The Fourth Vigil

For a long while after the Vigil of No Place, the younger powers remained quiet.

The Glimmer endured.

Threshold held.

The Sleep of Sameness pressed close.

And yet no one spoke of Things, Threads, or Fields any longer.

The elders were pleased.

For a time.

Then one day a younger power rose.

This power was clever.

More patient than the others.

More cautious.

And therefore far more dangerous.

"I agree," said the younger power.

"There are no First Things."

The elders nodded.

"There are no First Threads."

The elders nodded again.

"There is no Great Field."

Still the elders nodded.

The younger power smiled.

"But surely there must be something."

At these words the elders became very still.

For they knew this temptation well.

The younger power continued.

"Not things."

"Not relations."

"Not places."

"Something older."

"Something beneath all distinctions."

"The Great Substance from which all differences arise."

And the younger power named this imagined mystery the First Clay.

The other younger powers were delighted.

At last they had found a beginning worthy of beginnings.

The First Clay was not a thing.

Yet it could become things.

It was not differentiated.

Yet differentiation could be carved into it.

It was not a field.

Yet all distinctions could unfold within it.

The tale spread rapidly.

Soon the younger powers spoke of little else.

Some imagined the First Clay as a shining mist.

Others imagined an endless sea.

Others a sleeping giant from whose body all forms would eventually emerge.

The details differed.

The certainty remained.

The elders listened.

Then they sighed.

For they recognised another old disguise.

At last the eldest among them rose.

The Glimmer dimmed slightly as they spoke.

"What distinguishes your First Clay from a thing?"

The younger powers were puzzled.

"It is not a thing."

The elder nodded.

"And yet you speak of it as though it were one."

The younger powers frowned.

The elder continued.

"It waits."

"It endures."

"It possesses qualities."

"It gives rise to other things."

"You have merely made a thing so large that you no longer recognise it."

A murmur passed through the assembly.

The younger powers did not like this.

For the First Clay had become precious to them.

It explained everything.

Or seemed to.

The elder led them once more toward the boundary of the Sleep.

There the Glimmer flickered.

Difference stirred.

Threshold held.

And the elder asked a question.

"Where is the Clay?"

The younger powers pointed everywhere.

The elder shook their head.

"You are pointing toward what appears."

"But where is the Clay itself?"

The younger powers searched.

They searched among the stirrings.

They searched among the distinctions.

They searched among the places where the Glimmer resisted collapse.

But nowhere could the Clay be found.

For every place they looked already depended upon the very distinctions the Clay was supposed to explain.

The younger powers became uneasy.

One of them protested.

"If there is no Clay, how can there be difference?"

The elder replied with a question.

"Must difference belong to something?"

Silence.

No one answered.

For they had never considered the possibility that it might not.

Another younger power spoke.

"Difference must be carried."

The elder asked:

"Carried by what?"

The younger power hesitated.

A thing?

A relation?

A field?

A substance?

One by one, the old answers returned.

And one by one, they failed.

The elder nodded.

"You continue to seek a bearer."

"A vessel."

"A hidden foundation."

"But every vessel is already a thing."

The younger powers lowered their heads.

For the trap had closed around them again.

They had removed things.

Then invented a hidden thing.

They had removed places.

Then invented a hidden place.

Now they had removed substance.

Only to invent a hidden substance.

The First Clay joined the First Things, the First Threads, and the Great Field among the discarded certainties.

And thus began the Fourth Vigil.

The Vigil of the Broken Clay.

The Vigil in which one learns that difference need not be carved into anything.

The Vigil in which one learns that non-uniformity may not require a bearer.

The Vigil in which the dream of a primordial substance finally begins to fade.

The younger powers found this Vigil especially difficult.

For they could imagine the absence of things.

They could even imagine the absence of places.

But the absence of substance seemed unbearable.

How could difference exist without something that differed?

How could distinction persist without something that carried distinction?

The elders offered no answer.

Only the Glimmer.

Only Threshold.

Only the Sleep pressing endlessly toward sameness.

And only the undeniable fact that distinction endured.

Not because it belonged to a thing.

Not because it inhabited a field.

Not because it arose from a hidden clay.

But because uniformity had somehow been broken.

How this occurred, no one yet knew.

Yet the mystery had sharpened.

For now the younger powers understood that they could not explain difference by appealing to anything already differentiated.

And so they sat before the Glimmer once more.

Watching.

Waiting.

Learning, slowly and reluctantly, that every beginning they imagined still carried traces of the world they were trying to explain.

The Fifth Vigil had not yet begun.

But its shadow was already approaching.

For if difference required no thing, no field, and no substance, another question would soon become unavoidable:

Who—or what—was keeping watch?