The two are One. The One is two.
As he sat high above the city the locals called Machu Picchu, Tween thought of his sister, Twixt, and immediately heard her voice “I know you’re thinking of me Tween” of course she would; when you and your twin sister’s souls are one side of the same coin you’re still as connected as if you were sitting next to one another, even if you’re physically thousands of miles away from each other.
“Yes I was just wondering about something important” replied Tween to his sister, which at this very moment was herding a group of underworld Children towards yet another bloody battlefield. “What would that be dear brother?”
Tween didn’t quite know how to word his question, since the framing of it was as important as the substance of the query. After a long pause he told his sister “I know you and I can see all. The past, and the future. We can see into every layer of every universe the One has created. We are his avatars of the Eternal Balance. That much even the Children know.”
Twixt interrupted him, “you think too much brother. That’s so boring.”
“I know ‘I ponder and wonder’ at length, as you regularly AND mockingly remind me.”
Twixt egged her brother on to get to the point “so? You do. You think too much! You should be more like me!” said Twixt as she casually incinerated another of the underworld Children for straying away from the group of Shadow Children being herded towards the battlefield ahead, “more action. Less…pondering I say!”
“Yes, perhaps you’re right, but if I don’t think about these things, then, well, then I get bored of always dealing with the Children. They can be so infuriating in how they don’t seem to do ANY thinking at all!”
Twixt laughed, “no one cares for the Children more than you do, even though they can be so stubborn and short sighted.”
“Yes, I agree. But never mind that. Here’s my question. You and I can see all, past, present and future” Twixt interrupted “you said that already!” “Shut up and listen” snapped Tween.
“But how come you and I can’t see when we came to be? Why can’t we see when our souls were ignited into life? Where did we come from? Do we actually exist? How can we know everything, yet not know that simple fact?” His sister did not respond, so he continued “just last night I heard an old Inca Soul Walker stumbling through the spirt world…they can be so clumsy when they’re in there. He was, as is always the case with most of the Children, frightened when I first spoke. He started to cry right away, but eventually I calmed him down. After he composed himself, he asked what he could do for me. He, of course, offered to sacrifice one thousand virgins in my honor!” at that his sister added “smart Child! But I would have asked for two thousand if I‘d been there!”
“I know you would have, but I ignored him and instead asked him to recite to me the mystery of the twin spirits.” Tween paused and then continued “he correctly chanted, ‘the Balance is eternal, yet it does not last. The Way is the road that goes on forever, yet it has no beginning or end. Death is our gift, yet we shun it. The Twins are and are not. They will be and have never been. They will die, be reborn, but were never born. The two are One. The One is two. This is the Way.”
He finished and his sister still did not respond. She had either not heard him or was ignoring him. At that moment a dark shadow passed over him and the mountain promontory he was sitting on. He looked up and saw a Chachapoya Dead Wing fly overhead and in front of the sun. The bat-scorpion creature shrieked in fear as it sensed his presence on the ground below. Though it could sense the awesome power flowing from his soul, its rider could not. The rider was blind to the wonders Mother Turtle provided, as was almost always the case with the majority of the Children; they hardly ever noticed what was right in front of them. Always worrying about what was to come, or some other everyday minor distraction. Before long the beast and rider had gone far into the horizon, where they could no longer be seen by mortal eyes. But he was no mere mortal, and he could clearly not only watch where they were physically going, but could also see into the future and know that they did not have long to live.
Twixt interrupted his distracted watch on the Dead Wing flying above, “what kind of waste of time is that?! You know what you need to think about?!” Ok, here she goes again. One thing you could say about his sister, is that she is relentless on staying focused on accomplishing what she sees as their combined and most important mission, “you need to be thinking about the end of the Children and how we restore the Eternal Balance. That’s all. We need to finish this, find the Seed Children, and then I can finally go back to sleep again!”
“Yes, yes I know. You tell me so regularly. But still. I want to know. I want to see the moment we came about. Yet it is as if a black veil comes over my soul when I look that far back. I’ve looked everywhere for an eternity to find a way to do so and still I can’t see through the darkness keeping the truth from my soul! I don’t understand why the One would keep this from us!” Tween continued to explain to his sister why it was so frustrating for him that he could not get an answer to his question “imagine that! We are here by his will, we are there and everywhere now and forever ensuring that HIS Eternal Balance is restored, and he has not given us the courtesy of a balanced story of our existence, from beginning to never-end!”
As Tween continued to speak, his anger kept building up. Though no one in the city of Machu Picchu could see him, they could not help but notice something odd happening in the distant mountain where Tween sat. In Machu Picchu a few especially perceptive individuals began to hear a rumbling coming from the snow-capped mountains, as if thunder from an incoming storm was rolling over the mountain peaks. Soon every living soul in the city could not but help be enthralled by the growing spectacle of light and sound which had quickly overcome the tallest peaks in the mountain range. Though where such thunder and lightning could be coming from was a mystery to all, as no cloud was visible and the sky was a bright blue.
The rolling, rumbling thunder kept gaining in intensity and then suddenly, as everyone’s attention was glued to the peaks overlooking their holy city, a massive peel of thunder exploded over the mountain tops, and a burst of blue energy flowed outwards in an expanding circle of unstoppable energy. Roof tops collapsed, trees were ripped from the ground, men and women dropped dead on the spot, and as one, all of the people sank to their knees in prayer and fear. They did so, because without anyone telling them, they all inherently knew that a god had just spoken. And although none knew what such an event meant; they all felt deep within their souls that they had just experienced a moment of raw, divine power.
In time, Soul Walkers would seek to know what had happened on the mountain, and all but one would fail to find the answer. He who succeeded would forever change the course of their lives.
Tween of course cared little that he had just “caused a scene”, as his sister would later incessantly mock him about. Especially more so when she realized that he was a little annoyed at having lost his temper. Losing his temper was not something Tween ever did. That was her department. This she knew was The Way.
