Tales of Cis Chapter 7 : The Superior Structure

If a magical ray of light
Were to reflect every bit of my soul
Into a single building

How would I look like ?

I was always both, thrilled and perplexed, by the idea of getting a 'high score' in life. After all, people want to prove their existence to others by showing what they are made of. Wealth becomes a prerequisite and praises become necessity. Wandering for an answer, I accidentally arrive at what might be, the appropriate destination.

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"Good day adventurer !"

Days had passed since I left Ingenio and advanced on my journey. I was on the verge of stopping a nearby town named Satisve when my path converged to that of two men. One of them was tall and slender, while the other one was a bit.. how do I say this, podgy ? Well, anyway it was the former who shouted from the back.

"Ahem.. you are from outside the town, am I right ? I was wondering if you can help us," he carried on.

"Ah.. Yes, I am. How could I be of your assistance exactly ?" I replied.

"Please, let us first introduce ourselves. My name is Strak. And this is my brother, Cher. We are known as the Strak-Cher brothers," said Strak with a big smile in his face. He quickly extended his arm as I shook their hands and introduced my name in puzzlement.

“Strak-Cher ? Are these guys some kind of clowns ?” I thought to myself.

"So here is the situation Cis,” Strak continued. “I am a builder from this town you’re going to walk into. More specifically, I’ve been selected as one of the six royal disciples of the Master Builder.”

“Yeah, he’s a dem fine builder okay,” his brother suddenly cut the explanation.

“Hey now Cher, let me finish first !” said Strak. “Now Master has this new huge project of building a new castle for the King, but he will only choose one of us to be involved. Therefore, a test will be conducted starting the day after tomorrow. Master allows us to have two other people in each team to assist the builders. As you see right here, I have my brother here accompanying me. We have been looking for one more person everywhere but.. people got too busy nowadays. So we broadened our search outside the town in hope that we can actually find someone.”

“And we found you !” Cher screamed so excitedly as if he just found bags of gold in his backyard. “Every personnel will get free lodging and food. So, what do you say ?”

Frankly, I am not usually interested in such matter, but hey, who doesn’t want free food and place to stay for a month ?

“That’s a very interesting offer. But I don’t do a lot of this building stuff,” I said in doubt.

“Don’t worry ‘bout that mate. We just need your power. You know. Man power, ” said Cher with an overly inviting look.

“O-okay.. I guess that will work,” I finally concluded in awkward manner.

So we walked inside, to their residence, while they were giving me a short tour of their hometown (with Cher dominating the conversation in case you ask). Apparently, Satisve was very well-known for its architectures; lots of houses, statues, and monuments with marvellous designs. The big statue of King Spira was one of the townsmen’s opus. As we arrived in the residential area for the builders (and the ‘helpers’), I realized that our team is the last to get to have 3 people inside. The least I can do, I guess.

And here we go to the night before the starting day, the Master Builder had us gathered in the meeting room for the last briefing. He was a grey-haired, middle-aged man, but anyone that saw him will agree that he is as energetic as any youth. Moreover, you can feel some kind of aura of wisdom radiated from his presence.

“Gentlemen,” the Master said. “As you all have known, the test will commence tomorrow. Just on the south side of our residence, you will see a big circular field. That will be the place where you will carry out your construction. Everything will be watched day and night by the King’s guards so you don’t need to worry about someone sabotaging your work when you are resting at night. “

“Now, this is something you want to see pertaining to the test,” said the Master while handling copies of the following to everyone.

“And one more thing,” he added. “There will be a 7^th team that I just recruited. But the team will only come tomorrow as they can’t make it today. Remember, no talking to other teams until the end of the test period. No questions asked to the guards as well,” said the Master as he stared to us with threatening, but prudent eyes.

Last of all he said “Do your very best and I will be back next month to see what you’ve got for me.” Then he moves out from the room silently, leaving us stranded in the state of confusion.

It was truly a sleepless night, and I believed everyone felt the same, too. How are we going to do this with the talking limitation ? (perhaps, this is the other reason for the requirement of teammates). What structure are we supposed to build ? Who are these people from the 7^th team ? Mysteries are all over the place.

