments, and it was then that she jolted into the awareness of a realm of the village that had never been there before.

It was a day like any other. Mara woke from her sleep, on the bank near the river, with the sunrise. She walked to the river, splashed the cool water on her face, and stretched, welcoming the day’s activities. She set off of find some berries for the day’s sustenance. She walked the same trail she always walked, hopping the rocks to cross the river and venturing deep into the forest, past the thicket of pines, deeper still, until she reached the enormous currant bush she knew and loved so well. She had picked the first side pretty clean the day before, and so she walked around to where she could see more of the little black jewels sparkling in the sunlight that glinted now and then through the waving canopy above. She began to pick them, and put them one by one into the leather pouch she carried on her hip, as she did every day. The birds had been picking at this same bush, and so she crept to the underside of the bush, not notice the sun rising high in the sky above her. As she crawled to her knees next to the currant bush, as well as the imposing boulder that sheltered it from being completely picked clean by birds, she was suddenly overcome by a blinding light. The sun’s brightness seemed magnified by the lacy interlay of branches above her sheltered spot deep in the forest. She closed her eyes to block it out, and when she opened them again, the mouth of a cavern had appeared beside her in the wall of the black rock she knelt beside. She was astonished. She knew suddenly that she had never before seen the inside of a rock like this, and she knew that there was something strange about her knowing that she had never seen a cavern. Despite the fear that crawled up her throat at this insight, she followed her instinct to crawl into the cavern. It was such a small opening that she had to enter on her hands and knees, but about 10 yards into it, the space seemed to open up and she could walk normally. She crouched on her legs, then rose up a bit more, her back still hunched, and eventually was able to walk upright. The light had faded a long way back, but she could see another light up ahead, so she continued to walk forward, towards it. As she approached the light, she could see the shadows of figures occasionally silhouetted against it. She walked more and more briskly, her heart pounding relentlessly. As she drew close enough to make out the figures moving in the light, she began to run. It was her tribe! There was Bard, and Skela, and Orbe! Tol, Ferg, and Salo! She looked around. It was nearly everyone, and they all had the same new quality to their faces – like the face of a river during a storm, contoured and shaped in such ways that made her body shudder strangely. She looked up. The light streamed in from a hole in the top of the cave. She approached Tol. “How did you find this hole in the ground?” His eyes sparked in the light. “I was stalking prey as usual, following the tracks of the antelope tribe, when the Sun grew so bright in the dew of a fallen leaf that I had to close my eyes. And when I opened them, I saw a black opening from a pile of rocks next to where I stood. So I walked in.” Mara’s eyes ignited with the same flash that had been in Tol’s. “That’s just what happened to me. I was picking berries when the Sun flashed so strongly that I had to close my eyes, and when I opened them, there was a hole in front of me.” They looked at one another in a way that they had never looked at anyone before. There was a new depth between them. Mara sensed the importance of what was happening, and suddenly knew what she had to do next. “We have to tell the others.” Tol nodded. “Everyone!” He called out loudly. He winced as his voice came bounding back at him, and some of the others crouched like they were hiding from a predator when they heard the echo. But when they realized it was just Tol, standing in the light streaming from above, they stood up and looked at him. “Mara and I found this cave today after the sun blinded us. Did this happen to you too?” Every single one of the tribe members grunted in agreement and nodded their heads. They looked around, eyes lighting up successively like a flame passed from candle to candle around the circle they stood huddled in. Tol looked at Mara. She nodded in acknowledgement of the significance of the response. “Does anyone know what this is? Where did this hole come from?” Degh spoke up. “When I went into the hole I found, nobody else was here. So I wandered around. It looks like this place stretches all throughout the village; there were lights in every direction, as far as I could see.” An audible sigh rose above the tribe and hovered over them, a communal vibration expressing the shock they didn’t yet know how to express. “What should we do?” Rube asked the group. Mara didn’t know, but she knew that somebody had to decide, so she replied. “Let’s go on with our tasks as usual. But we can come back to this place when we need to have a meeting, or to rest.” A bubble rose up from her chest into her mouth as she spoke one last thing to the crowd. “We’ll call it the inside, and the rest of the village the outside.” There was a murmur of assent, and then the tribe filed out of the cave back into the light of day and their tasks, but as each of them stepped back onto the earth again, they knew it would never be quite the same.

