

The Grandest of Games
Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and being alone won’t either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on Earth. You have to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up. And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes too near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself that you tasted as many as you could.
-Louise Erdrich, The Painted Drum
CHAPTER 2:
THE GRANDEST OF GAMES
Adrift in the Cosmos
The desert gave way to a lush jungle, and within it, an ancient temple. Beyond, only abyss. Like rudderless ships caught in the ocean of time, the current pulls us all towards uncharted waters. The only illumination within are torches on the walls, walls which the nature outside is slowly reclaiming, a testament to the void beyond these sacred yet disturbed walls. There is only one way to travel beyond this chamber, and inscribed upon this passage, a message: Will you be the horse, or will you be the rider?