Untitled (Strangers)

He stared out the window at the cityscape, reflecting on the present, just like they taught him to do. Despite their intermittent absences, like so many bursts of static, he could still remember much of their teachings. He had especially loved the Brood Ma, whom he had loved as he loved his mother, and could hear her comforting voice echoing in the subconscious.

"The past, the present, the future. So many things to look at, so many things to play with, yet, great temptations are not withheld from us." That cryptic way she always spoke in... "The past, like a great shoot, has already hardened behind us, tough and unbending, we may only observe in silence and learn the way of the tree. The future, so wispy, so undefined, so...not-there. That is what we see with great fear, unknowing and ignorant, like an embryo unsure of the world outside the womb. We may bend it, but carefully, lest it springs away like a faerie idiot. But, ah, the present! IT beckons, IT calls, IT begs us to do, to be, something NOW. NOW! NOW! NOW! it calls, like an imbecilic cockatoo. Being the One That Must Be, we must learn to be omnipresent, omniscient and omnipotent...which must all be done NOW! To be everywhere is easy, but to be everywhere AT ONCE is difficult. That is the magic of the Present."

He watched and watched the greyness of the haze, thinking on the appropriateness of the weather in accordance with the heaving feeling of his soul. He felt emo. That was what they called it, those adolescents. It could be explained. He was not at a crossroads, where one feels like being quartered. He was simply in a barren wilderness, knowing that he had left a town back there from whence he came and knowing that he was heading towards another town. But where and when was beyond comprehension. They told him to head due south-west for three days, but he had already walked in that direction for thirty days and hadn't found any town, or ruins for that matter. Where on Earth was he?

He had left his friends behind and had hoped to find more where he was going. But he found himself a Stranger in a Strange Land.