Ophia's Sister-Soul

 

Introduction by Sanyori Mon-Sequestra

The sum of our dreams can be strung into a circle of props, casting our life journeys in the light of a stage production. Within such a play, we may see aspects of the plot that characters nestled within the story cannot see. How many times have I witnessed this? The audience yells at the speaker on the stage, trying to make him or her awaken to some crucial fact, even though they well know that such commotion won't alter the story’s trajectory one whit. But the spectators just can't help themselves.

I hope you’ll forgive me for all this dramatist’s jargon. I was--am--a man of the stage, and I speak as my nature and training lean. And I’ve also been conditioned by my tenure as a Sophryne, a Wakeful Dreamer. There are times--particularly during historical moments of great unrest, tension, and change--when the dreams of a great many coincide, creating an even larger, overarching narrative.

I call that narrative living theater. Many others refer to it as myth.

And perhaps because I'm accustomed to blurring the distinctions between "dream" and "reality," I've been asked to present as clear an account as possible of my people’s most beloved myth: "The Twin Souls and the Parting of the Veils."

Within the context of this tale, the lines between dreams and reality are sometimes in stark contrast and sometimes scarcely discernible. On occasion, I daresay, they even seem to trade places. I've heard this is often a characteristic of twins. Who could resist the temptation to at least try it, to explore--to borrow a phrase from Colleen Addison's world--"how the other half lives"?

For art and dreams are life's twin blessings. They remind us of magical inner movements we can feel divorced from in waking--or forget entirely. Language itself arose alongside the dreaming life of humankind. Primitive peoples, like the Oskwai tribes you'll hear about, could gesture towards objects in their physical world. But for those more intangible feelings of possibility, magic and wonder that dreams awaken in us, words were needed.

How else could that wonder be shared when it couldn't be related to anything in our surroundings?

This was how theater, song, and all other arts began: early humans trying to convey what they'd experienced in their sleep-time excursions using sounds, gestures, and pantomime. That's why art will never die and never stop evolving. We humans will always keep groping for ways in which to express the inexpressible.

Those of you not native to my home world of Ophia--those who share Colleen's points of reference more intimately than mine--might feel that some information about my people, the Shaini, and the origins of Sophryne lore might be in order.

Ah, but I might rather try to catch a golden mahseer with my bare hands, were I currently possessed of fleshy hands, than try to satisfy this demand. You see, little history survives from our earliest ages. Only the most nebulous clues, clothed in symbolism, are preserved in oral traditions. That's because time itself was malleable. Many possible paths were explored. Each of these, in turn, thrust roots into their own 'pasts' and 'futures.'

During those earliest epochs, though, the Shaini tangibly felt and participated in Sorsajna, the fire of Creation. Later, when we no longer felt Sorsajna in the pit of our being, our speakers, the Sophryne, were obliged to find more demonstrable ways of evoking its essential pith. They had to almost confound and beguile the minds of their kindred in the hopes of awakening them to old inner knowledge.

It's a baffling circumstance, perhaps, but can you not understand our confusion? Once we'd inhabited a living dream. Then, suddenly, we were Ophia-bound, entrenched in material bodies, and subjected to the laws of space and time.

Many spirits began to inhabit this world we'd fashioned out of our love and desire. Again, one cannot measure such a process in millenniums and eons. Time itself was amorphous: more of a guiding ideal than a practical fact. It grew tangible as we became more deeply manifest, as we attuned ourselves to physicality and began to take on something of its form. We clothed ourselves in flesh as Ophia clothed itself in ground.

And we now had to survive, to pluck Ophia's fruits to sustain ourselves. Might humankind forget its source, forget that the world's manifest beauty was the natural outgrowth of our spiritual potency? Might we forget it was a reflection, albeit a fractured one, of luminous Sorsajna, from which we'd sprung? Could we retain the memory of our origins? These questions led to the birth of all the Sophryne arts, which reminded us of that boundless and nameless realm from which we emerged.

So, No 'hard history.' We can only approach any version of truth that might hope to satisfy our longing by chasing the wind trails of our most venerated myths.

But it can be empowering to recall that we all participated in Creation. From the raw stuff of life, we brought forth forms that could be seen, heard, felt, smelt, and tasted.

And sometimes, to our eternal enrichment, souls incarnate to remind the rest of us of the dimensions from which we departed. The twins of whom I’ve spoken were--are--two of the most renowned.

Such beings are naturally drawn to Sophrynism, to Wakeful Dreaming, a practice that straddles the lines between life and death, here and hereafter, time and eternity. Powerful Sophrynes can work such an effect upon the minds and souls of those with whom they come into contact that the recipients begin to break through the barriers of the world they know. They begin to perceive and respond to other realms of being. Such epiphanies can also penetrate the sense of separation that we often experience with one another.

