Life is a place of beasts and fears, shapeshifters and thieves, dungeons and shadows. It defies us with its puzzles, seeming to bind us to such rules and causalities as to make us believe in consistency and tangibility, only to weave its own circumstance with complete disregard for the same, at least to our eyes. It shows us wonders and glimpses of possibility and dares us to dream of the impossible, but then chains us to the likely and feasible with steel so cold as to burn and lead us to lonely despair. It is a dichotomy that seperates the optimists from the skeptics, and the tranquil from the faithless; the hopeful see the chains as benevolent guides not yet understood, while the cynical see the wonders as self-delusive coincidence. How perfect a balance it sometimes seems, and, just as its own reflection, it can be looked at with smiles of amazement or simply with frustration.

What can one say of Shenrakari, child of this place, who believes in his heart of hearts that there is a pattern to it all? Dream and Shadow, Chaos and Amber, all pieces of a one cosmos that one can understand, if not traverse, when one is ready. Somewhere, invisible masters and seers of the universe might call him a Seeker, a learner on his way. Others, beings with their hands well into the groundedness of things, would call him a fool, a asset wasted on his inability to simply deal with the reality around him.

Shen himself, like his father's ancestors were to the wind, is a listener, and so he hears both of these voices, and all in between. He has the gift of faith, and so at his core, beneath the layers of daily consciousness, he is certain of his greater world. He has also the gift of question, however, the eyes that let him check himself by others' view, and so he sees his foolishness, too, and so tries to build himself reliable things of earthly strength, as well.

Our child's end place is straddling the chasm between the mundane and the fantastic, one foot planted firmly in the muck of unforgiving banality, and the other set to climb upon the staircase of a great palace in the sky, the reflection of all that can be remembered and dreamed of from the sliver of the present in which we stand.

It is a precarious and trying place.

Shenrakari layed his tired body down upon the deck of the ship as it swayed gently beneath the stars. He fought to settle his stomach, part upset from his walk upon the Pattern of the Tir, and part upset from his body's confusion at the motion of the waves. More was he upset, however, at his failure to find anything even remotely connecting the Dream with the Tir as he'd hoped.

Now he'd seen visions of the elders both in Amber and the Tir: metaphorical echos of the great struggle that he could only guess had led to Patternfall, and the war, and the curse. Now the elders were scattered across shadow, sprawled amidst the concerns of making their bid for control of Amber and the challenge of living a life of some kind of meaning trapped away from home.

He and his cousins were their legacy, unwitting and even unfit, it occasionally seemed, to take their place of overseeing the whole of Shadow. Then again, they obviously failed to do a suitable job themselves.

What frustrated him even more was that despite all they'd seen and had at their disposal, they were still essentially clueless as to the overview of the situation. It seemed Zamorna was all but omniscient; it was as if his reach allowed him access to everything but Amber itself. His influence had reached them in shadow, via demons, raiders, and pirates, and his armies had marched not only through Shadow but into the Dream itself and seized the very ability to warp Amber around them.

Shen had long ago started to wonder how this all worked, and his failure in the Tir was another mark in the column supporting the idea that it simply didn't. If Zamorna could thrash his way about all of Dream and Shadow then why even bother with Amber? Was the universe in absense of the Pattern, which from lore Shen had to believe was the only true and single goal behind Chaos' history of moves against Amber, really such a prize amidst all the paths he already seemed to master? Shen wondered if it was more an issue of pride or even mere boredom at this point.

And here was he, sick to his gut on his way back to Amber, unsure of what he was even returning for. Fletcher's philosophy of just doing the best for whatever situations you run into serves well the pragmatist, but it offers little consolation to the holisticist trying to justify his moves. Every new detail that unfolded back in Amber just seemed to make things more complex, less understandable, and, in most cases, worse. Honestly he was tiring of it, and he was beginning to see the benefits to the traditionally human outlook of expedient thinking.

Actually, in his center, he was beginning to see the benefits of chaos.

How easy shapelessness and ever-changing inconsistency must be, he thought. Order is, after all, inconvenient in that it requires maintenance and planning. It is, by its nature, fragile in that it can become disordered. Even a span of stability amidst chaos is as random as anything else...

He was exhausted, and he could see it in his thinking. What else was there to do, really, but try to sleep, and put this all aside? He knew that in the morning, he'd have the strength to focus on the issues at hand. Part of him hated that, though. He resented the fact that the big questions always seemed to get pushed aside simply because the alternative, apathetic surrender, was so distasteful. It made most of everything he spent his time building seem like a mere distraction, like some sort of illusive entertainment designed to give a truly meaningless existence some kind of purpose.

There again shone the balance in which it all hung: life's delicate and intricate shroud, designed to allure with teasing images of meaning, but provide guarantees only of inconsequence. To the buyer is always left the decision of whether the object is worth the price.

Shen hunkered down against his queeziness and let himself fall to sleep, knowing that in the morning he would forget all of his questions, until, like the ever-worsening crashes of an approaching storm, they would rise again, and test the endurance of his weaving.