II: RELIGION III – THE SEAMSTRESS AND THE WIND’S ETERNAL DUELIST SOUL

I had touched down at the Airport in Merida. There were people scattered about the few air strips, as if a bowl of dog food was tipped over – someone had to eat them or clean up the mess – and the colossally smaller blue wyrms that I saw extending endlessly from a spring-esque eye thousands of feet high in periodic Zonda winds had no visible mouths at all. Nowhere to be found in any of the footage or pictures people took probably for the last time.  One could say their hunger was for destruction. The wyrms were almost perfectly cylindrical, valiantly measured at 1000 feet long  and 70 ft in diameter. they looked ethereal, behemoths spun into being like the thread of a sweater, yet made of solid plasma. The dust shading the air was far from settling when the sentient kibble regulated themselves from the path of the 747s they wanted to hijack. They came in like a burst air up the stairs, things got so packed, the pilots had to deploy the orange fluorescent inflatable slide to bleed out any of the weight. With my backpack on I slid off down, putting me directly on level with the chaos.

Days of idleness in Argentina.

It continued as I got onto the Plaza Bolivar. The streets were flooded with sprinting panic and its meat byproducts colliding and flowing every which way around me, into me, past me. As one of the only people not running, I observed while making my way to the advancing front. What else could I do, really? If I didn’t take a moment to focus on the local color, you wouldn’t know about a couple by the name of Marcela and Leo fucking right there on the street, people tripping and/or walking and hopping over them. You wouldn’t know about the cart vendor still selling strawberry ice cream to three kids and an adult, who all actually paid for it. You would know about the useless riots and the frenzied praying, the burning buildings untouched yet by the wyrms. It was all beginning to have an effect on the faith I have in myself, which is normally around in bounds or completely absent. I was walking the middle of a crowd, impinged by both disorder and placidity. Battling a group of non-descript (even including present elucidations) wyrms with a card game? What was I thinking? Language sounded more foreign than ever. A large monitor on the wall of a building displayed tousled troops, flipped tanks, vehicles thrown into a diaspora, all of which not counting those completely crushed. I began to walk away amongst tremors, between screaming, pleas for help, answers as unknown as some unsure kid before multiple choices…I heard blasting, turned around glimpsing at the screen and in the consecutive instant shell knelt down to take cover. 

I could not discern my shivering from the earth, everyone, and everything else.

A wyrm had entered the adjacent Avenida with a hole the size of a silo clear through its north end. It was torn and appeared to be hurling its last throes onto humanity. It plunged its assumed face or end clean into the ground, it’s being arched like a slinky ready to collect the rest of its rings, then tensed up, looking as if it were made of cable veins twisted into a blueberry steroid twizzler, and finally stood it’s body as if an obelisk and began to spin with enough force to turn magnetic north a few degrees and burrowed into the earth. I came over with enough time to see the last vestiges of its dim blue fade to hollow black. A disparate ring rung around loosely at the epicenter the wyrm drew. The entire intersection of that avenida was trapped between shattered crosswalks, and all of us looked into the sinkhole with as much quiet as such a situation could muster. The destruction continued despite us all. I looked up from the pore to the sky. I was now cognizant of my sweat pouring on this winter day as I shut my eyes and sighed. I told my self that I should have known better. In fact I said “I should have known better,” hunched over like some Shinji Ikari – but I knew that the simile was just that, a tangential relation, and knowing that I realized that I wasn’t so hopeless: for I had now come up on The Point.

With that point doing furious nothing in an agape to the front below of me, the converged vibrations circuiting up my arm and beyond – I got it. I unusually cared not of what others would think of me, for if I failed, all was lost anyway. I was here for a reason – and sure I flew forward with no prior caution on a whim that I could save South America and the World from some malevolent invention by playing a very real game of Duel Monsters– but I knew now and then that it was possible. Which was l ever needed – desire.  Even if I failed today, even if the monsters would fail to realize and I fell a fool to the “concrete” bounds of this realm – I would die doing precisely what I desired. There’s no regret now, and there never will be. The love of Alejandra that I knew was real was the needle making for me the omega point in a floor as if a metaphor. An abyssal pearl. It was my own land of dreams and it was up to me to flood that hole with a thread that would tie everything together again. I ran the entirety of my way to the front line, remembering nothing of what had passed me. 

So when I finally got there the military finally put on some goddamn sirens and began to formally (as much as they could) evacuate the people. It didn’t seem like there was much difference to me. Getting to the frontline took less time than I thought, mostly because it had receded somewhat dramatically. It seemed everyone was losing their hair, tearing it out by the handfuls, their stratagems being taken over by brute force. Deltas of bomber waves sprinkled spores of explosions upon the pellucid organelles, keeping them subdued at least momentarily. They had also targeted the epicenter of their birth, but no rate of fire stopped the flow. It was confounding. I saw generals and grunts between flustered, doing all they can to keep up the offensive as I knelt down and took the Battle City Duel Disk out of my bag. I had to do what I can to help, even if it might end up doing nothing at all. 

