(align:"=><=")+(box:"===XXXXXXXXXXXXXX===")[A seed, like an egg, alive yet silent, resting in soft earth, fed by cool water. It glows with a light like a blessing, like the cry of infinite babes or the sound of infinite endings. It is yours, to hold and to grow according to your whim. Let it be vast, let it be small, let it be [[wild->Growing tall]] or [[contained->Growing Wide]] or [[strange->Growing deep]], but let it grow into something more, as it is meant to.](align:"=><=")+(box:"===XXXXXXXXXXXXXX===")[You shower its leaves as it blooms, letting the water flow like rain, like the belief of a crowd into a single point. It blossoms, growing fast, until its branches become mighty and wide, and grow like limbs, reaching for an infinite sky. A million ideas and a billion beliefs in those ideas, all wrapping madly and around each other and growing wider and higher and in a million directions, each hint of love and madness and faith a new branch. In many branches you see other seeds, [[buds growing bit by bit,->GROWTH]] but perhaps it is best that [[only some be true->Let It Burn]], that the best be separated from the chaff.](align:"=><=")+(box:"===XXXXXXXXXXXXXX===")[You find for it the deepest soil, full of life and death and everything a seedling needs to grow. It drinks deep of rich earth, its roots burrowing below like worms, a reflection of a thing alive in another, and when it buds, it grows small, like a bush, a sphere of irridescent leaves blossoming from midnight-dark soil.
Do you [[listen to the bush?->That which is Strange]]
Or do you [[teach it to grow taller->Drops of Wisdom]]?](align:"=><=")+(box:"===XXXXXXXXXXXXXX===")[With a strong foundation and little light to bloom upwards, the seedling grows thick and wide, expanding to cover more ground, to hold more within itself and store it, protect it. Infinite sky and deep, dark waters flow within bark harder than steel, shining like a midnight moon out into a barren landscape that it has drawn from. All within one, like the world itself had become this pilllar, (t8n-time:4s)[[growing deep and rising tall->Depth and Width]]. A lonely tree that shows every promise of what that seed could be, even if it stands in a place (t8n-time:4s)[[drained away.->Drought]]]It burned violent and bright, but nothing fertilizes like ash. The ground that was so dry from so many branches and so much need has become rich again, and that which survived the fire was reborn so much stronger.
You have pruned and trimed and taken such care, starting from the beginning this time, letting just the better parts grow. The seeds have withered on severed branches, but the life within them returned to what remained. Your worlds are safe now, grown into canopies within canopies, myriad realms under your watchful eye. There are fewer, and none quite so mighty as before, but they are beautiful and strong and vast, and far safer than an infinite seedbed. When it grows right, under the right care, the symbiosis of authority and beauty make something whole.
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/YN6wj5NfOnM" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>(align:"=><=")+(box:"===XXXXXXXXXXXXXX===")[Now a World-Tree, and not a seedling, the plant has grown healthy and true, its branches full to bursting with new life. On each, a seed full of the sounds of life and laughter and growth can be found, an infinite rainbow of worlds bowing branches under their weight. From one have come an infinite many under your watchful eye, even as worlds grow beyond and without you.
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/gJCpuLGGZ_c" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>](align:"=><=")+(box:"===XXXXXXXXXXXXXX===")[As it draws deep, it builds an enlightenment beyond anything you've known. it does grow, but its canopy remains perfect and infinite, and in each leaf is a secret or a truth, dredged up from roots deep beneath the earth. It knows all and shows all and from its branches come perfect myriads of madness and wisdom, and it shall stand forever, keeping people wise and safe in a world without trees.
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/tNyz-uVfSN0" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>](align:"=><=")+(box:"===XXXXXXXXXXXXXX===")[You listen to its secrets and they lead you deep, deeper than you ever thought possible, but not over the edge. It speaks to you, something so very other, and its words are madness and truth and it takes time to understand it. It never ends. Its irridescence grows and grows until it is a light, until it is brighter than any flame you've ever looked into, until, hugging the ground, a sun whispers to you of divine truth and strange mysteries all around in a world that has been made both alien and familiar by new knowledge.
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(align:"=><=")+(box:"===XXXXXXXXXXXXXX===")[An eternity within a moment. A world growing forever, protected by a trunk wider than eternity. Within a single pillar, all of reality grows, the barren waste outside the trunk of the World Tree reborn within a single whole, protected and ever-frozen, a moment of infinite time and space kept safe by a barrier of divine intent. The old world is gone, and the new one is greater than it ever was, as all children must be.
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/vNCH6uhB_Bs?start=4" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>](align:"=><=")+(box:"===XXXXXXXXXXXXXX===")[You pushed for it to release its consumption, to let out the infinite worlds of life and change and time and space back to the desert where they came from, but they have still changed. Protected and condensed, then exhaled like a breath from God, the desert is now a jungle, it's infinite complexity ever-growing. Many trees dot the jungle now, the wetlands and the forests, but all bend in supplication to the first tree, the seedling, the Egg of the world.
