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State of Reality

"What is it?" Xanth looked quizzically across the table at Tali. The
small orb she'd put on the table between them luminessed with a slight
blue tint, then green, then pale red and purple. The colour of the
orb itself never changed, just the light it seemed to give off. The
orb was small, hardly filling Tali's slender palm when she'd held it
out to him a few seconds before.
Tali looked up at the young man from lowered brows, smiling at him
through her black hair, which was hanging in her eyes. "It's
something very special, and very secret," she said, her voice low and
smooth. She gave Xanth the impression of something dark and
wonderful, like moonlight in the forest. He smiled slightly, out of
the left side of his mouth, his eyes taking in the orb again.
He reached out, shyly, his hand hovering over the thing in front of
him. It gave off no heat, but he felt something, like a burning, his
palms tingling at first and then a sharper, deeper pain. "But what is
it? It seems," he paused, his eyes narrowing, focussing on the
sphere, "...angry...?"
Tali smirked a crooked grin and snatch the orb from the table, quickly
depositing it in a pouch at her hip. "It," she said simply and turned
from the table, "is the heart of that which hates me and the true
spirit of what was and, if I have my way, shall never again be."
Left alone in the room again, Xanth stared at the table, in the spot
where the orb had just been. He pressed his fingertips to the spot,
feeling for some residue, some remaining bit of energy. He thought
for a second that he felt it, and then there was nothing. Only the wood. "Well, that was a bit cryptic," he said to himself, sighing and
sitting in the chair he'd been hovering over since Tali's appearance
in the room.
"I don’t know why you let her spin your head." Xanth looked up as Lan walked out of the shadow of the pillar at one of the rooms entrances. The fox lazily crossed the room and curled up on the stone hearth at the rooms head. He looked up at Xanth, who was staring at him expectantly, but only yawned and lay down, his bush of a red tail covering his nose.
Xanth, tired of waiting and growing more impatient, shook his head and
stood. "I still can't quite figure out how the lot of us can inhabit
the same space, spend so much time together, and still have so many
secrets."
At this Lan laughed, raising his head and smiling at the bewildered
man. "What the hell are you talking about? The only secrets here are
the one's you create."
"What?" Xanth shook his head again, more violently this time. "How
can you say that? No one around here ever has a straight answer for
anything, and we never seem to have anyone in the same room at the
same time anymore."
"Have you considered asking a straight question?" Again Lan smiled.
"And as for us never being in the same place at the same time, I don't
think it's our fault. You always seek us out individually, and never
really join us."
"Are you telling me there are no secrets? That really, you all just
'hang out for tea and scones' when I'm not around?"
Lan sat up know, looking Xanth squarely in the eye. "Look, my friend,
all I'm saying is that the secrets here aren't as big as you make them. That it's you who is secretive. You create the mysteries. We don’t tell each other everything, because we don’t have to. What isn’t said, or what is implied, is taken as such. You seem to need fact so much, to have it laid out, to sort everything into boxes.
“Our world isn’t built on fact, but it is built on truth. We understand thing to be so, and so they are. The more we are pigeonholed, the more we change. Listen and feel, think things through, follow the line of what is unsaid and the mysteries will be solved. That’s the way it has always been here.” Lan smiled softly at Xanth, who was obviously getting frustrated. “You missed out on a lot of history here, but you know the stories, even though we don’t speak them out loud. Hearing them doesn’t make them anymore true.”
“It seems to take the truth away,” Xanth finished the thought, as the realization of what Lan had been telling him became apparent.

posted by September @ 9:53 AM