The sisters' respective worlds were separated by a seemingly boundless gulf because they needed to experience, in their very vulnerable and messy bodies, that more pervasive separation I spoke of. Both worlds had lost their sense of magic, and the twins, Colleen Addison and Esperidi Mon-Sayquana, healers at heart for all eternity, instinctively looked for ways to patch the resulting rift.

Eventually, they found those patches by traveling through the heart of their mutual bereavement.

In the line of Ophia's tapestry, into which Esperidi became a vital thread, the Sophryne arts were perfected out of necessity. I know because I lived during that cruel and repressive era. It was perilous for any of us to speak our minds. We writhed within a spider's web, our every movement, word, and emotion sending tremors through its strands. To criticize the ruling body with even a whisper…One might as well trumpet protests to a lynch mob.

Imagine the life conditions of the thousands of Shaini inhabiting Ophia in this age. I, Sanyori, spent my formative years beneath the Weaving's eyes. I knew my community’s quiet desperation of. Our security came at too steep a price. But who among us would dare raise voices of dissent? The Weaving would expose us. Even plotting rebellion would alert the Cordonne. One could not even get aroused by the prospect of freedom.

What recourse had we?

Ah, but the Weaving, the chief instrument of control employed by the Cordonne, the ruling body, was still a physical construct within a physical world. It could never reach its fingers into the dreaming dimension. And so it was there that we learned to awaken, congregate, and communicate freely.

We who escaped Ophia during its last days, its decadent days, planned our emancipation while we slept. Shadowy omens and premonitions illuminated our way, foreshadowing possible perils and treasures. Abandoning the social compass, we oriented ourselves around inner nudges and whispers. They helped us to regain our bearings when we'd lost sight of all shores.

That's how we came to etch the essential structure of this Hall of Records, where I now inscribe these words and struggle not to feel overwhelmed by the responsibility bequeathed upon me. I must remind myself that a living myth is created by all who partake in it. This relieves some of the burden.

One participant in the drama, Colleen Addison, prefers to relate her part of the story in her own way. Thus, her tale will be preserved in her voice, sometimes with freshness and immediacy, sometimes in retrospection--all deciphered, of course, in the way every dream is: into vernacular and symbolism that will have meaning to the dreamer.

Colleen preserves her voice in a physical journal much as I do this more ethereal tome. Sometimes, she speaks in the present tense. Sometimes, she considers her life in hindsight. In either case, the denizens of countless worlds can now understand--and, in some ways, participate in--her journey.

The magic of this still astounds me.

But what about those who might be considered our adversaries? Surely, Jain-Toh, Karia, Konatep, and Tumoset, among others, would have no desire to be transparent about their deeds? However, a being's perspective can be profoundly transformed on this side of the Partition, particularly after they've come into contact with the larger entities of which they are a part.

The drama we call "Parting the Veils" touched upon many worlds, altering the mental landscape and changing the historical trajectory. This could not have been achieved without every participant's roles, even if their positions seemed destructive in the limiting field of time.

Do not forget that contrast is often our greatest teacher within these mortal worlds.

Those reading this testimony with at least a partial knowledge of its underlying myth may have grown restless by now. "Yes: We know what the twins achieved in the end. They forged a pathway between the worlds that allowed each to recapture its sense of possibility and wonder. But what did they actually do?"

With that question, the road grows nebulous indeed. How does one recount the travels of two heroines who walked as much in their dreams as in waking? How does one do justice to the supporting cast--again, forgive my theater training--when many of them aspired towards the same thing?

Despite such daunting challenges, I've done my best to limn the journey of Esperidi Mon-Sayquana and Colleen Addison and the forgotten art that united them, finally--at least, for long enough to alter the destinies of their respective worlds.

It isn't always comfortable reading. For many beings on both sides of the Partition, existence had grown unmistakably dark. Both worlds were purged in fire, floods, cyclones, and upheavals, whether one might interpret these in psychological or physical terms. And in the depths of their suffering, each world began to long, more and more, for the other.

By the fangs of Grandfather Serpent! If I persist like this, I'll likely be out of breath before I begin! But perhaps you can better understand my attachment to this story’s emotional sweep if you consider--and as you'll discover--that I participated in some of its unfolding events. By which I mean I lived them in a physical body.

Remember, always, that the distance between the worlds is, to awakened eyes, akin to the distance between our twin heroines: no more than the breadth of thought. Or, as my teacher once said, "Naught but a wisp of gossamer gown."