The Prophet of Landfall

With one last kick and a deep moan he broke out of his cocoon, which was far too large for him now. How long ago had he spun that? He could barely remember. Why had he spun it? He didn’t remember that either. And why was he now tiny?

GREET.

It was completely dark in the cave, yet he could see his Maker as clearly as a moon in the sky. He knelt on one knee and bowed his head. He had never knelt before, and wasn’t sure where he had learned that should. But in an instant he knew exactly where he had learned it.

STAND.

He stood on his new legs. They were different than they had been… He used to have six. They had been slender and tall, and had lifted him high above the shells of mer. They had taken him far beyond his ashen homeland, south-by-southwest. But now there were only two, two short, fat, wet, fleshy stumps. How were they supposed to take him anywhere?

FLY.

Wings. He had wings. With a thought he commanded them to open, and they unfurled, dripping glittering sap on the floor of the cave. He could fly.

SEE.

His two eyes were already open, so he opened the other two. He had never had eyes before. He had never known the word “eyes”. He had never known words. So many senses were new, but yet he understood them, and was not afraid.

REMEMBER?

Remember what?

YES.

His past came flooding back to him like an ash storm. How he had been born an animal. How he had wandered into this cave exhausted and scared. How some ancient part of his insect mind had snapped into action and wrapped himself in sticky netting for warmth and protection. How he had fallen asleep, and how he had been spoken to.

Then more pasts came to him, so many pasts it made him feel ill. All his blood-pasts were now his to remember, even ones he hadn’t experienced while he was gestating in the cave. He saw as his brood were enslaved, as their shells were hacked and hollowed out, as they were run starving and lonely by their overlords. And finally, as they died beneath the ash.

He moaned deep with mourning, loud enough that it shook the stone walls around him. The branches of his Maker remained perfectly still.

MORE. UNDERSTAND.

The grief passed quickly as he remembered even more pasts: the pasts of his new lizard brothers, the pasts of some of the Great Branches, and even the pasts of a few mer. It felt like his mind was being filled by a great river, relentlessly gushing memories and meanings.

The memories coalesced into a great web of points and waves that no man or mer had ever seen, like a massive nest seen from all points on the inside simultaneously. He could see all their little sins and their pride and their sad mistakes. Their cruelty and their pain. Their kingly games and pointless quarrels.

UNDERSTAND?

At once he understood. With a river of sap pulsing through his transformed carapace, he could feel their need for Salvation, for a true God to follow.

It was his task to show them. It would be a long, uphill climb, but patience ran in his blood.

GO.

He was already out of the cave, in the half-sunlight of the swamp. The new wings opened, and he floated towards his destiny. “A caravan of one,” he thought.