Sages & Temples

   Tea was poured into four small glasses and the men drank it fast but in silence. After they had finished, they separated, each taking a different direction on the crossroads that passed just by the small hotel they had met. No one would ever know that those four men had been talking about very ancient things, about legends and about men that no longer existed. They were all sages, taking care of temples in different regions of the world. Each one of those temples was dedicated to a different element existing in the world. They used to be more temples but they had been destroyed in the past and only the four most important ones remained. People had forgotten all about that, but not the sages. They had taken care of their buildings in such a way that any person that passed by was impressed and had to come in.

 Even if they didn’t now the whole meaning of everything, they always knew that those places were very special. No one ever tried to move them or demolish the temples to build something else. Actually, no one even thought of building anything close to any of the temples. That aura that the woods and every other natural element gave to the place was part of the reason why people adored spending time there, even if they were not especially fond of praying. Families just spent the day there checking out the hidden features of the building, which had secret drawings and things all over the place. This pleased the sages because the legend said that the temples should always be filled with people or the gods would descend to make things right in the world.

 The four of them had met because they had all received a mysterious letter. There wasn’t a name on it, not a thing telling them who had written the mysterious words that revealed there was a lot more to their order that they even knew. There was some secrecy that had always surrounded their group but nothing like those letters, which spoke of a very old enemy preparing to come out into the world to bring chaos, which they had to confront whether they were ready or not. The letters seemed menacing at parts but they weren’t threats or warnings. They seemed to have been written by a especially mysterious friend, something they didn’t really appreciate as people in the dark tend to like it there.

 They read the letters various times, trying to look for differences between the four that they had received but that was not possible as they were exact copies, word by word. The paper seemed to have been made by the person that had written the letters, as it was very hard and rugged in several areas. The writing did weird curves and funny loops but it was obvious it didn’t have anything to do with the writing skills of the letter’s sender. The ink was pretty regular, so that did not say anything either. But the signature, however, had something they hadn’t seen in quite a while.

 The thing was, the letters didn’t have a traditional signature. Instead, there was a red seal at the bottom of each letter. According to those markings, the seals had been put on different times. Some were very well defined and others seemed to have been put in a rush. The seal was a symbol that monks had used over one thousand years in the past, when dark forces reigned all over the country and the lands of nature. The presence of that seal, made the sages think the person that had written the letters knew the past very well. No one really had access to those seals, unless they had kept them for generations. Some were in museums but none of them had been stolen. There was the possibility of all of this been a hoax but, somehow, it didn't seem like it at all.

 The group of four men stayed in that small hotel for an entire week. Not surprisingly, they were the only guests of the place. The owner, a big-breasted older woman, didn’t even talked to them, as she already knew what they needed and when they needed. Breakfast, lunch, diner and teas times were always exactly at the same hour and were always served at exactly the same time. She prepared their bed exactly at nine o’clock at night and left the windows opened because they all liked to hear nature as they slept. These details had all been given to her by letter sent from an assistant of one of the sages in order for her not to interrupt any of their meetings. She liked having them around anyway.

 Every meeting, they met in a small room by the veranda where the sun entered gently as well as the autumn breeze. It was often a very quiet room, even when they were all there. During long moments, the sages liked to keep silent and not say a word unless they thought it served to enhance their conversation and their deliberation about the letters. That’s, in part, why they stayed there for a whole weak. They had to go through every detail and each one of them had to give his opinion about every single matter that they proposed, every solution to the mystery. In spite of the modern world, these men had decided to live a life that wasn’t rushed and fast. They thought every single step they took in the world.

 All of them had gotten to be sages exactly because of that. They were patient men that loved to be close to the gods and nature. They knew how to communicate with themselves and the people surrounding them and had always this aura of peace around them that made people like them instantly. No one could be aggressive to any of them as they calmed fast and just heard their words and opinions about any old subject that the times put on the table. They were also very smart although they were no geniuses. They actually refused to be thought of as more than men or more special that most men. They always insisted they weren’t and that they were just men on a very special mission.

