- BE -

A vast library stretched in front of Gabzryel’s eyes, the likes of which he had seldom seen. However, he remembered enough about it, since he had often visited it before; so he knew exactly where to find the one book that obsessed him during all these times. Finally reaching it, Gabzryel picked it up, and laid it softly on a nearby table. The book had a fine leather cover, with engraved gold ornaments; the title was in an unknown language, but Gabzryel just felt that the book contained the exact knowledge he was looking for. What stopped him from discovering it, was a strong chain keeping the book locked... but, this time, Gabzryel finally owned the key to open it. Barely able to contain his excitement, he fiddled with the lock, and a satisfying click was heard. Gabzryel held his breath as he flipped open the cover, and gazed for the first time at the fragile old pages…

A single string of seven numbers.

Gabzryel stared in muted shock at the disappointing content of the first page.

“Seriously?!” he finally managed to say; he turned the page, but the second page met him with the same numbers. So did the third page, and the fourth, and the fifth...

Gabzryel swept through the whole book, then threw it far across the library when all the pages revealed themselves to have the same line of numbers.

“Oh come on!!” he yelled in frustration.

Gabzryel snapped open his eyes, staring right at the ceiling of his bedroom.

“Aww, man...” he whispered disappointingly, as he sat in his bed.

He realized that his heart was pounding heavily, so he hurried to breathe slowly to calm it down; reaching to his bed table, he took a pill from a lying bottle, and gulped it down with water. After a few seconds, his pulse returned to normal, and he exhaled in relief.

“Damn heart,” he mumbled, setting aside his covers and resting his feet on the cold floor.

Looking over to his bedside table, his brown eyes rested on the framed picture of a young girl in her mid-teens with long raven black hair, her dark-brown eyes smiling brightly. Beside the picture was a small ornate jewellery box filled with dozens of small pink crystals; only Gabzryel knew that there were exactly twenty-three of them, and were in fact rare pink diamonds.

Sighing at the disappointing result of his dream and the book obsession from several months, he rose out of bed, and walked softly to the living room; he knew he wouldn’t be able to go back to sleep once he woke up. He plopped himself in his favourite sofa in front of the back window, facing Madzistrale’s beautiful backyard garden, the moonlight passing through the window and settling upon him. He reached to the side table to pick up a detective novel he had begun the evening before. As he delved into the story, he heard soft steps crossing from where was the bathroom to the living room.

“Can’t sleep?” Madzistrale said sleepily.

“Nope...” Gabzryel sighed.

“Your sister?...” she asked as softly as she could; it was a subject she did not felt comfortable to tread.

Gabzryel chuckled.

“Far from it; honestly, it wasn’t because of a nightmare. Just woke up, as usual, and can’t go back to sleep.”

“You’ll be alright alone? Want some company?” she kindly offered, but the effect was immediately ruined as she yawned right after.

Gabzryel smiled softly at her offer, but he knew she was mainly just hoping he’d refused so she could go back to sleep. Not that he minded, for he was more than happy to set some alone time aside to reading, an hobby becoming rarer with all the experiments and projects going on.

“Yep, go back to sleep, Mad. I’m afraid I’ll get hooked to the novel, and ignore you anyway,” he reassured her.

“Okay...” Madzistrale yawned again, and left the living room, her sleepy footsteps trying unsuccessfully to walk as elegantly as her flowing nightgown. “Have fun...”

“Nighty night, Mad,” Gabzryel wished her, watching her leave with an amused smile.

As she turned toward the hall of her bedroom, the moonlight hit something sparkling at her neck, and Gabzryel realized it was her silver cross pendant.

He sat back in his sofa, smiling softly at that vision; since she always had covering clothes, he often forgot that she still wore everyday the cross pendant he had brought her in their early days of friendship. Not for aesthetic purpose, but as a religious reminder, a rare thing nowadays in the age of science and of extreme logic.

********************** June 2012

Gabzryel opened his palms, and revealed a delicately ornate silver cross pendant; Madzistrale’s eyes sparkled, and she tentatively stretched her hands.

“Is that for me?” she asked shyly.

“Of course. Who else?” Gabzryel laughed, forcing the pendant into her hands.

“But… I’m not supposed to be...”

“What? You’re not supposed to be a Christian? Mad, no one has the right to tell you what you’re supposed to be!”

Madzistrale looked fearfully at her new friend. Behind them laid a wildflower landscape, soft hills sprinkled of mature trees, a small river running through it. In the far side of the land, buildings shaped after the architecture of Zen and Buddhist temples stretched, pergolas overlooked the river, stone and sand gardens filled the rest of the place. However, all of it had a distinct Western feel, and for good reasons: Madzistrale’s home was a relaxation and personal evolution resort isolated in the Northern region of Québec.

