Not very long ago as these things are measured, when I was first Cast Out, I helped a bard down on his luck stay alive while in his cups. Over and over he sang a little ditty that sounded like a children's song. He did not know that it had its origin in the ritual chant Shadde Quah share to move wavecutters at speeds others cannot believe, and he made it end with the words "life is but a dream." Life is but a dream. Not knowledge shared by any but the old or wise among People. It stuck in my ear, as they say. It slept in me so that my mind was as a body outstretched on a bed of rock for many nights. Knowing this ending before hearing him put it into words, though wrapped in darkness and unreal visions rather than in power and battle, must be what sustained me when I survived the change during my rights of passage and became what I am. No longer Meh-lan'ek but Sansquah. Torn into pieces by a dream of Vonark Many Arms and cast into the world to crush whatever had destroyed the boy my parents knew and return, victorious, myself once again. Or not. And not.
Now I have been back among People, more powerful but still Sansquah, and their minds remain closed. I don't blame them. I am something they knew and now do not. But I must begin to tell the story, at least to myself, as though I will find myself. If I do not, I may end with my inside resembling my outside and without even my self for company. I have not told my story, even to myself, because I did not want to add weight to the truth of it in the telling. If dream is strong enough to teach me to speak dark languages I have heard in no other place, and also strong enough to aid me in learning the language of angels then, perhaps, it is both too powerful to resist and may bring me before the great door of my purpose. At least, if images are this strong and do not also have keys to open the door of a beautiful life, then I am lost and may as well go into the sea.
But Vonark covered me against the blast, and now he is over my heart, and he comes to those I used to call My People most often in dreams, so I will accept his protection, hoping that part of the dream holds true. As they say, you never know the nature of his grasp until it closes the water over your head or hurls you onto the beach and into the future. Either way, his embrace is irresistible at last. I still have the things I use to draw and carry images from the darkness before dawn. I suppose I will use them.