They looked around, shivering. It snowed convulsively. They were being covered. The gentle flakes had no rush in taking over. They were slow. Everything has stopped anyway, there was no sense in rushing a message that would be delivered at any cost.

They woke up from their torpor and it was still white everywhere. They felt odd for not seeing anything but it. The village was not down there. The rooftops and the marked steps, filled again, could not be even remotely perceived. They looked at each other, smiled whitely. A strange comfort embraced them as they realised that like once shadows inside a shadow, they were now inside a greater white. Inside the depths of the snow that has fallen gently on them for moments, for years, for nothingness, for totalities.

Reproduced identically on the top of a small white hill, the Tree. The papers, without colours, nailed to it, aged, on their way to being forgotten but for them still precious, still important on a research, a tension that was not to be left alone until all elements gathered and made sense. Climbing up, effortlessly, since they learned fast how to walk the blank surface, they sat down: the One and the Other facing each other.

As soon as they sat, the world twisted. They were now, inside the snow, on the other part of the world they never knew or could know from the inside they were trapped in. They were upside down. Supported by a force only felt but unseen. They looked at each other and for every time they could see inside each other, they could see now through each other. Transparent, they fell on their feet, finally welcomed in this unknown part of their world. The first thing they did, realising that, was to sit down again. For we have always to proceed even on the stranger circumstances.

Looking at each other, through each other, the Other nodded while the One took his little leather bag. He picked up a little square piece of wood and started emptying the content of the bag into it. As soon as the small square piece of wood has covered with the white grains the One said:

- I have been consumed by the frozen codes of pictures, numbers and letters too many times. For too long. This morning which never turns into night I want to bring you the hand. The hand that commands the chain. The hand I use to bring you magic, things happening, moving, things that I can throw in the eyes of people before they jump into them. Physically I want to show you what the eyes that read can not carry to the brain that thinks. Look and then close your eyes and look again.

The Other did so. The One blew the white grains into the Other’s eyes. He was forced to close them. Inside his eyes he could still see through the One. That amused him. Behind the One small projectiles flew fast, risked through the deep low white skies that started where the Other’s head stopped, resting on his thin shoulders, towers of strength struggling to hold up to his feverish imagination. Then he started seeing all things around, behind the One moving fast, like spirals with fingers that started touching the Other’s own hair, face, that started surrounding him, evolving him, really fast. He could not move but scared he opened his eyes, which encountered the One’s eyes on their way, charming white, familiar, paternal:

- No. You are cheating. Close them again. If not, everything stops.
- ...
- I know. It is still moving. But try to close them again.

The Other did it. The projectiles opened small holes in the skies. Rays of a strange, sickening light started to come in through them. The colour of everything that was moving, moved from pure white to that yellowish, fever coloured of old, dying snow. The sight was now unpleasant. The One took off his bag a metallic piece with small forming limits spread all over its iron body. From the small square wooden piece he spilled the now liquid white grains that fell comfortably, without any loss, in each shape. Each one of the five. One for each finger in the hand. Inside his eyes the One asked: Open your eyes now!

The Other did it. The small holes in the skies healed immediately. The rays could not be seen anymore and the white surface was immaculate again. The moving stopped, seemed everything slept and he could not see through the One anymore. They faced each other and looked inside each other as normally they would.

The One opening his hand let four of those pieces fall into the Other’s open, amazed hand. The hand absorbed them. He stretched his fingers. Ready and armed.

-Use them well. You know how.

The One lifted up and started walking closer to the Tree. He leaned his hand against it. Five holes opened and he thrusted one by one the pieces into the Tree. He still gazed up not believing the height of the Tree and its look, now fully white, silvered leaves with all their messages, their treasures and their conquests hanging like frozen drops from its aged, story telling and secret’s holder skin. He looked at it again and again, thinking with the shiver of recognition: it contained all their lives. Could it contain the all to be?

As the words vanished, dropping from his head, it started snowing violently inside their bigger cocoon that was made out of snow itself. He ran down in time to embrace the Other, still surprised by the violence of the white storm. The left hands grabbed each other. The storm started covering them with gentleness but without loosing any time. As if they were one body undistinguished, their eyes open to see through each other, and then closed forever until the next moment. What was seen could not be told. The world twisted into the other half.

Noises could be heard outside the snowy cocoons.

 WEST

//end 05

The other’s heads started splitting into two exact halves. From inside, each time more visible, a crude face, blank, linear at first but which features started moving in a horrible birth. Long ears, dark beard, soaked eyes. A grown-up with all the Loss we carry with us. Those new old eyes stared at the One’s small, delicate features twisting into an indistinguishable coil of snakes. His blonde,angelical hair now dark as the darkest of nights, without points of light, soaking away his calm, broken smile into an angry grin, mature, savoured, adult, final and ready to start falling.

Energies impossible to contain came out of their fingers, melting the freshly inserted projectiles, falling on the floor, hypnotic, defeated, fast yet going nowhere, having no purpose of use. Their hands started opening, lost from each other grip, brothers turned away by the long arms coming out from their arms, from new, giant hands crushing, closing in the original gentle creative discovering hands, smashing them with the arrogance of a new life. The legs bursted out and small steps were now giant leaps. They were tall, growing at an unspeakable pace, scared, not recognising each other. Failing to recognise themselves.

