The Balance of Wings

by Epiphany sola Gratia

A year after the Blight, Alistair is king and struggling with his responsibilities and his personal losses. While undertaking a diplomatic mission into the Cauldron valley, things do not go as planned. He meets a woman who helps change his perspective.

28. Interlude 9: Cant of Transfiguration 11

Interlude 9: The Canticle of Transfiguration 11

The Chant of Light

Transcribed by Brother Dyfed

O Creator, you change not

though the world is transformed

by the shaping of your hands,

bathed in the Waters of the Fade.

The hearts of men are mutable;

capable of corruption

but also capable of contrition,

capable of covetousness

but also capable of compassion.

We have taken for granted your gift,

desiring it like all empty wealth,

forgetting the true purpose you intended:

to bring us closer to you

on the seas of our dreaming,

so we might not forget you

and so we might recognize your voice.

Instead, in the waking world,

we buy and trade

what once flowed freely

from your open hands to us.

It poisons the body,

just as desiring it poisons the soul

like all gaudy riches horded.

We were not meant to wield it

for our own elevation in the eyes of the world,

but we abuse it to our detriment.

Body and spirit are weak

and we corrupt ourselves

in the pursuit of the power

that rightly belongs to our Maker,

the power that should only

be wielded by a Creator.

We are shabby charlatans

to presume to hold

what only a Creator should touch.

Have mercy on your misguided children,

change our stubborn hearts

and make them softer than the stone

with which we corrupt and cloy our bodies.