I had fastened the Duel Disk Launcher to my arm with the fabric straps and converted it from standby position to duel position. I put in the three cell batteries. The Duel Disk gave a few weak boot-up flashes in the provided led displays. I thought the Disk was already set to on, but I had to flip the switch. I had expected that much of Sebastian. It looked like a terribly designed gauntlet. At least no one was paying attention to me anywhere.

I was reaching into the bag for the deck when I realized that I left America with only one card: The Blue Eyes White Dragon. Then I remembered that anyone who actually knew the rules would have told me that one cannot simply play a Blue Eyes straight out of the gate, for two monsters had to be sacrificed to simply summon it. I felt like an idiot for not remembering. I crossed my legs as I plopped down. Staring into the cracked foil of the Blue Eyes, I knew I wasn’t fit to play, to summon it period, not only by definition of the rules, but definition of myself. It appeared I made the wrong move before the game had even begun. I had noticed in the leaking of my thoughts to some certain nothing attained in spiritual and mental petrification that all the talk being shouted and garbled was growing softer. I could actually understand that someone had said “Look! It’s Meifang!”

A draft picked up, and with that, morsels of fresh snow.

Slacking my head back, past all the falling crystal I saw a petit girl floating through the air a bit far off and coming closer with a fantastic surfeit of speed. Orbits of tiny squares surrounded her and shuffled about in a egg-like cloister. Her hair billowed about her like blood in water and made her face look like a vanilla almond or an incisor in comparison. Her legs were bound by will, as she sat on her shins resting upon nothing the streaming wind.  She stood up; I could see the soles of her feet looking like dough under kitchen light . Shard to shard of what appeared to be cards began to fan together in manner befitting water circling the drain as she descended. When she got in front of the front line, all the cards converged into one layered square. I could see she was prepared to play.

A group of men in a myriad of rank-specific fatigues surrounded her, and the chatter erupted again. This continued for about a minute and a half before I heard a shrill whistle spear every centimeter of air. The ice of our world had hot water running down the entirety of the tray and with the cracking silence we heard her speak.

“Yo tengo esta, señores. (I’ve got this, gentlemen.)” Her voice sounded like a twelve year old, and though preciously miniature, her assertion gave my ears a hint of blunt edge. I could see her move her pinky to her ear and twist it for a moment. She removed it and from behind I could tell it was headed to rest on her chin.

“You with the Duel Disk, get over here.”

I jerked up and looked around, there had to be someone else. But no. I was the only one. Now everyone paid attention to me. I walked up a small path formed by people and assault vehicles. When I got there, she had placed the deck square on the top of her head. The wind was weaving her bouillon tresses into a neat plait. She wore a breath vapor gray qi pao that conformed to her small frame, the skirt cut just above her kneecaps, except for this wing tail extension that concealed her left leg. It appeared text was written in black all over it. I approached her side.

“I’m going to commandeer this,” she said, grabbing for my arm. I shook free. I couldn’t believe this. “What are you doing,” I asked. “I’m going to commandeer this. I don’t think my whistle hurt enough to pierce ear drums.” “No, I got that,” I said. “But why?”

She stepped back and crossed her arms. Then placed them on her hips. There was a thimble on her right index finger. Some of the men picked me up as if about to detain me.

“No,” she said. “Let him go.” They did. Then she said, “Look, in order to defeat the menace, I need that.” I got sick of her misunderstanding me with her half-moon bang just a snip above the slender eyebrows. You don’t just come floating in a house of cards and just expect to defeat an alien menace. The men were beginning to let me down. 

“You just expect to defeat these bastards floating in a house of cards?” 

“Yes. Yes, exactly. You don’t think I could do it?”

“What just makes you so qualified?”

“Well, for starters, I’ll have you know I am the daughter of Argentina’s sacred wind, Meifang Siffonis. Secondly, I am the Yu-Gi– wait, hold the phone,” she said putting the backs of her wrists on her hips and getting into my face. “What makes you so qualified to even be here?”

A general chimed in with “Do you have any clearance?”

There was a longer silence then there needed to be. Days of idleness in Argentina. I stood in the crowd of the distraught Argentinan army. News cameras peeked over the heights and shot the proceeding. I could feel the looks of everyone, and in light of those, I felt like a fool. Landslides continued in the distance, wyrms continued to wreak havoc, people died and were still dying, and I felt like a fool. 

