MaZ Teaf

Its all alittle bit confusing right? Unfortunately, it doesn’t really get any clearer from here. Without getting into the specifics of different Guardians, we are concerned with understanding the fundamental truths behind them. But short of measurable parameters, firsthand testimony is about as good as it gets. And in more cases then one, the information we have cannot be gathered first hand. Some due to scarcity in occurrence, others due to the lack of survivors. And stories are told exclusively from the realm of survivors. I mean, dead men tell no tales right? Then, at best, a story is more like a witness statement. And the dominant cultural narrative is like the ecosystem it lives in. So, in as much as a story is a vehicle to transmit some degree of firsthand information, we the information consumers must strain the wheat from the chaff. What if a bad actor wanted to spin some outcome advantageously for their own benefit? Or perhaps the cultural proclivities bias the events in one way or the other. Thus, stories by themselves don't usually transmit the essence of truth. For any curious explorer, your own direct experience is probably the closest way to sus out whatever truth, if any, the given words might contain. Here, for you consideration, let me paint you a picture of MaZ Teaf.

….

It's a starry night. You're on the hillside, sitting in the grass below a tree, overlooking a town, tending to your sheep. The evening's calm, as it normally is in this part of the world. The wind picks up a bit and you pull your scratchy dry cloak tigher around you. The fire is dying, but you underestimated how much wood youd need to have a warm fire, and now you'll probably not have enough to last the night. Birds are chatting above you, you scoot closer towards the embers, and the warmth brings a small curl to the side of your lips. The sheep are quiet, and you haven't seen any sign of predators at all the last few days. In fact, it’s really quiet a nice evening.

You wrap your hood over your head, and heavy eyes start negotiating. “The sheep have bells on their necks, they’ll wake me up if anything happens, which it won't. Tomorrow's the big day. We're going to go see Fuzia. She's so lovely, and it's best to get a good night's sleep when you have such important business to attend to. Asking for her hand in marriage could mean this is one of the last times you're sleeping in a field tending your sheep.” Before you know it, the soft fire and the whispers in the wind are joined by the soft snore of a sleepy shepherd snoozing happily on a hillside.

You wake up laying on your side, embers crackling, “Ohh the fire must almost be out.”

Struggling to peel your eyes open, expecting to have slipped off only for a moment or two, you pull the hood from your head and push yourself up onto one very cold, stiff arm. In front of you is a pile of black and grey ash, your fire has indeed gone out, but the sound of crackling wood still whispers on the wind. You slowly wipe the dirt from your hand and rub the sleep from your eyes. Looking up, the valley seems to be glowing a slight orange, not from the morning sun. But from the town itself.

Duh-Dum

Your heart pounds in your chest, and the rough smoky air catches in your throat.

Again.

Duh-Dum. Duh-dum. Duh-dum

You can just barely make out panicked voices breaking through heavy heart beats in your ears. Tired eyes don't seem to translate what they are seeing.

“The town’s on fire? Why’s the town on fire?”

Time begins to speed up. Your heart pounds harder. Your breath quickens, and your mind begins to race.

What about Fuzia, the Baker's daughter? What about my future or, the- the kebab man in the market, or the fisherman who-who- who exchanged smoked fish for the wool or- or, or...

The wind carries screams, now louder and painted in panic. Exploding to your feet, you abandon your flock to attend to the safety of tomorrow's potential. The grassy hill was slippery and steals your feet out from under you. Over, and, over again you slip landing hard on your hip, back, and tailbone. Adrenaline pushes you back to your feet, each time quicker than the last.

It doesn't matter if you slip. Slip forward. Don't stop moving. Just don't stop. Don't stop. You can't stop.

Bursting through the trees gives way to a path of gravel and shale, each step marked by a distinct crunch.

You're going to make it. The town's burning, but you'll make it. But why is it burning?

Each thought jumping to the next like a flickering candle perched precariously near the window on a breezy evening.

