Cruelty and Compassion

 
The Glow
Shortly before sunrise, light seeps across the horizon, and I awake to a soft scurrying sound.
Shazira is on watch, somewhere along the beach, out of sight.

The rest of the circle is sleeping.
Everyone but Nival, who doesn’t sleep.

I stand up in alarm, and Shazira comes near.
The sand around us is covered with dozens of small creatures that crawled out of the sea.
They look something like seals, but they’re ten inches long.

My concern vanishes when I read the gentle emotions that fill them.
“Don’t harm them, Shazira,” I tell her.
“They’re peaceful.

Shazira moves toward me, and the creatures clear a path for her.

Their expressive faces glow in the dim light, like fireflies.
What would a swarm of these glowing faces look like underwater at night?

Their faces fill with curiosity when they see that I’m awake, and they’re bold.
They focus on me, and ignore Shazira.

Several of them come right up to me and gently poke my feathers.
They jump back in surprise when I spread my wings for a moment in a birdlike stretch.

Their upper bodies rise, and they look at me with joy, and make a pleasant humming sound.
The sound calms me, and I feel energy flowing freely through me.

I don’t know if they’re intelligent, but I sing: “Thank you for your present, little ones.”
They stop humming, and look at me intently.

“Here’s a gift for you,” I tell them, as I sing them a soft song.
They form a circle around me, and concentrate very hard.
They start humming again, and the humming comes in powerful low waves of sound.

When I finish, each one comes up to me and gently touches my beak with its face.

I watch them glow as they roll and play together in the sand, digging for some kind of food.
Before the sun rises, they are back in the water and out of sight.

Shazira moves away to check on Tzina.

“I heard you thank and sing to them, Yagrin,” says Balshown quietly, as he moves slowly toward me.
“I saw how they touched you afterwards.”

“Do you know what those creatures are, Yagrin?” he asks.
I shake my head.

“They’re called Feldin,” he says.
“Most people think that they’re only a legend.”

“They’re friendly and beautiful,” I tell him, “but hardly worthy of legends.”

He laughs.
“Sometimes,” he says, “I don’t know if you’re an intuitive genius, or just lucky beyond belief.”
“Maybe both,” he adds and smiles.

“Don’t you remember that the walls of the closed city are covered with murals of the Feldin, swimming, playing, and digging for food.”

“The murals are unexceptional, except for one.”
“That mural shows a few dozen Feldin forming a circle around a Kishla.”

“The Kishla raises it’s head in song.”
“That bird has the usual colors of the Kishla except for two black, knife-shaped marks on its feathers.”
“The black marks in the mural are glowing.”

I twist my head around, and look at the knife-shaped marks on my feathers, and a shiver passes through me.
The black marks are glowing like the faces of the Feldin I saw.

“Prophecy, Balshown?” I ask.

“I don’t know,” he answers.
“But that’s not all, Yagrin.”

“Yes?”

“The legends of the heart fountain say that the mural is much more than it seems.”
“It’s called the path to the fountain.”

Shazira wakes Berek, and I tell him about the Feldin, without mentioning the fountain or the mural.
Then Balshown and I glide some dried fish out of our packs and we all eat.

Tzina looks terrible, but she eats.
She has a day, maybe two before death claims her.

 
Prisoners of Compassion
The sun rises over the horizon, and the darkness covering the Bizra burns away like a fog.
Shazira gasps when she sees thousands of Bizra awake and stretching.
Before long, they notice us.

It’s hard to describe the Bizra to someone who hasn’t seen one.
Imagine a cat with a body as flexible as a snake, and a face as expressive as a person.

It’s wonderful to watch the Bizra when they move.
Even the way they stretch leaves you breathless.

We start to move toward the Bizra, with me leading the way.

“Yagrin,” cries Shazira, “Tzina won’t move.”
I go back for her.

She seems to be slipping away.
I change myself and her, back to Jiku form.
And I carry her, as we approach the Bizra.

The Bizra look at us intently.
They seem to be looking past our physical bodies at our energy bodies.

They herd Shazira and Balshown to one side, leaving Berek, Tzina and I together.

“Should we resist?” asks Shazira.
“No,” says Balshown, “unless they show any sign that they mean to harm us.”

Balshown and Shazira are surrounded by many Bizra in a tight circle.
Balshown flows himself back into Jiku form, and Shazira follows his lead.
They stand back to back, facing the Bizra, prepared to fight.

Berek and I are surrounded on three sides.
The fourth side is open and leads into the center of the meadow, where thousands of Bizra are watching.

“Let’s go, Berek,” I tell him, and we move to the center of the meadow.
The Bizra surround us, and look at us, waiting.

I put Tzina down on the soft ground.
She whimpers.
It’s the first sound that she’s made in days.

I transform myself back into the Kishla form.
“Greetings Bizra,” I sing aloud, not knowing how to begin.
“We’ve come to solve an old mystery, and to find help for the young one who is dying.”

A thought comes to me.

The Bizra speak in dreams.
Sing them a dream.

When I sing a message in the Kishla way, I don’t have to think about encoding the message in the song.
I just think and feel the message.

This time, I combine the powerful visualization skills of the Kishla, with a song.
I sing a sad song, and imagine the attack of the Krale on Berek’s city.
I visualize what I saw last night when a Krale materialized from the Bizra nightmare.

The Bizra move back a few feet, and make a low wail.

