Shooshaku

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

Author: Tath

Date Published: Jun 27th 2025

The sun set hours ago, and we only finished cleaning the kitchen just now. Najim wiped the water from their hands, “Come on! If we hurry, we can still hear the last of her stories!”

I do the same and follow them through the doorway made of long sticks, and out from under the thatched roof, and into the cool night air. Small lanterns hang in the banyan trees, their yellow light much softer than the sun. It rained earlier today, and the dirt’s sticking to my feet. Usually during this time of the year, its all you can do to catch a bit of shade, let alone a storm cloud filled with fresh water. I think its cause Almikiv came to our ashram today. My teacher Avysa, said this is her first time back in over a century, and that she found ascendance in this forest about 200 years ago, and some even say it was longer ago then that! I’m only 9, and I’ve been here as long as I can remember, and I can’t imagine going 100 years without coming home.

Najim is a lot faster than me, and I can hear them call out, “Hurry up! Come-on Mukunda!”

It took me a minute, but I caught up with them, and we could see the fire that everyone was crowded around just up ahead. Najim turns mid stride, eyes wide, and they jump into the air and flail their arms around a little, and we both run to join the group.

“Just in time! Here -sit.” Avysa smiled, scooted over so I could sit down on the log, and whispered to me, “She just finished answering questions and is about to tell another one.”

We’re sitting in a semi circle in front of Almikiv, and she’s sitting cross legged on a pillow with their back to one of my favorite tree’s I call Chaya. Stubby branches covered in bushy leaves hang over her head. Long blonde/grey hair hangs by her waist, and the robes she’s wearing are the same color as red clay. My breath catches in my throat, and the feeling of something warm expanding in between my ribs scares me. I looked up to my teacher, and they smiled at me and nod. I can tell she knows what’s happening, and it must be safe, cause that’s how they usually look to me when I peek my eyes open when I get scared during meditation class. It’s like warm water’s running through the bones in my chest and down into my hips. My lungs finally start to work again, and it’s like- I’m breathing in honey? And the warmth goes up my back and down my front again around and around.

Almikiv shifts gently in her seat and blinks very slowly, “One more story, I think that will do.”

There’s freedom in her eyes; they’re like vanilla marbles filled with soft creamy moss.

From the bucket, she takes a ladle full of water, pours it into her left hand, and giggles.

“Ohhh Zen’uru—Hehe—how wonderful…”

I don’t look away, but I hear Yvasa’s voice, “She’s going to tell us the story she sees in the pool of water in her hand!”

And Alkmikiv began to speak.

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“You mean you weren't there? You musta been late to the party.” Curiously, Shooshaku [Shoo-Sha-Koo] sat kicking sand from a dune, talking to nobody. Just filling the dusty open space with laugher. “You see. Friend, Ohhhh, if you spend enough time, there's only more and more curiosities to behold.”

This wasn't the first story told by this messy jester. I once met a seagull who said of Shooshaku. “I asked him for a snack and the bastard had the audacity to fly me over far shores with promises of crunchy fluff potatoes like none I’d ever had. He walked me to the end of the world, and then we walked some more. Their stories were so intoxicating that once we arrived, I hadn’t even realized we’d walked out of eternity.”

This bird was quite a jokester himself. While reciting his story about stories, I found myself in thought, this seagull is going to drag me into Infinity as well, and I walked away having thunk I'd got the gist. I hunted and looked and checked all the old places nobody liked to stay anymore, and I finally found them, and they didn't even know I was watching. But nothing could have prepared me to witness The Shooshaku fondling the universe.

Shooshaku continued. “The dancing masses of warm starlit skies. It's all a picnic on a sunny Saturday. I was sort of stalled, you know? There's only so many eons you can float. Just waiting for something new? Something else! I drifted from one end of the sky to the other and still hadn't seen it yet.”

