It could have happened last Tuesday, but when you an inter-dimensional Wizard, time is no more important to you than a toothbrush is to a stick insect.
Two Wizards just ‘happened’ to bump into to each other on the summit of some random peak in a billion mountain tops, a million light years from the last stop sign of civilisation.
‘Nice cosmic ride, moe’ bean.’ The more invisible of the two Wizard’s admired the other one’s transportation.
This was a vast upside-down spiral of strange mountains that seemed to protrude from the fabric of the starry sky above like thorns piercing a dark cloth.
‘Of course,’ the invisible wizard just had gloat, ‘Me and my kin can instantly traverse the Cosmos without the need for bling-on-a-wing, if you know what I mean?’
‘And yet’ the second Wizard got in a nice, cool come back, her voice like tidal wave of calm certainty, ‘I doubt you’ve ever considered the greatest question of all: if we are all of one conscious universe then just what is this nothing between you and me, Babee?’
If the other Wizard had been of the visible spectrum, he might have frowned at such a question. As it was, he’d other matters to attend to.
‘Hey before we get down to business, I have a bone to pick with you. I have heard that those in your Core-Operation take faith in the Wild Imagination, the theory that the entire Cosmos is nothing more than just the chaotic imagination of some eternal inner-infant who lurks at the heart of every living thing.’
‘Yep.’ came an even cooler reply.
‘If that’s the case then what does that say about existence? What’s the point of taking a thing seriously if the entire Cosmos is just the whacky, irrational playground of the universal inner child in all of us?’
‘So, Honey,’ her smokey voice become so cool that it froze space and time, ‘you randomly found me out here just to condemn my ethos?’
‘No! I found you out here because I wish to put to test a theory of my own kind…’
‘Which is?’
‘As you know, our Great Cosmic Sosighcity of Too Many Tribes, the hand that holds all civility together. Yah know, that glorious waste of space-time our intellectually-challenged ancestors were spat out from? Well, it’s a bit like disease in the Cosmos at the moment. New Townlands keep on cropping in every trans-dimension. Even if you give one a good-damn spray every now and then, set it back with a bit of an apocalypse, they have a nasty habit of growing back with a hateful-vengeance, sometimes, stronger then ever.’
‘Hmm hmm,’ the second Wizard snapped one of her many-staffed-limbs up to her chin, ‘This is another place where our philosophies are dire-metrically opposed. For me the Sosighcity is that most beautiful of neon tapestry’s, and the Townlands within, such inspiring, glorious playthings of undying mystery! Oh, don’t you see the beauty in the brutality of it all!? The dramas playing out within their dimensions!? –
‘What would the Universe be without LOVE and HATE, joy and pain, Passion and heart-break? Tragedy, melancholy, misunderstandings and unrequited hearts? Prejudice and Obsession!? The game of chance, hard lessons learned, embracing the slow but inevitable tide of change, rising to impossible challenges and breaking all the rules! Kind innocent souls persecuted until they become freaks and outcasts who reek their revenge on all ignorance! Souls saved just in time, souls lost despite all hope! Fist fights outside pubs where the best of pals are made! Life in the SosighCity is a so beautifully twisted thing! Oh, and the chaos all that emotion brings! Oh, that lonely fLICKering light of innocent IDEAlism lost on an broiling ocean of indifference! Oh the bitter-sweet melancHOLY of it all, Baybee, its pure ecstastical, tragical, emensical, drama of the highest, flyist, WONDERMASTJESTEEEEEE!!’
There came an intense grating sound from all around as the invisible Wizard appeared to grind his hard palms against his invisible staff until the many limb-ed wizard couldn’t continue her wistful musings.
‘Now, now, my Dear?’ She tried not to sound any more offended then she felt.
‘OH COME OFF IT!’ The invisible Wizard’s voice howled like air rushing into a vacuum cleaner, ‘I don’t buy your sentimentalism! You’re are the Many Fingered Laydee, are you not? You are legendary for the chaos you have wrought upon the Sosighcity. You’ve stirred the apocalypse from its slumber enough times, like the best of us! You must hate the City at least as much as a Wizard hates the brainless-monkery who proceeded him!’
‘HATE? What hate? What a simple word for a such a complex and uncertain emotion! HATING the Sosighcity has never interested me as much liberating its tribes, from time to time, from their habit of getting too set in their dull, blunt ways! Every knife must be sharpened from time to time!’
‘But don’t you ever dream,’ the invisible wizard was in danger of getting into a rant, ‘of finally leaving that damned primordial quagmire we came from behind? Don’t you dream of depressing the last of its doomed goo into the undergrowth, down into the particles-of-particles until its like it never existed and finally you’re free of all its crap?’
The many-limbed Wizard tossed her wild black hair backwards, snapping her many glowing staff-limbs outwards with 360-degree-jabs as if she was considering lashing at someone who could have been all around her.
‘Anyway…’ the invisible Wizard managed to refrain himself with a clearing of the throat, ‘Me of my
Core-Operation have been lost deep in thought for quite some time, pondering all the different control-methods and which one might be the best way of putting the Sosighcity out of its misery once and for all. After much ponderising I have collectively come to the conclusion that there can be few more dangerously contagious forces within the Sosighcity then matters of the heart….’
‘You mean Love?’
‘Yes, love!’
‘What’s love got to do with it?’
‘Now that’s what I need know! That’s why I need you for to do some research for me. I’m a C*ntry boy at heart, can’t stand being in town for more then five nano-seconds on a Sunday morning, so I need someone like you to do some toying with your beloved plaything!’
‘Hmmmmmmm, and what toying did you have in mind?’
‘I think our Sosighcity’s primitive cousins massively underestimate how such a seemingly positive emotion as Love can end up being so chronically self-destructive to civilisation. Could love tear our city-of-crap apart once and for all?’
‘Hmmm….’ The many-limb-ed Wizard may have been scheming, ‘would an interesting theory to put to the test, Baybee.’
‘Interesting enough for a wager?’
‘What we talking about here?’
‘I may just have a short cut, call it a day pass, if you will, to the heart of the Gardener’s Mother….a chance to bask in so much knowledge that you don’t mind falling forever into her wisdom. If seeking the source-of-all-things interests you….’
‘He he he, ah, ah, ah, HAH, HAH, HAH, HAAAAAAAAH!’ She laughed teasingly, before biting on her velvety lower lip, one of the few facial features on her tree-like head-dress,
‘You know, I just might have to think about that one….’
‘What’s there to think about?’
‘You know, I think you’re right.’
All of a sudden her arms had splayed out into endless glowing fingers of energy.
‘Time to get down, Baybee, talk after. If you know who I am then you know I never make deals t’with nobody ‘til I’ve danced with them first. If the MIGHT of your beautifully hate-filled Core-Operation of invisible cowards can survive my staff-power then I’ll decide if I wanna take on your most curious wager…how’s that sound, Baybee?…’
As she spoke her endless staffs of light were reaching a brilliance that would have blinded all those who had eyes. It was a good job then, that no living thing around these parts had need for such senses.
As she danced and swayed her limber body from side to side, firing a hundred balls of energy in a hundred different directions at once, it suddenly felt as if there were as many invisible enemies for her to aim at as they were mountain peaks.
‘OKAY LAYDEE.’ The invisible Wizard had always had an omnipresence in his tone, but right now his throat sounded as if it belonged to a billion different Wizards shouting as one. ‘If you’re grooving-for-a-bruising, THEN WHO AM I TO DEPRIVE YOU?!!!! ’