~

Meanwhile, at the center of the inferno, stooped atop a large stone wall, lit by thatched straw roofs of burning stables , was a 9-foot tall, whitish/blue, wire wrapped muscled, creature that no one would fault you for saying looked like a demon. Where a man would have eyes, instead, black voids filled with effervescent, dark purple miasma gawked upwards at the orange and red smoke-filled sky. A large gaping jaw filled with gnarled, poorly arranged teeth, hung open wide. Veins in its neck strained, and it trembled. Not in anger, or malice, or aggression. MaZ Teaf shook in pure, unadulterated, bliss. Its shoulders were broad, a whitish color that turned a dark blue the further down its body went, crouched, with its arms out, and face to the sky, as if basking in the spring rain on a lovely April morning. Two wretched black wings, topped with a single sharp broken barb at their apex, stretched up and out, shaking while it laughed. Not a human laugh per se, or anything that could really be mistaken as a laugh, but a deep, sharp crackling noise, like burning wood screaming, begging to be extinguished.

“It's so beautiful!!
So juicy!!
It’s…….it’sssss-SoOO sumptious!!!
I want more.
I NEED more!
Faster! More! More, more, MORE!!!
It's all so delicious.
The music, the joy.
It's too much, and not enough.
I need more, but it feels so good now.
My body is ready, and I can't dance without them.
We're equal sides of this gestalt. It's exquisite, aMaZing. It's my best work yet!!
I need to make it last longer, but it's not fast enough.
We can make it better. We-we can find the small spaces and make them bigger!!!!!
Weave a web, an ornament that they can hang from their hearts, a crown jewel from which they won't ever desire to depart!!”

MaZ’s claw-like fingers reached out into the frightened world, relishing the art being painted in time. It agonized between bathing in the current fantasia or, continuing to paint even brighter, more dynamic pictures. Their fingers scrawled down there face, overcome with the exquisite, ecstatic, agony. The burning stable moaned and squealed, collapsing slowly with three horses and 2 donkeys still within. But before the breaking bows of wood could bring their journey to an end, the sound beckoned the Angel of Death into action. In all but a flash, MaZ had moved from the top of the wall to just below the falling roof. Standing beside a horse, its black claws cradled around its soft face, like a lost lover, newly returned from a long voyage at sea.

To describe the unique experience of Teaf disassembly, the word pain wouldn't necessarily be correct since it takes a matter of microseconds for those nerve signals to even reach the brain. But the conscious experience of being unraveled bit by bit, cell by cell, in a fraction, of a fraction, of a fraction, of a second. That isn’t something that can be put into definite words. Especially not when speaking to time bound entities. When witnessing something horrifying happen in front of you, it can feel like time slows down. And in this case, maybe time is slowing. There isn’t any system in the human body that is able to react in time with these craftworks. Thusly, as both spectator and subject, how do you think one would be privy to the experience that MaZ so sincerely revere’s as the penultimate expression.

Time is a moldable surface to MaZ. Like clay, it’s stretchable, stainable, compressible, and rearrangeable. To any present onlookers, the animal would have simply looked to have sublimated into a cloud of perfectly homogenous organic droplets. But for the consciousness, hostage to this experience, in this case the horse or the donkeys. They'd watch as the skin peeled away, separating into its varying layers and consequently into chains of keratinocytes, and each muscle, blood vessel, tendon and bone teased apart from one another and consequently themselves, all at the behest of MaZ Teaf. Each dendrite, still pulsing with information. Each nerve, alive, in the unbroken, but separated corporeal form. The delicate care and knowledge of each rhythm in the victim’s body, the attention, and will power necessary to create these displays. There wouldn’t be an equivalent in the material world to feeling so cared for and truly known, in this peculiar way. One might say MaZ Teaf truly groks each subject of their gory art in a unique fullness unavailable to the rest of us. All 5 beings in that stable were gifted the same fate, and the 9 feet of blue white guardian spread its wings, launching beautiful sparks above its godly art.

~

You've been running down the path, your lungs sting and the metallic consequences of dehydration ring in your throat. One breath after the other. You round a corner, slipping down a small but steep turn. Catching your foot and folding over your ankle, you fall exhausted into the brush by the road below the trees. From your vantage point, you cant make out the blurry figures beyond the stone arch leading into the village. Catching your breath you have a chance to focus. Its a small group of five or six people, running towards you, screaming and clamoring to escape, and you try to scramble to your feet.

There's still people alive. I can still save her.