Older than old is Shooshaku in terms of your years. The Primordia’s from before had both welcomed and said fond farewells to this psychotropic daymare. Those from before the before are different, you see. Those who've crawled across the Sahara naked don't spend much time in tanning salons. But a sunny daze is like a long rabbit hole, too far to fall. Too free to fly home. After all, once you lose your zip code, there's not much left as far as a home address goes.

“It got quiet slowly. The sounds sung last songs long ago. And lights blinked into blackness, you see, or maybe you don't......” Shooshaku snickered like a kid playing with a pile of blocks. “I could leave whenever I want, but that crusty old fuck gave me some luck, which might, and could be, considered my greatest misfortune of all. I'm looking for the new thing, the digs, some cool new threads, something that'll blow my mind's eye lids. It was so very quiet, you see. Eventually, and curiously, I thought it was all blinking out, smaller and smaller yet till it all seemed like all that was left were the shining lights underneath. But suddenly a shimmer, and my goose felt like it was about to be cooked. I saw it waver, a wiggle, a little wax and wane in the candlelight. So, I slowed it right down. I jumped on a curvy line and got to watching. Have you ever seen the birth of life? The astral seas rise up from the havens. They blow up like a balloon, and with a bang they popped it. The lights, the wave rose and fell and climbed again. And it hasn't stopped. Watching my brethren build, be born, and descend back into the inside. So, I've been riding these waves ever since, and now you're a part of that wave as well.” Shooshaku stopped and snapped its head towards me.

How could he perceive me??? I’d used all my tools and all my tirelessly sought after techniques. I was quiet.

“OH. No. I can hear you loud and clear.”

I sunk back, turned around, and followed the straight and narrow lines. I thought to myself. If I escaped past the hounds up high. There's no way I can be followed. There! A sparkle on the left! And I burst through the effervescence.

“!” Shooshaku was there, and in my face, giggling in a way one might deem cosmical.

“Alllllllllllllll I want. Is to hear a story!”

Such a curious request, especially since none of the happenings right now make any sense.

“Nothing makes sense. Little 1. You will now do two things. First, what’s your name?” Shooshaku wept the words, animated like a leaf in the wind, as if meeting someone dear returning from a long trip.

“You can call me Zen’Uru,” I was taking in our surroundings whilst keeping the jester in the corner of my eye.

Their curious grin crawled across their face, and suddenly, they were in my ear. I never even saw the movement.

They whispered, “Last I remember, I'm the watcher.” The words fell from there lips, so cold that a chill ran to the quick of my issness.

My being shivered, and I recognized where we were. The Halls of Effervescing Joy, where I once called home. Awareness of the reality currently unfolding dawned on me. The meeting of two cosmisities beyond that of normal recognition wouldn't be an odd occurrence in these halls. Except for the fact that two beings of eternity, the so-called children before light, held form in a room not well equipped for this level of cosmonomical potential. The essence of the halls began to fall away pixel by pixel, first at the edges, and the space around us began to become undone. A chorus sounded from the keepers of the hall. This is the first time I’d been amongst truly young beings since I stepped off the ladder.

I heard the call of the little beings below, and Shooshaku swirled, giggled, and blinked in what some might call an act of grace. With there own potential, Shooshaku stabilized the physical density of the halls. Though, time started to fall away, and all those but the Lords of the Hall left before their grip was lost.

“Give it to me however you want, friend”.

“Alright, I'll regale you. Try this one on for size.” The balance of the space shifted and troves of emissaries and pilgrims who could see, filled the halls. “In a small forest ashram, two friends are washing the dishes from the evenings festivities…….”

As the story was told, the halls filled further. This became an event of astral significance, such that all envoys sent as witnesses were able to perceive the two eternal ones in a clarity that spoke directly to their own hearts. No two groups were ever able to produce a congruent recitation of what was said. Even now, the implications of that meeting ring through the universe. And Shooshaku laughs, giggling a cosmic giggle, drinking of the liquid isness that flows in the veins of infinity.