As Mara worked at her daily tasks over the next few days, her mind remained on the scene at the cave. She wondered where it had come from – had one of the other tribes dug it out overnight, or – could it be? – had it always been there, but never seen by any of her people until just the other day? She couldn’t shake the feeling that she and her tribe had been meant to find the inside, and that they had stumbled upon it for a purpose that remained to be discovered. This idea exhilarated her; her stomach flipped, and she felt a tingling in her spine that felt like the most cleansing raindrops she had ever known were dancing upon it. It was this feeling that drove her to think more and more about the meeting on the inside – to analyze it, searching for some clue as to what it meant and what they were to do with the new discovery about their village. She made up her mind that she would ask Tol to explore the cave with her, in the hope that this would help her to understand why it had come into their lives.

That evening, as the tribe sat around the fire, Mara pulled Tol aside, to tell him about her plan. “Tol, the inside has been with me these past few days, and I feel as if there is something more about it that we must discover. I want to explore it. Will you join me?” Tol’s eyes looked narrow and focused, as the hunters did when they were stalking prey. “If we want to know why we found the caves, we need to explore the outside of the village, not the inside. There is much to understand about the other tribes that surround us. I will be visiting the stars at sunrise, and examining them first. Ferg and Skela will be coming with me.” With that, Tol turned around and walked back towards the fire. Mara felt an empty space inside of her swell open further, just as suddenly as the cave had opened up from the rock wall the other day. She felt her aloneness echo on the walls inside of her, but felt even more convinced that the way forward was to explore the inside. She sat next to the fire by herself, hunched over to hold the emptiness she felt in her gut, and as she sat thinking of what tomorrow might hold, the light of the flames licked her forehead in the vast darkness of the village at night.

Mara rose just before sunrise, with the anticipation of her quest for the day. She walked to the river hesitantly. This was the first day that she hadn’t simply embarked on her routine mindlessly. Everything she did felt strangely significant – deliberate, even. She splashed the water on her face, and drank some as she had always done, but as the droplets fell back into the pool, she noticed a face, contorted by ripples and illuminated by the moon. As she started from the shock of it, she noticed that it responded with the same expression that she felt. And when she raised her hand to brush her hair back from her face, she saw that the reflection was her own. She wondered how is it that I’ve never seen this before? Things were changing quickly, and this made her afraid, but she could see in the now still water that the thought had also brought a smile to her face. She leaped up, hopped across the rock trail in the river, and ran into the forest straight to the opening to the inside, where she knew she would find some answers to quench this desire in her breast, to know, to understand the purpose of the cave, and the purpose of her people. When Mara reached the cave opening, as she had before, she crept to her hands and knees and descended into the tunnel. As she crawled, she tried to notice everything she could about the cave. She felt its hardness on her palms, and the pricking of the tiny bumps on its surface as they pressed into her knees. She felt the enormity of the void before her as it resonated with the void that she had identified within herself. She looked at the wall as she passed it by – dark gray with tiny rainbow dust glittering in the moonlight that came in softly through the mouth of the cave. She breathed in deep, smelling the foreign, yet familiar, smell of the place – it was musty and earthy, but with a tinge of something so different, so grand, something that felt whole to her. She continued on down the narrow path, standing now, past the first opening where they had all gathered the other day, and kept going. Now she was descending lower and lower into the depths of the inside. It was getting darker, and the area she walked was opening larger and larger, ever more vast, until it looked as if she could be swallowed up in anonymity again, as she had felt she was for most of her life. She looked up to see that the sun had risen, and its light was faintly discernable in a hole far far above her head. The subtle light illuminated the shadow of the undefined boundaries around her, and she realized just how vast this cavern was. She was suddenly afraid and dropped to her knees, crouching to shut out the loneliness, when she felt a brush of air on her head, and felt a calmness descend upon her. She looked up to see a man, hovering between her and the light far above.

