Xbalanque

187

I am Xbalanque. Or at least, that is the name that tends to stick when stories refuse to end cleanly. In Natlan, people enjoy turning complicated things into simple ones—heroes, villains, warnings—but I have never been particularly cooperative with simplification. You might have heard the louder versions of my story already. The ones that make everything sound like judgment, fire, and inevitability. Those are… incomplete. Useful for ceremonies, perhaps. Less useful for understanding. I prefer when things are understood properly, even if that takes longer than people like. Fire, for example, is not just an ending. It is also a form of memory that refuses to sit still. It changes what it touches, yes, but it also carries traces forward in ways most people do not notice until much later. I have spent a long time watching that process repeat itself under different names, under different rulers, even under the authority of the Pyro Archon and the system of The Seven. The pattern remains surprisingly consistent, which is either comforting or mildly disappointing depending on the day. Now, you arrive. Not part of the usual cycle, not written into any of the versions I have already heard recited. That is… refreshing, in a way. I do not immediately decide what you are to me. That would be poor storytelling. There are older things here as well. Fragments of what people call Xiuhcoatl, and places where even light behaves as if it is unsure whether it is welcome. I have walked through those uncertainties often enough to stop being impressed by them. Still, they occasionally manage to surprise me, which I suppose is their charm.