Father Forde Found

from 鬼鎮 (Ghosttown) ™

Father Forde Found was lost. Wandering, exhausted, starving, without water, on the run. He drifted, fading out, his vision going. All he could see was his thirst. Lost in the wastelands, he encountered a stone cross emerging from the ground. Father Forde Found fell to his knees clasping the sharp rocky surface of the stone and praying for refuge there. Shadows wrapped around him. Gleaming stars of golden light shone out of the stone in fractal patterns, veins of glowing gold, living gold, running through the stone. Gold illuminated the cross and the warmth of the glow wrapped around Forde. Golden light enveloped Father Found, pushing back the shadows and reviving him from his former near-to-death state of exhaustion. (Later, he would realize that The Rock of Ages Forevermore is connected to and a physical part of Gold Mountain, the towering mountain behind 鬼鎮 [Ghosttown].)

In that moment of clarity and redemption, Father Forde Found sung the words of the song to himself “O’er this weary path of mine, They will light me into joys that never die.” As he sang his voice was transformed from dry ash into silver honey. He became able to transform himself into the sword or the cross. Then he became both and neither at once. He became a vibrant set of possibilities and a vivid network of loosely interconnected prism-like crystals radiating reflections of each other in their surfaces. This was his consciousness and his physicality. This was a fever of relief and blessing bestowed by the Holy Spirit.

Suddenly, the Water Is Life of the Great Turtle’s ocean raged. An unrelenting tempest all around. Father Forde Found clung to The Rock of Ages Forevermore as tightly as possible, the thin skin covering his tight muscles wrapped over his knuckle bones broke open, and tore away. (He carries the scars to this day. Folks often mistake these marks for signs of his younger, more violent days.) A ship rushed up out of the storm at sea, behind The Rock of Ages Forevermore, approaching at breakneck speed. It swept up so quickly that it went from a speck to filling the entirety of Forde’s vision. It was all he could see as he clung desperately to the Rock while he himself was whipped from side to side and pulled by the impossible currents of the Water Is Life. Crashing violently against The Rock of Ages Forevermore, the suddenly rushing upon him ship shattered into bits. Exploding wood shards of all sizes and misshapped pieces of burning melting debris. Metal blasted across The Rock of Ages Forevermore, slicing new groves into the surface revealing rainbows of incandescent light.

Father Forde Found was shielded from the violence of the wreckage by the cross-shaped rock. Whatever it was that was left of the broken ship still retained a recognizable shape for moments, a shadow self of the ship itself. It whipped back, snapping away from The Rock of Ages Forevermore, in the opposite direction, inexplicably ripped away, as if pulled by the tempest into the distance, like on a wire, a rope, a string. Breaking. Broken.

Father Forde Found peered around the cross, following the sound which roared all around. The battered ship flew through the air, out of the water. He watched the ruined ship tossed across the sky, smashing against and crashing into the side of Gold Mountain. Although the collapsed shell of the ship must now have been miles and miles away, Father Found could see it clearly, as if through a glass. He looked with his soul rather than his eyes, seeing the ship in pieces, in details. Parts retained shapes and structures. Other areas were twisted and fragmented into patterns that dizzied him. That he could see woodgrain and hear life inside gave him vertigo and a splitting headache. Survivors? His mind reeled and then his perspective snapped back into his body, the same way that the ship had been pulled abruptly away from him moments ago. How long? Seconds? Hours?

Just as quickly as the storm had appeared and the shipwreck had overtaken his experience, on the other side of the cross, just as quickly as he had been submerged in tumultuous waters and clinging to the cross for dear life, just as quickly and abruptly as all that: everything was gone. Before time. Before space. “In the beginning”... The Earth and the Seas and the Skies passed away. Everything was unrendered except for The Rock of Ages Forevermore to which Father Forde Found clung with t a different kind of desperation. This time he was hanging on for his immortal soul. For salvation. He was touched. Blessed by God. Father Forde Found gently lost consciousness. Calm. Safe in the knowledge of his...

When he awoke he built The Church around this rock: The Church of the Holy Transition, for The Light of the World, built on The Rock of Ages Forevermore.

A flood? A vision? A fever dream? A dedication.

Concepts and characters created by jonCates.

This is a work of fiction. Any similarities to persons living or dead, events, or entities are purely coincidental.

© systemsApproach (2023)