There was once a sea that grew pale, and more sunless still. It flows to the east. The east where a messenger once sailed, after it left its past, present and future.
No one must sail east, because past the edge of the sea - further east where the horizon itself ends is a place only for those without future, present, or past.
At the edge of this horizon, before the threshold floats a store only meant for those who flows east.
No one sails east.
'The store is open for you.'
The newborn consciousness dreamed of a pale, sickly green ocean that grew gold and shining as one sails to the east.
It dreamt that once, great trees of unnatural make sailed by this ocean. A tree eternal formed of ravenous spiders; it's great leaves clothed by webs, it's towering branches wriggling like hungry beasts.
A burning milky white flame burned atop the vast sails of an eastern imperial ship.
A golden apple fell far, far enough that it seems the stars itself has dropped it all the way into the pale sea. Inside, a serpent sleeps, coiling an entire city populated by sweetly dreaming men.
Giant metallic birds dived deep beneath the pale sea, swimming in its crushing depths as freely as they would fly the open sky.
East.
They all seem to keep on sailing east, past where the world itself ends. It sat there with the old man by the store at the edge of the horizon, of the world. Watching all these titanic vessels and beasts sail east, seeking where the pale see grow verdant green and gold.
This store is only open to those who sails east.
No one sails east.
But the store was open to me.
I picked up my coat, ready to depart after finishing the pleasant tea of purple hue. As I stepped out, the old man asked me.
'Old soul, where are you going, old soul?'
Once, I said...
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Little yang woke up from the dream.
It remembered that it had a long peaceful dream, snacking on sunflower seeds and drinking purple tea with the smoking old man by the pale sea's edge.
It wondered, 'does the ocean end?'
Little yang had obtained consciousness on location where there were truly no horizon's edge. The old garden is as vast as the roots of time and space itself, and it was only as confined as one's own dream.
There was a milky white sea of flames that he saw when he visited the oldest trees in the garden. This was the only 'sea' it was familiar with.
At one point, it knew the sea as it dreamt it was a droplet of water flowing from great streams into rivers... into the vast oceans. It knew that it wouldn't ever end its journey. Hence, it was confused that there was an end to 'east'.
'Where is east?' Little yang knew the word, he had heard it many times by now. It knew that east was a place. A location. Just like his rooting place was a location. Like the great vast green is a location. But he does not know where east is.
'Ah'.
Little yang gasped. It remembered that before it began dreaming again, the sky was sundered by a beautiful red light and the old man had sent him away back to its rooting place.
The little being looked at that place above, and it wondered if the crimson light would still be there. He realized that he only saw the familiar milky white flames.
Once, it had dreamt of being a water droplets raining from the heavens, and it realized that it was a cloud before it fell as a drop of rain. The little fella thought that that place above looks like a cloud.
It felt happy that it had understood what looking like a cloud ... is. At the same time, it wondered what it meant.
"Water is mutable, and therefore everywhere."
"?" Little yang only now realized that a 'man' wearing a straw hat was sitting by it's rooting place.
"It's great isn't it? It's the softest thing there is, yet no other is as effective in destroying what is hard.."
The man threw a weird curved stick with a string attached at the flowing water nearby.
"Here we see it as flowing water, sailing east."
He looked up.
"It vapors and heads to the heavens whence it came. Eventually, up there it becomes the lofty clouds, floating by uncaring of worldly strife."
The weird stick bobbed down and the man tugged. Out the water came a brown object, full of tears and holes.
"Huh. Well, not that fish should exist here, but I didn't expect old broken books flowing downstream like this.
Anyways..."
The man tossed the weird stick aside and approached Little Yang's currently nascent sprout, and wrapped it with a colored cloth he took out from his shirt pocket.
"....??..???"
"You would know about clouds, wouldn't you, little seedling?"