“Mara.” His voice shuddered through her like the wind through the trees during a storm. She opened her mouth to speak, but she could say nothing. When he spoke again, she felt as if he were speaking from her own chest, the resonance was so thorough. “Yesterday was a great day for Earth. Your tribe has discovered a very special place. The cosmos is celebrating.” She looked up at him (as he was much taller than her, and was hovering above the ground so that his feet were at the level of her clasped hands as she crouched before him). He was slightly taller than the men in her tribe, and she couldn’t quite make out what he looked like exactly, because it was more of a sensation she had that took the place of what should have been her visual impression of him. But from what she could tell, he “felt” like sunlight, just as its first rays touched her eyelids in the morning. She felt that this man was very important, that he could tell her about the inside, and about her tribe, and even about her mother, whom she believed she had never known. She gathered this impression in a stretch of time that seemed like an entire day, but she knew that it had only been a very short time, as the sun had not moved from where it shed light on the cavern floor just to her right. She found that she could now speak. “Celebrating for what?” He answered. “Never before, in all of Earth’s age, has any tribe been able to know this realm. And you now you have found the inside of things. This is a turning point. It is for this that Earth was created. From now on, more and more of your tribe will dwell here, and eventually the other tribes too. And you will join together in love.” Mara wanted so much to understand. She could sense that all of this was important, but could barely grasp what he was saying. “Love? What is that?”

“It’s unity, Mara. It’s coming together for the sake of unity. And it is what causes the changes in your village. It brought you together with your tribe, and it will bring your tribe together with others. Listen very carefully to this. This is the reason you exist. The Earth needs to transform. It needs to be united, to come together, so that you and all the others can be fully expressed. This cavern is the key to that. It will provide you with all that you need, to know what to do. You must continue to come here, and to explore all of its depths. Allow it to nurture you, and to guide you.” Mara nodded, her eyes wide in awe at all she was hearing. “Is my mother here?” The man smiled, and Mara felt as if her heart were bathed with warm water. “Yes, she’s here. She’s been here all along. Look here, transform the village, and you will see her.” Mara felt water coming from her eyes, and a crushing sensation in her chest. She cried out in anguish. “Where? How?” But the man has disappeared, leaving behind him only the shafts of sunlight which, Mara realized, had now moved to her left side, which meant that the entire day had nearly gone. The encounter with the strange man played out in her mind over and over again as she made her way out of the tunnel, and back to the camp, where the others were sitting by the fire as usual. She wished that she could understand what he meant when he talked about why Earth was created, the inside, love, and, most of all, her mother. She didn’t yet know what to do next, but as she approached the camp, these worries were replaced by a shivering feeling in her legs that made her want to break into a run, and light feeling in her heart that made her smile. It was anticipation to join together with her tribe, and it was nothing that she had ever felt before. This was certainly a day for new beginnings, she thought as she joyfully ran towards the others. When she got there, she could see that the others were smiling also, and everyone was making sounds altogether, in different tones. Some tapped their feet with the rhythm of the hunters feet as they hit the ground in pursuit of their prey, and some clapped their hands together, while all expressed their joy in sounds uttered from the deepest parts of their voices. It brought Mara such joy to hear them all joined together, making such a beautiful sound, and as they sang, she remembered what the man had said about love, and wondered if this had something to do with it.

That night, Mara settled onto her spot near the river and drifted off to sleep, as she always did, but this night something new happened. She found herself, while she was asleep, in another world, which looked like the normal one, but in this world, there was violence and suffering all around. She was standing on the bank of the river, but the river ran black in this world. She tilted her head toward it, trying to get a better look, and dipped her hand into it. It came up thickly black with blue and pink shimmering rings sparkling off of it. Mara felt alarmed, and a little sick, but became distracted by a sound she heard upriver. She began to walk towards it, and stopped in her tracks as she watched a large ball of fire blasting up from the mountains. She dropped to the ground and cried out. She ran through the prairie behind her towards camp. She was relieved when she saw her tribe, but as she drew closer, she no longer recognized its members. These people were possessed by some spirit that terrified her. The fire from the mountain seemed reflected in their eyes, which were black and opaque, like the water in the river. She called out to them. “Hey! The river is black! And the mountain is fire!” A few of the people turned towards her and spoke back, but she didn’t understand anything they said. The language they spoke sounded like gibberish to her. She ran into the woods, searching for anything familiar. The trees cried out in a chorus of sadness. Ahhhhh….. ahhhhhh!!! They seemed to wail as the wind rippled through their leaves. She smelled blood in the air, and heard the faint cries of the many tribes in a symphony of suffering. She was overwhelmed by a great sense of anguish and helplessness. Then the man from the inside appeared to her, emerging suddenly from between the trees. “Mara, this will all happen, but it will pass if your tribe can find a way back to your original language, and to connect again with all of Earth.” He then held out a slab of rock, and handed it to her solemnly. “This is your guide. Follow the instructions within it to know the way forward in love, and call on me when you need to.”