“When the armies of men go to war, they will not rely on themselves, but nature. Also, that’s not even what I meant,” said Meifeng smirking. “Look. We don’t have time. Give me the Duel Disk and you can interview me all you want. I have a plan, and you fit into it, just not in the way you wanted to. I know how you feel. Actually, I lied, no I don’t. As soon as I saw you and the Duel Disk at the airport coming through customs, I already knew what you were up to. I left without a second thought. But you can’t do it without me,” she said walking up and poking my arm.

I knew not what to say. I took the Disk off and gave it to her. She threw it off a bit to the side and let the wind fasten it to her arm as she pointed to one of the Generals, saying: “Alright, ready a vehicle and two of your men. I’ll show you the best path. The kid is coming with me.”

Then I realized that I was “the kid.” Later, we rode about five miles, and in the interim I got to know more about Meifeng. She was in fact half human, half meteorological phenomena. Meifeng was twenty human years old, but as the wind she was created and birthed with an innate wealth of collective unconscious knowledge exclusive only to the elder, sentient winds.  Aside from that, as a wind spirit her form was very young, at about ten aesthetic human years.

Her father, Ventarrón was said to be the strongest, and the fastest – which made him a wandering knight in human legend. Her mother was a human seamstress named Delia Siffonis. Meifeng knew that one of the reasons she and Ventarrón mated was of course love, but another was for protection. They knew the growing insurmountable problems of the human world were beginning to leak and bubble under the floorboard of the natural one and felt that creating a hybrid being with all of the strengths and none of the weaknesses would help bring harmony and protection to the changing world. Ventarrón used to tell of a time where he tried to protect Delia, but could not, for “he was just air…” At first the couple was outcast and heckled in breezy whispers everywhere they went – said race mixing was frowned upon and almost never practiced for varied and wary forms of reasoning that will not be divulged fully here. They weren’t all ridiculous, highly idiotic prejudices like the humans’ were. But even when her mother died of violent and tumultuous childbirth (one of the reasons) and her father went insane and literally took it all out on the world (another reason, for mad loves will do that to meteorology, as history tacitly explains). The elder winds managed to contain him, sap and redistribute his power and knowledge, most of it was implanted into the yearling Meifeng. 

But it wasn’t easy, her human frame (another reason) couldn’t handle all the atmospheric energies, and as a result her growth was stunted, her puberty would take longer to attain, and she had to train even harder to keep her developing power in check. She was born of the corner four winds, the most unpredictable. Myriad pressures led her to Yu-Gi-Oh, one of the only outlets she had. She became good at that, becoming South America’s number one player. If anyone was fit to play, it was her. When I asked her about her dress, she said that her mother made it as she gave birth “to prove that her being through love existed,” and to distract her from the rending pains.  And it always would, for Meifeng would take care of it meticulously (glass cases, cast mannequins, steaming, and cleaning) and only wear it on special occasion. She said that in lieu of said human influence on the environment and the weakening age of the elders, more responsibility was being placed on her to grow to her maximum potentate. When the elder winds convened, they originally thought they would combine and combat the wyrm menace, but Meifeng stepped in and lobbied for their trust in handling the situation. I had asked her if they knew she would use Yu-Gi-Oh. She said hell no. The military wanted to nuke all of Merida if worse came to worst, which is still steadily approaching. More of the dying wyrms were digging into the ground; more of the wyrms were still growing by the second, as if they were clones…

I told Meifeng that the Duel Disk wasn’t mine, and that she better take care of it. La hija del viento smiled and said she would – and that precise combination of words sparked a new plane of lucid so leucistic that all material given to vision blanked out completely except Meifeng. In this world of ours as void as blank paper, we were two lines vibrating in our invisible seats as if nothing faded away. She continued to shuffle her cards psychically, as if she was Matilda. 

As for me, I felt a certain immanence in the air of my being, a momentous succession where the blood sprites and exalts to the surface of the skin a new, but familiar feeling I felt the same time I made the flighty decision to try and complete my directive. Every fault in my skin flaked up like cigarette ash and peeled apart into a stream of essence no less me, but completely discontiguous. A blue thread shot through every flake, I felt as if I was being translated into some new state of energy, formless and far beyond, in all-consuming warmth and mirth personified, metaphysical eloquence, a pieta to my split spirit. 

I went along with the stream of the thread toward a cluster of blue organelles. A signal coursed through my body, I saw the clusters familiarity, they were weaving together…fusing into something larger, a structure of some sort, it was patchwork, and it looked like an expanding spherical scab of denim from up high. The blue thread chaining me began to spiral towards the patchwork neurology, and I had to make a choice then. Do I become a part of this? If it didn’t feel so right, so welcoming, it would have been easy…but I knew not what it was as we came closer, then I realized it began to feel hotter, sweltering even. It felt like a core. I had reached a point, perhaps the point. I felt pulled and pulled and pulled, and pulled and closer, sedated, too close to say know to the tugging, as the doldrums fumbled within my ventricles. I knew I was losing my identity, and it was beauteous, this erasure. But then a flake of my iris caught a sole of Meifeng’s foot, and I was reminded of what I was leaving behind: my duty. 

