Caino's Alphabe,: F

Focused on their own arguments as they were, 
it was Caino’s guess that neither Aaron 
or his former kidnaper would ever succeed
 i n persuading the other of anything at all.  
    Their arguments were too practised 
and balanced.  The rhetoric each rival 
brought to the fray served only to drive the other back into tribal pre-judgement, 
leaving no space for evidence, 
compromise or logic. 
    Caino left the pair to continue their bickering
and headed into the woods, 
he wanted to see Darius.  
What Aaron had told him of Places and Paths 
had piqued his curiosity and he had questions 
to ask his old friend. 
    Stepping behind a crumbling wall 
he found Darius and, 
struggling for the right words 
in the language they shared, 
Caino did his best to relate 
what Aaron had told him 
about the many Paths each Mind will travel.         It was his own interpretation of Aaron’s talk 
that he told—one of the Mind as an aggregation 
of many Paths that flowed from a common source,
as an inversion of tributaries feeding a river.  
Aaron had described it as the branching of a tree,
but for some reason, 
Caino was more comfortable using his own analogy.
When he had finished, Caino asked his friend, 
“You could be on a separate Path, but if that’s so, then why do I see you?  Why can we talk?”
    “I don’t know,” Darius replied.  
“We used to play together long ago 
when you were small, 
but now we only meet when I sleep.  
When I wake up, you’re dead and I’m alone again.
You’re just a memory from my past.  
A ghost of better times.”
    “Dead?” exclaimed Caino. 
“You died a long time ago.  
You live in my dreams and that’s it,” Darius replied.
    “It’s not me who’s the dream!” Caino protested,
“You‘re the one who vanishes when 
others approach, and it’s you who can change 
from a wolf to a boy.  
It’s you who should be the dream… 
but then you find rabbits wherever they hide 
and lead me through dark moonless nights. 
 I know that you’re real, but your life— 
you live it on another Path.”
    Darius circled Caino and said, 
in a language that was theirs and theirs alone, 
“here I can run on the ground, 
and at times when it rains I get wet, 
but if I pounce on a rabbit 
or touch you or your friends, 
I pass through as if I’m a ghost…  
yet when I’m awake my world is as solid as this one is for you.  I don’t understand your Paths or your Places, but I want to believe you are real…  
So I will,” he concluded happily.
    “I know it’s confusing, 
but Aaron could explain it better,” Caino replied.  
“He studies these things like I study the stars, 
giving one thing a value compared to the next 
and trying to fit them together.  
Could you reveal yourself to him?”
    “No one can see me but you—
and that’s only when you are alone. 
 When others are close, you never can see me 
no matter how much I shout or I jump.”
    “Then let’s find another way 
to demonstrate your existence to him.  
He’s smart; he’ll tell us who’s
dreaming and who’s not.”
    For the first time, Caino felt that he might 
be able to understand the true nature 
of his invisible friend, 
but he still had many questions to ask Aaron 
and even more for their captured kidnappers,
neither of whom had yet mentioned a thing 
about communication between Paths.  
He decided he would interrupt the scientists’
bickering at the campsite and see if he might 
set them to this common task. 
—
    “No Aaron, no.  Each Mind has 
but one consciousness. 
Any divergent or parallel Paths are 
simply vestigial theatre 
for others whose Paths have, from them, diverged,”
chided the young Second Scientist 
as Caino returned to the camp.  
Her comrade was now also conscious 
but apparently too dazed to speak. 
    “Theatre, Gail?” Aaron returned—
having discovered their captive’s name, 
“is it theatre when a woman gives her life 
to bring a child into the world?  
A man his life in battle?  Are these ends not 
more worthy than the woman who dies a spinster, 
or the man a coward?”
    “Artefacts of possible lives lived.  
A mind is a single thing, 
it cannot be split into its myriad possibilities.”
    “And what of their weight? 
what we once called dark matter and dark energy account for the mass of these Paths exactly.  
They are without a doubt-”
    And they would have carried on in this manner until nightfall had Caino not intervened.
    ‘Aaron,’ interrupted Caino, 
“can we travel between the Paths?”
    “No,” said Aaron curtly, turning back 
toward Gail with the intention 
of continuing their debate.
    “But I can see Darius, 
he finds us rabbits, and he found you.”
    “Darius?” snapped Aaron, turning back 
to Caino in irritation, “What Darius?”
    So Caino described his unusual friend 
to Aaron and Gail.  
He told them how Darius walked unseen 
despite the keen senses of fearful rabbit 
and hungry wolf, how he led him to the former 
and warned him of the latter.  
He told of how Darius had tracked Bartholomew 
and Aaron when they were taken away, 
and how he led him through darkness 
when he secured their release. 
    “Fascinating, I did wonder at 
how you accomplished our escape,” 
remarked Aaron, “and will this friend of yours reveal himself to us as well?  
Come on then, out with him!”
    “He can’t do that, I only see him when I’m alone and others never can, but he tells me about places that I’ve never visited and things 
that I never have seen.  
Ask me about somewhere that I’ve never been, or something I could not yet know, 
and he’ll tell me about it for you.”
    “Your boy’s imaginary friend 
wants to play fetch?” asked Gail and, 
as she looked down her pretty nose at the boy, 
her narrowed eyes told him
she had not yet forgotten 
the blow he had given her head.
    “And what would you have him fetch?” 
Aaron asked the Second Scientist.
    “Nothing special,” said Gail, turning to Aaron,
“but it’s a good distance away from here, 
so let’s just see what he finds along the way—
if he gets there at all in the end,” she finished, as she turned to give Caino a sly little smile.