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Chapter Forty: Taberah's Time
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Fiona said, "So, Taberah, how about your time?"
Taberah said, "Why don't we take a walk in the forest, and I'll think about how to explain it?"
They began to walk along the path, Taberah stopping and thinking every so often, but saying nothing. This continued for five minutes, fifteen, thirty, an hour -- and Fiona began tapping her toes. Taberah stopped, and Fiona sat down on a log and began drumming her fingers.
"What are you doing?" Taberah asked.
"Nothing," Fiona said. "I'm just waiting for you to start explaining your time already."
"What about your hands and feet? What are you doing with them?"
"I'm just tapping them, because I'm getting impatient waiting for -- ooh... Taberah, are you walking around and not saying anything on purpose?"
"No; I'm thinking about how to explain time to you."
"Do you understand why I'm drumming my fingers?"
"No. Why?"
Fiona began to realize something. She decided to try not to drum her fingers, or pace, or tap her foot, but just sit. It turned out to be harder than it sounded. Fiona kept noticing herself fidgeting; even when she thought to herself, "It's been a while and I'm not fidgeting," somehow she realized that her fingers were drumming on her legs.
"Fiona!" Taberah spoke, and Fiona suddenly realized that she had lost track of time -- and was not fidgeting. "I do not have a different time awareness, so much as not having an awareness of time. There are moments for me, times with other people, times doing a task, and times waiting -- watches are fascinating to me, but even when I watch them, I watch the rhythmic motion, and more often than not forget that the motion is measuring something that's supposed to be time. That time is fickle; it seems to speed up and slow down. The first lesson in medieval time is to let go of it."
Taberah walked a bit further, stopping a few times, and Fiona still caught herself fidgeting -- but she began to catch herself completely relaxed at times. Fiona wondered when he would finally speak, and then was surprised when he broke the silence -- was he done thinking already? Taberah said, "There are moments -- I do not know how to say it in your language -- when you are totally absorbed, rapt in concentration, when you lose track of time because you are so completely filled. It is not so much time as a foretaste of eternity. These moments cannot be commanded or controlled, although there is a cooperation with them; they are a gift from God. Those moments are my 'time', if time is the appropriate word. 'Timelessness' is better. That is the apex of the time I live in, and I am sorry not to see you live in that time more."
"So how do I enter this time? You've told me what time you live in, but not how to get in it."
Taberah thought briefly and said, "I can't tell you that. Pray, and God may grant it. But I don't know how to enter it."
Jonathan's Corner
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Firestorm 2034 >
Chapter Forty: Taberah's Time
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