A World Internal
Segment I: Cyan Garamonde

ARTIFICE

I do not know why I did what I did.

It was something as simple as writing a letter, and then another. It was as simple as giving a young woman a reason to keep going. Why, then, is it so difficult to uncover the true motivation that I find myself questioning? How can I be so completely unable to find an answer to the simple question "why?"

The sky is beautiful today. The wispy air of the high mountains is still somehow able to solicit a fresh breath in a body as tired as my own. Perhaps it is the pure beauty held in the atmosphere of the morning that has shut me away in my thoughts. It is different today than most days; it seems to reach into me, as does the need to seek the true words of my soul.

I think of the letter I've written to right my wrongs. It sits on my little table, yet to be sent, a symbol of my cowardice. The letter I have sent in its stead is attached to the leg of a carrier pigeon that I can still see in flight, and holds within it the same professions of love and devotion that I have been writing for the past thirty days. I will someday send my confession, but I find little solace within it. A short letter, one that holds truth and regret, but the truth I seek can't be found in my apology. My written words do not contribute to my understanding of the instinct I chose to follow.

I watch the little bird carry my letter to Lola. It's almost gone now. I feel another stab of regret as I imagine the consequences of sending it, and I suddenly long to call the bird back, but I know it is too late. The bird carries my conscience on its wings; I know it would be better to end the charade I should never have begun. My motivation… it remains a mystery that I still cannot solve.

One might call it fear. I suppose that could be justifiable. Fear may drive a man to do strange things on the advent of a dire hour, and the realms of fear are plentiful. I reflect on it every so often, and I am driven to wonder within which of these realms I found myself that day.

Did I fear isolation? Perhaps.

Did I fear change? Almost certainly.

I am a proud man, but not too proud to admit that I accepted change less than gracefully. I still remember the day Elayne told me that I would become a father. To think of my first reaction to the news, the initial wave of uncertainty, fills me now with embarrassment. Had I only known then what a blessing our son would be... but such is the frailty of my stubborn mind.

I did not know the joy that Owain would bring to my life… our lives. I bow my head as I remember the only son I ever had, and the dear love of his mother upon which he and I thrived. I could not have known back then… and I remember being filled with anxiety at the prospect of an addition to our family, another distraction from my duty to the King. I remember the desire to hold on to the life we already had, and being unable to embrace the possibility of change.

It might seem odd that a man so intimidated by change could find himself fighting alongside a rebel organization in a civil war; rebellion, after all, is often the principal agent of change. Perhaps there's a difference between change and progress... or perhaps the man is less stubborn at heart than he thought he was.

But I suppose that if one fears change, there is a part of him that invariably fears loss. Perhaps his life is simple enough that he fears loss only of the familiarity he knows. I wouldn't presume to call myself so innocent. I have learned that the maintenance of innocence is impossible in a man for whom death is routine. When such a man is haunted by potential loss, his fear is seated far deeper than a concept.

It is a cruel world that will bring to life those inner fears.

I am still haunted in my nightmares by memories of that day. I can still see the wretched poison seeping through the canal, and I can still feel the sickening horror of watching my people – my friends – die one by one. Every night I relive the moment I walked through my chamber door to discover that I no longer had a family... that I no longer had a life… that everything I held dear had been snuffed out in an instant, as if it had never existed at all.

I defy any man to match the utter hopelessness, to breathe but be truly dead.

Perhaps it was then that I began to embrace change. Perhaps it was then that I realized the true necessity of change in a cruel world.

I stare at the clouds as I think about it. I remember growing up; I remember coming to hate everything associated with the evil Empire. I hated wars that killed innocent citizens. I hated their machines… I hated all machines. I look back to my little alcove in the mountain, thinking about the two books I've carefully hidden inside, books about machinery. How strange it is that I've come to embrace even the technology I loathed so much when I was young.

But as I turn back to the cliff, staring at the endless sky where the little pigeon had been only minutes ago, I see the revelation that came upon me as I fought with the Returners. During my time with them, I began to understand that not all machines are as evil as the Empire's Magitek. As uneasy as I may always be around such technology, I realize how blind I have been all these years. I suppose I really did fear change.

