Love thy neighbor as you love thyself even if that neighbor is mad

Thales had reached the hill once more but this time with a different approach.

"Beato… I undermined you, I'm sorry I disregarded your thoughts, your feelings and your existence despite you so easily accepting me"

"I called you a pixie without following through on its meaning I can see your magic, Beato"

"You hear those disembodied voices and see their spirits, right Beato?"

The Girl who painted a canvas of blood with esoteric, occult like markings and symbols revealed her madness were finely precise strokes of genius.

She turned around, looked at him with an empty eye and said.

"So you're finally awake again Little Dragon"

As light bloomed in her eye

"That is correct, this is a spiritual medium, I speak to the ghosts they provide cheat like cultivation, I did what you did disappear while being clearly visible surely that wasn't a problem?"

"Yeah it doesn't have to be deep I guess, it was quite simple and yet I was blind because I refused to believe that possibility doesn't bend to my will alone"

"I'm scared of what isn't, or more like the gray in between. I'll be better Beato"

"That's good enough for me Thales, I'll rejoin again when I'm ready"

"Ok sure, create the world within; impossible is possible because we make it so"

"Is that what you're saying?"

"I'm saying stand up and shoot like a star!"

"What a stark disposition from the existential melancholy I felt, I can breathe again and I can laugh again, I'll be fine, see you next time"

"Buh-Bye little dragon" With that she went concentrating onto whatever it was she was doing mad or genius it didn't matter anymore, it was her creative spirit and Thales could accept that, no matter how empirical he was or how rational he would be.

"Then it is time for me to start working too"

And start working he did.

"Edmund-Sensei I need some advice, I feel like my mind moves faster than my body and I have unlimited inspirations, but isn't this a betrayal to my father. He gave Beatrix a home and he gave my life, but we're killing him is this fine?"

"Well Young Thales I will aid you with such tremors too, but to explain the situation it is a bit like this"

"There was a father with two sons, the younger son, the son the father met last requested his birth right and he fought tooth and nail for it. The younger son had the property divided between them"

"Soon after he set off for a distant land, he uses his gifts to spill blood in creative ways, after he spent enough energy until he realized this matter and energy he squandered were alien to future opponents in the distant land, there was a hole in his mind and water spilled out and dried up. So he went to find work with his expenses or maybe that was what he should have been doing in the first place but got too immersed and lost his way, he was sent to the fields to feed pigs he longed to fill his belly with pigs, eat like they were eating. But he didn't even get the scraps they got, despite living the highest life spilling the blood of lambs easily. When he became lucid of the dream like prison he was in, he pondered my father's hired servants have plenty of food to spare and here I am famished."

"I will go back to my father and humble myself and say: Father, I have sinned against the heaven and you I am no longer worthy to be called your son make me like your hired servants"

"But while he made way his father saw him, filled with compassion for him and provided him a father's warmth"

"The son said to the father the line he practiced and prepared"

"But the father told the servants to provide his son with the most lavish clothes, a ring for his finger, sandals for his feet and fattened cattle to fill his stomach. Let's have a feast to celebrate for the son was senseless but now he makes way. So they celebrated."

"The other son heard the sounds as he approached the house, he was slaving away in the fields but heard music and saw dancing so he asked what was going on? The servants said your brother has returned, so your father clothed and fed him because his son is safe and life was not lost, once life is lost it can never be found."

"The Older boy was downtrodden and enraged, he rebelled against his father, so his father went out to plead his case, the older son argued he was the slave and his father was the master and he was humbled in that dynamic never once being prideful enough to rebel but for his troubles he never even got a young goat so he could celebrate with his friends but when the debaucheries son comes home a fattened cow is presented on a platter"

"The fathers argument was simple, I am you and you are me, everything I have you have, everything I don't have you don't have, but we had to celebrate and be glad because your brother who played with life and death, who was lost, found himself and now makes way"

Thales nodded, he thought deeply.

"So I know my universal duty and he knows his, we agree to mutual killing and even something as horrible as that can be forgiven, I'm allowed to be hypocritical and enlightened at the same time because I have experienced many sides of life and life is never black and white, it is shaped by circumstance and we should forgive circumstance in an impermanent world in a brutal world we should heal the bloodshed with love and forgiveness for all?"

"You have listened well young Thales, good luck in your endeavors."

Edmund bowed and went about his duties while Thales worked and then left to bring Beatrix some black tea and cookies, he routinely switched day in and day out for regular conversation, an authentic Thales not a false Thales. A Thales who could accept what he was in a life with an uncertain hand that was dealt.

Soon he turned 14 and there was only some months left until the game between him and Ghalib Miray, his father and the race against father time. He had grown taller.