Beneath a tree whose leaves take the shape of men’s hearts, sitting in a full Lotus is Su’ngab Pakal, student of Subang Nadagit Kina’ban. Out of all the students of Guro Subang, what sets Su’ngab apart is that out of all of the guro’s students who all desire to learn the secrets of Blossoming–with most attaining it, albeit only as a mere incomplete glimpse–Su’ngab is the only one of them all who is wholly uninterested in learning the secret nature of the gods, the world, and Violence; they only simply wished to know the best way to Cut a man in half, how to forget the face of their father, and what is the most efficient way to shine their favorite rock.

It is precisely because of this fact that Pakal eventually became Bulakdiwa, although they never knew it. Or maybe they did not, who really knows?

It’s unfortunate, regardless, that Pakal happened to be a real piece of shit.

—

On their travels through the isles, they happened to find themselves taking refuge within the ossified husk of a dead giant, whose corpse was leaning against the wall of one of the many curals of the Lakan. In this husk they found the kindness and generosity of a people disenfranchised, who despite having nothing still invited them to break bread and share water, as is custom among the cural-folk. It helped that Pakal knew many songs and that they had a suspiciously large stash of betel to share.

In time, after breaking fast and sharing water, Pakal found themselves in deep conversation with a blind man, one of the so-called “priests” of the disenfranchised. Pakal, deep into their cups and intoxicated on chew, still had the sense to know that this priest is not meant to be here, either he was forced here or came of their own volition. They leaned towards the former, as this priest smelled of raw blood—the kind that pours fresh from beating hearts. The cural-folk (the ones on the inside) do not take too kindly to new and uncomfortable smells like death, or at least death that they cannot ignore. So they sent the priest here, where he can be firmly ignored.

Their conversation, deep into the night, went something like this:

“Ginoo Pakal, please tell me how pleasant it must be outside the curals,” the priest says in between grinding chew in his mouth, “Surely it must be better out there.”

“No, it isn’t any better,” Pakal says, matter-of-factly, lazily reclining on a hapag of bone and rotten copra fibre.

“What?” The priest is surprised at the vagabond’s statement. Surely, the priest thought, the vagabond is proof enough that people beyond cural and mandala can come and go as they please. That’s proof enough of freedom.

The priest began to speak. “Ginoo, you are much free than you give yourse—”

“No, I’m not,” interrupted Pakal. They tore a bit of rotten copra fibre from the table, weaving it into a small knot.

The priest is thoroughly confused. Is the inhuman bondage suffered by him and his people not proof that things are far worse here? On some moons, his people—disenfranchised as they are—are hunted for sport by rich nobles of the cural’s upper kota.

Shaking his confusion off, the priest asks, now thoroughly taken by the betel, “Then explain yourself! If that’s the case, then you mean to say—”

“Yes, that is what I completely mean to say,” interrupted Pakal. Again.

In all honesty, Pakal had no idea what the priest was about to say, their hangover stabbing knives into the back of their eyes and shortened their patience by margins. It’s usually at this time that their wisdom shines through, more often than not.

The incensed vagabond continues, holding up a finger to silence the priest, “You and your people slave away for masters, seen and unseen. Correct?”

“Well… yes,” the priest replied, shakily.

“And from what I can tell, you absolutely fucking hate it. Correct?”

“Of course…?” replied the priest, a little bit sure yet  unsure.

“There you have it.” Pakal rubs their temples, partly out of a desire to will away the headache and partly in disbelief that they’ve started acting like their old guro. “Here at least you can see the chains that bind your hands to the masters, and you’ve learned to hate it. I’d say that’s fucking progress.”

The priest is confused, what did the vagabond mean by progress? It’s the natural course of things to hate the conditions of their bondage. Of course it is—

“The sanctioned Violence perpetuated in this cural is the logical conclusion of the sanctioned Violence perpetrated on the outside,” Pakal says, almost struggling to get the words in order. They will try to preempt everything the priest will try to say, all for the purpose of being able to sleep a bit earlier tonight.

The vagabond sits up from their reclined position, “Bondage suffered by others, from debt-raids to barter-slaves, is sanctioned by the ancestor-gods, because they did it when they were alive, and in turn becomes sanctioned by me and you, for how else can we supposedly honor the glorious dead? We start acting like them in life.”

Pakal hocks a ball of spit tainted black by the chew. “Everywhere will be like here, may not happen this cycle, or the next, but it will happen. That’s the thing about cycles,” the vagabond draws a circle in the air, “some folk just are ahead of the curve on brutality when compared to others. But they’ll all get there, one way or another.”

The priest is a bit taken aback at that, he’s heard stories of the nobility of old-blooded lords, of the conviction of mutual cooperation of the mountain folk, and the prized freedoms of the raider-lords to the north. Will they all be the same? What’s the point then if all will spiral into rot and decay and bondage? He’s smart enough to know that it isn’t the case for all of those peoples, but those are exceptions, and not the rule.

To the priest, it seems to him that some people are simply more equal than others, and in his heartsblood he knows this to be simply unacceptable.

“Then what do we do?” the blinded priest asks, partly out of curiosity, partly to ease their own building dread that wells in their empty-chest cavity where their heart used to be.

“Fuck if I know,” replied the vagabond. “Use your imagination? I’m no revolutionary.”