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/5BqOMb7fdb4?start=4" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>](align:"=><=")+(box:"===XXXXXXXXXXXXXX===")[How it came to you matters little. The world is wide and wonderful and strange, and many things occur in it that might conspire to give you the thing which now lies in your hands. Your path before now has been wholly yours, and will remain private to all, but your way forward is made for not just you, but for your newfound gift as well. Often one can be measured by the kindness with which they accept their gifts.
It is small and fragile to the touch, like the shell of a newly born egg, nowhere near ready to hatch. It needs care, and attention and yes, even love, if it is to grow. It requires fertile soil and water, and it requires a piece of you to tend to it. It will not be easy. It may not be hard, either. But it will take work and Faith.
It needs you now. Do you try to (t8n-time:4s)[[care for it->Baby Steps]], or is it (t8n-time:4s)[[not yet time?->Trepidation]]](align:"=><=")+(box:"===XXXXXXXXXXXXXX===")[It's not yours to deal with. Or perhaps it just shouldn't be. Even the thought of a thing so frail and so massive is enough to make you shudder under its weight. That's ok. It is not for everyone to care for another, not for everyone to be ready to help something grow. Set it aside, then, but keep it. There is nothing stopping you from coming back (t8n-time:4s)[[when you are ready.->Baby Steps]]]
(align:"=><=")+(box:"===XXXXXXXXXXXXXX===")[Though perhaps you feel you will never be ready, that any weight will be a burden too unpleasant to bear. The seed is safe and with you, and may grow when you are both ready, but... perhaps, instead of coming back when it is time, you decide to (t8n-time:4s)[[discard->Abandonement]] it.]
(align:"=><=")+(box:"===XXXXXXXXXXXXXX===")[It needed you. Perhaps you weren't chosen, perhaps it wasn't fate, but something small and delicate and wonderful was in your hands, where only you could care for it, and you pushed it away. There is comfort to be found in removing value from something, but what you might fail to realize is that if nothing matters, everything does, from the birth of a star to the abandonement of the smallest thing. Nihilism is no shield; it is the great equalizer, and you have chosen to use it to leave behind something that was yours and that would have been beautiful.]
(align:"=><=")+(box:"===XXXXXXXXXXXXXX===")[Don't worry. The story goes on without you.
There are others that will make different choices, that will keep this thing safe or help it when it calls. You had the option of patience, of care, even one where you held back until you were ready, and all were too much for you. But don't worry.
The story goes on without you.
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/xVYiwOQyvIk?controls=0" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>]
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/dAJM3X-B22c?controls=0" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>(align:"=><=")+(box:"===XXXXXXXXXXXXXX===")[It starts small. Almost everything does. You find a place where it has room to grow, and set about finding a way to fill it with what it needs. You dig through the soil until your muscles ache and exhaustion eats at you until you have filled it in. You bring it the best earth you can find, which isn't always the best ever, but it is you and it is yours. You do your best, and it is enough, and the seed soon rests in rich ground, fill of potential ready to be remade.
Of course a place to plant itself is only the first step. The water comes next. You must move carefully, so as not to spill, washing the earth in cool, clear waters full of life. You come down onto your knees and bow close as you pour the water, your hands clasped before you and your face close to the earth, that not a drop be wasted where it's not needed. It is you, and it is yours, and it fills the ground and feeds what is within it.
(t8n-time:4s)[[It begins to grow.->The Seedling]]](align:"=><=")+(box:"===XXXXXXXXXXXXXX===")[You don't think you've gone too deep. It still feels like you when you think. You think. You feel the roots and their patterns, brittle and dry from spreading so wide and so thin, fed by you. By what you are and what is yours. You did not feel it as the roots and branches became part of you, when the life grew from you long and thin and close to the surface, roots dug shallow and branches held low. You almost do not notice when the fire comes. It burns bright and quickly, the patterns coming alive again, reflected in your eyes between the branches, until all is burned away, a field of fallow earth dusted with the ash of a thing made to burn but made too large, and too strange, by having too much of you.
Perhaps there were other trees, perhaps other paths, perhaps other lands. You can feel, in what is left of you, that they are touched by flame and ash.
Wisdom is hard to see when the details cover your visions. A tree is not a person, and to lower it to that... even rich earth can be drowned in blood, and empty wisdom burns hotter than anything but Faith, and the two look so similar. ](align:"=><=")+(box:"===XXXXXXXXXXXXXX===")[You go deeper into that which grows before you, and it is beyond anything you have seen before. Perhaps it might have been things that you had seen before and simply not understood, but as its roots twist and twine and its branches curl, you know it is more than that. You can see, in the patterns of its fractal branches and writhing roots, things beyond what your mind can hold. It leaves imprints in your mind, unformed clay left shaped into vague shapes that could be kindness and could be fear, that could be love and could be hate.
