Sons of one religion

I love you when you bow in your mosque,
kneel in your temple, pray in your church.
For you and I are sons of one religion,
and it is the spirit.
-Khalil Gibran
*** *** ***

28 June 2011, Chicago, IL

There is a box of secrets buried deep within the hollowed out heart of a long-fallen King, who lies scorched and windswept, rain beaten, overgrown, with mushrooms between his toes and no laurel wreath for his head.  And this box holds memories that are vital like heartsblood and echoing like clarion calls and luminescing like lake light: truths, every one of them: brilliant and aching.  And they whisper like heartbeats, or the cadence of the wind or the rustle of summer-green livery high over head or the thrum of the bird-clatter as many take to wing in a singular moment: breath taking: breathless.  There is a box of secrets nestled in near the heart of the hollowed-out King, with his oak-staff arm lofted high, lazily canted, like a hat rack, or a back rest, like a tall mast, a stanchion.  Regal.  Forgotten. Weathered to white, bone white and then...

And then.

It has been months since Emily stood in this clearing, eased the lid of the heart box open with just the pressure of the pads of her thumbs, picked and poured over the trinkets and drawings and bits of poetry left behind, the markers and by-the-way signs of passing lives, of strangers.  Since its inception the Court has not been hers and Kage's alone, or merely the purview of Awakened minds, or even a secret, not really, and this box is a living thing, breathing, vital.  Others left tid bits behind, took away secrets, changed the magic of the space simply by standing within its Lonely bounds.  

A little after Midsummer, the afternoon light is golden and clear, muddied only where the flocks of summer bugs swarm through her vision, where they tangle up with half-cast shadows and recede into the realm of things ignored.  Her offering, this Singer's tithe, is a small piece of pale green paper, penned with a chocolate-hued ink:

This is not the end.
It is not even the beginning of the end.
But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.

At the bottom right corner of the small card, pressed into the weave of the paper itself, floats a pale rose petal, once-white and slightly browned from drying.  Over it, in the same careful script, stand the letters: E.L.

It is less than a promise but ever so much more than the continuing silence that has stretched on between them.  She pauses long enough, too, to see whether the seeds they planted last spring have pushed through the muddy earth, sprung up with any sense of purpose or direction.

Long before the sun dips down below the horizon or even turns ruddy in its descent, Emily makes her way back a now familiar black-brown path, away from the place where this path kisses another, where they fold back on themselves and retreat toward the trailhead parking lot.  Time has quietly passed, but her footing is sure and her memory for this place strong and unblemished.