An influence that can only be equated to the polytouches of a lover’s hand turned my chin told me: “Your duty? Your role is to watch the game and cheerlead. You’re Tea Gardner,” and maybe it was right, so I floated, kept floating over. Then, the seventy-eight percent remaining white void of the sphere the wyrms were stitching over began to shift along a gradient, growing darker, on the onset of the inclusion of shadow, more oscure, more illuminating, and when it attained perfect absence I knew I was staring into the same hole, or a form of it, punctured through the floor of that avenida. Every flake began to disintegrate from the body blue thread and back at my seat I reconfigured into human form and function. About eighty-one percent complete, I turned my face incomplete to Meifeng, who was beginning to take my left hand and starting to talk in echoes: “I want you to hold onto this. It’s a Patagonian Thimble. It doesn’t have much magic left in it because of the passing of my mother and the degree of belief enervation that my father suffered from as a result – but – you’ve got soft hands – you can use it in case anything goes wrong. Just rub it, and tell of a micro form of what you desire. It was simple, stainless silver with woven ribs, and it sucked my being together faster as it slipped onto my index finger.

“On my mark, I’m going to go begin the duel, and you are going to go into the forest with these two men to investigate the source of the wyrms, because someone has to. I didn’t feel far from it I realized at eighty nine percent – and I realized that I had a role after all – that I had not a duty, but a desire…to take the thread…and weave the point closer and onward repairing a damaged seam in the side of the world, on the side of me….to express faith through action, and yes this was possible, and at ninety eight percent, I took my hands and yanked the thread that was barely visible through throat pixels into my command. It began to swing in a spiral towards me, all around and around my body in concentric close circles, and as I froze in position brightly wound – I knew that life was bondage and that only I could be the tie, tied, and tying: the thread, the dress, and the seamstress and with that sentiment I tried my will back into the visceral realm of normal life.

            When I opened my eyes, I saw Meifeng loading the deck slot of the Duel Disk. I erupted with “Wait, don’t you need this?” And Meifeng said “No, not really,” and I asked “Why?”

        Floating into the air with the shoulder sway of a roller skater, her toes pointed to the ground as if she was about to protract the world’s circumference she said that there was no need to realize what she had in mind with magic, to will the arena of the duelists, of anything into being is enchantment enough. A wyrm coiled its head a few yards from us. With this Meifeng said “Watch this,” and drew her hand of six.

       “The power of the Hopeless Blue-Eyes White Dragon Deck! Are you ready,” she screamed to the wyrm, which reared part of its extended neck back. “I always wanted to say that,” she said to me and the men.

       “I play Swords of Revealing Light!” The card pressed into the Duel Disk with a glaring shine. In a distant island cloud causing overcast, one after another, as if a fleet of gilded needles falling with the ferocity and rhythm less of rain drops, golden glaives in the form of swords began to hail into every wyrm on the field.

     “This won’t stop those that are still coming out after I played the spell,” she said beginning to lift off higher, but you’ve got thirty minutes or more if I get the other two copies of that card soon to search the range for the source!”

     “Can’t you change the field, maybe? So that it’s easier to see? ”

     “That’s a good idea in theory,” she said placing down two cards. “But if I use those, I throw the world’s genetic composition into turmoil by introducing an environment foreign to here. Plus, I don’t have any field cards in this anyway, hell, I don’t really need them: the mountain makes these dragons stronger! Debris and Exploder Dragon, go!”

       A humanoid dragon with a jagged silver and green anatomy with crude swords for finger tips converged from white light into realization. A more traditional conception of a dragon carrying a spiked mace bomb converged from light into realization.

      “Attack!” and with that each of them began to strike. Debris Dragon began to rend each impaled wyrm into pieces, resulting in a blue shower of their bodies that mingled with the snow nicely. Exploder Dragon began to hurl it’s mines onto clusters of proximal wyrms. They were making good progress. The M113’s radio told all units to enter defense mode and stay advised, for they were trying to construct a strategy that would help the monsters with suppressing fire. We were speeding along and Meifeng was floating above, trailing us less and less. I asked her about turns, already expecting the answer:

        “There are no turns to take in the real world. Never right, or left, no U turns. Always forward.”

         She leapt further into the powdered sky to retain oversight over what she summoned. I knew that she wasn’t playing with life points, but with life force, as the ancient Egyptians did. The rules of the game weren’t exactly the same here. We entered into a path of the Andes, littered by crumbs of destructions. The snow gave lacrimae rerum in liberal spades. We pressed on all of us, deeper into avenues, threaded roads of life, which was always said to be just a game anyway, to the source of the enemy.

Days of idleness in Argentina: fuga hacia adelante y mucho más allá.