'Prim Masters the Road' Series - All Liturgies

“Once, on the road, Prim met a meditating sage who had spent most of his life on top of a flat rock. They had black bread and shared some ajash, as was custom. The sage was thankful, as the road was not very frequently traveled in those days and he was very near the point of starvation. During his conversation, he was delighted to learn of Prim’s extensive mastery of Empty Palms and the fifty five earthly purities. Delighted, and as payment for his meal, he taught Prim the meaning of watchfulness.

This was the old breathing and cold-atum technique often used by warrior monks in those days. It ran through the following methodology:

Build a tower, and make it impregnable. Make every stone so tightly sealed that no insect can squeeze through, no grain of sand can make it inside. Your tower must have no windows or doors. It must not accept passage by friend or foe. No weapon, no act of violence, and not one mote of love may penetrate its stony interior.

“Why build the tower this way?” said Prim?

“It will make you invincible,” said the sage, “This is the way of Ya-at slave monks. Their skin is like iron, and so are their hearts. They are inured to death and fear. Grief shall never find them, and neither shall weakness.”

Prim thought a moment, and came upon a realization, for she was wise, obedient, and an excellent daughter. “If a man built a tower this way, he would quickly starve, no matter how strong he became.”

The sage was even more delighted. “Yes,” he said, “There is a better way, and I will teach it to you:

Once you have built your tower, you must deconstruct it, brick by brick, stone by stone. You must do it meticulously and carefully, so that while you leave no physical trace of it remaining, your tower is still built in your mind and your heart, ready to spring anew at a moment’s notice.

You can enjoy the fresh air, and eat fine meals, and enjoy a good drink with your friends, but all the while your tower remains standing. You are both prisoner and warden. This is the hardest way, but the strongest.”

Prim saw the wisdom in this, and quickly made to return to the road, but the sage stopped her before she left.

“As you to your earlier remark,” the sage said, “The man who builds his tower but cannot take it apart again – that man is at the pinnacle of his strength. But that man will surely perish.”

– Prim Masters the Road

Prim, after some time, began to grow tired of the road.

She had become accustomed to it, in the way that the shapes of her body fit its grooves and whorls in a kind of tired obedience. Her feet were hardened and calloused from years of walking. Since leaving her father’s house, she had done nothing but walk. Even though prim was very small and white, and had very small hands, she was not like the soft and tender-footed maidens with full stomachs that populated the crepuscular palaces of the outer realms at that time. She was wiry and dust-blown, and bent constantly towards the horizon.

On her travels, Prim had met many sages, warriors, and poets. She had traveled through many realms, and trod across the soil of many lands. Through it all she had summered with princes, taken refuge at countless hermitages, and even lived as an errant musician for a while, sleeping tucked into an attic in a many hued city, shored up with the intoxication of youth and the faint warmth of drifting and forgotten friendships.

And yet, all that was behind her. The road always pulled her back, making rapid past tense of everything, gobbling it up like a starving stray, and she was sick of seeing it. Her heart was glad to be free of the iron cage of her childhood, and yet it longed for a resting place, a nook in which to nestle until the soreness could drain from her body.

She began, then, to wonder where the road ended.

– Prim Masters the Road

Prim came to a part of the road that was well worn. The path split and furrowed into pleasant little runoff trails, that twisted and snaked their way through groves of gently rustling trees. The undergrowth was thick and green and warm with insects and flowers. Prim felt some of the tension drain from her body and she rested a while under a tree, feeling quite relaxed.

After a while, she took a short and refreshing nap, and awoke to the distant voices of travelers a short ways down the trail. When she went out to greet them, she saw them clothed in white, and their faces and features were quite nondescript, as though washed in the ocean a while.

“Hello sister,” said they, “Who are you?”

“I am called Prim, who was the slave of Hansa, and now slave of the road,” said Prim.

“You are in luck, sister,” said the white-clothed people. “This is the end of the road. You are free!”

Prim gazed past the travelers through the treetops to see a broad and verdant valley, spotted with the trim rooftops of innumerable houses, each sporting a neat little plume of smoke. It looked like a very nice place to be, and Prim’s heart burned with a certain kind of longing she had not felt in a long while.

“What is this place?” asked Prim.

The travelers looked at each other, as if it was an odd question. “This the valley of Eternal Life,” they said. Prim was taken aback, as Immortality was one of the Three Forbidden Punishments. Seeing her expression, the travelers laughed stupidly, as though they had stumbled across a small and confused child.

