The Prophet

A short story about a short Prophet who lived for a short time.

When Belin awoke on the morning of his death day, the suns were shining. Through the hole in the roof of his cell, the sullen orange sky was intersected by vast rings of graduated silver-blue dust and rocks, unchanged for a thousand years. The planet Or was continuously bathed in the muted glow of twin red suns, creating a permanently dimming daytime as they died a tragic, ten billion-year death. That was nine billion, nine hundred million, nine hundred and ninety-nine thousand, nine hundred and ninety-nine years, and ninety-nine days longer than Belin had left to live.

The rings had always held more meaning for the people of Or than the suns; they had worshipped them for nearly as long as they worshipped the moon before. The mother moon sacrificed herself for the whole planet. An act of selflessness that inspired and defined the peoples of Or. The destruction story guided them to greatness, chastised them into humility, bound them in love and finally embraced them in death. It was to these rings that Belin found his fate bound, soon to be returned and united whether he wanted to or not. Today, he was to be launched from Or and pitched into the rock-strewn melee of the rings via the tiny capsule poised on the gantry outside his cell. He would be ground into dust in the rings to join with millions of his fellow Or’ians, most of whom had joyfully travelled to the rings before him. For Belin, there was no joy in joining the rings. Sadly, he had a new truth thrust upon him, which caused him to reevaluate the religious significance of the rings.

And now he believed in something else and had told others about his truth, so he had to die!

Belin never intended to become a prophet, and, as was his notional understanding of the nature of prophecy, this was the same for all prophets. After his first revelation and initial unsolicited spiritual awakening during his brother’s wedding, Belin sought other prophets to share notes with, to find guidance and maybe even a way out. But right from the start, all he saw was death. Prophets died often and quickly on Or.

His brother, of course, had tried to kill him immediately. The result of a non-conformist spiritual revelation during a wedding instigated the immediate annulment of the marriage. Followed quickly, as was the custom, by the death of the bride and her family and the banishment of the unfortunate prophet by the Royal Ring Regiment, a zealot sect within the Or military charged with the defence of the one true Religion. As is always the case with defending a religion, this is done simply by exterminating any other ideas, philosophies, prophets and gods that are foolish enough to make an appearance.

Under normal circumstances, the swift right hand of the RRR is enough to end the matter when the ideas are ejected from the planet in tiny, perishable silver capsules. However, on this occasion and to everyone’s surprise, the death of his wife and her family caused his brother to undergo a war spasm (even though he had shown no inclination towards military work previously). With the frothing frenzy upon him, he split the Bridal table asunder (Belin had never seen anything split asunder; it was impressive) and attempted to penetrate Belin’s thorax with the resulting splintered plank of vintage Oakl. Unfortunately, having no control over his war spasm because of his lack of basic military training, Belin’s brother exploded, spraying the retreating guests with an exotic marmalade of his inners. Whilst this unfortunate incident saved Belins life, he was far from safe and knew he had to take swift action to avoid being labelled a heretic by the RRR.

He said his goodbyes to family and friends and rushed to burn his house and belongings. Finally, as was the custom, he urinated a circle around his ruined home to ensure the ground was not cursed for all time. The Hounoured Thexal and his assistant bore witness and scribed in the “Book of Dawn” that everything was done according to the scriptures. As DayTwo began (With no nights, days blended seamlessly into one another on Or), Belin was chased from the town by fourteen elders who threw assorted tainted fruits, cursed vegetables and a number (not disclosed) of blessed RingRocks. These are essential to ensure the spirits (whomever or whatever they are) know they are not wanted here. The streets rang with fervent chanting: “The ring and its Mother Moon are all powerful; they cannot be split again. What was split will never reform; what is formed cannot be broken”. The frantic Elderly throng sang in the high-pitched, kerning voice of the religious as Belin ran, stumbled and slipped out of the town of his birth to find himself alone on the long road.

Belin had never stood on the long road before. He had seen it once when his father had taken him for his “orientation day”. This is the ritual coming of age for all men of Or, where he would see for the first time the ring within the ring—the line of rocks, hills, walls, fences, scrub, and dirt track that delineated the boundary of his home town and the rest of Or.

“This is the ring within the ring, Belin.”

Standing atop the viewing mound on the outskirts of the village, Belin gazed upon his entire world. His father drew a ring slowly through the air, indicating the rough but clear line surrounding the village.

