A young deer starves in the forest. The weakness in her legs causes them to wobble uncertainly. Her brown eyes fill with fear. Somewhere above the vine-draped canopy the sun is setting, or the moon is rising. The deer trudges over mossy riverbanks smelling at the growth for signs of nourishment, but all she finds has been tainted. Why does the young deer starve herself when the vegetation is so near to her yearning tongue? Why does sun set? Why does the moon conspire to rise? There is a single withered ravenwood tree. In half-light the deer wanders past, imagining she spies a plethora of eyes embedded in the patterned bark. Leaves and shadows ripple with a gust from far-off Gaudiguch, and the imagined eyes fix their illusory pupils on the deer. Slowly, beyond sight, the sun dies and Night falls across the expanse of inhospitable woodland. Night embraces the Basin in utter dark once again forever. It is said that a concept exists called 'mercy.'

 

The deer notices her starvation, the ravenwood feels the soil’s taint, the shadows of crows understand their intangibility, yet none of them are aware that they are pegs in the wheel. The wheel cannot turn without each churning spirit: just so is each individual life caught up in the fate of the hidden wheel. Even you, far off reader whomever you may be, even you are not separate from the wheel that turns us all. But are you the one who turns the wheel, or the one who is — in turn — turned by it? I starve from lack of impetus. I feel the taint of the soil in which I grow. Though the shadow of a crow is made from only shadow, I understand that I am even less tangible than that.

 

The deer, nearly fainting from the rasp in her parched throat, submits to take a sip of the merciless forest’s waterways. The childish deer drinks ice-clear water that has known the caress of murky plants and insect life all existance long. Unthinking trout have exuded their slimes into that stream and they mingle in the coursing rush of life and mingle inside the young deer. She has not seen her birth-mother for three winters.

 

It is said that when Kethuru spread his lack of a soul across the land, this forest was cursed. There are those who say it was blessed. If you bring into Night one man who has argued this point, Night will be embracing a man who does not understand his place among the wheel. To argue is meaningless, for you are only a pattern of motion. You are a single strand in the pattern of a raventree’s bark. I was moved to pen these words only by the patterns of the wheel turning. I am sorry I have written this, yet I could not stop myself. These words were born from the womb of my brain, my heart was led by Night and my hand was guided by the endless revolutions. The wheel spins against the backdrop of Mother Night. The wheel is the Basin and the Mother is all unknown things beyond. I think that I remember craving mercy, though perhaps that was a dream.

 

The sun has set. The light below the canopy dies. The young deer’s eyes are useless as she wanders into impenetrable blindness. In blank rutting animal-thought, she longs for a modicum of mercy, but there is no light. None exists. No starlight or moon-scar can penetrate the entwined enshrouding canopy. This is the Mother's entire manifestation. She has no mortal form, for what use is a boat that can bleed? What use is a corpse that can dance? Our Mother is blank-faced and answers questions with their own asking. What is mercy?

 

What use is a question, when the answer has always been the asking?

 

Even you now, unknown reader, you think to make sense of these words I have set into place. Every syllable in its house, yet you are a fool if you attempt to pry a meaning from it all. These words are simply a part of you, and that is all there is. Like my Mother I must be blank-faced and answer questions with their own asking. We are mere splotches in the bark of Night’s cosmic ravenwood, you and I and my words. If you are starving, you will eat. The deer who starves herself breaks her own peg, prevents the wheel from turning — and this cannot be tolerated by the merciless momentum.

 

The event is invisible, bathed in Night, but the deer does expire in the forest. The strains of flesh are too much for it, and it has not seen its birth-mother for three winters. “At last,” thinks the deer as her eyes widen unblinking and stomach distends, “at last my Mother has come.” The Night takes the deer to where starvation cannot hurt it, the momentum is restored, and the wheels churns all our lives onwards. By the time you have reached the final word here set down you shall feel foolish. I feel foolish having taken up this quill. But were I to starve myself — like my fake deer starving in the woods that I based on a real copy of a starving deer who might exist — the terrible perpetuity of momentum would lash the dance from out of my corpse and I would turn to worm-fodder. So here are words. Commissioned by the ever-turning wheel at night-time and delivered to you, as ignorant as I.

 

This is the final sentence, but for one. Night is wrapped around your mind and you never will receive mercy unless you notice your own starvation, unless you feel the taint in your soil, unless you understand your intangibility, and set into the houses of your will the notion that there is no mercy to receive.