A Commentary on Destruction
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It isn’t unusual for an Akadian cleric to breeze through the towns. Outside the marketplace, they preach their gospel of fearlessness in the face of change, and every few years, one or two townsfolk might walk away with renewed courage to switch careers, to confess secret feelings, or even to take the road out of town themselves.
The Akadian taking the grossy stage today is easily recognized: the gray druid, with her white hair and changeless face, the hero of one war or another. It isn’t unusual for the shaman of Akadi to glide through the towns of Narfell and the Great Dale either, but never in a generation can anyone remember her climbing to that spot on the hill to preach like her brethren.
Consider the notes of a harp. When tuned, each string sounds a different pitch. Melody and harmony are achieved through the contrast. Turn the peg of a single string to loosen or tighten, and it will change its pitch. Consequently, the contrasts change, and even if the other strings remain the same, the scale and the possible melodies are altered. Each twist creates a dilemma, a shift in the meaning of every other pitch by its relations. And thus, each twist enables previously undreamt melodies. Turn a peg, destroy the scale, but a new scale is always created.
When a druid speaks of balance, they mean strings sounding in concert. When all is well, they summon familiar music to make us dance or cry. When one string is stubborn, the music becomes more challenging but no less capable of great beauty.
Break a string then, you might say. Break all the strings, break the harp even - in the silence that follows, the possibilities become infinite and the very notion of music can be rewritten entirely. The destruction of one world creates the door to another. It is a terrifying prospect, but no less full of hope than the time before the first harp.
This is the nature of destruction. A force not only in balance with creation, but its accomplice.
What does the swift hawk achieve? A quicker rabbit. The grinding of grain creates sustenance. Lightning in the forest creates new growth. Destruction is a season - like winter, like death - and the nature of a season is to bring about its own metamorphosis. Destruction, like all change, is a process never measured by a goal - for what does the hawk win if every rabbit is eaten?
As with the harp’s courses, destruction’s role is to impose limitations upon the game, but it cannot force the moves of the players. The outcome is forever written by all hands. The ever-shifting wind teaches us to see other ways of life, foreign flags, and differing opinions not as enemies to be destroyed but as seeds of wisdom, carried afar then nestled in our souls to sprout and bring hope. When thunder rings, remembering to listen first is the challenge. Living one’s truth in harmony is the reward.
With her abstract message delivered, the gray druid shifts into a hawk unceremoniously and soars off toward the next town as if there are no horseshoes to smith or barns to raise. No wonder, some may muse, that the elemental faiths attract so few followers.