Urgency kicks in and you go to push yourself up, but your hand slips, landing you face first into the damp road. You're still disoriented from the shock of what's happening in front of you. And then it appears behind them, arms outstretched, head turned to the sky, gently landing on the ground with one foot and then vanishing.

What the fuck was that?!? What?? Its coming!! HURRY!

You want to scream, to reach out with your voice and warn them. But it's too late. And there's no air left in your lungs anyways. In an earie silent splash, it appeared behind the two furthest in the back. Two massive hands cradled the backs of both their heads into MaZ Teafs Tightly wound chest pushing its gawking face to the moon, basking in the moment before the first brush stroke stains the canvas. The monster vanished. In the place of both people hung two fine red clouds of mist, suspended in the air like clean linens hung to dry on a sunny day. Soundlessly, it appeared beside one on the right, holding the person, pulling them into its bare chest, and then again the being vanished, and where the human just stood, was the red mist, delicately contrasting the white buildings trimmed with flames behind them. The images before you are beyond your comprehension and the evolutionary drive for survival kicks in.

But what about Fuzia, her father and mother?

Fear grips your heart. Your chest feels like it's going to explode.

I’ll try and save Fuzia, but the baker and his wife, they would have to come second.

pop-pop

pop

The last three were evaporated in a quick flash starting on the left and cascading ahead to the one leading the pack.

Pop-pop pop

Together, all 6 red clouds of what used to be humans fell to the ground as one, accompanied by the sounds of their bodies being disassembled echoing in your ears. Your hands grip into the earth, your whole body feels numb. Stomach in your throat. The hair on the back of your neck stands erect and at attention.

Am I next? What about tomorrow?? It doesn't matter.

All the stories evaporate and one-word forms and repeats in your mind's eye.

Quiet, quiet, quiet, quiet, quiet……

It stood, arms outstretched, wings reaching into the sky, and it trembled. Its whole body quaked, and a sound erupted from its shadowed maw. Somewhere between a roar, laughter, and just a scream, kind of like hissing gas, breaking glass, and gurgling magma all at once. Suddenly, even that last word left in your head was gone. There's no way to know how long it lasted. A minute? A year? It didn't matter. Your eyes were peeled open, unblinking, fixed upon a physical impossibility. And then it was gone. Your eyes slamming shut as if to pretend this was all a dream.

…..

In the wake of such extreme, unknowable, unimaginable events. What would you do next? Run? Would you march into the burning village to find the person who 20 minutes ago was going to be your tomorrow? Or would you turn around, grateful that there's the possibility of any tomorrow at all? It doesn't really matter either way. Whatever story you're left with has been steeped in fear and shock and must make it through the myriad layers of trauma before it ever reaches the ears that could bear witness to your subjective experience. Therein lies the predicament of understanding the relative function of MaZ Teaf within a universal context. If a fungus breaks down something that's been killed in the forest. Is it a villain for dismembering the complex once self-integrating system? If a star explodes and wipes away a system of planets and all their inhabitants, is the spirit in residence at fault? In the context of the actions of MaZ Teaf, one thing we do know, is that there isn't a single blip of animosity or self-aggrandization in its actions. No vitriol or animosity, not even a smidge of prejudice towards any specific victim. But without a doubt, the horror of experiencing those actions firsthand is outside of the realm of understandability, and inevitably leaves a mark on their respective soul.

So. We ask you. What is the truth of MaZ Teaf?

This story (including this statement) has been translated and interpreted from its original language into your local dialect and syntax.
Please note, despite our best efforts some words may not be Translated Acurately, or at all due to the dissimilarities between alien cultures, customs, and complexities

Universally, there's a phenomenon where certain beings exist as functions. For lack of a better translation, we will refer to them as Guardians. We can see them step into our worlds, and sometimes see them step back out in a similar way. So you might ask, where are these doors they’re using? Or what's on the other side of them? We aren't entirely sure of that. What we do know about them, is a lot less then what we don’t. Notoriously tight lipped about the nature of themselves, many of them do walk among the worlds of integrated consciousness. Some even work towards the ends of integrating the vast fields of unintegrated being, affording further participants a roll in the unfolding material drama. But in general, they do not share any more then is required to perform their distinct functions.