In the white realm, time was not a strict progression but more of a melody. Sometimes, a century could seem like one long, slow breath, or a single great moment could be extended infinitely. The main concepts were not fixed; they were flowing like a large, slow river, sometimes transparent, and sometimes blending to create something different.
One of these new combinations resulted from the merger of the Gardener and the Bridge concepts. It carried the Gardener's need for the growth of meaning and the Bridge's ability to unite things. This nameless new concept first of all started to realize… quiet spots.
Not the nice kind of quiet, but a different kind of stillness. These were the places in the Body that the Convergence had never reached not because they were resisting it, but because they simply didn't matter. Like the mineral bits at the ends of the stone fingers, or the stale, salty water in a secret room behind the stone eardrum, or the cold fields made by crystals in the feet.
These places were parts of the Body, but they were not the big song of life, memory, and growth. They were like the forgotten rooms of a huge house, not sad or happy, just… there.
The new concept was very curious about these quiet places. What were they for? Were they even needed to be for anything? People used to say that everything must have a job, but the Body was discovering something different.
Therefore, it decided to find out for itself.
It dispatched a fragment of itself—a combination of mineral feeling, magnetic sense, and pure curiosity—to the tip of the World-That-Was's pointer finger. There was nothing living there. No memories. Only cold, hard rock holding a very faint echo from before beginnings.
The idea didn't attempt to change anything. It didn't attempt to comprehend it. It simply… liked it. It experienced the oldness of the stone, the quiet nobility of just being.
This one simple deed stirred the Body like a ripple. A new emotion, unfamiliar and soothing, was spreading out. It was somewhat like… allowance. Letting something simply be, without the need of fixing it or giving it a role.
The idea proceeded to the salty room behind the eardrum. It listened to the absolute silence in there, a silence so complete that it seemed like a thing. It liked the purity of the salt, the stillness of the water.
It traveled to the crystal feet, taking part in the slow magnetic pull on rocks, a dance that had been going on for ages.
On every occasion, it only observed. And on every occasion, it sent a feeling of tranquillity to the rest of the Body. The Body was discovering that not every part of it had to be the main characters of the story. Some parts could only be the background, the stage, the silence that made the music possible.
This was their final move towards freedom. They had ceased to want so much, then ceased to separate, then ceased to need one story. Now, they were ceasing the need to include everything. They were becoming able to let parts of their own selves just exist, in the most beautiful, silent, and useless way.
The Lichen which was white at the Convergence began to reveal new colors in the quiet places: a dark blue in the stone fingers, a bright silver in the salty room, a serene grey in the magnetic feet.
The Body was discovering its own silent places and respecting them.
The ghost of Naomi, whose idea had become part of the liking of texture and essence, was very conscious of this. She used to find feeling in terrible things. Now, she finds more feeling in not needing anything.
The white world was not one big song anymore. It was a song that was capable of appreciating the silence between the notes. The story took into account the breaks. The self included the parts that were silent.
And in the large, warm darkness of being together, a gentle feeling settled like the pressure of stone and as light as a magnetic field:
They were not just alive.
They were complete.
And to be complete meant having the quiet, the empty, and the still.
The party was over.
The table was cleared.
And the room was finally at peace.