“In the ring, within the ring, we live in peace and harmony. We have rules within the ring; we have our homes, we have jobs, and we have our lives within the ring, within the ring. We strive for the ring, we build, and we learn for the ring; we are the ring, and the ring is us.” Belin listened intently to his father’s voice, mesmerised by the strange, poetic words from a man who, up until this day, had only said words that related directly to the task at hand, as all fathers do. His young mind struggled to understand the metaphors and the spiritual power of the words, but even at ten years old, Belin knew these words would shape his life, and that shape would be ringular.

“NEVER…” the tone of his father’s voice cut through the child-fog, the grip on his arm tightening. “NEVER STEP OUTSIDE THE RING WITHIN THE RING”.

His father let the words hang in the air. Belin patiently waited for them to descend to the dusty earth before he asked the question all boys asked on their orientation day: “Why?”

His Father struck him hard across the head with his ornate Goloonga, as was the custom. Even though he knew it was coming, it still shocked his young mind. His breath escaped faster than he could control, forcing a strangled hiss out of his bone lips. Belin fought against the primal instinct to run. If he did, he knew it would be at least another year before he could ascend to manhood.

He fell to the floor, his mouth full of dust and his head full of stars. Grit spitting, he pushed himself onto his knees. His vision swam, rocks separating and rejoining as his five eyes rolled in their sockets. His Father, stood statuesque in front of him, stick in hand. The intricate patterns on the Goloonga told the story of the Mother Moon’s sacrifice, the years of turmoil, fire and death—the eradication of the oceans, crops, water and all creatures bigger than a Stalynx. The intricate inscriptions detailed the planet’s rebirth and the formation of the ring within the ring. The Goloonga, so often a thing of play in his youth, now swung threateningly between them, moist with a streak of his blood.

“Ask again, son. Ask again.”

Belin didn’t want to ask again, but custom demanded it; the scriptures demanded it, the Ring demanded it, and given the magnificence of Mother Moon’s sacrifice, how could he not offer up his simple skull?

He fought back the tears, sucking dust-caked snot back through his slit nostrils and stared definitely at the elegant gnarly, nobble-ended pole.

“Why, Father… WHY!”

His Father swung the Goloonga high in the air. His extended arm drew a blurred arc that seemed to fill the sky above Belin—briefly blocking out the rising and waning twin suns Faxor and Smeril while tracing the Major and Minor rings. The Goloonga held its place in the rocky sky, the gnarly nobble end now positioned precisely where Mother Moon gave up her life and consumed the meteor. His Father and the Goloonga are frozen in time before crashing down, down, DOWN… Smashing into the ground in front of Belin.

Silence.

Belin stared at the ritual stick buried into the ground. He would be dead if it had struck him, and that, of course, was the point.

“Because my son, my new-man, you must never tread the long road.”

“And where is the long road, my Father, my old-man?”

These words signalled the final phase of the ritual. His father glowed; his son had been reborn, and his time as a parent was complete. He looked down on the young Belin, now a man. Through the dirt, snot, blood and tears that smeared the cracked crystalline skin of his son, he could see that his sacrifices, the years of casual torture in the name of religion, had been successful. He gripped Belin by the shoulders and drew him up. Mud, dust, stone, and rock cascaded from him, miniature landslides over his torn clothes.

As he dangled from his father’s strong hands, Belin shakily lifted his grazed inverted knees onto his father’s broad shoulders and, placing his hands carefully on either side of his parent’s split skull (to avoid separating the plates, causing instant death), pushed himself upward. Until, at last, he was fully grown, man on man, standing on his father’s shoulders, completing his religious journey from child to adult.

Belin breathed deeply, his eyes scanning the horizon. He had waited his whole life to see the long road; it was everything. He had feared this moment, but he had been excited about it. He had played it down with his friends but also spent hours meditating on its meaning, how it would change him, and what he would do. But he had never suspected the enormous, soul-crushing tsunami of disappointment it would actually bring.

Seeing further than he had ever seen before, the shadowy line of the long road couldn’t have been less exciting if it tried. It was a shit streak in the sand. Brown, hard, packed earth lined with bush and scrub. As for the actual length of the Long Road, well, even on his father’s shoulders, The Long Road quickly disappeared over a brow, presumably continuing for a long way beyond.