“What’s your name?”

“Call me Son of the Light. I am your brother, and your guide.” Without another word, he turned and faded back into the forest, back to the place from whence he had come. Mara surveyed the symbols that were inscribed on the slab, and miraculously understood what they were trying to communicate. This is what they said: Earth started as one, then began to diverge. The journey begun, many beings emerged. Playing, experimenting, Earth continued to flourish; it knew what it needed, for it to thrive and be nourished.

In a variety of forms, life danced into existence, but the primary branch continued to thrust forward, persistent. Finally a being was elegantly formed, free enough to compound consciousness, and allow self-reflection to be born. Earth turns back on itself now, embracing itself in love, and turns towards convergence, guided by a unitive force from above. This one mighty tribe, called humankind, will become utterly powerful because of their minds. They’ll rely on them only, ignore their unitive guide. They’ll want to know what to expect; so they’ll follow their incomplete insights, and treat the rest of the village with disrespect. Frantic in their search for the purpose of their lives, their reflective capacity will drive them down a path riddled with chaos and strife. But flexing, contracting, reaching towards one another, love will patiently guide them on to come back together. If, by attraction or self-surrender, they can let go of their identities, they will discover their truth, unique for each entity. They must allow their vision to be cast to the place, where the whole converges together, a gateway out of time-space. If they are able to accomplish this holy purpose, the Earth will shimmer and glow, homogenous on its surface; and will eventually reveal its heart as the heart of none other, but the nurturing and graceful, ever-longed-for mother. The way forward is unity; surrendered to the permanent, the never-changing force that is the ultimate firmament. Stand on this rock to know the way, put your hope in the immutable, and see that pure day, when Earth is completely transformed; each being on it is profoundly known, and finally, fully, it finds itself home. Mara carried the tablet, in this miserable alternate-world, to the mouth of the river, where the water sprung up, to her relief, pure and clear, and placed it, symbol-side down, under the cypress tree that grew there. Immediately after she placed it down, she woke up. The others in the tribe were already eating and washing. She blinked her eyes a few times. The water was clear. The air was thick with the mist of morning on the prairie, but nothing else. She breathed a sigh of relief and got up to start her day.

The sun set, and rose, set and rose again and again. Mara went to back to the spring, and found the tablet just where she had left it in her dream. She didn’t know how it was possible that it could have been given to her in that world, and still exist in this, but she didn’t question it. She was just thankful for a solid guide on which she could rely. Her conviction only grew about the importance of the inside, and she continued to spend her days wandering there, exploring its depths in silence, and her nights telling others of its wonders and of the Son of Light. She showed the others the tablet with the words inscribed on it, and many were amazed by it, and believed in the words. These tribe-members explored the inside along with Mara, and had their own encounters with other worlds as they traveled far into its secret depths. They were always motivated by their desire to find their purpose. They called themselves inner-seekers. But there was another group, led by Tol, who also desperately wanted to find their purpose, and these tribe-members believed that this was to be found by examining the exterior of the village. This group discovered many things about Earth that they had not known before, and their confidence in their own minds and methods grew. Over time, more and more tribe members joined Tol’s group, and spent their days journeying to all the places throughout the village, to its farthest reaches, surveying and mapping its contours, observing the behavior of other tribes, and, eventually, even killing some tribe members for the purpose of picking them apart and analyzing them. They called themselves outer-seekers. The one place they did not explore was the inside of the village. They were unimpressed with its darkness and seemingly monotonous, winding passages. And as they grew more and more reliant on their own vision, they saw no use for the message of the Son of the Light, so alien to their village and to their way of seeing things, and for any of the cryptic knowledge they might find on the inside, especially when compared with the stark brightness of all they were finding on the outside. In time many nearly completely forgot it was there, and the number of those that continued to seek answers on the inside with Mara dwindled. After all the only answers they had ever found were veiled in mystery, and could not be properly brought to the light of examination by the tribe members, for the answers stayed in the dripping, musty cave below them, and so remained hidden from complete exposure. Mara kept the tablet with the prophecy on it in the enormous cavern where she had first met the Son of the Light, and spent many days there, basking in its presence, trying to understand it deeper. The words of the prophecy remained deeply imprinted not just on the slab of rock, but on her heart as well, but a very strange thing happened within her tribe. The way they spoke to each other changed. It was so gradual that they didn’t even realize it was happening, but one day Mara was shocked to realize as she gazed on the prophecy that the symbols on it were distinctly unfamiliar to her – of course she could still understand them, but she suddenly felt that if she were to try to speak these words to someone in her tribe who didn’t know them, she would not be able to find a way to say them. The depth and complexity of their meanings had somehow been flattened. And something inside of her sunk with grief as she remembered her dream from ages ago, that forewarned of this very phenomenon. She knew, more than ever now, that the prophecy was coming to pass; but she also knew that, more alone than ever, she could try to warn the others, but her words would only fall upon deaf ears.

