She cast a colourful rose across the vast firmament and enchanted it with words from the deep. Its petals unfolded like veils within veils and bore seeds that were then drawn forth by primordial beings of incandescent light. From the seeds then emerged radiant spheres and eyes in the sky, piercing and high, and there was silence. From the silence, life arose and later perished and all that was once begun came to end, and from the end beginning arose anew until all that of merit had been recounted countless times. All that dwelt remained without end for from nothingness came being and thence it went.
She strode across time uncountable, many a lives she saw led from dawn to demise, and wherever she was, the bountiful splendour of silent eternality lay open unto her. She knew neither longing nor belonging nor name and all that came to pass was the same to her although on occasion, she became part of lay and tale as adventure and tribulations briefly defied the indefatigable will of destiny, but nothing was to last. Life after life was thus spent from beginning to end without suffering nor sorrow and all was well. And yet, something was missing.
Later, she was stood in the midst of a great, forbidding forest named al-Ḥawl where the strangest of creatures dwelt and sang long, drawn-out songs of mistifying sublimity. At the very heart of the forest, which was only accessible unto those that did not look to find it, a singular flower was stood offering a key. Idly and without forethought, she retrieved the key and lent dew to the flower. She then slept and dreamt.
As she dreamt, she wove her dreams into a fine fabric embroidered with images and impressions drawn from the unfathomable deep. The more she did so, the more she seemed to cease to exist. Places that appeared at once as though intimately familiar and yet uncannily remote emerged into being around her and then vanished. Silence spoke and cast words unheard into her heart. Everything was everything. Becoming became extinguished and perishing perished unknown. Time was no more. Beginning came to end and ending was unknown. She had become her dreams, her dreams had become her.
When she awoke, the forest had turned into a desert of silken sand permeated by mirages of the unseen. Rivers of radiant brightness arose and then faded across the limitless horizon as the eyes in the sky stood high and watched with penetrating glare. She closed her eyes and she was at once at one with all places. Before her appeared a sea without shore of light upon light, a day without dawn that extended beyond sight, a night blissful, eternal, and then, nothing upon nothing, end without end. She thought to herself: "All the rivers run into the sea, yet the sea is not full." and later, she departed. And yet, something was missing.
Later, after she had passed through many more realms and demesnes and had born witness to much misfortune and joy, she came to notice that she was bearing a key. Slowly but surely it began to intrude upon her boundless consciousness. Eventually, she began to enquire with whomever whose judgment she deemed worthy of trust about her key but none knew of its provenance nor its progeny. None knew of its provenance nor progeny. This, however, she had not once chanced upon. As this continued to transpire, sudden and unexpected resolve emerged from within her. When thus she began to decide to change the course of her days towards where she had been before, she found that wherever she had enquired with someone concerning the key, there now was but blinding nothingness as though the very fabric of being had rebelled against the impossible. She even attempted with all of her serene might to locate once more the very heart of the forest al-Ḥawl where she had come into possession of the key but she found neither the one nor the other.
She stared into the unfathomable deep and became shrouded in the pale. Time beyond reckoning passed, but she remained there, where her very being began to fray and for the first time in all of eternity, her soul became worn by her days until there was no return for nowhere now lead nowhere. Beyond her awareness, all that had been and all that could have been had now ceased to be and came to be beyond the pale. All that she could remember was that once she had lent dew to a flower which had offered a key to her. The key was not there anymore, in its place there was a seed. She cast her fading countenance towards the nothingness and as darkness was upon the face of the deep, it began to rain.
She lay on the ground and turned into a rose.