Belin wasn’t sure what he was expecting to see. It was precisely what it claimed to be: a road, not obviously a long one, but it was a road nonetheless. However, considering the years of study, ritual, beatings and teachings he had been subjected to, it was a little bit… rubbish. The old Belin, the youth, the child, would have feared sharing his thoughts, but now he was an adult, he could confidently say the things inside his head, knowing they had value and worth as all adult thoughts do. So, as they returned to the village, Belin expressed his disappointment, and his father nodded sagely. “If I’m honest, Belin, I felt much the same, but this is the way of the world. I have found most things that I build up in my head to be important and meaningful turn out to be a bit crap in reality.”

And with these final words of wisdom, his Father walked away, their time together now over. Those were the last words he ever said to Belin; that was the last time he saw him alive.

As was the way of the world.

Belin took a moment for himself as his father faded out of his life and into the village Tavern. He could no longer see the long road; he was barely 4 feet tall, and it would be at least six years before he cracked his carapace (as they say) and reached his full height. But at that moment, as he stood in the dawn of his manhood, he felt the first pull. A momentary tug, a tingle in one of his stomachs perhaps, something new… something profound and powerful, a new energy, a new sensation, a whisper, pulling him toward…

…the road he must never walk on, the road on which he now stood.

The Long Road was calling to him, and from that moment on, the voice in his head would get louder and louder every day.

Belin never asked to be a prophet. There were many better suited to the calling in his village than he. He was a below-average student of the scriptures; he had never felt fervour or enlightenment. Over and above the basic teachings of rituals for manhood, crop rotation, woodwork, breeding and grooming, he barely bothered with religion. He found he was perfectly capable of going about his daily tasks without flagellation, poetic salvation or the oral cleansing ritual much loved by his classmates (mainly because they got to drink Wine). He had never seen the poetry pits and thrashing circles, beloved of the RRR, deep in the bowels of the Ringthedral at the centre of the village.

Yes, he loved the rings; he really did, but deep down, he saw them for what they were: a seriously lucky resolution of an extraordinary series of cosmic coincidences that turned the planet into a dust bowl rather than destroying it entirely. And he was perfectly happy to keep his heresy to himself until it was forcibly extracted from him at his brother’s wedding.

For Belin, prophecy was best described as ‘splitting your head open on a rusty spike as you are struck by lightning, whilst wearing underpants made from fireworks’. However, he knew it was coming; he’d been warned and should have left a year after his first dream. This first vision or revelation had been a dream so vivid it reduced his bed to a pile of smouldering ashes. In the dream, Belin found himself suspended in the rings, or perhaps as part of the rings, stretched so thin his arms and legs appeared to disappear around the world. His body was suddenly boundless, allowing the boulders, rocks, pebbles, dust, and particles to mix freely with his own. They passed through each other, creating millions of tiny glowing rings, lighting his torso up from the inside, turning his solid form into a glittering constellation, part of the ring, the ring part of him.

This was a wonderful dream.

He was part of the world and the cosmos beyond. For the first time, he could see both suns simultaneously. (This was a revelation because Old Bobl’s one Sun half orbit theories are still taught in schools). From his Ringside seat, he could see the whole of Or. The rolling dust ocean ebbed and flowed with a silvery mist of fine rocks and minerals. In the distance were the giant mounds of loose grey rocks that spread out from the Ring within the Ring, impossible to climb because of the fine covering of Moondust that constantly fell from the heavens.

Belin was revelling in the view when he felt a warm touch on his chest plate. He slowly lifted his head, heavy in the strange weightlessness of the ring. His eyes turned, looking down to find what can only be described as a deformed and stunted hand, with five, yes, five silvery fingers reaching out to him. The hand was attached to an arm with only one visible bend, also covered in the strange metal fabric. Above that, a single glassy globe, maybe an eye… a giant, crystal eye that twisted and distorted the reflection of his face.

Belin gazed into the eyes of a god. Floating there, it’s giant moon face, his face a face within a face. The rings curving perfectly over the round shiny head.

Belin and the God gazed in wonder at each other.

The moment of serenity passed, and a sensation of panic rose inside him, brought on by the enormous wrongness of his current physical situation. Belin began to struggle. He wanted to move away, but he was stretched thin in his dream, his arms and legs far, far away from his brain. Unable to gather himself, he was forced to stare at the monster, stare at the face of this new god.

