The Spirit of the Now

“Well, you probably won’t understand since you’re not of the forest, where it’s all about, but I’ll try to explain it to you. Right, sit comfortably, you can’t really dance to this:

Auri-El is the king of the gods, insomuch as gods have kings, you see. Auri-El led our ancestors in war against the Doom Drum, and even the other gods needed time, just as we needed shape. But the Boiche are the tree sap people, wild. We don’t usually care so much for kings, and we don’t care much for war.

Now obviously there have been some. Some kings have won our hearts, but they are special ones. We do love our father Auri-El, but there’s no sense in disdaining the Mundus, and in pining for a god who left. How can you worship something that is so un-here when there’s so much that is here?

Y’ffre isn’t a king, and we love him. Y’ffre was tricked as we were all tricked, but Y’ffre was wiser than many. The Doom Drum’s works were wicked, but Y’ffre understood the important thing, the Now. Beasts are cruel, but cruelty is the natural way of things, and from wickedness much good can come. From the chaos, Lorkhan wrought the Mundus. Still a place of chaos, but the chaos of liveliness, movement, today.

Because Y’ffre understood that the Now was the important thing, he understood that though the Doom Drum was wicked, the Mundus is a wonder. Means and ends, as the men say, and the ends were a new Natural Order. So special, so much more so than the grey chaos of before there was a before-and-after. With time, place, shape all together, we can walk and sing and dance and shoot and live, love. See?

So it’s the Now, that’s really important. It’s not about what’s still and what’s moving, what was and what will be, it’s about the Now. Things in balance, forces and motions, the Natural Order. That’s why we love it, one of the reasons. Anu, Padomay, Anui-El, Sithis and the Grey Maybe, that’s all Then, and it’s of very little concern really, that’s how we feel, that’s what Y’ffre taught us.

Auri-El gave us Time, the then-then-then-then-then-then, yesterday, today, tomorrow. But when Y’ffre taught us our shapes, we learned our place in the Mundus, and not just our space-place, our time-place – our Now.

Comprehension, you see? Understanding, self-knowledge. It’s very important to the Boiche, and it’s what Y’ffre is all about. The only reason we don’t mind when men call him just a Forest God is because the forest is all about the Now. Really, he is so much more than that. God of the Forest, Pactmaker, Storyteller, Shapefixer, Earthbone, Truthsayer, Walkingmer, Wakingmer, the Spirit of the Now.

Do you understand?”