The inner-seekers began to spend more and more time in the caves beneath the village, withdrawing from the rest of the tribe. They eventually began gathering around their own small fire there in the evenings, and sleeping there. Now and then, a representative from the tiny group would go back to the camp of the rest of the tribe, and come back with stories of the outer-seekers transforming the entire village with all of their growing power. They had managed to subdue many of the other tribes, and, no longer able to speak their language or understand them, became completely disdainful all creatures besides themselves. They cut down the trees in the forest without their permission in order to build large shelters. They drilled deep into the belly of the rocks so that they could draw out its blood and guts for motive power. The air became thick with the residue of their relentless drive for more power and towards what they believed was the answer to the question they had been asking since the discovery of the inside: why were they born? Why does Earth exist? From where did it come? And, most elusive of all, where will it go in the future?

One day, Mara decided that it was time to confront Tol. She had tried to hold onto her belief in the power of the Son of the Light, and the hope that he had provided her, and that had given her the strength to continue deciphering the message he had left her with. She had allowed it to settle into her heart, and she and her group had worked on ways to translate it so that it would be understandable to the rest of the human tribe. She was convinced that the way forward was for the entire tribe to unite on the inside, and to leave the village behind – to melt into the darkness below, and that if they traveled far enough throughout its corridors, they would find the answers they were searching for, and their true home. Just as the sun was setting that evening, she emerged, blinking, from the cave. The outer-seekers no longer met around a single fire. Instead many of the leaders among them had their own shelters, constructed of tree flesh and dried clay. Their fire was contained in cylinders made from metals dug from deep within the ground, and was siphoned into the home through holes in the floors. Mara, along with her fellow inner-seeker Orbe, knocked on Tol’s door. He was eating cow flesh with his mate, Ferg. When he opened the door, he looked surprised to see them, but smiled and invited them in to join in on the meal. When all four of them had gotten settled at the table, Mara brought up what she had really come there for. “Tol, Ferg, the other inner-seekers and I don’t like what’s happening to the village.” She paused and took a deep breath. “We see the power your group has wielded over all of the tribes and all of Earth in your search for answers to our ultimate question, but we feel it has gone too far.”

“What do you mean by that, Mara?”

“Look around you! The air is thick with smoke! The river is nearly black! We no longer know our fellow villagers; they hide from us or are silent in subservience. Yet you continue on, searching for answers by picking apart this place that is worthless!”

“You’re wrong.” Tol replied. “We know the other members of the village. We know them all better than ever before. For instance, I know that this cow I’m eating is made of muscle and fat, and organs that all function together to make it alive, and that it came about when its parents mated, their reproductive cells combined, it grew inside its mother, and then it was born. I know it all, Mara. Tell me, what have you learned by sitting in that dark cave where you go?”

“The inside is where it all started, Tol. Don’t you remember the day when we discovered it? That was the day when the questions first arose in us. When we first felt driven to discover our purpose, and the meaning of our lives. When we remembered our mother, and we wanted to know her again….” Tol abruptly cut her off. “Our mother? I don’t remember any mother. All of that is ridiculous. We are finding our purpose, on our own. Look around you. Look at this shelter I have built. Feel the warmth on your skin. Taste the food on your tongue. Know how joyful our lives have become. It is because of the mountain of information we, the outer-seekers, have gathered about Earth. Soon we will have explored every bit of this place, and then we will truly have mastered it. Then we’ll know.”

