Viritrilbia
Ransom stepped out of the casket. He always felt a little more alive after each journey in and out of the large wooden box. He thought of his first voyage in such a craft. He’d followed the eldil’s call to journey to Venus, that is Perelandra in the common tongue of the universe, and he’d traveled back to Earth, that is Thulcandra, the same way. As Random’s eyes adjusted to the extreme brightness, he guessed about what he would see. Would these people be the likeness of whales and ghosts and moles like the citizens of Malacandra? Or would they be perfect humans, clothed only in innocence, like the citizens of Perelandra? Would they speak the language of the eldils and citizens of Perelandra and Malacandra? Or might they speak Earth languages? In as much time as Ransom’s pupils shrunk to pin holes, he pondered his present surroundings.
Once adjusted, Ransom shivered in the heat. The land around him seemed as ice, but it could not be, for Viritrilbia was known on Earth as Mercury, and the heat which engulfed him could not at all explain this phenomenon. He was on ice but he saw mountains–or were they glaciers?—floating across the horizon. He tried not to skate. His body was still not adapted to either the ice or the extreme heat. Ice skating seemed to him a happy activity, and he did not feel happy here. The eldils had called him to this place for some purpose. He hardly could remember a time when eldils were invisible, and he was a content resident of Thulcandra. Yet, here he was again, on another planet, but this planet was even more unusual than his other visits. This planet lacked the civilizations of Malacandra and Earth, and even the beautiful innocence of Perelandra seemed to be a dawn compared to the blankness of Viritrilbia. Ah, and that was key.
Ransom brushed his hand across the radiating ice. It seemed as if the sun was trapped beneath the icy surface instead of being a reflection light years away. Energy itself pressed against Ransom’s finger tips. This planet, it seemed, had yet to be even innocent. Viritrilbia was blank. A void. The mountain glaciers he thought he’d seen, perhaps they were merely vibrations of the mass of energy contained beneath the ice.
A flicker. To Ransom, that glimmer or wave of sunlight had been just a phantom-ray lighting upon his iris, but a seasoned traveler of other worlds should have recognized the one thing that remains constant. He shifted his mind to see without his irises. Such a sense cannot be adequately explained with our Earth tongue, but the King of Viritrilbia later named the sense tiliadil for he greatly desired to give Ransom an expression for the phenomenon. When Ransom now realized that he saw through tiliadil he saw what even his experienced senses could not comprehend. The ghostly horrors of Malacandra and the perfect innocence of the Perelandran queen’s naked body were comprehendible at least, but this sight—this thing that he perceived via tiliadil—this even Ransom could not fathom.
Ransom awakened to the gentle rocking of Melendel the Unseen. To any other human, Ransom would have awoken to the same sight he’d perceived upon landing on Viritrilbia. The icy landscape did not shift; it just continued to wave and shimmer. No one spoke, for there was no one to speak. No breeze blew, for the breeze of Earth’s creation had taken another shape.
On Earth there is a book that tells the story of Melendel and Melendel the Young and Melendel the Unseen. In the book, all are only He. There is no “they” for that would be inaccurate. This, like many things of the heavens, is unexplainable in the tongues of Earth, but in the heavens it is called—first by the High Prince of Perelandra— thulelentri. In the book on Earth, the story of Earth begins with a great void, and a spirit hovering over the waters. Here in Viritrilbia, that glimmer of ice—the ice itself—is thulenentri and more specifically, Melendel the Unseen.
What Ransom was seeing, he slowly realized was a new planet—a planet void of civilizations and void of innocence. The King and Queen of Perelandra had shown Ransom that innocence was a thing to be earned. He’d seen the Perelandran queen grow older through testing and remain faithful to a task which made no sense. For a short life-time she lived her life by awkwardly exiting the fixed land by nightfall and for that singular act of obedience she gained a kingdom. Viritrilbia had yet to produce a queen. It has yet to earn a morality of innocence. As of now, it had no value. Viritrilbia was potential and thulenentri alone.