It wasn't until the world was reduced to ruin that I truly lost that fear.

It seems strange, I suppose. At a time when the world had lost all hope for the future, I could only see the life that remained. When nobody could let go of the past, it was I who discovered how long I had clung to my own inner demons and abandoned them. It was then, after seeing how the world had changed around me and yet gone on living, that the concept became less threatening. I travelled across the country for a long time. I found Mount Zozo, and the little alcove that had once been somebody's makeshift home. The more I saw of our new world, the more promise I found in its future. By the time I met Lola, it couldn't have been a fear of change that made me do what I did.

But there was still something missing. I remember leaving one obstacle behind and yet still feeling unfulfilled.

My thoughts drift back to the immortal "why". I picture the moment, the day I'd passed through Maranda and caught a glimpse of her, standing outside her house and watching the skies. I see her face again, and I think of all the letters I have been writing in her lover's stead. I remember the compassion, the sympathy I'd felt when I heard about all the messages she sent and the months without word.

Without warning, as I think of Lola's face, I see Elayne.

My heart suddenly feels heavy as I begin to understand… and yet, I understood from the very beginning, from the very first word I wrote. I had thought of Elayne. I suppose that, in one sense, I was writing to her all this time, sending with my letters the flowers I would always craft for her, the ones she loved so.

But I remember the pity I felt for Lola, suffering the same pain I had fought with for nearly a year. Every day of the eleven months that had passed since the end of the world, she had been left without hope, without any promise of a future. I wanted to return that hope to her, to help her learn to once again embrace life as I had.

I recall the first letter I wrote, something hurried and a little careless, sent from the most secretive place I knew: that little alcove at the summit of Mount Zozo. It was the only letter I planned on writing, a short, reassuring message. I remember spending the night there with the intention of departing the following morning, only to find upon the sunrise that she had sent a letter back.

One month of letters, each time telling myself that it was the last, and that I would leave and never return. Thirty days… thirty elaborate lies. Even the flowers… I think about them now and see how appropriate it was to send them to her. Artificial flowers, sent from an artificial person, a symbol of artificial love. An intricate web of well-intentioned deceit.

Artifice.

I think for a long time. I stare out at the horizon. The breeze tosses my hair this way and that. The grass rustles beneath my boots. The sky looms dark and foreboding, the same horrible sky that has haunted the dead world since the day the Statues were moved from their delicate alignment and wrought their vengeance on the inhabitants of their world.

Everything is artifice, I decide. The flowers, and the material from which they were made; the paper that has been transformed into letters, and the ink with which they were written; the man writing them, only a persona created by one woman's desperation and one man's sympathy. A human being lives his life surrounded by the artificial, a world that other humans have both created and destroyed. I suppose that is why I have come to embrace the machines that once filled me with such fear and hatred. They are spawned from the same human capacity for creation from whence have come the flowers I have made, or the sword at my belt. In their own inexplicable form, such machines are, in their own right, works of art.

But I am still left wondering, contemplating the real secret to humanity. How much is there that humanity has created? Can one truly love a memory enough so that the memory becomes real? Can a memory be touched, held, or kissed? Is love a creation of humanity, as artificial as the human world itself?

Perhaps I was right the first time. Perhaps I have suffered from a fear of isolation. Perhaps I have truly felt alone in this elaborate imitation of reality. The world changes, all that is around me changes, and I am left without a life to call my own. Could it be that all I need from this dead world is something to live for?

I realize that I have been chuckling to myself. All this time spent searching, and the answer has been there for me to read in the very letters I have been writing. I will send my confession someday; even something purely artificial, it would seem, can bring light to truths as natural as blood.

Why did I do what I did? Why do I write endlessly to a girl with nothing else to live for? To remind us both of a simple reality, one that stretches to distances beyond the longest journeys, hides in places more remote than the highest summit, and lives on in craft as well as in the craftor's soul:

Nobody is truly alone.