A god within the ring?

The Mother of Mother Moon?

The scriptures did not prepare him for what he saw; there was no mention of a five-fingered Moonfaced God. He had never heard of a God that touched you. Gods generally focused on smiting and chastising when they found themselves near Or’ian’s.

This was something new.

Something to be feared or… revered?

Belin found himself unable to avert his eyes from God as he had been taught - instead, his gaze rolled off the head down to a torso, almost rectangular in shape, orange in colour, with strange markings. But the strangest part of the god was the large white and black shell on its back with an extraordinary tail. No longer than a tail, a tentacle, like the Giant Dustopuss from the sand sea, twisting and pulling this tethered god.

‘Tethered to what?’ thought Belin, twisting what remained of his translucent head, the atoms and particles glistening behind his eyes, setting off chain reactions throughout his body. But even that couldn’t distract him from the temple in the sky that hung above the god—a gargantuan construction beyond imagining, with towers and pillars of mirrored metal stacked upon one another. Along the top of the most prominent tube were two domes of frozen sky, only visible because of the reflections that curved over them. From three gaping funnels at one end, jets of flame, so magnificent, so bright, and so hot, it was like the suns were trying to escape. As he stared in awe and wonder, Belin’s world became brighter; every atom in his body was sparkling, and he began to feel … heat…. So much heat!

Belin awoke, his bed on fire, his walls scorched. The three fingers on his left hand were severely burnt, his flesh singed on his torso where the god had touched him…

The god had touched him!

He was forever changed.

It was impossible to hide this revelation, his accidental spiritual awakening. The hole in the roof of his house and the classic telltale burn marks were enough to convince everyone that Belin was messing with shit he didn’t understand and he ought to be a lot more careful when he went to sleep. He was bought in front of the council of Elders, who took detailed notes and gave him a ritual helm wove from silver threads to wear when he went to sleep. This intrigued Belnin. The helm was clearly something the Elders had pre-made. This could only mean his was not a unique experience; this god had been seen before. But he was banned from asking questions, told he must never speak of his experience to anyone on pain of death and finally, but by no means least, he and his father had to move to the less desirable end of town immediately.

To avoid the banishment, his father brought forward his orientation day to the day before his brother’s wedding, which was the day before he found himself alone on the long road.

A strong hand on Belin’s shoulder shook him out of his reflection. The prison guard had a friendly face and smiled apologetically. He didn’t revel in the role of escorting the condemned to the pods on the gantries.

“It’s okay”, lied Belin. “I understand” he lied again.

The guard thanked him for his lies and gestured to the open door. Belin stood as confidently as he could but couldn’t hide the fact that his legs were shaking. The guard gripped him tighter, allowing him to walk steadily out of the cell door. As was the custom, the walk to the pod was lined with representatives of the church. Belin wished his father could have been there. It had been a shock to hear he had died the very day that Belin had been arrested for being a Prophet—a heart attack in his bed, according to the priest who found him.

Belin climbed the gantry, and the silver pod hissed open. Inside, there was a single chair with a harness. As he was strapped into the seat, it occurred to Belin that the pod appeared to be made from the same material the palace in the sky had been made from. He shook his head, ‘That is why I have to die,’ he thought. ‘I see my new God in everything now’.

The guard stepped away, and the religious leaders chanted through the pod’s open door and threw ceremonial dust and rocks into the capsule for good measure.

“I never meant to be a….”

The door closed, trapping the word ‘Prophet’ harmlessly inside the capsule. ‘Fair enough’, thought Belin, ‘it’s what I would have done too’; he had experienced first-hand the power of the word Prophet during his short walk on the long road.

The sun beat limply down on Belin as he walked the long road. He had quickly cleared the rise he had viewed just two days ago from his dead father’s shoulders and was now descending a non-descript hill. The road weaved around and over many similar hills, none worthy of a thought. His steady progress rose and fell with the dusty mounds, his mind twisting around his predicament like the long road before him.

He walked with as much confidence and purpose as he could muster. If he were to be banished (and he was), he would take his banishment like a man (because he is), and like all men, he needed a purpose. In his ex-village, everyone had a purpose. The warriors and the preachers, the miners, the farmers, the shopkeepers, tavern owners, the mother women, everyone had a role to play. Like his father and his father before him, he was destined to be a builder. He would have made great mounds where the villagers could have lived and worked. Whilst it was an undoubted honour to be a builder, he had to admit that he had struggled to get excited about pushing around dirt daily. But it was a purpose, and right now, he had none except to tread the long road until he died (according to the rules).