As they stretched, their clothes rip apart, the loose pieces of flesh and hair and nails and fibres falling fast, constantly on the white floor, becoming one with it, disappearing as if meaningless all the times, like their source, their origin, the One, the Other, being undressed from the inside, tossed out, corrupted, eaten away by their bigger selves.

The noises outside faster. With a paced click. Getting faster. Quicker. Furious.

What was left from the Two, the small cloud of consciousness lurking above them could not believe what got inside its replacement for eyes. Two beasts, two lived, strong man, walking in the last days, eating off the last of meals, sucking out the last of bloods stood there, defying each other. Defensive. Protecting each other’s space even if together, close to each other as they have always been. They kept on growing, skin stretching, breaking up, healing, and stretching again, infinite, large, giant. Both soaked eyes, both pointy ears, both darkened fingers, hands, bony legs, long hair, dirty teeth, dirty soul, greenish skin, ferocious grins, equal as they were never, smart now, calculated, knowledgeable about the all, the it, the nothing, in blue, in dark, in red, in all, in all to be, in to be all, adults, adulterous, letting the one without, knowing more that one thing than the one with you always, grown up, with territories, responsibilities, sinking, stumbling, wreckage supported by a vicious spine eating what has been just expelled.

The noises outside incredibly fast. Frantic. Stabbing muttered thousands youthful screams.

The walls of the snowy cocoons still contained them. Everything around them grew at their own scale. The Tree gigantic, white, all covered now with the marks and documents they left and which grew even faster than all surrounding. The holes multiplied by the thousand bled silver. The inscriptions went as far as sight could allow them to. Letters, craving dancing, over filling cups and minds, all drinking to forget. Letters everywhere forming adult words. Knots wrapping them and finding them, The memories creating the memories of yet new memories. An echo of echoes of letters everywhere. The world with no halves where to twist. All repeating a million stars.

The adult beasts felt pushed down. Their giant hands crossed pushing against the limits of the white cocoons. They would not give up. Crashing, growing, falling, growing again. One was missing. In what shape would it come? For how long could it be delayed? Where are we growing? When can we stop? Are we allowed to conquer when we stop? Can I break apart the lace and have them strangle each other? It is not complete. As a last resort they turned to the Tree, trying to cover with giant hands, creating new, numberless fingers to cover the holes bleeding silver. Each time silver touched a finger it was burnt to the ground, melting with everything else into the great white.

The noises outside. The hurting noises. Hysterical.

They tried then to grab and rip the papers. Too many. They divided into two each time they got one. The letters danced speaking to them. It was unbearable the noise they made. So much to be said.

Outside the other noises amplifying everything. Waiting on the move. On the move conspiring.

Untie the knots. The fingers turned into knots themselves. As the legs and feet when they chased the elements. The noise outside...

They moved their head low to forget the memories. Thoughts were flashed into them like floods. Waters breaking spines. Moving seas and skies of electric stimulation. Chemicals suffocating. Veins heart beating. Outside millions of hearts pulsing, hands lifting, perforating.

All was tried. Everything. All of the sudden: the crack. Sublime.

At first small points of light started invading slowly the inside of the cocoons. The beasts awaiting freedom, reaching arms, the remaining fingers, soaked eyes still down to avoid the light. Then Morning came unexpected, pure and real. Entering to the thousand holes made by the thousand small hands holding blades of all sorts perforating without rest.

Pieces of ice were being thrown everywhere. As soon as they reached the floor, a morning star melted them. One star for each piece. One star for each body. All broke apart. Both undressed from the cocoons. The top of it came out totally. The soaked eyes dared to see above. Thousands of Ones and Others each one holding a different blade, each one a tribe inside a tribe, as far as the large, wide eyes of the beasts could see. Up the other Tree, down the village, South, North, West and East. Everywhere. Not even a blank space to be filled. The beasts burned in fear.

The blades haven’t stopped. The noises mixed, cracking ice, high pitched grins, screams, laughter, anxiety, and the sounds of love and creation played on the scales of hate and destruction. Beautifully harmonic. Like one. At once.

The snow cocoons reached only the shoulders of the beasts. Then it all stopped for a moment until the beast’s bodies were covered by the hands holding the blades. With each stab a retreat and everybody that could be seen or unseen drew blood, cutting, stabbing, ripping, until there was no more life to be taken or soul to be dried. A cutting wind from the right hand announced one of the ends.

All blades were abandoned, stuck into the body of the tree. It looked like a speared body, with no space for light, just struck from all sides, inch by the inch inside the inch. The only respected contours were those of the five silver holes, the frame of the memories and of the pictures. Two of the Many advanced:

With large Eastern windy blades they cut the beasts´s bodies into four parts, two for each. The inferior part of the One was mixed with roots, perfumed with Death, poisoned spiced and buried quite close to the Tree’s end to feed it forever. The Other´s superior part hanged with invisible rope to the top of the Tree, tightened with the marking knots of lovers that meet there, to feed the birds that brought revenge and spread it far.

The superior part of the One´s body was frozen and silvered. It adorned the left of the tree and the smallest lights moving still in the dead flesh and energy. Playing, guiding, blinding. The final part of the Other´s cut into small pieces and hanged in every leave living on the right part of the tree. All of the sudden a crack and everybody laid in hope of a better day and turned into one with the what they wanted to.

All of the sudden, it all made sense. Even the two smiling children, under the decorated tree, under the memories, the bodies, the inscriptions, the silver, the things and the way to the things. Two smiles in agreement. The quadrature has been completed.

And still we are all at the staring point.

EAST