Gabzryel stared back at her in wonder, but could understand why she was confused: here he was, a man resembling like all of her family’s clients, a yoga initiate, offering her to embrace a belief drastically opposed to that of Buddhism.

“My father wouldn’t agree… You know how he is.”

“Well… Technically, you shouldn’t need to hide your personal belief system… However, what harm is there to acknowledge your family’s beliefs while acknowledging that you privately hold different ones?”

“But why do I? I love them, I respect them… but why am I different? Why do I reject that silly religion of yours, of theirs? And why am I myself believing in a silly religion such as Christianity? Why am I disrespecting my family’s beliefs, why am I being unkind, disloyal to their teachings?” Madzistrale asked, agitated.

Gabzryel gazed at her compassionately. Here she was, an eighteen year old girl that never knew the outside world, shielded from it by her over-protective parents, suddenly facing the constant of this world: that each souls were born to be different. How could she ever have learned that being different did not negate being loving, kind, and loyal in any other way.

He stretched his legs, readjusting his robes, and noticed Tom climbing the hill to join them.

“There you are, little sis,” Tom said playfully. “Hiya, Gabzryel!”

“Come and join us,” Gabzryel patted the grass between him and Madzistrale. “Look at Madzistrale’s pendant! I thought she might like it.”

Tom sat down and looked at the cross, his sister looking away in shame.

“T’was about time you had one,” he simply said, surprising her by hanging it around her neck and ignoring her protestations as he closed the clasp.

“What do you mean?!” she asked, surprised and shocked. “I never dared telling you!”

“Our parents might be abnormally blind for supposedly ‘illuminated’ people, but I can see the signs. You forget that I love reading about philosophy, mythology, and religion, sis. I think I can figure out the signs when someone believes in God.”

“Please don’t tell… But more importantly… don’t think any differently of me...”

Gabzryel refrained from making a facepalm at such a reaction, even though he knew that it was a genuine fear for someone like her. The danger of being raised in a dogma was sitting right at his side.

Tom hugged his sister.

“Why would I? I don’t get it why you feel it’s so wrong.”

Madzistrale stared at him in shock.

“You don’t?”

Tom laughed, and motioned the scene around them.

“Look at this. Don’t you think that I feel it too? That something… something incredible lies behind the veils of this world? Just out of reach, yet so near. And where’s the harm in such a belief? You treat nature better than many so-called enlightened people at our resort; you respect others, you try to be selfless. You are flawed, yet never stop to grow and reach for the impossible. It was about time you manifested that belief. Buddhists does; why can’t you, a Christian, do the same?”

Madzistrale blushed. She looked at the pendant, and she faintly smiled; she then slid it under her shirt.

“Your faith is the best thing that can happen to you,” Gabzryel reassured her. “Don’t ever lose it, and don’t ever be afraid to admitting it.”

They remained silent, Tom still holding his sister against him, Gabzryel stretched on the grass.

“What about you?” Gabzryel asked Tom.

Tom thought for some time.

“I’m still not sure what I believe in. I know that for me too, it’s not our family’s beliefs. I don’t exactly believe wholeheartedly in God… but neither can I deny such a possibility.”

Gabzryel looked at him interestingly.

“Have you ever read the works of Immanuel Kant and Henry David Thoreau?”

Tom looked at him with surprise.

“Yes I did! A while ago, mind you, but I did. And… I think that might be it.”

“What do you guys mean?” Madzistrale asked.

Gabzryel squinted, trying to find a memory.

“Let’s see… Ah yes. ‘The empiricists believed that knowledge is acquired through experience alone, but the rationalists maintained that such knowledge is open to Cartesian doubt and that reason alone provides us with knowledge. Kant argues, however, that using reason without applying it to experience will only lead to illusions, while experience will be purely subjective without first being subsumed under pure reason’.”

“Indeed,” Tom said.

“I see. You’re a Transcendental Idealist,” Gabzryel admired.

“Huh?” both siblings asked, puzzled.

“The compromise created between empiricism and rationalism. The belief that experiences alone cannot be accepted as knowledge without being submitted to reason, while extreme reason cannot by itself account for experiences and thus cannot become true knowledge. A Transcendental Idealist will consider both experience, intuition, and reason in his quest for truth.”

“That’s pretty much it,” Tom smiled.

“You’re lucky, Mad,” Gabzryel teased. “It means Tom has no choice but to allow your belief; as it’s one that requires trust in reason, experience, but intuition as well.”

“If only our parents could understand like you do,” Madzistrale replied gloomily.

Gabzryel thought deeply, then sat back up.

“We have so many things in common, so many dreams and wishes of a better world than what is presented… And yet… So I might as well ask: why not come and live with me?”

The siblings looked at him, surprised.

“What?”

