Just a thread going no where for now

In the CMS area, people milled towards the bus-stops at the close of work. They felt the first drops from the sky and looked at the sky in a mixture of resignation and nostalgia. There was a heavy
monsoon rain coming. It always brought out the smell of wet earth. It was alien to the concrete jungle of Lagos on most days. Those who moved from the countryside to the city would be reminded of more innocent places. Then came the sadness that accompanies memories of vast farms of fresh, green shoots drinking up the rain. The thoughts of home came uninvited, but they did tend to linger as pleasant distractions from the ugly race they ran every day. It didn't really matter how far
away from Lagos they came from. The smell of rain, of fresh wet earth, was more welcome than the usual smell of urine and the exhaust of diesel-fuel generators. People huddled together under any kind of shelter that they could find before the rain got any heavier. In Lagos, as anyone will tell you, things can get heavier in a minute, so sort you need to yourself out and not get distracted. One of the commuters calmly walked in the rain. The darkened sky seemed to comfort him. A woman was wrestling with her umbrella looked at him with concern. If Lagos was a safer place, she'd have offered to share her umbrella with him. Kindness is often taken to be weakness and it might cost her a phone or a purse. When her umbrella finally blossomed, she jumped back into the street to walk to her bus-stop. When she was directly behind the man she noticed. Something about him made the cold breeze bite harder, closer to the bone. She wasn't sure why until he stopped and turned to face her. He wasn't wet. It seemed the rain understood he wasn't to be touched.
"There are things you are not meant to see. They may not cost you your
life, for life is not just peace of mind, but it determines your quality of
life. Don't remember me. Don't."
And with that, he seemed to become transparent and suddenly he wasn't there anymore. She was too wrung out by work to scream or faint. She'd been in Lagos for too long. She just took his advice and continued to her bus-stop. It was until she got home that she suddenly cried from shock. It was not just what she saw, but who. She had just recognised her late brother. He'd been found dead in his sleep and, for some reason the village elders didn't explain. He was buried very quickly. She knew
he was part of a society that protected the community, but she didn't understand what from, or why. She'd been asking questions and the elders were visibly disturbed. They had no answer to give her. Then one of them, Waniko, called her aside.
"My daughter, the truth is simple, but it is easier seen than said. I promise you that your brother is stronger than I will ever be. To the ordinary eye, he is dead. But there are things in this world that are
not meant to be seen by everyone. It will be explained to you soon. I promise. I do not lie or treat children like fools. Just let it be. I won't let anyone harm you or bother you. Just let this dog continue
sleeping."
She wasn't satisfied with the answer, but no could refuse him because his demands of everyone were few and far between. Even children would do things for him because he would not ask and it would be a shame to them to see him without helping.
Her brother had come to her to tell her that she needn't worry. His life had not ended. He was not sleeping the long sleep. The truth of the matter was beyond her. He actually never died. He had to change his way of life to do what he had to. He had now become a guardian of tremendous power and he needed to be dead to the world so he could join those who help keep it living. Now, he had no family, no scent, no fear, no point of compromise. He was not perfect, but he was beyond the
fallibility of most men. If he could, he'd tell her things that would frighten her instead of assure her. He'd tell her about how the dust of the dark side of the moon feels between the fingers. He'd tell her that the mountains they read about in school were dwarfed by those under the ocean. He'd tell her that he has not been more than a thought away from her since his 'transition'. He would not tell her that he was still mortal. Or that he puts himself in the way of danger to protect the world from things banished to folklore and fairytales. And that those things were more real than the things that men fight and die for like money or wealth or power. He could not tell her that he had killed so many of these natural enemies of man, he was beginning to wonder if his life had been a dream. As she cried into her husband's chest, she knew, intuitively, that her brother was there. He looked at her then
turned away into the darkness of the room and emerged under the rain outside. He looked up and began to climb the rain drops. When he reached a certain height, he noticed he was among many doing the same. They were joining a cloud movement. It was where they would meet. It was there they were told about the Emptiness. It was there they feared a man more than anything.

PROLOGUE I

It is hard for a sentient being to imagine nothing. Not the same thing
as emptying your mind. A nebulous nothing surrounding nothing. This
was our first history as anything. Before sound, before touch, before
fire, water, before sky, before stars, before suns, before life,
before man, before war, before all we understand by our senses. Yet,
the most amazing thing about this nothing, this emptiness, is that it
is still here, with us. It occurs in pockets, defying the imagination
to points where we fail to see it, not because it is not there, but
because we refuse to accept it.
Suggested, from the times of more focused & structured scientific
thinking, to be what is found within an atom. We've reached the point
in of recognising sub-atomic particles. Yet still, in the
infinitesmal, we are confronted with that same emptiness.
The funny thing about emptiness is how it exists on all levels of
life, confronting the intellect, the imagination, the very dreams of
sleeping life, shows itself an impasse to even a collection of minds
and wills. It cannot be out-numbered, it cannot be contained, it
cannot be fully appreciated because it is an absence within substance
or thought.
It has proven something. We cannot understand it, even if it embodied
itself within a man, and made its full nature available to him. And it
does.
Why it chose these men, when, & how would require a one to be born in
Miyamoto Musashi's fifth ring of nothing. It was a flirting, brief &
superficial, compared to the rest of what he did not say. He did not
say everything. He did not need to. Man may yet conquer space, but he
has no footing in emptiness unless it was given, for it cannot be
taken. It would not be taken. It will not be taken.
It yielded for forms of matter, then of life, then of the intrusions
of that life. It had to yield to create space. It had to yield to God.
The men who it had joined with bear its nature of seclusion, of
uninvolvement, and of great power by just being. There were those who
had a passing connection with it. They didn't operate on its turf,
only near it. They were elementals closest to it. Their base of power
was established on the fourth day of creation. That was when God gave
definition to light and darkness, as man would understand it. Most men
wouldn't. It's not a curse. Rather it's a shield of ignorance. That
was what made the men of the emptiness feared. There was really
nothing they could be ignorant of. They had a side to their heritage
that went against all things human. They could never be a group, a
trio, or even a pair. Only one at a time. They are mortal. When it is
time to cross-over, never by human agency, they would have found a
successor, opened up his being and he would become his predecessor's
grave. The Emptiness is, like every other power, a burden that is
envied by stupid people &challenged by those given up by natural
selection.