It becons you deeper, deeper into those patterns, into the thin strands of life and abstracts. You feel your own self, the patterns deep within you, shifting slightly, the human become smaller in the face of something beyond.
Does the (t8n-time:4s)[[revelation take you?->Pyre]] Or are you still whole, alive and (t8n-time:4s)[[bearing witness without falling?->The Burning Bush]]](align:"=><=")+(box:"===XXXXXXXXXXXXXX===")[Once, a man wandered among trees, among nature and life. For all that there was beauty, there was also danger. As he strode, something began to hunt him, a great thing of majesty and claws, of hunger and violence and power and wonder. He ran, as quick as he could, through endless spaces, always chased.
All things end, and the man's flight ended as he slipped, and fell down a cliffside, only barely grabbing hold of a vine growing from the sheer cliff. If he let go, the fall would kill him. If he held on, the beast would catch him.
On the vine, there is a beautiful, ripe, perfect fruit, glistening with dew and flavor. With a smile, the man took a bite, and relished in the flavor, enjoying every drop of nectar.
The tree above you, thinner and winding, beginning to bloom, reminds you of a vine.
Do you (t8n-time:4s)[[Understand?->Holy Tree]] Or are things still (t8n-time:4s)[[Unknown?->Drops of Wisdom]]](align:"=><=")+(box:"===XXXXXXXXXXXXXX===")[There's too much. Too much to control, growing wild and ragged, and your efforts to prune it have made it grown gnarled and wrong. You've done your best, but even with all that work, at some point it became counter productive. You've put in love and care, but perhaps too much. it is frozen now, a statue of a thing that despite its pure intentions has gone wrong by being too much of itself under the care of too much effort trying to control it.
Fire is terrifying. Burning flame, the moving of the smallest possible building blocks in mindless excitement until it becomes something new. It is a midnless, endless force that multiplies and consumes and rebuilds it as itself. But it is not bad. It is a renewal, in many ways, a renewal of blinding power that destroys the old until it can become something else.
Perhaps it's better as it is, and with a bit more work you can make it (t8n-time:4s)[[perfect, like you always wanted->Eternity]].
But certain things need to burn if they ever want to (t8n-time:4s)[[live->Many Realms]].](align:"=><=")+(box:"===XXXXXXXXXXXXXX===")[All that has ever been will ever be. You cut, and you cut, until all that was wrong is made right. So much has been cut away that it doesn't look like it did, not much like the tree it was before, but it is still a tree, your tree and no one elses, your world and no one elses. You hold it to what it is, so that nothing new can come from it to make it wrong. It will be like this, yours, forever and ever, amen.
Why oh why would you everthink to change this thing? Or ever (t8n-time:4s)[[let it change->Let It Burn]]?](align:"=><=")+(box:"===XXXXXXXXXXXXXX===")[That's the thing about infinity, isn't it? Not all of it is good. It is both infinitely good and infinitely bad, and endless and perpetual and unending growth that goes on forever in every direction. Unimaginable horror and unimaginable wonder, good and evil and so much that is neither or both or something else entirely, and you control none of it. It is untamed and ever more than it used to be, and how can you control something like that? You know it is foolish to try to chain infinity, and the tree finds new ways to grow, some branches feeding on others, other building fresh new worlds to feed the roots.
Perhaps one day it will find a balance, but perhaps this is it, perhaps eternal ideas and eternal worlds are just eternal chaos in turn. You could always take a heavier hand, try and fight the impossible and (t8n-time:4s)[[bind it->Let It Burn]], but there is nothing inherently bad about the Endless, and no shame in knowing the limits of a human in the face of (t8n-time:4s)[[Infinity->Infinite Worlds]].](align:"=><=")+(box:"===XXXXXXXXXXXXXX===")[It is so beautiful. It has taken all that love, all that impossible effort, every part of you, and it has become one thing that grows mightier than any other. It reaches above all else and beneath all else, until the world it came from is so much less than the tree has become, could still become. You were its beginning but it is beyond you, like any child, a whole world(t8n-time:4s)[[ in themself. ->The World Within]]](align:"=><=")+(box:"===XXXXXXXXXXXXXX===")[But perhaps it is lonely. Perhaps it is wrong to keep such a thing of majesty all alone, no matter how much it might weaken it to let others grow. The land around it is parched. If all eggs are in one basket then perhaps that basket might fall. Is it impossible that by leaving so much else empty that one single thing isn't enough no matter how mighty it might be? Perhaps its time. Perhaps you need to remind it that even the One that is All is still (t8n-time:4s)[[only... one->The World Without]]. Even if it is so, so close to (t8n-time:4s)[[perfect->Depth and Width]].]