...And We Will Have Snow

Chapter 7-10: Tengri's Take

It was late evening at WBI. The team had all withdrawn from their various QAR and remote drone engagements to share dinner. Now they had all retired to the lounge to relax.

This evening the agenda had been unusual. Their friend Zeke from CEDO had just given a new talk via QAR, which they had all attended. It was over, and someone had asked Tengri what he thought of it. He looked around and it appeared he had been given the floor. So he leaned back and smiled, then began.

"These ideas should not be new or strange to anyone. But they are, and that's a sign of the times. Which is why Zeke's talk is so wonderful.

"It's also a sign of the times that Zeke was asked to give this talk, and that too is wonderful.

"Still, Zeke's ideas should not be new or strange to anyone. They're the daily cycle of life. But perhaps the cycle is so familiar its meaning is lost. So let me explain.

"In our waking hours we interact with the world, perceive it, respond to it, accept or reject it, resonate with it in whatever way we do and incorporate the experience into our world view. At the end of the day we are more or less overwhelmed by it and retreat from it to a place where we feel safe enough to withdraw into sleep. In sleep we return to the void, the timeless nothing and nowhere that is our true native state, retaining only a tenuous link to the body's here and now.

"Renewed, we return from the void enough to enter a dream state, drawing resonances from the Q that restore our sense of self, perhaps drawing from that a renewed interest in what the waking world has to offer, but at times instead finding in a dream something unpleasant, from which the waking world now offers a retreat. Either way, we then open our eyes, letting reality draw us into its embrace. And the cycle repeats.

"So we always have the option to retreat from the world into our own dreams, or deeper sleep, and then return refreshed. The difference that Zeke offers is recognizing that the return can be a choice. We can wake to a new resonance, a new body, a new life. And if we allow it, it can be as if the old life never happened. The new resonances can take over, displacing the old.

"This can be an aberration, or a desired change. Either way it's a choice, conscious or unconscious. This is simply the way of the world.

"Now it appears to me that what people are beginning to draw from the drone dream, from the Sea Dream, and from Zeke's talk, is the recognition that they are not their bodies. One has a body, just as one may have a pair of shoes. The body is its own entity, a complex, multicellular entity intimately connected to the person and able to summon the person back from the world of dreams at need. This recognition is the first step toward understanding the full cycle, the daily cycle of life, the cycle of life and death.

"This is what makes Zeke's talk so wonderful, so exciting. If humankind can arrive at the full depth of this understanding, many shallow, aberrant understandings will fall away.

"That will be truly wonderful."

Perhaps partly in response to Zeke's presentations, popular imagination embraced the shifting ability as the Sea Dream spread and with it the understanding that this potential was inherent in all life, that it explained gaping holes in the theory of evolutionary history. Tengri said the ability to shift was naturally suppressed in times of relative ecological stasis, and surfaced in times of change.

Tengri had heard rumors from Zeke of people dwelling in other Sea Shells who swam with dolphins and took dolphin or half-dolphin form. Even some apocryphal rumors of natural dolphins who shifted to human.

Tengri knew that Zeke did not indulge in shifting, preferring to accompany the shifters with his drone. Zeke told him of one such occasion when the group witnessed a shark attack on a seal.

Zeke had said, "Normally I would merely record this as a natural event, but some of the half-seal shifters reacted emotionally and felt threatened too. I knew this could unstabilize their shifting ability, so I used the drone to roll the shark and immobilize it."

"Roll the shark?"

Zeke nodded. "Years ago some field researchers learned the trick from watching an orca. The orca apparently knew that any shark will quickly go still when turned on its back and held that way. It's got something to do with basic shark physiology, works on all of them from nurse sharks to great whites.

"After that incident we decided to assign a drone guard whenever shifters are swimming in dangerous waters.

"But I tell you what, after doing the shark immobilization trick my body's heart rate skyrocketed and I felt adrenaline heaves coming on. I had to leave the drone and take care of my own body. So it won't be me out there playing life guard."

"You know, Zeke," Tengri had said, "There have always been shifters, were-folk, not only selkies like Ryan. In fact Dema and Cern are archetypes for all of these. I know that Juan and other shamans of Mexico have done coyote, and also eagle. Ghandl perhaps, and other Haida, and shamans of other lands are known to have the ability, at least latently. Part of the success of humanity is this shaman resource among us that has always understood and helped shield the people from predators, helped them cultivate the soil and domesticate other animals. The shamans can come out of hiding where the practice is accepted. Possibly, with so many people following your example, more of them will come out of hiding now."