Let’s skip the bewilderment and the next morning finally came. The sun rose and everybody was walking towards the circular field the Master told us. One of the guards noticed our arrival and gave us the instruction as promised in the previous day. It turned out that our spots are positioned exquisitely in six corners of the field, equidistant to the neighbour’s, like the vertices of a hexagon.  As for the 7^th team, the centre of the circle is preserved for them. Meanwhile, the 7^th team finally appeared on the stage. They were all wearing white hoodies so you can hardly look on to their faces. This couldn’t be more bizarre, I thought.

But what amazed us was the fact that the instruction was so simple

“Build a one-room, one-story cabin”

“Hey, is this a joke, isn’t this supposed to be easy ?” babbled Cher.

“It seems so. We can actually finish the task by the first week, even with a fairly complicated design. I wonder why we need to do it for one month. Definitely Master didn’t meant this as a speed-building contest,” said Strak.

“Maybe we can just stick to this instruction at the moment. How about starting with the design ? “ I suggested.

Everyone agreed as we remembered that no questions could be asked. As one of the six royal builders, Strak was gifted with all the soft and hard building skills. The seven builders showcased their designing talents as the others help achieving the structures. As expected, all seven cabins were more or less, completed by the first week and everyone didn’t seem to have any ideas on how to spend the rest of the month.

On the first day of the second week, something peculiar happened. The 7^th team started building frames for what I thought to be the frame for the 2^nd-story. You can see everyone was staring to the centre of the field. At first, we disregarded the act as it was more than the instruction given to us. But it didn’t take one day until other teams also began to plan the same thing. I guess they were afraid to lose their dominance. After all, a higher building will attract the most attention at the first sight, so it was just plainly natural, I  thought.

Somehow, Strak insisted to not do the same thing as others.

“Master told us to build a one-room, one-story cabin. And I will do so as ordered,” he said.

Cher exhorted Strak continuously. He kept telling that we might be losing foolishly if we were not to keep up with others. But Strak stayed to his principal. Building a castle for the King is apparently one of the greatest and most honourable feats a royal builder can achieve. Your name will be carved inside and be remembered for a long, long time. Especially since Satisve is the renowned place for architecture, a lot of people will come to visit this future castle. I wouldn’t say that to be involved in that project was not Strak’s deepest desire, but as he was the leader of the team, I would just do as he told.

On the 20^th day, the 7^th team went up further. They expanded the back of the cabin for a 2^nd room. This measure, was again automatically followed by the others. The others builders were working hard to keep up with the centre cabin, while our team was engulfed in a constant debate until Cher finally gave up on forcing his brother. What we did daily was just quality checking on every bit of the structure, made sure everything was perfect as it could be.

One month finally elapsed, and all the teams gathered in the field. One of the builders, being impatient, shouted to the guards

“Guards, where is our Master ? Isn’t he supposed to come today to judge our buildings ?”

“What are you talking about ? He is already here,” said one of the guards while pointing towards the 7^th team.

One of the men with white-hoodies finally revealed himself and everyone was suddenly in shock. He is the Master Builder himself ! Then he proceeded to explain the situation.

“My disciples, I have trained you for a long time and I acknowledged that every of you has unquestionably, bright talents. But I need to see the inner side of your heart. Clearly, I instructed you to build one-room, one-story cabin. Everyone were doing so until I, deliberately, did more than what you had been told. Except this one man.” said the Master while pointing towards Stark.

“But Master, improvising things can’t be a bad idea right ? People will definitely appreciate it better !”, said one of the builders.

“The future castle of Satisve will have the reputation to be one of the major structures in the world and it is easy to be inclined to build it bigger or taller. But do you remember the prime value of our town ? Contentment, son. It is what we have been taught of since our childhood. There will always be a more superior structure. But do you want to keep chasing the bar ?”

It was a happy ending for the Strak-Cher brothers and an afterthought for others, but more importantly, this experience shows me light to my doubt.

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In life, we strive to get the best out of what we do. But often times, we tend to want ourselves to be more superior than the others. The motivation has shifted. We search for our identity in things we do better than people around us. But truly we can’t, and it’s just a matter of time until we realize. When we don’t have the sense of contentment, our soul is in thirst for glory. But those who are aware to their calling will find satisfaction in what they do, regardless of what others may think. Are we, content ?

With contentment,

"Cis Harry"

“A tranquil heart gives life to the flesh,

but envy makes the bones rot.”

Credits :

1. First image : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Broadway_tower_edit.jpg

2. Inspired from Rescuing Ambition - Dave Harvey