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The Tower
| The Four gathered, as was their custom, on the open top of the tall stone tower, itself at the very edge of a spit of land to the sea.
It had been a hundred years since they last spoke together and they were not well-pleased, none were there by choice, none could not be there.
Master How, sitting, his back to the wall, was slowly and softly beating his head backwards against the grey slabs of granite that encircled their meeting.
“It is simply unbearable” his words were quiet, measured with flat, metronomic thumps of his head
“Unendurable!” he suddenly shouted, rising to his feet
“no matter the degree, no matter the detail, no matter the exquisite, intricate, matter-of-factness of all that I explain, they are never content! They chew me, swallow me and are straight away hungry for more! I am their slave who cruelly call me Master. I want to tell them all of it, at once, so they will finally and forever stop!
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Lord What, his heavy brow slashed with its habitual frown, looked down on How with utter disdain. His bulk filled their circle, his smell lingered through the tower.
“You stupid child” his voice rumbled, bleak with age.
“What did you expect; do you come to this only now?”
A spasm of pain contorted his face as he lifted a clubbed fist to strike at... something... down to the savage rocks below.
“I have endured this since time awoke to itself and I have as much satisfaction as sand" his look at How dripped with contempt.
"I name all that I see, I shape all that I name and all that I shape I give no promise save death.
And If I could, I would send all to the void!”
He stopped, choked with rage, eyes dried by a century furrowed down his face.
Guru When crept closer to them both. Her body seemed to slide, she was between them, then by them, her words came over them, then inside them,
“Brothers, dear brothers, do not suffer so, let me sing to you a little while”
And she sang, sweet murmurs of times long forgotten, tingling promises of what might one day still come till Master How and Lord What felt their passions succumb.
The day turned to night, turned to day, turned to night and in the tower those who had spoken readied to part, to rule, each in their way, for another hundred years.
But before that moment, at the last, as was the custom when time stood still for an instant, the three turned to their companion, curled up as quiet as an infant.
“So, Sister Why” their voices jeering, mocking that which they had to ask
“Will you spare us from your usual wordless, whimpering drivel; do you have anything to actually say on this one day that might keep us?”
And then, as they must, they waited for reason
Like three escaped mental patients, like prisoners of treason
“Well…” whispered Why, and at her voice they all trembled
“In truth, I do, begin, to understand”
They froze, literally, the tower’s stone reached icy roots into their feet and then their hands.
“And I believe I will leave you now, for I do not think your answers will help me again”
And she rose as the sun, as the wind, and flew, from the tower to the world.
For all of it alone could answer the beautiful, burning questions of her very life itself.
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