“Well… I’m rather famous here… Officially, you’re two curious persons that needs more experience to fully understand the world and the philosophy of Buddhism… In short, like Prince Siddartha, you need to get out of your palace and walk amongst the people if you wish to understand what your belief teaches you. Officiously, I’m just getting you guys out of here so you can be your true selves.”

“The resort can survive without us,” Tom reasoned.

“Are you kidding me? It already does, with all the workers Dad and Mom recruited,” Madzistrale said.

“And I have uses for you,” Gabzryel enigmatically replied, smiling.

“That better-future-world-building dream of yours,” Tom guessed.

“I need volunteers; people who thinks alike about changing the system, who believes there is a way where Earth and humanity can co-exist without conflicts.”

“How will you convince them?” Madzistrale asked, worried.

Gabzryel smiled mischievously.

“I have my ways. But do you guys really want to come? My farm’s after all in Kansas...”

“Of course!” the siblings cried in unison.

“Great! It might take some time, but it’s going to happen,” Gabzryel reassured them.

After some moment of silence where the two siblings and their friend looked out at nature unfolding before them, Madzistrale turned to look longer at Gabzryel. Nothing about him would have made her notice him. Relatively short for a man, a little bit compact, he had a roundish face, and an overall ordinary and unremarkable look and presence. Yet, it seemed only for Madzistrale and Tom, he had captured their attention by an yet unknown force of spirit.

Curious, Madzistrale asked him:

“What about you? You don’t feel like a typical Buddhist.”

“I’m not,” Gabzryel admitted. “And it’s not my purpose. I’m here to understand what could unite humanity. I’m not interested in flaws, in who’s-wrong/who’s-right, in what divides people. I’m interested at finding out the common ground; whatever country, belief or culture that one is from, no one is ever truly apart from everyone else. There’s always ways that we can all comprehend one another, believe together, and unite.

» I thus try to embody that quest of understanding. Although, I have to admit that I have my other reasons. Any which way, I call it ‘Eidomorphism’.”

“What does it mean?” Tom inquired.

Gabzryel smirked.

“That’ll be your first challenge, my dear friends. Once you find out, if you can still acknowledge me as I am, then nothing will stop us from bringing the dreams of us three into reality.”

**********************

The small cry of a nearby fox took Gabzryel away from his slumbered reminiscence, and he smiled even more fondly.

The siblings had indeed discovered his nature. But that discovery only brought them closer, and the trio ended up complementing each other through life. Madzistrale’s faith, the way she was able to look at the world because of it, the way she was able to be hopeful and forgiving despite all the troubles, helped them to see past the cover of the books, so to speak. Tom’s belief in rational thought and in grounded knowledge and reason, without pushing aside or negating the unprovable mysteries of the universe, helped Madzistrale and Gabzryel keep their feet on the ground in times where the head had to rule over the heart. And Gabzryel’s quest to understand all religions and all beliefs, to find the common ground and ease the tensions resulting from misunderstanding, tremendously shaped the whole group’s vision of the world, for at the core of it, there was not a single belief... or rather there was one very important belief: that it was only through uniting and searching together that humanity stood a chance at knowing the truth. And Gabzryel felt that no one had to abandon what made them be good souls, or helped them go through the hardships of life, for the sake of another’s approval. That was why he once gave that pendant to Madzistrale and reassured her that not giving up her faith would be the best thing for all of them, and that she should never be afraid to admit to it.

Heck, who were all of them to judge what belief was wrong or right? Who could judge him for opening himself to all possibilities of the world? Had he not, he would have never seen his sister again.

Gabzryel stroke his dark raven hair, unconsciously rustling his patch of white hair. Because of his Eidomorphism nature, he had long lost his natural brown hair colour, except for the white patch that began when he was as young as seventeen years old; but once in awhile, he’d always revert to his sister’s black hair look. It was the only remaining physical evidence of her life on this Earth, before a brain cancer took her away when she was eleven, and he five. Her death deeply affected him, for he always looked up to his playful and kind sister. When he was thirteen, after researching some obscure legend, he decided to believe in it, and as if by luck, he had been able to meet her again.

To this day, Gabzryel had still not ruled out the exact origin and reason of her appearance, and neither did he wished to. Some would have called his resolve to not know and to believe her existence somewhere else than on Earth, as an unhealthy habit; but he gave no care to it, as it comforted him better than all the logical explanations. That was why he never laughed at Madzistrale’s Christian faith, or at all the faiths he explored during his own life; where was the harm there?

Not to mention that he kept on receiving a very physical pink diamond from her, every year, since the night they reunited twenty-three years ago… Something too he could not explain, but was nonetheless happy to receive.

Opening wide his eyes, and yawning, he shook his head; enough, he thought. He put on his earphones, put up his songs medley playlist, and opened his detective novel. Time to put himself into the shoes of his favourite detective.