The Cycle

Zalima's TALE

It began with your birth: the event that changed me, and the course of my life.

    Your mother and I were childhood friends. A pretty and lithe thing she was. Not the broken thing she is now. She got hitched to your father at the early age of twenty, and before long, your brother came; and then, it was you.

    This one is definitely a girl, she said; she will wipe the smug smile of that handsome face. A bet with your father it seemed. He was in lead with the male child, and she needed to score a point, with a female.

    Your birth was a new beginning, in more ways than one. It broke old bonds; for your mother and I, seized to be, in the days that followed. But though it broke old bonds, it created new and powerful ones: first, between you and I; second, the universe and I.

    I see the confusion in your eyes. How could you have done that as a child, who lacked awareness of the world she had entered.

    Over the years I've mulled over that day—that singular brief moment, which transformed me into the woman I am. And I arrived at the conclusion that you sprang into this world with great power. But I believe that the phenomenon was not, and is not unique to your birth alone. For I have tasted and taste still, depths of hidden knowledge I know not—where they come from.

    There is power that arrives with the final Travail of childbirth: the last scream of a mother's push—the old soul—and the first cry of a babe—the new soul.

    Two things they bear: the old that births a new; and the end that brings a beginning. There is a system and hidden knowledge in the process that allows life to spring first, as a miniscule spark; then break forth as a life breathing entity. And when that moment comes—that power, that force is released.

    It can be caught, harnessed, absorbed.

    And I caught it, Mabel, I caught that power. Better yet, you gave it to me—for it was yours to dispense—the moment my old-life hands, held your new-life body—cause you understood the system; for though as a babe you were thought unaware; you were infact, more aware than anyone.

    I heard you Mabel, and your cry spilt my psyche, open. And I heard you anew; and what pain I heard, so much so, that I wept with you. Your mother hadn't understood, called me too emotional. Attributed it to my first delivery.

    But I heard you in my head, and it wasn't the cry of a new soul, but that of an old soul, which said, no more.

    Even after the other woman, in the master-room of your home where you were born, took you from my arms–lest I drop you in my emotional state, she said—I heard you still: the cry of an old and tired soul.

    From that day, an old soul: I; saw the world anew.

    From that night, I dreamed dreams within dreams within dreams. Forgotten knowledge; knowledge that could only have being lost to time; knowledge that didn't belong in the world; knowledge that showed me how insignificant—I was, in the grand scheme of things—they rose from within me: a secret place I didn't know existed. And they assailed my mind with visions, trance and images: all great, all terrifying: a world in flames, a world broken apart, a world conquered, a world erased; yet still, a wave of better things: a pillar on which a new world is built. But even more terrible, the crumbling of that pillar.

    All these have been, have happened, have past, yet the cycle comes around again, and all things repeat themselves.

    I see you always, see others like you, see the great things you all do, see the terrible things you all do.
  
    I can't say what you truly are, but you are a catalyst for change, whether for good or for bad, that choice is up to you. Yet I fear that that choice even, may be taken away and steer you into a path you are never meant to walk. All I know is that you will cause great change, whether through your life, or your death.

    Yet I hope with all things—it be in life. I wish to see what you become.

    You changed me, even if you don't believe it. And I offer myself, no matter what path you take—my knowledge, my power, it belongs to you.

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