The world was still dark when I opened my eyes. I woke up with a groan, as my back was protesting against the firmness of the floor. I stretched, wincing as a few joints popped. Immediately, I checked my smartphone, it was half past four… I just slept for three hours.
I stood up and headed toward the bathroom to take a bath. As soon as I put my foot outside the no-shoe area, I saw Chis on the ground. Well… I ignored her for a moment and rushed to the bathroom.
The shock of cold water hitting my skin was the only thing capable of scrubbing the sleep from my body and the weirdness of the last few hours from my mind.
8 minutes were enough for me to take a bath.
I dried off quickly, dressed in my usual plain shirt and pants, and stepped out of the bathroom.
I walked toward the counter to clean and prepare for the day. While I was walking, again in front of the stairs, I could see Chis on the ground, lying…
However, I ignored it again…
I went behind the counter and flipped the switch on the espresso machine. As the machine groaned to life, I checked the inventory. I pulled out a fresh bag of beans and poured them into the hopper.
I put out the old milk or the used milk and grabbed a new carton from the inventory. Everything that I had used, I cleaned on the counter. I decided to make another coffee. My sister sometimes told me not to drink coffee frequently because of my consumption of coffee and gave me a rule: a three-to-four-hour break and one cup a day.
But who cares about that? There was a time that I drank three cups in a range of three hours.
As my coffee was done, I took a sip of it.
You know what? As my consumption of coffee is so much, I feel coffee is not waking me up anymore.
After I had done everything and prepared everything for the day. I just took a seat at the counter and played with my smartphone.
Last time, I thought about belief and view, as my opinion, belief is like students painting a chair in a circle. Every student has their own view of the chair, so they are entitled to their own righteousness; they will say their painting is the right one. Everyone is painting in harmony, but one student decided to challenge, and maybe use force to change the painting. That's a belief and view for humans. As like in this fantasy world too…
However, as I had met Arum and everything that tied into one thing, that was the only thing I knew in this world. It was about culture.
I checked the time; it was five o'clock.
Well then, let's talk about it…
Culture was the most amazing thing and the distinguishing thing between creatures. Each creature had its own culture. In this world, we could see the elf culture had distinct colours for their robes: gold for high priestesses and silver for priestesses. It wasn't just a fashion; it was shown as a hierarchy, a visual language. It may not be dictated by their Goddess, but it appeared from the elf itself, as they must have thought about how they wanted to represent themselves in front of her.
Then there were Dryads, with their strict vegan-but-reverse philosophy, believing they were guardians while arguably leeching off trees. What an irony, right? Was it like the real world?
…
So, they had their own culture, but they had a culture that I belonged to, right?
WRONG….
Aksara, Arum's staff, and the chanting from Varania and Lilith.
I checked my phone again, half past five…
So in this world, they used Aksara. So, it was theirs. Simple. It was like a hairstyle, fashion or maybe language. Sometimes, humans were blind, as they saw the same hairstyle or fashion with different meanings in different cultures. Immediately, they freaked out, not realising that they were just looking at a mirror of their own humanity, refracted through a different lens.
"Basically," I muttered, taking another sip of my coffee, "claiming a culture is like claiming the wind. You can use it to sail your ship, but you can't be angry when someone else fills their sails with it too."
This world was maybe a different lens for this culture.
This world was the one that made me embrace this culture again.
This was a beauty and a sadness about culture.
As I was before stranded, I really didn't care about Aksara. However, as I saw someone or others use Aksara, I wanted to know or learn it further. It made me realise I was a moron.
"Back home, I let the old books gather dust. Here, a Demon Lord uses Macapat to summon an ancient magic. If that isn't the universe laughing at me, I don't know what is."
I swirled the last dregs of coffee in my cup. It was cold.
There was a small book to learn about this culture, and this small book would tell everything about it. As a child, I bought it and never used it. It was called "Pepak" or "complete".
However, did I need to be angry with them because they used Aksara? They didn't know the meaning of it; they didn't know what it was; they just used it. Even Arum's staff were from the staff that belonged to this culture.
"They didn't steal it," I mused, tapping the counter. "They just… found it. Like finding a driftwood on a beach and using it to build a house. You can't blame them for not knowing it used to be part of a ship called Java."
Yet, there was a group that didn't understand or scratch everything.
Let's call these creatures hollow!
Hollow was basically a person of the void. They didn't have or understand a single thing about the culture they were surrounded by. However, they acted as a guardian of the culture. They would freak out if others used a culture from others. So basically, they would freak out on your behalf.
"It's a strange kind of arrogance," I muttered. "To claim guardianship over a treasure chest you've never even opened."
Basically, they didn't know the feeling I felt to see the elf and demon use Aksara. If these hollows were in here, they would lash out at Lilith and Aella for using Aksara. Lilith and Aella would just dumbly find the whole situation amusing. If I stood beside them and saw them lashing out at someone because of wearing or using the culture. I would slap or punch them.
YOU KNOW IT'S HARD TO FIND SOMEONE TO WEAR IT! EVEN IN JAVA ITSELF…
There is a time when the meaning of clothes becomes degrading. A thousand years ago, the clothes were for royalty, but in the modern world, these clothes are merely used for rugs.
So if someone or foreigners wear these without knowing the context, it will bring a new sense of pride to us, but not just pride, shame… If these foreigners are enjoying wearing it and are not ashamed, why is the local actually ashamed to wear it?
"Sometimes, it takes an outsider to polish the mirror so we can see ourselves clearly again," I mused.
The hollows would not know the feeling of this, as they were basically just hollows. They didn't have anything – no culture, no history, no identity to be proud of. What they could do was just lash out at people.
I checked my phone again; six o'clock. I looked at the stairs. Orla was still not going down.
As culture was like the wind, there were a lot of times when assimilation and acculturation happened. Acculturation was basically two cultures becoming one, but the original cultures still could be seen. Assimilation was two cultures creating one new culture, yet the original cultures disappeared in the new culture.
Macapat was a result of Acculturation. It came from two different cultures, two different beliefs, but they still had the original cultures. It took the concept of high literary poetry from Hindu history, but stripped away the Indian strictness to make it fit with Javanese culture and language. The original one was Kakawin; it followed strict rules of long and short vowels; however, the Javanese language didn't have that, so they made new rules to fit the tongue of Javanese.
It wasn't just that; Macapat was basically two beliefs blended in one. It blended well with the Hindu-Buddhist philosophy and with Islamic philosophy. It stopped trying to be Indian (strict rules), it refused to become fully Arabic, and it stood as a new culture while the original was still intact in it.
Imagine if the Hollows learnt about this and lived in that time; they would be furious and lash out…hahaha…
What about assimilation?
I would introduce you to the music genre, Dangdut.
If Macapat was a polite blending between two cultures, Dangdut was like a riot. It was the perfect example.
Dangdut didn't just stand side-by-side with the original cultures; they dissolved into each other to birth a completely new culture. You had the tabla drumbeats from India. You had the winding, sobbing vocal from the Middle East. You had the melodic roots of Malay orchestration. And then, you smashed it all together with the electric guitars of Western Rock.
If you looked at the cultures separately, it was a mess. But when did you cook it? It didn't sound Indian. It didn't sound Arab. It didn't sound Western. It sounded like… a new music. The original identities died so the new one could live.
"That is the power of assimilation," I mused.
Imagine the Hollows; what were they trying to do about it?
"Probably scream about 'cultural dilution' while aggressively dancing to it," I chuckled.
I checked my phone; it was half past six. I looked at the stairs, and a sound of footsteps was approaching. It was time for Orla to come down, well then…
My thought was done in here…