When he said this I had a flashback, a moment of memorial deja vu, when
the present and the past are morphed together by one thought, when one
idea from the past and the present exists in such a way as to connect
the two times around it, forming a nexus between the two moments. I was
brought back to two separate times, the first being my initial meeting
with Onan, when I saw the muraled dome, the genetics of history, and its
depiction of the events which were symbolically representative of Daem:
the deformed man, the warring races, the worshipers of the White Eagle.
The other was my arrival in the Temple of Time, when the King showed me
the altar to Temis, the God of Time, depicted as a great White Eagle,
wrought in diamond and grasping the altar in its talons. There was
something about the White Eagle that connected itself to me inseparably,
something that converged us into one form. I had a sense that it was
somehow a key to the mystery of the end times, but I could not make the
connection. I thought back to what Onan had said to me just a few
moments before, that he and Zimri were close friends, and not enemies at
all, while those on earth believed their rivalry was a serious conflict.
Yet while I had two separate memorial deja vu's, I could not make the
connection between them to figure out what they meant.
"Tell me," I asked of Ramma, "What do you mean when you call me the
White Eagle?"
"The prophecy said that our kinsman redeemer, who would bring us out of
the lands of desolation and into paradise, who would come to us like a
giant eagle, soaring high above the sea. Across the ocean there," he
said, pointing to Daem, "Is Daem, the paradise land, wherein dwell our
enemies the Zards and Canitaurs. They keep us off of the island and on
the mainland by force, and here we have suffered ever since the great
wars, in these desolate and barren wastelands, where there is neither
life nor death, but only a hazy in between. An ancient one with wings
like an eagle was to come and rescue us, the White Eagle, and under his
guidance we are to be led to victory against our enemies.
"To them he would be sent first, humbly he would come to redeem them
from the woes of their own causing, but they would receive him not.
Instead they cast him away, and he was to come to us, to bring us to the
promised land. What a blessed sight it was when we saw you soaring
through the sky on your white wings, and now you have come, my dear
Jehu, you have come at last, in the hour of our greatest need. Come, oh
White Eagle, and let us go to Kalr, our city. Tonight is the Feast of
the Hershonites, celebrating the night that the prophecy was received,
and on the same day shall it be fulfilled!"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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