“This is what the Son of the Light warned us about. Blindly following our incomplete insights, Tol. Don’t you see how what we’re doing is driving us to destruction? What do you expect to find by ripping up the village? You’ve already explored every bit of it, and found nothing whole. It’s worthless. We need to leave it behind. The Son of the Light told us that we need to come together. And so we must come together on the inside.” Orbe shook his head in agreement, and continued. “I have seen it myself. I discovered a whole new world, of other beings that know much more than we do. We must learn from these beings, and let them direct us home through the corridors. But we need the entire tribe for this task. We all need to be together. Only then will we find our mother again. I have such peace in my heart, Tol and Ferg, ever since I began to go to the inside, and I am certain that the way forward is to follow the Son of Light, and to leave Earth behind.” Tol arched an eyebrow at Orbe’s confession. “I know that we all want the same thing: to know our purpose, to understand. But we don’t need the Son of Light to do that. He’s not even one of us, and as far as I know, he’s not even real.” Mara sighed. “I was afraid you’d say that. Please consider joining with us in our search for meaning. If you don’t, we’re going to have to stop you ourselves.”

“Is that a threat?”

“It’s just a warning. If you continue like this, we will never be able to find our mother again, and we can’t let that happen. So we’ll stand in your way. We’ll make you join us on the inside, and get rid of those who don’t.” Tol laughed. “What can you do? You have no power.”

“We’ll find it somewhere.” With that, Mara stood up from her chair, turned on her heel, and left the house, Orbe following closely behind her. She was furious. She spent the rest of the evening meeting with the other inner-seekers, planning their first line of attack.

War broke out within the human tribe. The inner-seekers, a smaller band with less obvious power, resorted to furtive guerilla tactics, such as kidnapping explorers on expeditions and sabotage the machines that mined and analyzed mountain rock, while the outer-seekers could afford to launch more brazen attacks, such as throwing explosives into caves, killing a few people and creating roadblocks of rock so that they would have to dig through the rubble in order to continue their explorations. Everybody was miserable, but both sides believed in their cause all the more as a result of the fighting, and so it continued on.

The outer-seekers had discovered virtually all they could about the village. They had sent representative to nearly every other tribe to examine and explore their behavior and anatomy, they had an enormous book full of their discoveries about the composition of every creature in the land, they had taken expeditions beyond the mountains, and even under the river. They had figured out how to cultivate food, how to make the tribes work together for their own comfort, benefit, and continued exploration, but they were running out of elements to explore. It was time for something new. Tol decided to send expeditions to scout out the boundaries of the village. He divided all of the outer-seekers into team of four – each team was to set out in each of the four directions – north, south, east, and west, with instructions to keep on traveling until they reached the end of Earth, and to write down every detail of what they found. He himself would join the group that went north. In the meantime, Mara was afraid. The outer-seekers’ attacks were becoming more and more aggressive, and she feared that soon all of the corridors would be blocked, and all of her people killed, and there would be no way to get home. She decided that it was time to send an expedition to travel as far as possible into the inside, to try and catch a glimpse of their true home. She couldn’t stand the idea of not seeing for herself; in fact, none of the inner-seekers could, so they all decided to join together and go, with the intention of coming back if they could, to honor the prophecy of the whole tribe being united, but of course in their hearts many of them secretly hoped that they would find their mother waiting with open arms and would never have to return to the growing strife and carnage of the village of Earth.

On the same fateful day, all five expeditions set out for the ends of their known world. It was a long and arduous journey for them all. The inner-seekers traveled down the path where most of them agreed that they had felt the most guided and had met the most ghostly beings. They encountered barely-there creatures, most of them human-looking, who spoke to the depths of the hearts and directed them on without providing any clear answers about what was up ahead. The path led them down, deep into the inner heart of the village. The outer-seekers traveled in vehicles, powered by oil from under the prairie, and made up of metals from under the mountains. They recognized their own fingerprints with pride as they drove past already-conquered land throughout the vast village. Tol’s team, after many days, reached the clouds, the previous boundary of their explorations. They had never ventured farther, because they knew that the air began to thin out here, and had assumed (until now) that it was simply where Earth ended. But they had rigged together masks that pumped oxygen into their lungs from tanks mounted on their backs, so that they would be able to venture beyond the clouds. Tol elected himself to be the first to step outside the confines of the village. His singular purpose was to know about the origin of this village, which he now felt such jealous possession over, and which he mistook for love. With one last breath of pure Earth air, he put on his mask and stepped into the mist.

