Have you heard the Tale of the Two Sisters?

There are many stories as old as time.

This one is much older.

It happened in a place before the Sun and Moon. Before the rivers were named and the lands between them. It happened in a place before measuring the shadows on the wall, or the waiting periods between the light. It happened to two sisters, and has always happened to them, and will happen still. It is a story before there were stories.

The tale goes like this:

Once, inbetween light and sound, two sisters were born. They came into being at the searing of everything at once, and fell from the heavens just the same as the comets which blazed behind them. Somehow they would never learn this part of their history, and when they woke up, together but alone on the surface of an unfamiliar rock, that is where the story begins in earnest.

It is not important, in telling the tale, to reminisce needlessly on the order of events before this point. The land, the sea, skies, ocean and stars... all were missing and then in place, and where the story takes place is more in the cave of memory than in any physical space we can touch or call our own. The important part is the two sisters, so we must speak of them.

To know the sisters before the start of everything was not much. Imagine, on waking up, the opening of eyes for the first time, finding the sounds in your throat like a babe in its birth. Imagine no words for anything that had come for before or after. There was One, and there was Two. One had woken up first, and her coat was as white as that which there was still no word for.

In her heart, and beyond the touch of her body, the one known as One felt something in her breath. She felt the turning of a great wheel, driven along by little spokes of air. She felt all of this in a way from outside herself, and it was brilliant and horrifying all at once. Then she saw her sister, and the world became much smaller.

The one known as Two was next to her, still asleep. She roused as she was noticed, as though the weight of One's eyes had tapped lightly on her shoulder. Against the snow and brilliant fire of One, Two was a turned-over stone; the swallowing parts of a cave that devoured vision even in the daytime; the black tapestry overhead when the outside things howled, the faraway carpet of sinister voices and stars.

It was important to have both halves in place.

One spoke first of Balance. And it woke Two, and noticed her sister, and they knew each other finally, as pieces of the sky meet in the middle.

For a while there was no room for words. Then came the first Urgency.

Where was the river, and who would find it?

This required leaving the cave. As all journeys begin with the decision to stand up, One set a single hoof into the sunlight, and behind her, Two followed in suit. They departed the cave, and searched, and came to water as it was blessed before them. And they drank, and were nourished, and rejoiced in their discovery.

And Two said, Shall we remain in the river forever?

Language was at last upon them, and it began in the crackles and gurgles of bones and clotted limbs, last gasps for breath in a dark and confining place. As the air moved, so was the privilege to move it blessed, and the shape of each word congealed around the art of concealing sound, of muttered semi-syllables that could creep under the wind and speak in scratches on the wall of a cave. It was an art learned in two halves, and as most things wound up to be, spiraled fractally outwards forever. This is only the beginning of the circle as it unwinds.

No, said One. We shall find a way to keep the river with us even when we are away.

And from this One fashioned the first container, capable of putting to use even that which is not there. The pot operates because it contains nothing, and it uses nothing to contain everything else. One said nothing in this way, but created simply her vessel, and it was filled with water, and that was very good.

It is a joy to refill water. This came to One from outside her head, and for the vaguest and first time, she was aware of Three. This story is about Three, but not until later on. For now, this was all she heard. It was her choice to repeat it.

And this for the first time out of intention, she kept something to herself. She felt the splitting of a very fine thread, but was unable to touch it with her hoof.

Let us bring the river back to our home, said Two. And they did so, in the container that One had made for them. And they had water to drink when they were thirsty, which was often.

Hunger came before sleep, and it was that first night awake together in the midnight that they heard the voices other than their own. They heard languages that had boiled in the mouths of howling teeth and shredded arteries. And they clung together and shuddered in the dark and cold and whispered between them new guttural sounds for the forces outside, where they creature or maw of the void, and would they swallow them up the moment they closed their eyes. Because sleep was new too, and the force that overcame them and dragged them into aether may as well have been the last sound they would ever hear.

Two fell to it. Then One fell.

In this haze, everything was uncertain.

Dreams present an additional terror when they seem more tangible than reality. When waking up is a new and unfamiliar enterprise.

Two felt this feeling first: loneliness.

She felt it when she awoke and found there was no One beside her.

At that moment, frenzy. It stretched out forever, in every direction, as we have known fury and felt it in our whole bodies, and that fury forever also as it consumes and orchestrates us entirely.

There was no water. The container was gone. Hunger subdued in sleep, Two ached of thirst. She found her sister's name and gurgled it in her throat to the heavens.

One, she called, deepest and loudest. One. One. One.

When her mouth felt only the motion and the sound, and no longer the meaning, she fell silent.

Her sister returned soon with another part of the river in her pot.

For this time her first, Two said nothing of what she felt.

It is time to talk about Three, One said.

Two nodded. It was that simple between them then.

I hear them in my sleep, said Two.

And I hear them while I am awake, said One.

They say there is much more than in here, said Two.

They say there is an after us and before us, said One. A giant thing which will swallow us up if we swim in it in either direction.

I'm scared of that thing, said Two.

The sisters sat for a moment without speaking.

We must get food, said Two. Before the night falls again.

Then let us find what there is to eat, said One.

And they got up and went out of the cave and into where it was still light and looked for food. And it was known to them somehow at sight that the grass was green and good to eat, and anything which resembled it was mostly good as well, and all the things of brightest colours and the reds and purples and that the birds, which there were still, and flitted about in the trees and on the bushes, if they consumed the things and fell silent, or flew in circles and then collapsed suddenly to the ground, those were best to avoid.

So the sisters ate grass, and leaves from a tree, and it was good, and they were nourished both. And Two refilled the container of the river and carried it to their cave.