After many mounds, rounds, rises and falls, he saw in the distance a fellow traveller. This gave Belin pause. He had not considered the possibility of meeting anyone on the long road. Firstly, it was long. Other banishees would have walked far from the village, and even with his youthful but manly pace, he would be unlikely to catch up with even the slowest. He knew others had gone before him, many in fact, but still… their journeys would have taken them far away by now.

Yet here they were, face to face, with more dust than trust between them. Belin took the first step, perhaps out of youthful exuberance or simply because he had nowhere else to put his next foot forward. The stranger reciprocated, and steadily, they approached each other. Neither seemed to be in a rush to make the acquaintance of the other, but neither changed their path.

Where was there to go?

The road was a single-lane with no tributaries or junctions. It was one long road, one long journey, and until now, Belin had assumed that journey was in one direction.

Away from the Village.

But here they were.

Two strangers.

Destined to cross paths.

They paused a respectful distance from each other. They shared many similarities: the travelling cape and the small hand-made hessian sack with their meagre belongings. The number of legs, arms, and eyes confirmed they were from the same part of Or. The stranger had acquired a long, rough-hewn stick to aid his walking, and it was clear to Belin that he was older than Belin by some years.

The stranger lowered his head formally before returning to an upright position with a gentle smile.

Belin returned the greeting, and the two strangers walked slowly to meet in the middle of the long road.

“How fare you on this fine day?” asked the stranger in a cheerful, lyrical manner, immediately putting Belin at ease.

“I am well, stranger. My name is Belin; what may I call you?”

The stranger smiled. “I have had many names, but they are all discardled along the long road. I find it betterly to be travelling light, as names have ways of weighing you down, wouldn’t you agreely?”

Belin paused for thought. He had never considered the weight of a name; in fact, he had never considered the idea that words could weigh anything.

“What a strange thing to say”, remarked Belin, his youthful naivety shining through his dusty traveller exterior, “How could a name have weight?”

“Like many things, you will learnly along the long road; this lesson will be better experienced for yourself than explainly by me, a simple fellow traveller.”

Belin was reassured, as we all are, when we find others like ourselves. He no longer felt alone; he was part of something once more.

“Are there many like us?”

The stranger looked at Belin like a kindly teacher; never having experienced such a thing, Belin was oblivious to its meaning.

“How couldly anyone be like you or me? Are we not uniqued in every way? Have not our experiences been purely for us? Do you not find yourself alone on a journley that no one else will ever experience? Is not every moment of your life one of internaly perception, yours, privately, unshareable?”

Belin had never been asked so many questions, and he told the stranger so.

“Ah, that is the long road. It will bringly many questions out of you, and you will find your journey to be the most fullfilled when you can answer them with another question.”

“I have a question!” exclaimed Belin, realising that this had been burning away in his mind since first setting his many eyes on the stranger. “Where does the long road go? Or, more importantly, where have you come from?”

“Ah, you’re a young one! So much inquistivily, a mind looking for answers and a soul searched for truths?”

“A soul?”

“Are you not banished? Have you not been brandly a heretic? Did you not see a god?”

Belin was taken aback. Was this a trick, a test? Who was this stranger? How did he come to be on the long road, in his path on his journey? Why was he walking the other way? Why did he speak so similarly but so differently? The tiny hairs that covered Belin’s shiny back tickled with a new sensation. Was it fear, a warning, was it just the wind? All Belin knew was that he had to tread carefully.

He took a defensive step back, the way he had been taught, eyeing the rough-hewn branch. From his recent experience, he knew the pain of a well-swung stick. The stranger acknowledged the defensive stance, and in response, as was the custom, he opened his arms, allowing the stick to fall to the road. It bounced harmlessly; the solid thud of wood on road punctuated the steady rhythm of the wind.

Then silence.

It lay in the dust, a symbol of trust extended between them.

“I’m no threatly; I seek only the questions,” he said reassuringly.

In this simple gesture Belin saw the stranger for what he was. They were kin, travellers on the same road, going in different directions but he was a vision of Belin’s destiny. In response, he adjusted his feet and bowed his head in apology.