“Don’t be so shocked,” said one of the travelers,”it’s true! Nobody knows want, hunger, or sickness. Our days are spent tending our gardens, talking to our neighbors and families, and praising God, who has granted us this boon. Death does not touch us here. People are neither born, nor die in this land. Our needs are cared for and the land is pleasant and green. What else could we want?”

“You should join us, sister,” added one of the travelers, “as God is good, you will know nothing but happiness in this valley.”

“Can you leave?” said Prim, who had an expression like she had tasted something sour. The travelers looked at each other in confusion. “Of course not,” said they, “why would we want to? It is impossible to leave the valley.”

“What else do you get up to?” said Prim tentatively, “Other than praising god, tending to your gardens, and talking to your neighbors?”

The travelers were very confused indeed, and seemed to think this was a very odd question. “Are you happy?” added Prim, as if this would help.

“Yes, of course,” said the travelers, smiling blithely. The expression on their faces was hard to read, but to Prim their words came out like a warm paste. “You will know nothing but happiness in this valley.”

“This land is terribly cursed,” said Prim, and moved on.

After wandering further, Prim came across a crater many miles across. The edges were smooth, like glass, and curved inwards, down into a steadily increasing darkness, where at the bottom Prim could barely see a hole. The hole was extremely unpleasant to look at. Not a single mote of light touched it. As she took in this unsettling sight, Prim was shocked to see the distant figures of people, crawling up the edge of the crater, and steadily but inevitably sliding into the massive hole, where they were swallowed.

A croaking cough emerged a short distance away from Prim, and she beheld an unbelievably filthy and emaciated old man, who was clothed only in a ragged sheet draped over his head and body. He had a staff, like a shepherd, and it was broken at the tip.

“What is this place?” said Prim, trying to hide her disgust.

The man wet his dry lips, and said, “This is the end of the road. Or one of its ends anyway.” He motioned to the hole.

“The hole?” said Prim.

“If you go into the hole,” said the man, “you will very definitely die. Your entire existence will be permanently obliterated, almost instantly. It is very painful and causes tremendous scarring. The filth from your obliterated corpse will spread into the air like ash and sicken people for years.”

“It’s not the cleanest way to reach the end,” he said, hacking out a dry cough, “but its very easy.” He leered at Prim with a brown-toothed smile, as if expecting her to agree.

Prim left immediately.

Prim strode on, weary for a resting place. Surely the road had to go somewhere, she thought, otherwise there was no point to the road at all. Yet for every step she took, the ground beneath her feet seemed to stretch out three.

– Prim Masters the Road

Prim went by a brightly lit merchant city, where the free living inhabitants held nightly sojourns, seances, and threw wild celebrations. They sampled poetry, sipped on liquor, and inhaled smoke. There were among their number many great, wise, and virile arithmeticians and philosophers, and many well furnished and splendid parlors and cafes.

It was a very pleasant and energetic place, and a Prim stayed there a while, eventually owning a used book shop, but after a while Prim began to realize that nobody stayed there for very long. It was not a place to settle. The hours were too late, there were few children, and the people talked in circles. So it was after two or three years Prim moved on and returned, wearily, to the road again.

– Prim Masters the Road

“Prim strode on, and the road stretched before her, taunting. The horizon unfurled itself again and again at each dawn, the sickening play of sunrise and sunset a never-ending, nauseating whirl, meaningless and endless.

After a thousand more days of walking, something broke in Prim, and her gaze no longer turned to the side of the road, nor caught on its many culverts, streams, or diversions. It no longer rested on the idea of a pleasant end, but the idea of ending. A primal dread and a terrible fury caught a hold of her and animated her limbs.

Prim began to run. And after a hundred days more, she began to sprint. She neither slept nor rested, and became a wild, tattered thing.”

– Prim masters the road.

“After running for three years and three days, Prim finally came to a tumbling halt. No matter how far she ran, no matter how fast her legs carried her, she could not find the end of the road. No matter how she scanned the horizon, or reached out with trembling fingers, she could not grasp her resting place. The road continued forever.

There was a way-angel there, standing on a pillar of basalt, who understood many things, and he said to Prim: ‘O piteous thing.” Struck by her dreadful appearance, he recognized her as the orphan of Hansa, for he was very wise in the world. ‘What seek you on the road, small one?’ said the angel, “Perhaps I can offer succor.”

“The end of the road,” croaked Prim.

“There is no end,” said the angel, and it was so indeed. For the road was the rim of the Wheel, which encircled infinity. There was, truly no resting place. For some, this would have been dread news, enough to strike the life out of them. Many had given up when they learned of this, and laid down to die, as was sometimes the way of men in those days.

But for Prim, it washed over her, and soothed her, and for her weary and torn heart was the sweetest balm in the world.”

-Prim Masters the Road