Once there was a storm that came and didn’t leave.
The people knew about storms, but were used to them rolling through and disappearing. Perhaps some shattered windows left in their wake, a waterlogged home, a feeling of fear and fresh grass.
Yet this storm was bigger. Its winds ripped apart the buildings that had seemed impenetrable, exposing rot that had infiltrated their beams and foundations. Explosions of light and sound reverberated through the land, shivering terror and rage into the people who saw the fires bursting in their wake, eviscerating fields and factories.
The people wondered who to blame. “No one warned us of a storm like this!” they cried. They turned toward their prophets. “Why didn’t you warn us?”
The prophets said, “We told you to check your foundations. We told you to build your resilience. We told you to uproot the corruption in your homes.”
The people wondered who to blame. “No one prepared us for a storm like this!” They turned toward their leaders. “Why didn’t you protect us?”
The leaders spoke with many voices. Some blamed the people for planting the corruption and rot. Some blamed the people for praying for the storms to come. Some told the people that there were no storms, there was no decimation, it was all an illusion.
The people fell into confusion, rage, and terror. The storm raged but in moments of quiet the clouds opened a portal for the moon to peer through. In dreams and moonlight the people saw invisible strings pulling each other, pulling their leaders.
New prophets arose and said the chaos of the storm was a lie. All of this was orchestrated. Secret rulers lay behind the thrones of power instilling chaos and terror into the people that they may be controlled. These prophets whispered that the hapless king was a fighter for freedom who had to pretend to be an idiot or else he would be destroyed by the storm-bringers. These prophets whispered that the king himself caused the storm to unsettle the people and turn them against him.
The people, mired in confusion and terror and beginning to starve, did not know where to turn. When they looked to the storm, which continued to wreak destruction, they saw a world of chaos in which nothing secure could be planted. When they looked to the moon, they saw a world of nefarious and occult order in which nothing could be resisted.
And all the while, in the wake of this destruction, the burnt timber and burnt fields became fertile. Lightning infused nitrogen into the soil. The people, whose dreams had been choked by the order of the old world, found a place to plant their food and dreams. The light of the moon showed them the strings within that guided their movements, the unnamed fears and wounds that spurred them to act impulsively.
Beneath the terror of chaos and the terror of order lay the land, and the people remembering the land was the first sovereign. Greater than the prophets, greater than the kings, the land was their sacred home. The great body that gave them nourishment, who would receive their bodies after death.
And in exhaustion and terror, the people turned to all they could do. The storm too big to contain, the moon too distant to tame, the people nurtured the land. The people nurtured their dreams. The people fed each other and learned to love each other, to seek to protect each other, and above all to love the land in which their futures grew.