“I am sorry. I am new to banishment; it’s my first time, and I have much to learn.”

The stranger smiled.” Ah, you’re doing fine. Nothing has eaten you yet, and your mind is sharply for the subtleties of communication. However, you linger too longly on answers. Take it from me; only questions can reveal the world for what it is.”

“What do you mean?”

“Ha, you learn quickly?” the stranger smiled before elegantly sweeping up his stick with his bare-clawed foot and plucking it from the air. Then he pointed toward the long road and asked, “Will you walk with me, novice prophet, and question everything awhile?”

“But that is the way I have come.”

“What is your question?”

Belin considered this for a moment. The idea of questioning everything was not so strange to him. Had he not questioned everything inside his head his whole life: his teachers, the priests, his treatment for his revelation, the death of his brother’s wife and family, the burning down of his own house, the death of his father? So many questions unasked… until now. Banished, he may be, but now, ungagged, his mouth could roam as far as his legs and mind would take him, and together, they could begin to learn some fundamental truths about the world and the gods and the ring and beyond.

“Am I allowed to walk that way?”

“When you left your village, what made you turn rightly instead of leftly?”

Belin paused for thought. As far as he could remember, there was no reason he went left instead of right.

“None that I can think of.”

“Does it not stand to reason then that you can go the otherly way along the long road?”

Again, a question.

“Can I go the other way?”

The stranger smiled; Belin was a quick learner. Belin smiled in response; he knew he had learned something important, even if he didn’t fully understand it yet.

“Will you come with me to testly our hypothesis?’

Belin nodded, sealing an accord between the two travellers to become travelling companions. They headed back along the long road towards Belin’s village and the ring within the ring. As they walked, Belin remembered a question that had remained unanswered earlier.

“You mentioned my soul earlier; this is not a word I have heard before. What is my soul?”

Belin’s travelling companion considered the question for a while, his pace quickening as he constructed his response.

“A soul is everything left of you once the physical has worn away. Your Soul is what you feel, not what you see, what you say inside, not outside; your soul is only for you and your god”. He became more animated as he spoke, waving his walking stick so vigorously that a cloud of flies whirled in its vortex before being catapulted into the sky. “It’s your soul that looks for answers...” he stopped sharply in the middle of the road for added dramatic effect, “…and your soul that asks the questions your lips are too afraid to utter because if you do...” His stick achieved one final whirl before it finished just short of Belin’s head. “…you end up on the long road, like us. Is this not the truth?”

Belin was in awe of his companion’s incredible mind and felt warm with luck that their paths had crossed. He would answer many of Belin’s questions, for everything he said was everything Belin felt; therefore, it must be true.

Belin nodded. His companion rotated his stick and struck the ground firmly with the tip before continuing his walk. Belin scampered after.

The weather changed.

The dust swirled around their feet as giant tumble trees barrelled over the long road with purpose.

The wind blew.

The wind was blowing.

A small rock struck Belin in the face.

The sharp pain snapped Belin back to reality. He was inside his capsule; an angry hissing sound filled his ear, and a tiny hole had appeared in the thin metal capsule. Belin was unsure if the sound was the wind outside trying to get in or his precious air trying to get out.

He glanced through the small window to find he was hurtling at an extraordinary speed towards the ring. He attempted to wiggle out of the straps and was surprised that he didn’t have the strength to move his body. His arms were pulled backwards, and his thorax creaked under the ever-increasing invisible weight. It took everything he had left to turn his head to take one last view of the world he had called home for his entire adult life of six days.

Beneath him, the world was disappearing quickly. He traced his eye along a barely visible line of dust that marked his path to the scaffold from which he had been launched moments ago. The enormous armature that had swung through the air, catapulting him skyward, was less than a smudge beside the blot of prison.

The town of ‘Other’, twice the size of the village of his birth, was no more than a shadow on the brown of the world from which he was racing away. Beyond that, the long road wove and wound backwards and forwards as far as the eye can see. With every passing second, his eye could see further and further. Until… in the distance, at the very edge of the world, something was forming, growing, rising upwards. A shimmering, glittering, hazy… was it trees, trees of silver and glass… what was that…?

Belin tried with all his might to lift himself a little higher, but the weight was pressing down and down. The harder he tried, the heavier he became. His vision diminished. Around the edge of his world, a dark circle appeared, slowly creeping in; the world darkened as he strained, turning the day to night and consciousness to unconsciousness.