 Before they separated, they agreed that the letters were a pressing matter. The sages had always thought they were the only ones with any knowledge about the ancient world and now someone was presenting itself to them and telling them that he it was there. Every single one of them returned to their regions with the promise to keep investigating in order to clarify the matter as soon as possible. They even worked during their trip back, which was by road or train, and as they did some of them discovered interesting things. Two on the letters had traces of some type of dust, which happened to be rice dust, which was normally used in cosmetics. Another one of the letter had a stain of water in the back and, when properly checked, they discovered it was salt water.

They kept discovering things like that, small indications in a very big map, and they decided to reunite again some six months after their initial meeting. This time, however, they chose a small town by the sea. They stayed in another hotel with another owner that knew how to treat them, and there they reunited every single piece of the puzzle. They worked on it for days and days until one night they agreed they had found the person. They decided there was no time to waste so they would travel that same night. The trip was not very long as their destination was a bigger town by the sea, very well known for the fisheries.

 There, they did a little big of investigation until they decided to act. They arrived at a grand house in the middle of the night. They didn’t knock or anything like that, instead using their special abilities to walk over the rooftops and enter the mansion that way. The place seemed deserted but suddenly the lights were turned on and a woman, young and beautiful, stepped into the garden to greet them. The men stay there, very still, as if waiting to see their host’s next move. It was a wise things to do because a battle ensued, where she used knifes and a love sword to battle against them. The neighbors didn’t hear nay of the racket because of the trees and the structure of the building but the fight was though.

 Then, the woman simple stopped and revealed herself to be one of the other sages, of the temples that had been destroyed long ago. She had been hiding because her grandfather had been the former sage and he had no one else to leave the temple than to his granddaughter. She promised to do well and rebuilt the ruins he had left her and she had done so. She asked the sages to follow her and soon they found themselves to be in one of the biggest and most awe-inspiring temples they have ever stepped in. The dedication she had show, in fight and restoring the temple, won the respect of the sages who accepted her as the only sage in generations to be a woman and to live by the ocean.

Phoenix

   The bird, magnificent as it was, flew over everyone’s heads and, just before disappearing as it always did, it let out a horrible cry, as if he had been wounded fatally. The cry was heard by every single man and woman that had come to catch it and they felt their hearts skipped a beat as they heard it. Then, the bird disappeared in second, making everyone wonder how much stranger nature could get. All the scientists that had come to the jungle stayed some more days but after a couple of them, they noticed no other bird like that would appear out of nowhere. That one, apparently, had been the last one of its species and now it could be hiding anywhere or maybe even dead. The jungle emptied in no time and paradise went back to be one.

 One of the scientists that had gone to the expedition, a man called Hunter, did not go back home after being in the jungle but instead traveled to several zoos, laboratories and so on in order to investigate. He wanted to know if maybe there was one of those birds in captivity or if anyone at least knew more about it than him. But most people, when explained what he was looking for, thought he was crazy. The creature he described was fantastic, out of some story told from generation to generation and even is account sounded even stranger than the most creative story of them all. He traveled the world for another year but no one knew anything. He gave up and he intended to return home immediately, as there was nothing more to do for him.

 However, he never got home. In the flight over there, he started feeling strange, like there wasn’t enough air. He had gone to the lavatory and it was only when the flight had ended that a flight attendant found him there, asphyxiated in the toilet seat, with a large red feather on top of his head. People thought he might have committed suicide somehow, but the autopsy proved, weeks later, that he had choked because he couldn’t breath. The reasons for that were not known or the origin of the feather, but the tragedy made it to the news and several of his colleagues realized there was something they couldn’t just ignore: the red feather.

 There was a tribe in the region where they had all gone to catch the bird. They had warned the scientist not to enter the jungle as dangers beyond their understanding lived there and could very well be their end. But the scientists thought it was just a folk tale to keep everyone away from the jungle. The tale said that the phoenix lived deep in there, alone always alone and with possession of a great strength and will. The legend said the bird could not be capture or tamed but that it could be befriended in order to find a way out of the jungle, if the person that found it was lost. But if it wasn’t, the bird would put its course on them, a course that would end life in little time.

