WHERE THE WATER FLOWS
by Irene Iris
Chapter 6: The Judgment Day
Water is everywhere.
Everywhere the eye can see – from mountain to mountain, from the vantage point to the horizon.
For the most part, it is solid, frozen. Thousands of years of history, compressed in glacial ice and once almost lost. Like two mountain rivulets, two thin ether-suspension rope bridges connect the opposing slopes with the edifice at the glacier’s cutting edge – the Temple. From a distance, it looks like the temple is levitating in the act of centuries-long meditation over the abyss, trying to conquer death… or bring back the lost time.
At the temple gate, a man is standing, neck-craned, eyes closed, face towards the cascading wall of water droplets that freeze midway through thin mountain air and end up being iridescent ice particles spraying the man’s face and shoulders. Two more men pass by, one of them – obviously originating from a warmer place – is desperately trying to find comfort in his recycled fiber parka.
Ultimately, everyone is cleansed, barefoot, and in for the most important Mass of the century…
The temple is empty, except for a few devout monks and these three new pilgrims. Each had their own reasons for being here on the Judgment New Year’s Day. One came because he has faith in the new generation he helps educate in line with the principles of eco-consciousness. One came to greet the new era when no island will sink again. The third one came to redeem the ancestral sins. All of them have their lives to cherish and lose, each led by the respective history of the lives of generations before them.
As the sun approaches midday, the water in the sacred sunlit cup of life is coming dangerously close to the edge. One drop-worth can overflow the cup.
The colorless, tasteless, odorless liquid slowly comes up to lick the curved chalice’s edges. For the first time in decades, it is being let to flow over. Free, the water breaks loose and floods the floor. As if having the consciousness of its own, it crawls all over the place, approaching the people’s toes. At the moment of contact, something divine occurs. The creator meets the creation.
The high priestess walks on the water and speaks out:
“On the New Year’s threshold, don’t ask the future for yourself from the planet. Ask it from your ancestors. If you could speak through water and through time, what would you say to your great-grandparents?”
And all the people at the Mass manifest one clear thought each, and then speak it out. The water hears all those mental and sound vibrations, recording them like a phonograph. And thoughts become fluid, and words become liquid. The currents of water become the currents of wishes and manifestations. Water becomes a multi-voice:
Please stop turning land into dust and water into dirt.
Please plant more trees, cut them not.
Please stop before lands sink and you have climate refugees knocking at your door.
Please learn to read water and hear what the planet says.
In the moment of catharsis, somewhere below, under the waterlogged floor, a loud crack reverberates through ice…
***
No one knows where the water in the temple comes from and where it flows after. Some believe it is timeless and placeless. Perhaps, somewhere, sometime, someone will be able to encounter and read this water, for the end of this human story is written in the water language. If only someone in the distant past learned to read water sooner. If only someone could connect with water and see the visions of the future to start the change on time… That would give the glacier an extra mile to stand, if only the humans of the past agreed for an extra mile to go in saving it. Saving the planet. Saving the future…
Copyright ©️ 2024 Iryna Dihtiarova-Deslypper. All rights reserved.
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