I have been around so long, my friend, that I no longer feel the chill through my window. I’ve become accustomed to it, so forgive me if I forget to keep your coffee warm.

Likewise, how careless of me it would be to not tell you the most important thing of all about this story, and before I do the telling. It’s something in the Ozhmeron that we take for granted, the torch that guides our way.

So bear this in mind, and never let go: the time and place we are living in now is not ours. It is not the one we’ve been given, neither in the past nor for the future. It is, nonetheless, a time and place in which we can go somewhere together — blindly as it may be — to meet the great ghost that is searching for us.

This is, you see, Tiroa’s time. Days are seized by the navy night. The stars have called retreat. The lids of our eyes close like curtains to shield what we can no longer bear to watch of the day. This is Tiroa’s time. The bridge to Paradise has been shattered. All remaining routes there – even by mind and by song – are besieged by Tiroa’s bandits. It is not safe.

This is Tiroa’s time. There is no rest. What we labor to earn is but half of what we owe to keep his flag propped in its semblance of control. It flies on a pole above every household to shield families from suspicion and disgrace. One neighbor flies it higher than the other neighbor; then the other neighbor flies one size larger. And so it continues until their mad homage erases all remaining traces of the docile beings they once were.

This is not our time. This is Tiroa’s time. A time in which peace is a threat to the state. A time in which if you stop for breath, you will be shoved out of the way lest you clog the artery of commerce.

“Make way for the bandits,” the quiet ones say. “They come to steal our souls and fabricate them into sentiments,” a gold that varnishes into material waste and which we are then forced to consume. We consume our waste with voracity, leaving what is pure as Tiroa’s loot.

Our time, no. This is Tiroa’s time. The stomach of greed is the stomach of his state. It is a stomach that hungers for our good senses; to eat them up until we are senseless and spent. And with all of our essence that we feed it, it only famishes for more. And so it bulges, and so we sweat. And as it consumes more of us, so we consume more of it.

But wait, my friend. Hold to that torch and keep it burning. We are not vanquished. Here in Tiroa’s time we begin waiting for something to begin. It is in waiting that all things begin, foreseeing the ultimate while bearing the pain of the penultimate.

Here in the navy night, in the hype of Tiroa’s Empire of the Market, is where the cycle of the Ozhmehron seasons begin.

Out of the black and blue of night will come the gold and rose of day. It is in the womb of darkness that we want to break free and live.  This much you already know in your bones I am sure. It is in the cloak of night, unable to see on our own, that we can subvert Tiroa and move by not moving.

Immobile, we must reach out for something or someone to help us walk the earth, unguided by the scepters and flags of Tiroa’s world. It is the only way we will again find our way to the broken bridge of paradise – a bridge to be rebuilt with what remaining goodness we can reserve.

So you see, I am asking you to turn your eyes inside out, and then you will see.  Respect the power and preeminence of the night. It serves our advantage. Put it on like a blindfold, and hold out your arm into the vast silence, and wait.

Our story

We call our people “Ozhmehron”, from an ancient tongue that means “the people who wait.”

We were born on the occasion of a single old woman, who having spent all her soul on feeding the stomach of Tiroa, laid by the side of the street near the city square and cried out:

“Save me, somebody! Save what I have left. Keep my last breath from Tiroa’s mouth, and feed me with something that is sweet and living. Let me have the peace of a little of nothing. Please, someone, let me sink my body into the arms of kindness, a face, a soul with some grace left in it.”

Preposterous to those passing by, nonetheless a small girl listened, and stopped.

Because she stopped, she was trampled.

But then another, a young man, moved by both the woman and the girl, also stopped, and although a little more visibly annoyed, the crowd still pushed him away.

Then two women stopped, and then three more, all stopping and surrounding the struggling woman on the ground, enough to obstruct the current.

And they waited upon her.

They raised her from the ground and held her in their arms, and comforted her.

What’s more important is that they refused to move. Exactly as she wished.

More stopped, until there was a sizable circle around her, causing Tiroa’s bandits nearby to take notice and become greatly aggravated.

The old woman died in the arms of the circle that held her still, and as she passed, she smiled, and out of her eyes came an image, as visible and clear as the paled face beneath it. Everyone in the circle knew the image well as it floated there. It was of Na-Adel, the bridge of paradise. The image floated in the air above her head for all to see. They saw Na-Adel being rebuilt with human hands, not machines; kind hands raising solid stones that would never falter.

Even though the bandits eventually broke the circle, the people there in the circle were changed by what they saw. They collected themselves in another empty alley not far away, where they stood and looked at each other’s faces and hands, as if in each other they were looking at a new form of life for the first time.

They were beautiful to each other, and this puzzled them.

They stood there for hours upon end, unable, unwilling, and undesiring to move. They stayed there way into the night, feeling the greatest peace and trust in each other, and they breathed.

After some more hours, out from the sky a turquoise star fell and settled in the middle of them.  Where it came from they had no idea, but there it was, filling the space with a motherly light that was tender and assuring. The star said nothing out loud, but said much through the silence.  It pulsed and caressed their senses, their tired feet, until all their minds heard the same thing: “Ozhmehron, welcome Ozhmehron”.

So that is how the first Ozhmehron became so called.  They gathered every night after that, and grew in number, until they had to form in smaller groups spread out through the city to escape detection of Tiroa’s bandits.

But as they gathered, they stopped, they waited, and they looked for the image of Na-Adel to reappear, for guidance on the way to go.

© Copyright 2013. Kalina Kucera. All Rights Reserved.