When the night came for the second time, the cold that followed was no longer as sharp. The sisters huddled together, manes over each other, passing each in different ways through unconsciousness. One slept mostly through and through. Two shuddered in her dreams, and turned abruptly when she was startled, which was often. Morning shook them both awake together, but only One remained there. Two fell back asleep, whispering the word for 'water' on her lips under the creeping daylight.

It is a joy to refill water, One said to herself as she readied her container and set out again to the river.

There was not much between besides grass and rocks, and those she was beginning to recognize as she went on her way. She spent her own time at the river, looking across its flowing surface, the clear crystal that moved and rippled and coursed over and around her hoof as she dipped it in. She felt truly that the river was there for a reason, that it was blessed to her, and to everyone, and must be remembered accordingly. She wondered at its name, but could think to call it nothing but from which the water flowed.

This pattern was the days, and in the time before nights, the meager feasting of grass, leaves, and flowers, as they came into bloom. One and Two were each others' everything else, and that was good for a time, while the cave was a home and the howling creatures remained outside. The weather remained either sun or sparse and cloudless, and only once had a drop of rain fallen, landing on Two's head and making her wonder about what kind of river could be floating overhead.

One day, the thunder came.

It was the loudest noise so far. Two and One held each other as the rain fell, and watched its motion from the heavens, and shivered in the cold as it radiated through the air. One was aware of the preponderance of wheels, but could say nothing to either see or express them concretely. It is a joy to refill water, she said to herself.

I'm very cold, said Two.

One held her close. She was quite cold.

It's been calling to us, said Two. The loud noises that make the trees shudder. They're trying to tell us something.

Of Three? asked One.

Two shook her head.

I don't know, she said.

Lightning.

And that is the first birth of this sound, which comes from the chest and the lungs and shudders out the breath at the behest of a tug from outside the self. It is the noise of amazement and astound. It was the scream of Three from through a thousand wheels of fire, and all the surfaces reflected in the dimensions of its fractals behind. There are words not built to bring the moment of time to life, and then there is the lightning, and the first fire, and the moment of that tree into its next, splintering atoms, and the pieces that seemed like white-hot glass thrown outwards in a million dimensions and directions. This is the opening of the world. A single, brilliant, white line in the darkness of the storm.

Lightning, said Two.

Volume, said One.

At the hint of the first rules, there was this feeling: I don't know any more.

It is difficult to translate.

That was the process between the sisters, to turn all of this into what could be told or written down. It is a story that lies dying on the backs of sunken continents, sigils vanishing in the fault-lines. And if it is ever true, it is different every time, so the parts-inbetween matter never as much as the beginning and end.

What happened next was a lot of Time.

It is important for the sisters, but impossible for us, to decide what the scale of experience should be. To take one day in solitude is not to understand ten years of isolation, nor is comparing a blister to a broken arm in any way beneficial. But if we can't build our ideas out of these fragmented comparisons, enlarging the minute into the all-encompassing, how can we ever hope to stitch together a common experience?

So take what you know about Time, and stretch it as long as possible. Make it a Cave, a River, a One, and a Two. Make language mute and strip away all the destinations and journeys. Give them light, and lightning, and the first fire in a lit line down the center of the forest. They will stare into the flame, and watch as it descends, and follow the trail it has laid out for them, as sure as the rain fell that night and continued to fall into the next day. As sure as it would fall again, the overhead river of grey.

In this way, we can understand the Two Sisters leaving. We can understand them taking their Everything, which was almost Nothing anyway, and either bringing it in pieces, or leaving it behind. We are almost at the end of the story, and it is about to begin.

The trail of fire lead the Two Sisters to the foot of a mountain. It is this essential mountain which emerged from nowhere that now stood before them, reaching up to part the clouds in a glory of twisted crag and spire. The Two Sisters studied it, each searching their mouths for a new word that would coalesce the shape and sense of the thing into a meaning they both could share.

I'm not sure, said Two. That was as close as she could get.

Neither am I, said One. But we know that we must go anyway.

We know that next they scaled the mountain.

This is where the story always becomes different.

What has changed in versions throughout history is most particularly the ending, as though in retellings in the mouths of ancients the edges had been scraped and softened off, the natural wear of numberless exchange. We know, for certain, that they scaled the mountain.

We said before there would be Three.

It is important to the story that Three has changed every time.

Most of the time it is a voice in the head. Most of the time it is named, in a way that reaches beyond the early proto-gutturals and compressed qualia of prehistoric vocalization. Most of the time it comes to One. Sometimes it comes to Two.

Very rarely, Three speaks to both One and Two. In this version, the final part of the story follows a dialogue, and it is a feat beyond translation to render it here. This is our attempted regardless:

I want to know what you think is supposed to happen next, said One.

Well, said Two, I feel that this all has to do with something much bigger than us. The things we dream about, I... I don't feel as if they're nothing to do with anything. I can't throw a rock and have it land in the same place twice. I want to know what happens next.

You mean the Big Next, said One.

Two nodded.

I know we've been there before, said Two. I know you were there once, and you'll go there again. We both will.

But you want to go there now, said One. Before any of this is over.

Doesn't it feel over for you? asked Two.

[It is especially difficult to translate the silence following this question, as well as the remainder of the exchange]

I want to know how long it feels like you've been waiting, said One. I want to know if you remember anything else, before or after. The shelter. The loud moving thing overhead. If you remember the names of the ones standing underneath. Why we use their voices to find each other in the night.

I remember all of it/I remember none of it, said Two. I can feel it in here with us. I dared it to do something. Anything. To prove this would end.

You know nothing ever really ends, said One. You can see the spirals too. Close your eyes.

I can't see them anymore, said Two. I can't even see the green(?) light.

Then maybe it is Time, said One.

The story ends when one of the sisters dies. Here is invented the word 'sacrifice'.

Its exact usage is uncertain.