The meadow fades a little, as the Bizra send me a dream.
I see a group of Bizra.
An image floats above their heads of the watchtower, and the great sea wall that surrounds the city.

The image changes.
I see the same group visiting my people, and showing them dreams of how to build the wall and tower.

I respond with a joyous song, and I imagine dozens or hundreds of Bizra moving among our people in several cities, long destroyed.

I wait in the silence for them to respond.

Their dream rises to my eyes again.
I see hundreds, perhaps thousand of images, each lasting a few seconds.

Each image shows the Bizra caring for their young, their old, the sick and dying.
Their feelings of compassion fill their expressive faces.

Then I see hundreds of images of young Bizra playing together peacefully.

“Berek?” I ask quietly. “What are they trying to tell us?”

“There’s no trace of violence in them,” says Berek.
“They don’t fight, even as children.”

 
Dreaming Together
Berek has a talent for understanding Bizra dreams.
But it’s not enough.
I have to find a way to understand their whole message.

I send my listening body, and it covers a few of the Bizra.
Each one of the Bizra seems like a pure color, or a pure tone.
What does it mean?

A voice whispers from deep within me.

There is no room in them for lies or contradictions.

In contrast, Jiku and humans are collections of personalities, often at war with one another.
But it’s not all bad.
We excel at living with contradiction, and tolerating imperfection.

And we are incredible simulators.
We can temporarily adopt a persona, a role, an attitude, see where it leads, and what it teaches.

I look again at the Bizra with my listening body.
There is a rich web of connections between them, and I see fuzzy images moving through the links.
I can’t see the images clearly, but I can tell that a single image changes slightly as it passes through each Bizra.

The Bizra see the world through another Bizra’s memories, associations, and point of view.

When I write a note, or draw a picture about something important to me, it may have universal, obvious meaning, but there are subtle associations that only I understand.

When the Bizra send a message, it has a clear, surface meaning.
But the Bizra assume that others will look at the message through the sender’s eyes, with all of the related memories and associations.

When they communicate with us, we see only the surface image, but not the rich associations that the sender intends.

I learned from the Gen how to join minds.
I join with the Bizra, and hope this connection will let me see what a Bizra sees when he looks at a message.

The Bizra images continue, but clearer than before, with ten or a hundred times the ideas and feelings.
A huge web of related events, filled with images and feelings.

Something is born, but not in words, that surrounds the messages like a shadow.
This understanding whispers to me, and explains what the messages mean.

I see the image of Bizra sleeping peacefully in the meadow.
Above their heads a great dream image takes shape.
The image is connected through vines of light to all sleeping Bizra.

It shows people landing on the world in broken ships.
The Bizra dream of bringing peace to the Jiku.

The Bizra think together, and dream together.

In the dream, many years pass, cities are built, and the energy masters are at war with each other

The war ends.

I see a Jiku flow master.
He walks with other masters among the hills of the Tshuan.

The Bizra fly above them, and one by one, the masters are turned into old ones.

The flow master refuses to become an old one.
He transforms himself completely into a Bizra.
And flies with them to their land, and goes to sleep in the meadow.

I see dreams of his life as a Jiku.
Joyous times, and images of war and suffering.

He wakes for a moment, as the others sleep.
And he looks around at the peaceful scene of the meadow, content with his new life.

The one who was Jiku returns to his sleep, and the Bizra dream together, again.
Images of Jiku war and suffering go in and out of their dreams, like static.

The dreams are infected by the one who became Bizra.
But, it is many years before the effects are felt.

The attack of the Krale begins.

The Bizra know that they are the source of the Krale attacks on the people.
So they withdraw from the cities, to stop the attacks.
It has little effect, but they continue to stay away.

The Bizra can handle the violence, and cruelty when it is outside them.
It simply saddens, disgusts them, or inspires pity.

But those thoughts and feelings become dangerous, when they are a part of the Bizra.

Among people, it’s different.
Each person has seen their own foolishess, cruelty, and anger.
We may hate it, but we usually can deal with it.

Tzina has Bizra eyes!
I understand what that really means, more than the superficial resemblance of the eyes.

People with Bizra eyes are poor at living with the different sides of themselves.
Tzina has built a mental wall around her acceptable, known self.

And other parts of her, run wild, and somehow destroy her sanity, and ultimately her life.

I have no idea how to help the Bizra or Tzina with this problem.

I turn to face the Bizra.
I visualize what happened with Tzina, and sing about needing help.

The Bizra show me an image of Tzina, near death, as a Jiku, with waring selves.
Then, they show me her transformation into a Bizra, and regaining her health.
When the Bizra transform someone with Bizra eyes, they can take her dominant self, and leave the others behind.
This doesn’t work with ordinary Jiku.

Their message is clear.
I can save Tzina by transforming her into a Bizra.
But if I do this, I lose her forever, and maybe cause further damage to the sensitive Bizra.

The Bizra clear a path so we can rejoin Balshown and Shazira.
I return to Jiku form, and carry Tzina back.

I tell Berek and the others what I’ve discovered.
“How do we stop the Krale?” asks Balshown.

“I don’t know, yet,” I answer, “but it might save Tzina as well.”
I turn to Shazira, filled with sadness.

“Do it Yagrin,” says Shazira.
“Transform her.”
“There’s no time to find another way to save her.”

“Not yet,” I tell her.
“I’m going back into her mind to find another way to save her.”