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III. The Words of Laughing Cat
They called me Laughing Cat because I was born with a smile on my face. They feared me because none of them knew why I smiled. None knew that in the womb I had been taught things that were funny to me when I was small. Things that are funny when you are small don’t stay funny when you grow bigger. My smile disappeared as I understood the weight of what I knew. The laughter they thought they had seen in me was gone, replaced by a need to scream out things that frightened everyone, things that cast me out of the village and left me alone in the desert with the dreams from the womb.
Others came. They wanted to know if the things that frightened me were real and if I could tell them when my dreams would come true. I couldn’t tell them when the dreams would happen, but I could tell them that I knew they were real and I knew they would come for everyone, not just me. I knew someday my dreams would be a plague that would drive men mad instead of showing them the light of hope. These others heard me grieve and if felt like less grief. Some began to dream my dreams. They dreamt of the same man and the same fate that I did. They called me a shaman, those who knew what made the Laughing Cat cry.
We will know him as the Impatient. He will scream at the rain to make the trees grow and they will not grow. When the herds go away, he will scream at them to return, but they will not. He will fear the night and long too much for morning. In his sorrow and his fear, he will beg the moon to leave him, but dawn will not come fast enough for him. He will see that the earth is slow. The seasons and the rain and the trees and the herds are not fast enough.
He will burn the trees and he will know that the rain will not come fast enough to put out the fire. When the herds come, he will be overcome by hunger and rage. He will devour the herds, picking clean their bones and plucking each hair from their hides. He will never sleep so that he misses neither the sun or the moon and all days will become one. Then he will wonder when the next day will come and in his rage at the earth, the beasts, the sun and the moon he will scorch the earth, devour the beasts and cover the sun in darkness, so the moon will be alone in her sorrow. It will be just her and the impatient and she will destroy with her judgmental glow.
From the sky, she will call a tide, an ocean full of new beasts and new trees. From this ocean depth’s, a new earth will grow, and the gentle sun will cast off his darkness our of love for it. He will shelter it with love and light until it grows strong and the moon will speak to the people, leaving them only one word to guide them: patience.
Now I have grown impatient and I want this beautiful world that emerges from an ocean in the sky, but I want to keep the one I have. The child laughs now at an old man’s indecision. Whichever world I want, I must only remember one thing: patience.
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