Once Ransom realized he stood on the inconceivable combination of void and deity, his senses escaped him. Sight, smell, touch, taste, hearing all climbed back into his traveling casket. Tiladil alone remained. He knew the void. He knew the deity, and knowing the later, he saw, smelled, touched, tasted, and heard all that was unseen, unsmelled, untouched, tasteless, soundless. The entire history of Viritrilbia was known by him before the planet fully existed. All the potential continued by thulenentri seemed to be completed to Ransom. He knew the King and Queen and the Omking and Omqueen. The first and the last. He knew the Enemy and the temptation and the outcome. He saw the architecture—doors in glaciers and windows with streams housed royalty, which were the only inhabitants. The air smelled of snow and rain and chlorine. There were no seasons, only summer. The iciness of Melendel the Unseen quaked to form glaciers and slivers of ice suspended in the dry-hot air. None of this had come to being, but to Ransom all this existed in the void and deity.
The deity. Ransom leapt off the icy expanse that was Melendel the Unseen. He wished he could hover but gravity prevailed and he fell again onto the embodied thulenentri. Never before had Ransom encountered thulenentri directly, and now he encountered Him in what seemed like a most irreverent manner. He stood superior to the deity. Any other man would find this less horrible, but Ransom fell back into his casket, which seemed to anticipate the fall.
As Ransom slept within the confines of his dark coffin, thulenentri made what was once the unseen, unsmelled, untouched, tasteless, and soundless. Glaciers sprouted snow-like flowers. White and yellow and blue stems bloomed into flakes of petals. Snow rolled down from the glacier caps, and once it hit the icy dirt, kept rolling. Such a thing would have been curious to Ransom, had he seen it. These snowballs continued to roll then stop to feed on blue stems before rolling more. A great tree sprouted just beside Ransom’s coffin. Melendel the Young had noticed Ransom’s sweating forehead and unconscious tears, and for Ransom’s benefit alone created a great yellow stalk which sprouted a red canopy with wiry branches and yellow tear-drop leaves. This would be the lone shade tree on Viritrilbia, which the Young King would name Tri Thulsom meaning, “the tears of Earth’s son.”
Now Viritrilbia danced with living snowballs and sprouting snowflakes. Huge bunny rabbits with yellow fur and blue noses skated across the ice. One day, Viritrilbia’s inhabitants would climb and saddle these creatures who served the same purpose as Thulcandra’s horses. Miniature polar bears stood and waddled like penguins. These were the keepers of the icy waters. The snowballs kept clean the glaciers and the rabbits grazed upon the lower lands. For three days Melendel the Unseen guarded the land while Melendel the Young formed the inventions of Melendel.
On the third day, unbeknownst to the sleeping Thulsom, Melendel set his mind fashion the master race of Viritrilbia. He gathered for himself white powder, the pollen of the blue-flaked flowers, and pressed it into a perfectly round circle. Then, with a gasp from the rolling snowballs, Melendel the Young plucked a hair from atop the head of the sleeping Ransom. This thing had never been done before. Melendel worked from nothing, but here he would do the undone. The archangel of Viritrilbia was born that day, when Melendel kneaded the dust of one earth with the hair of another earth. As Ransom slept, a new hierarchy began her reign. Here there would be no ruling king and queen. As Thulcandra’s countries have monarchs, so would Viritrilbia.
With a flick of his hand, Melendel the Young tossed the snowball and hair into the air, and from that poof of powder and DNA, a creature emerged. Great green wings brushed the air. Red hair billowed from a pale green face. A creature of old, for Ransom was now breathing his last breathe, reigned over the newest of Melendel’s worlds. In this act, Melendel offered the innocent of Thulcandra’s old world a new haven. Guarded by a familiar form sent into flight, the inhabitants of Thulcandra finally had a resting place of earned innocence and shivering glory. For, of all Melendel’s worlds, he loved Thulcandra the best. It was for Thulcandra that he sent Melendel the Young as a native, and it is for Thulcandra that Melendel’s most faithful warriors finally have a memorial to their fight.
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