Belin passed out.

Belin dreamed his final memory.

Belin and the traveller sat together in the town square of Other. Belin could scarcely believe what he saw; it was the busiest place he had ever seen. Thousands of miners, builders, tailors and teachers all hustling and bustling together. Going about their business, so alike his village but also wrong. The way they dressed, the way they talked, the way the buildings looked. Everything was just slightly… different.

“Why is it different here?” he asked his companion, who smiled kindly at him; his pupil was a good pupil.

“Would it not be stranger if it was not different?”

Belin considered the new question and nodded in agreement. There was no reason to think that everyone would do things as they did in his village. If they did, there would have to be an agreement between them; they would have to constantly check for deviations to maintain the similarities with no real benefit. Belin had a question.

“Are the differences important?”

“Can you see anything that is the same?”

Belin looked around. The square was surrounded on three sides by shops, some of which he recognised, selling hardware, food and clothes. Connected to the square via a grand staircase with a dramatic falice stood the grandest hall of mothers he had ever seen (It being only the second hall of mothers he had seen). With its steady stream of young, nervous, fertile men queuing for their moment in the suns, a moment from which they would never return. He bowed his head in respect for their sacrifice before returning to his task.

Beyond the square was a dark labyrinth of alleys and tight streets with overhanging buildings, built square rather than in the mound shapes he was used to. His father would have been amazed at the ingenuity of such regular angles, or perhaps he would have been appalled; it was always difficult to know how fathers would view such progressive change. The more Belin looked, the stranger the town became until he felt quite dizzy and a little nauseous.

“Am I missing something?” he asked.

His companion smiled and nodded.

“It’s hard to see what is not there, may I help you?”

Belin nodded.

HIs traveling companion stood and lifted his walking stick again, this time directing Belin’s gaze, to what was not there to be seen.

“Can you see the Ring Church? Can you see the poetry pit? Can you see any priests?”

Belin looked around, swiftly turning his head left and right. He stood on tiptoe and nearly fell over as he searched vainly for what was missing. But despite trying as hard as he could, he could find no trace of the RRR.

“How can this be?” he whispered, suddenly fearful that his presence had caused this anomaly. He was not yet sure how powerful a prophet he had become.

“Come sit, breathe. I promise all is fine in the world,” said his companion, tapping the empty seat beside him, indicating that Belin should join him again.

“This place is the same but different, yes?”

Belin nodded; he was wracked with fear and unable to talk.

“And you believe there should be priests of the ring, Elders, poets, and all accompanying religious paraphernalia here?”

Belin nodded again. He had nothing more to add.

“But would you believe me if I told you that in this city, a city called ‘OTHER’, no one has ever heard of the ring within the ring, they do not worship the rocks in the sky, and they do not know about the sacrifice of the Mother Moon? Would you believe me?”

Belin had never felt so confused, dizzy, and scared—an alien in this strange place. How could this be? It made no sense. The rings are there for everyone to see. The Mother Moon created this world, and the rocks on the ground are her blessing upon us. His father had beaten the truth into him daily for ten years. How could these words be true? He is nothing but a heretic who has seen and been touched by a false god.

He asked the question.

“How can that be true?”

“Can you tell me?”

…

“Because everything I know is just a story?”

His companion smiled a beaming smile.

“You are a wonder, young prophet, a true wonder. After everything you have been through and all you have seen and learned, you still question the truth?”

Belin was confused.

“Should I not question?”

His companion stood, his arms high in the air. He suddenly grew in stature, throwing off his dirty travelling robes, unfolding his bent back and revealing his red robes of state. In his hand, his stick had transformed into a golden Goloonga, encrusted with gems he raised high above his head.

“I am the high priest of the ring. I was sent to test you, and you have been found wanting. I pronounce you heratic and condemn you to the ring of death.”

“But…?”

The Goloonga struck him square in the centre of his skull crack, and all was darkness.

…

Whoosh…

…

Hisss…

…

Pitter, crackle, Patter, BANG… CLANG… TwaNG… crACKle.

