The Vessel: chapter 1.

As the vessel, his thoughts were trivial. He knew this. Yes, it was the first teaching. The most important.

Water created life. He knew. All life is the vessel for its travels. Life was only possible because of its flow. When the water ends its journey, it leaves the vessel.

He knew that everything he did was either because of Water or because of his resistance to the flow.

Resistance and critical thinking were an affront to the flows of life. He had been taught thus in school and every week the sermons proclaimed it.

It was his duty to seek out the resistance and flow over and around it. He had gotten quite good at redirecting the flow of his thoughts towards peace and tranquility. He focused the flow on his daily ritual of keeping his body clean and hydrated. He said his prayers. He tilled the gardens and reverently watched the irrigators when they came to the farms.

As a vessel for the water he had been asked to tend to his plants. But alone, he dreamed and drew.

His art plagued him.

It was never about the holiness of flowing or the great waves that had brought humans back to land after the destruction of the water systems caused a global catastrophe.

His art was always about his feelings. To his shame, he couldn't bring himself to draw the first irrigators or the pump houses at sunset. He drew feverish planes of joy and decadence, full of forbidden flowers. He drew sad winter days and their long evenings.

Each time he filled a page, his heart was full and his conscience was guilty.

He agonized over the details of a blooming rose. Grown only for its pleasing scent and highly frowned upon by the minimalist priests. What was the point of something that didn't carry any purpose for the water? The priests would say. Of course it was one of the water's creations, and was therfore holy, but flowers were treated as lowly and garish. Such a luxury was not dedicated to the betterment of the vessel itself, and was therefore regarded as tacky and impractical.

Xenon loved his flowers the most. Even though they gave him such pain. His heart would weep with joy upon seeing a tree in full bloom.

Aside from his daily duties growing food for the community, he also grew a riot of wild flowers around his house. He used his own water allotment for the day to sustain them and often resorted to illegal rain collection to water them.

The priests had bigger fish to fry. He was seen as a minor heretic. But his neighbors noticed the eccentricities and he was often unaware of barbecues or block parties until the day of each event. Requests for help with the fields during harvest were met with eye rolls and grudgingly slow work days.

Everyone knew Xenon's food was the most nutritious and tasty (even though taste was irrelevant to the water and was therefore decadent). His berries were fatter and tasted better than anyone's. The water had picked a sublime farmer. And so his differences were tolerated out of doors. For a time.