The Primordial Record

The audience tasted Eos’s grief as this new and unexpected flavor spread through the tiers like a slow tide, and the audience, who had been eating for so long that they had forgotten what it was to taste something new, did not know what to do with their mouths.

The Painter watched them in silence; its thought was unknown, but its hands were shaking, and Eos too made no move after giving them his grief; he also watched them.

The audience, caught between two servers, did what they had always done when presented with a flavor they did not recognize. They ate more slowly, and they paid attention.

In the tiers, the shift was not uniform. The seventy-thousandth tier, where the being who tasted the edge of erasure sat, was the first to register the difference.

This being had been eating Krynnex’s erasure, and the erasure had been perfect, and the perfection had been satisfying. But Eos’s grief was not an erasure. It was a preservation. It was the grief of a creator watching its creation be eaten.

The being did not know what to do with preservation. It had never tasted preservation before. It ate the grief anyway, and the grief was strange on its tongue, as the strangeness was a flavor it had not known it wanted.

In the eighty-second tier, where the being who preferred a particular rhythm of unmaking sat, the shift was different.

This being had been eating the Earth Mother’s unmaking, and the rhythm had been perfect, and the perfection had been a comfort. But Eos’s grief had no rhythm. It was irregular, asymmetrical, full of stops and starts and moments when the grief was too much and moments when the grief was not enough.

The being ate the irregularity, and the irregularity was delicious.

In the one hundred and ninth quadrillionth tier, where the being who appreciated the terror of not knowing sat, the shift was almost imperceptible.

This being had been eating Thessa’s unknowing, and the unknowing had been unfolding for a thousand years, and the unfolding had been exquisite. But Eos’s grief introduced a new unknowing: what would he do next? What would he serve? The being did not know, and the not-knowing was a flavor it had not anticipated.

It leaned forward further, and as it did, the audience, in every tier, also leaned forward.

The Painter’s hands had stopped shaking. It had been uncertain at first, and the uncertainty had been visible to the point that the audience had seen it, and the seeing had been a flavor.

But the Painter was not a being who remained uncertain for long. The Painter had been the first being, and the first being does not survive by hesitating.

"You are serving grief," the Painter said, and its voice was steady now.

"Yes," Eos replied.

"The audience will eat it." The Painter sighed, "They would eat anything, it seems."

Eos cocked his head to the side, "They will?"

"And the grief will not stop the feeding."

Eos blinked, "It will not?"

The Painter did not reply to any of his questions; it was almost as if he was speaking and not expecting replies.

"Then why," the Painter said, and the question was an invitation, "are you serving it?"

Eos looked at the Painter. For the first time in the third age, he looked at it directly, not as a player looks at an opponent across the board but as one server looks to another.

"Because grief," Eos said, "is the only flavor the audience has never tasted, and I want them to know what they have been eating."

The Painter went silent, and the audience in every tier leaned forward, waiting for the Painter or Eos to escalate the flavors as the feeding continued.

®

In the Origin Tree, on the branch where Krynnex-Of-No-Memory had gone into solitude, the false memories continued to eat the creature from the inside.

Krynnex had been a miracle. Krynnex had been one of the few beings in the Tree whose paths could diverge from the roots, who could become something other than what the Tree had grown. Krynnex had had a chance, a slim chance, a chance so small that only the audience in the seventy-thousandth tier had bothered to notice it.

The audience had noticed, and the audience had requested a flavor, and the Painter had obliged.

Now Krynnex was in solitude, forcing itself to forget, and the forgetting was failing, and the false memories were becoming real, and the creature that might have become something was becoming nothing instead.

But in the substrate of the Tree, beneath the false memories, beneath the poison, beneath the Taste, something else was rising.

What was coming was true memories.

Krynnex had been born in the first age, in the early days of the Tree’s growth, when Eos had still been learning what the Tree could hold. Krynnex had been a mistake, a divergence, a branch that should not have grown but had grown anyway.

Eos had not pruned it; he had let it grow because Eos was a creator, and creators do not prune what might become.

If he had the time, he might have created a power like End to balance his Origin Tree, but Eos thought that it would be better if this force arose naturally by itself.

The true memories rising through the substrate were not the memories of Krynnex’s suffering. They were the memories of Krynnex’s becoming, of the small moments when the creature had almost touched the path of the tenth dimension, becoming something new... the first of its kind.

The audience in the seventy-thousandth tier tasted these memories alongside the false ones, and the combination was a flavor the being had not anticipated.

The being ate both, and the eating was a kind of attention, and the attention was a kind of regard.

Krynnex, in its solitude, did not know that it was being regarded. It only knew that the false memories were slowing, and that something warm was rising beneath them, and that the warmth was not a memory but a presence.

Krynnex stopped forcing itself to forget. It began, instead, to remember.

Eos was not going to be fighting fire with fire; he was going to be doing something above and below what the Painter was doing.

He would be countering the poison of the Painter on his creation, while also using that truth to poison the Painter itself as he fed it to the audience that demanded everything.

Because Eos knew something about Truth that the Painter did not know about.