What's makes us Not pure of Heart?
1523 Words
Trying to convince the wise owl was a lot harder than they anticipated. They tried every trick in the book, from simple words to eloquent verses on the power of knowledge and so forth. Luca was stumped, and frankly, quite irritated. The team had been tirelessly researching for days, even Armando was at his tipping point, tossing a book none to gently over the tile and listening to the loud ‘thump’ of it hitting the ground with a look of satisfaction. They were wasting valuable time dithering around, a month was almost finished, and they felt no closer to the truth than before.
“What makes us not pure of heart?” Luca sat on the edge of the tile, head bowed, and fingers interlocked, the others don’t spare the effort of raising their heads from the books surrounding them to watch him. Luca had exhausted his every form of social conversion, which is not a lot admittedly, but he didn’t want to bend over a book again, so he started talking.
“One who has not accepted their world.” The owl repeated tirelessly.
“And how would you know that we have not accepted our world?”
Luca frowned and looked at the owl as an answer didn’t immediately reach his ears. The owl had tilted its head and twitched its wings… it was hesitating. Luca leaned forward in interest, a small fire of hope renewed in his chest, in all the time of talking to the owl, it had never failed to give an answer. He repeated the question with a little more strength, it finally returned its answer, “Because you are here.”
“Here?” He rolled the statement over in his head a few times, “You mean in a library, the normal place people go for answers?”
“Indeed.”
“Okay, now I know you’re just taking words from my mouth.” Luca stood angrily; he couldn’t understand why he was getting so hot-tempered over a simple sentence. Maybe it was the pain in his knee that he could still feel slightly in the game world making him cranky, the feeling of being so close to a possibility he couldn’t touch, the day’s he’s spent pent up both at home and in the Library, or maybe it was all three and more. “Why is it that we are considered not pure of heart?”
“As it is stated, you have not accepted-“
“Give me that answer again and I’ll pull a couple feathers.” Luca glared. The anger fled him suddenly, replaced with a strike of fear and a flood of remorse, his voice knocking sense back into his head… it sounded like his father’s, especially when the old man was angry. Luca took a deep breath and shook his head.
“As I said, have not accepted their world.” The owl’s voice was not judging, delivering its words like a therapist.
“Okay, okay… fine.” Luca placed his hands behind his head and slowly paced the side of the tile. “And why would it make a difference if we’ve accepted our world, wouldn’t our intentions be the same?”
“Indeed.”
“Then why?”
“Then one can truly say you are sound of mind.”
“’Sound of mind’” Luca quoted, “So then answer me this, if a warlord set on destroying this world walks in here, mind you has ‘accepted his world’, and demands to see the book, would he be allowed?”
“Indeed.”
“What?” he screeched, “Why?”
“Because he has accepted his world and is in sound mind, his decision for this world would not change whether he has seen the book or not.”
“Yes, yes it does.” Luca ignored Jay standing next to him with a curious look, forming another situation in his mind, “Okay, what if… an angry person willing to do serious harm to someone, not sound of mind, claims to see the book and what he reads could potentially stop him from doing that bad thing, would you not let him see it?”
“No… would you like to know why?” The owl hardly blinked at Jay wrestling with Luca to stop him from pulling out his hair, taking it as a cue to continue, “What makes one stand apart from an assassin and a healer? Do they not both believe in something, both heal another in their own way?”
“What’s your point?”
“If a person hires the assassin the stop the individual that hurt someone he loved, the assassin heals this person by giving them justice, the healer, unknowingly, may find this person, heal them and return them home, back to their family with a second chance.”
“That make no sense, then the guy didn’t get his justice and the healer just put a dangerous person back in the world.”
“But you see, this person had accepted their world by getting the justice he wanted, the assassin accepted his world by doing his job willingly and bringing justice, the healer accepted his world by doing what he sought out to do, help others.”
“And what of the dangerous person?”
“He was given a second chance to accept his world, his views are changed, and he now looks to the world with difference plans.”
“That still doesn’t make any sense.” Luca yelled, the rest of the team were now watching the conversation with interest, this is the most they’d gotten the owl to talk. “There is no surety that this person now sees the world differently, he has not accepted his world, there is a chance that he may just go after the guy again. A person can never just accept their world, a person’s world is always changing, it’s never stable.”
“A person?”
“If a person is hurt, by a very bad individual, should they just sit back and accept their world?” Luca huffed, the game wasn’t even on his mind at his point, scenes of his apartment flashing in his mind, his parents arguing, him and Sean arguing. “No, never, they fight, they stand up, dust themselves off and keep walking. A person never has reason to accept the position they’ve been put in; they fight little by little to make it a better one.”
“I do not fully understand.”
“A person with everything fights just as hard as a person with nothing, it doesn’t matter what life they live. A healer is always fighting to save someone, an assassin is always fighting to get the job done, that person that lost his love one will be fighting to stabilize his life, they will never accept their world because they don’t need to, they don’t have to.” Luca stoops and tries to even out his breathing, his heart racing in the real world, “To accept one’s world is to admit defeat, to admit that you’ve given up… If I’d accept my world, I’d still be angry at everyone, at my dad for walking out, my mom for not letting me back into her new life… at Sean for taking up a space in my life that I never wanted filled again.”
“I’d still be watching my dad waste away.” Jay smiled sadly, offering a hand to Luca. “I’d still be dwelling on my mom’s death, sitting in my room, wasting my life away doing things I hated.”
“I’d still be wallowing over my legs, crying over something I couldn’t fix.” Rena stood on Luca other side, rubbing her arms. Luca smiled sadly, turning slowly to Armando and Olivia. They didn’t stand, shaking their heads silently at him, he returned a nod in understanding, they were still fighting for what they believed in. Armando’s family might never accept that he didn’t process the world like he did, and Olivia’s family were still struggling with the possible divorce.
“And there you have your answer.” Luca could’ve sworn the bird was smiling at them. It stretched its wings and tilted its head, “You have passed the test.”
“What?” His mind failed to comprehend what the owl was saying, “What test?”
“One may only see the book if they are sound of mind, one who speaks their truth intentions.” The bird chanted, “Mighty is the one-“
The owl screeched, flapping it’s wings hard. Luca yelped as the tile exploded under his feet, shards flying everywhere and weightlessness overtaking his mind. In a split decision, he grabbed Rena and teleported to another tile, rolling hard, and throwing his feet under him again before teleporting back and grabbing Jay’s arm, jumping to another tile.
He overcompensated his jump, grabbing the edge of the tile to stop his fall. Luca twisted his head back and forth to catch a glimpse of Olivia and Armando, he sighed in relief as he spotted her dangling off the side of the broken tile, unharmed. Her hand was wrapped tightly around one end of her whip, the other, by a struggling Armando.
Jay appeared in his field of view, grabbing his jacket, and pulling him back onto the tile. Luca took in his surroundings, the owl was shaking itself, broken feathers fluttering to the ground… and on the many tiles stood shadowed beings pointing weapons at them.
Their house of knowledge had just become a battleground.
- Writer
