The Tree of Many Questions

Announcing the arrival of a calamitous morning, the owl of unasking quietly displaced the emptiness of the night and within its wake awoke the dawn of uncertainty. It knew neither whence it had come nor where its telos was to lie, merely that it possessed to each answer the question, for the eye that beholds the darkness of the night sleeps not. And thus, wherever it went, hence became and came to be. By the time the owl of unasking was no longer to be heard of or seen, a sprawling, wide forest of words had grown within the emptiness it had displaced. Entirely enclosed within itself, therein lingered by lettered ladders of letters, and held together by the spiders of myriad meanings, a square circle, a round triangle, a golden mountain, and the tree of many questions, each in its own possible world.

But there also were three that did not belong there, for those that did, could not tell beginning from end, and being was as remote to them as the distant boundlessness of the ineffable tranquility that surrounded them. Three that traversed a territory of the impossible, from the shores of nowhere to the abode of their destiny: a blind shadow, a silent lion, and a hudhud bird. Much, much later, when time itself became immemorial and rendered the unlikely inevitable, the owl of unasking returned and but briefly perceived the peculiar event and suddenly spoke, but noone was there to hear its marvellous speech. And hence, they were never heard of again, cast and banished into ephemeral eternality and impossible possibility.

"...much time has passed since we last convened and much less do know now than we did then.", the blind shadow spoke and, shortly afterwards, continued: "They have not been seen anywhere."

The silent lion did not respond.

As dawn finally arrived, the hudhud bird spoke: "They seem to have vanished without a trace...", it said, paused, then resumed in resignation: "...and along with them, the very reason that had compelled them to leave..