Before she left, he produced a dark glass bottle, old and cloudy, sealed at the top with wax. “Here,” he looked up at her, “I’ve been keeping this for you as long as I can remember. Your Great Uncle told asked that we give it to the last of his bloodline on the night before they leave the village. He even knew it would be a full moon.” He looked up, as if to check it was still there, hanging over them in the night sky. The funeral pyres were burned the dead and filled the air with a thick sickeningly sweet chared scent. He pulled his makeshift bandana mask down, kissed the bottle and handed it to her with a letter, aged and discoloured. “Take this far away from this place that has been emptied of all it’s goodness. Soon there will be no one left to light the fires and the disease will have claimed us all, our entire culture – but you will live and all of our ancestor’s knowledge will be alive within you. You are the last shaman of our people, our entire lineage, you encompass a thousand generations. And now you must go out into the world.”
She held the bottle up, examing the contents, and something within, moving, or was it the flickering firelight? But it almost appeared to swirl around. She turned her attention to the letter, opening it she bagan to read:
January 16, 1851 Barra do Rio Negro, Brazil
My Dear Descendant
At the moment you are reading this, our people, our entire tribe will have fallen. To war or perhaps famine, it is hard to say with certainty what events create the end but as sure as I have loved and lived, this jungle surrounding us, giving and taking, part of us. But there will come a day when our people will fall one by one until all but one survives. You are the last of our tribe, our knowledge, our blood, our ways, our mysteries, our pact and you will survive. But not in this place. You will have to travel beyond the jungle and take the gifts of our plants and animals, our medicine and our ways. Take these gifts of our culture and share them with others. A change is coming and in your time there will be many challenges and enemies. May these gifts help and guide you.
Things don’t happen for a reason. Things happen because things are always happening. All over the place, all at once and all the time. Things are happening right now and other things will forever be changed because of these simple, small and for the most part insignificant events. In other words, the present moment is an impossibly beautiful lie. While you may or may not realize it or agree with me at this very moment…one day these truths will reveal themselves to you. As I lay here writing this down in these last few moments of my time on this earth plane, I’ve achieved such clarity and peace. Everything seems to fit together with such unbearable beauty. All of these collected pieces, connected and creating a fantastic ornate and seemingly abstract order, underpinning life in its purest essence.
But I’m jumping ahead of myself. My name is Solomon and if you’re reading this, it’s not too late, but it is certainly the end of a paradigm and you most likely are the last of us.
When I was living within their modern society I craved solitude, to be alone with my thoughts but as I’ve grown older returning to the jungle to commune with the essence, I’ve surrounded myself with all of these ghosts and guides inherent in nature. They have begun to speak to me in their way, and describe their fears and their…this isn’t working. Nothing is aligned tonight and things are getting odd and uncomfortable. My grasp on reality is slipping and I doubt I have much longer.
I’m happy to be done with this reality. Tomorrow will be another day, things will be different and perhaps the wheels will turn more smoothly without me? I must rest.
It took a long time to figure out where we were going but once I saw it, I knew I was there…I’m sending you this message – bottled beyond time and saved in space. In your future, it this message will be waiting for you and you will uncover these instructions and the Reality™ AR map and you will know what to do.
author’s note: tell their story, the story of the first population and how they spread out from Africa: the invention of imagination – inspired by an egg shell, water and the creation of tomorrow (grounding thoughts in the present) [visions beyond the present] {abstractions beyond time and space}
Solomon Nunes Carvalho