The team of inner-seekers did not have any idea what they would find. They had been told cryptically by several beings that “the light” was up ahead, and so they continued on day after day. Supplies were getting low, and Mara began to worry that if they did not reach the light soon, they would either have to turn back or die of starvation in their quest. She did not want to make that decision for herself or anyone else. She trudged forward, in complete darkness now, wondering what she should do, a tiny flame of hope lit in her heart that this expedition was not destroying their last chance to live into the prophecy that she had found such peace in, and in which she had put all of her faith. She closed her eyes, and focused in on this light inside of her heart, and when she opened them again, she was stunned to find that the light she had seen with her inner eye, was now reflected in her outer view. She blinked several times, and began to run when she saw that it was really before her. Around her, the others were running and shouting, but she barely noticed. All she could see was that light, guiding her on in the darkness, telling her there was hope for her yet…

Tol stepped fully through the mist and took a deep breath from his oxygen mask before orienting himself. He couldn’t see much through the residue of the misty cloud behind him, so he took another step forward. It was so dark there before him. Where was this? The loneliness of this place gripped him tightly. Was Earth simply a living village, standing by itself, surrounded by emptiness. But then, there was a figure, running towards him. For just a flash of an instant, he thought it might be the mother. He waited until she reached just in front of him, and then she stopped dead in her tracks. It was Mara. “Tol?” Her voice was hesitant. “Mara. What are you doing here? How did you beat us to the edge of the village? I don’t understand.”
“The edge of the village? But I’m on the inside – this is supposed to be the light! You can’t be here!” The other humans began trickling in, some from the darkness, and some from the light beyond the cloud (all 4 expedition teams), and murmurs rose up as the warring groups encountered one another in this twilight of combined and projected hopes. Tol looked around. “How can this be? We came to the edge of the village, beyond the clouds, from every direction. But now we’re all here. And you’re here too.” He motioned to the inner-seekers, then squinted at the darkness beyond where they stood. “Did you come from the inside?” Orbe stepped forward. “Yes, we took an expedition to the end of the inside, as far as we could go. And ended up here. The beings we met told us there was a light up ahead, and we thought this was it. What’s beyond that cloud there?” Ferg answered him. “It’s the village.” They were all confused and stunned. The outer-seekers took off their oxygen masks, and nobody dared to move. The war suddenly seemed ludicrous. Here they all were, in the same place, united by their common desire to find the answer to their common question about the purpose of Earth. As they stood pondering their plight and remembering the joy they had felt when they had been all together, singing and working all together, they began to notice that the misty realm in which they stood began to expand. The twilight seeped into the darkness of the cave as far back as they could see, while the clouds rolled back to reveal the village, luminous and fresh in its new light. It seemed as if the inside and the outside had combined into one realm, which although it was new, felt more familiar than the village ever had. Peace descended over the human tribe along with humility and awe for what was happening to them, and they could think of nothing else to do but to make their way back to camp. When they returned to their routine, they could see that everything in the village sparkled and flashed with a sacred inner fire, and they loved it all. Together, the inner and outer-seekers could sense the spirit within the other tribes, and began to commune with them more respectfully. Over time, their language evolved so that they were able to communicate with the other tribes again directly.

Mara basked in the glow of the spirit she sensed throughout the village. The cave had disappeared, but it was okay, because she felt that the inside was with her, all around her. One day, as she was walking along the river, admiring its playful dance along the riverbed, she saw the Son of the Light again. She had just arrived at the mouth of the river, the spring bursting from the rocks, when she leaned over for a drink, and saw her reflection. Only it wasn’t her reflection – it was him, his face. She jumped back, startled, and looked again, only to see him smiling back at her kindly and joyfully. Her heart warmed. This was right. As she walked back towards the camp, the scene around her faded, and she became captivated by the sunlight. She looked up.

And Sophia looked down. She was exhilarated, with the wildest adventure she could ever have dreamed of. Her children, all parts of herself, were back safely in her arms, resting in the joy of their ultimate expression, singing a chorus of communion within her soul. And her mind was awakened with clarity and joy. She looked up again, to the cloud on her left, and felt the pull. She knew she was going home, finally, towards love. She kept walking until she was beyond the cloud; until she was wrapped in an embrace of ultimate and complete love.