 Every single person that had been at the jungle the time the phoenix cried, remembered the legend when they saw the news about Hunter. Some of them were openly scared; others dismissed it as a coincidence. A long month passed until there was word of a second victim, this time one of the assistants. She had been found dead in her apartment, apparently also asphyxiated and with a feather on her head. Then, two more deaths followed and the rest of the scientists just knew there was at least some truth to the legend. Now, some thought there was someone killing al of them, blaming them for something that had happened back them. Maybe they had an outbreak of some sort of disease or they just didn’t like foreigners in their lands.

 One of the explorers decided to take the bull by the horns and go back to the jungle where it had all started. The tribe there wouldn’t talk to him because they said foreigners had disrespected their beliefs and advice, which had been given in the best interest of everyone involved. They didn’t want to know anything about all those people ever again and asked to be left alone for good. Overnight, the whole tribe moved and they were not found again until several years later. The explorer attempted to enter the jungle again, to see if there were any answers inside, but that would be a secret for that place to preserve, as the paths had changed and nothing was the same as the last time.

  People kept dying until there were only three people left from the expedition that had discovered the existence of the phoenix. One of them, doctor Stacy Holmes, published a very controversial article where she described the creature and its behavior, what she could see anyway as the encounter had only lasted for a couple of minutes, until the beard cried and disappeared. No one really believed what Holmes had written on her report and the money that she had been granted for investigation was pulled away from her, leaving her to beg for more money to continue her investigation. Stacy was obsessed with the bird, she had been obsessed before too and it was something that hadn’t gone away.

 She was found dead on her bed, at home, asphyxiated as the rest of her peers. The feather rested softly on her head and the place seemed, to the people that came for the body, as some type of mausoleum. It was incredibly peaceful and beautiful somehow. Someone took pictures and they were all over the Internet, talking more about the possibility of a serial killer than about the feather or the ambiance in the place when the men taking the body got there. The remaining two people died in the following weeks. One of them thought it could hide from the curse but it could follow anyone anywhere so they died anyway.

 Back in the jungle, the phoenix appeared again. It floated around freely and was now, again, free to be. Often it would fly over the houses of the tribe that lived nearby, but they wouldn’t see it. It was a lonely creature, so there was almost no way that anyone could find it in the immensity of the world. What people didn’t know was that the bird moved around the globe at will, change its home from a cave on a cliff in China, to a nice nest in a European forest. It even lived among humans, who were too distracted and busy to realize they were so close from something they couldn’t even understand. The phoenix was a creature born several millennia ago, as the planet started to breath life. It was a time of legends and miracles, but a time that no one could remember.

 It had to be said that the cry did kill of those people but not the phoenix itself. He just did what had to be done in order to preserve a little mystery in the world, something that was being lost rapidly to the advancements of technology. The phoenix, being a creature with the capacity to be reborn and to cure every single disease in existence, could be the holy grail of mankind. But the bird knew what humans did with whatever they found out to be of use. They were brutal and did not care about anything except their personal goals, their thirst for financial retribution and for a power that, in the long run, didn’t mean anything.

 The bird cured people, however, when they were lost somewhere in the world. Because it had something many humans had lost long ago, which was compassion. Humans didn’t have it anymore, only showing a shadow of it when they wanted to gain something from behaving like that. Humans, almost all of them, were not sincere anymore and could not be trusted. That had been proven when that large group of them had entered the jungle without the proper respect, without hearing what their own had told them. They were disrespectful and only cared about their personal glory. The phoenix felt everything at that time, it could feel their ambitions and thoughts and the decision to put the course on them was as simple as disappearing and never being seen again.

 True, some humans had seen it and he had not killed them. Those lost souls; men and women that only wanted to go back to their families and be in peace, they wanted nothing more than to be left alone by life and the phoenix respected that. That’s why he helped them with everything he could, ultimately carrying them to the outskirts of the jungle in order for them to be taken care of by the nearby tribe. The bird was compassionate and behaved only in the way survival was meant for it to behave. It didn’t hate anyone or had any remorse either, it was just a pure creation of nature, forgotten by the world and that’s the way it should be forever, until the big change arrived.