The sounds crept into Belin’s skull—weirdly echoing, rhythmic sounds, like a rock slide, but all around him. Rocks sliding and tumbling around him, or him inside the rocks rolling, floating… he was floating. Belin opened his eyes. The window was on the floor, the chair on the wall beside him. He tried to reach out but moved backwards until he hit the cold wall of the capsule. He was weightless, flying in mid-air. Through the floor window, he could see rocks, millions and millions of rocks, rolling and tumbling, bumping and bouncing off each other. He found his feet scraping against the capsule wall and pushed himself off. He flew quickly to the floor; his face was pressed against the cold glass. The rings were all around him, above and below, as far as the eye could see, nothing but ring rocks.

He had always thought of the rings as thin bands, strips of precious minerals wrapped around the world in coloured bands, but that was clearly just an illusion. Up close, they were thick, deep, disordered and deadly.

As the capsule rotated in the rubble, rocks struck the exterior. Some just bounced off, but others, propelled by some unknown force, came at such speed that they might break through the metal shell.

The air began to hiss out of a hole on the opposite side of where Belin lay on the window. He hadn’t seen the rock. All he could see was where it had been and where it went. The two holes whistled a dis-chord in the tumbling capsule. As he watched, another hole appeared. The tiny rock shattered this time as it exploded through his craft, and the dust and particles floated freely around him.

Belin sighed; this was his fate. The ring would take him; slowly but surely, he would lose all his air, or the craft would be ripped apart. It didn’t matter; his fate was the same; however, it would happen; his time was nearly up.

As he watched more holes appear, he reflected on the moment he truly believed he had seen a god, touched a god. How he had convinced himself that he was special and knew something that no one else did, or perhaps many knew and wanted to keep a secret. His faith had failed him when it mattered, and his vanity and pride led him to this place and this fate. Here in the ring, it was a fitting way to die; at least now he could become part of the great ring, part of the story and like the mother moon, sacrifice himself for the greater good. He had been led astray by wild visions; he became a danger to others. Faith was what held society together. The rules that made life work gave hope and guidance, and he had forsaken it all for a moment of…

Suddenly, the capsule was glowing with bright, sparkling lights. Belin’s three-fingered hands turned gold and translucent in front of his eyes. His thorax followed, the light inside the disintegrating capsule growing brighter and brighter. All around him, rocks burst through the walls. Some are now passing straight through his increasingly transparent body. Belin’s vision was filled with golden glitter and sparkling light as his eyes, mouth, and brain became transparent; just as the capsule folded in on itself and would have crushed Belin instead, he serenely floated through its thin metal walls and ascended. The golden light of the ring was calling him home one last time.

He was one with the ring.

The ring was one with him.

Belin was surprised to find himself awake. He was even more surprised to find he had no arms or legs, but by far and away, the greatest surprise was the group of… well, gods, who were staring and pointing at him from across the bright, white and windowless room he found himself lying in. These gods were a similar shape to the god that touched him. They had the five fingers of gods, but they were much thinner, and their heads were tiny compared to the god in the ring. They had also shed their tails and seemed able to move freely in this white space within the ring.

The tallest of the Gods was shaking his tiny fur-covered head. Two translucent crystals held in place by wire covered its two dark, beady eyes. The god removed the crystals, wiped them with a cloth, and then replaced the contraption on its compact face.

Now his glasses were clean, Sergent Colin Bolinger could look in disgust at the mess in front of him. He knew it would be a tough gig teaching junior recruits the rudimentary mathematics and geometry required to perform basic teleportation. Still, he never expected it to be this difficult. Since they had begun circling this barren world and transporting the giant docile beetles that thrived on the rocky land below, they had yet to successfully bring one back and return it home without destroying it or large parts of the nests they lived in. He looked at the poor legless creature staring at him from the transporter floor. Its weird eyes swivelling around, its severed stumps waving in the air, trying to find purchase with claws, feet, or whatever they had that were no longer there. The large carapace rocked on the transporter floor as short squirts of a green blood-like fluid sprayed over the floor.

The young recruits laughed and joked, it was just a bit of fun for them but he would have to clean up this mess. Colin waved his students away as they crowded around the dying creature.

Belin stared into the god’s face. A tear filled one of his five eyes. He was right, after all. There were gods in the ring—real gods, gods you could touch, gods he could talk to, gods he could learn from, kind gods…

Colin stamped his foot hard in Belin’s face, which exploded over his boot. The young recruits screamed and ran away as Colin hopped on one foot, trying not to spread even more of the green blood over the white transporter room floor.

“Can someone get me a bucket and mop, please?”