Pieces

Between all the activity on the surface, dealing with changes and patches at work, and everyone at home being sick, I was finally able to spend enough time in the cavern to start working things out.
And, finally, there I was, standing in Dereno, staring at the portal that others had reported seeing as it drew itself in the air of the pod.
The effort had not been difficult, but how did others figure it out so quickly?
Maybe I am still thinking as if I am on the surface.
Maybe that is the secret to understanding the Ages, changing the way of thinking, and a little dumb luck.
Another piece of the puzzle falls into place, but I haven't a clue at the end what surprise we will find.

The implications of the existence of the D'ni are astounding. Their ability to create the links between places using the Art. Predicting the possibility of the existence of a specific place, through the art of specific description, and then having a portal to that place become created by the intersection of the description and the right materials. That is just astounding. So many pieces, more than any one person can keep in their head all at once.

There have been gaps in our understanding of each Age. The D'ni wrote their Ages with a purpose. Teledahn to feed them. Gahreesen to protect them. The Eder ages for rest and relaxation. Kadish Tolesa to flatter one of them with his own vanity.
An idea forms in the mind of a writer either from need, desire or vanity. Ink binds the idea to the pages of a book, translating the prediction from pure thought and burning a portal across all of Possibility.
The book's construction is a mystery. The making of the ink a secret. The results are sometimes, at least in part, in the end, a surprise.
Yeesha and the Bahro have taken the Ages and changed them. Each still a link to someplace ancient, but purposed anew to teach her lessons. Lessons of the Fall of D'ni. Do these lessons still have meaning. Are we becoming too much like the Proud?
The community is getting larger, the number of people handling the pieces of each puzzle increasing. Something happens–the DRC walks through the cavern letting something slip in conversation, some small clue from either Yeesha or the Bahro or other forces, unknown and unseen, is revealed–and the community begins trying to process it.
We talk alone to ourselves, we talk to each other. We find pieces of the puzzle buried in the embrace of stone and water and fire. We find pieces hanging on the walls, fragments along the Journey, marking the way.
So many pieces. Each Explorer bringing with them another way of understanding, a different perspective. Seeing the whole picture all at once, with so many disjointed pieces, impossible.
When viewed from the surface, the pieces seem to want to move away from one another, or collide in a jumble of messages, their meaning lost in the chatter of the voices on the surface, out of the cavern. Voices that demand to be heard.
When viewed from another angle, parts of a message seem to push out from the backdrop of D'ni history, the first failed Restoration, the family of Explorers struggling in D'ni. The messages scrawled on the walls, on an imager, in the KI-mail.
Maybe that is the secret to understanding the information, changing the way of thinking, and a little dumb luck.

Slowly the pieces of the puzzle seem to come together, changing ever so slightly as each Explorer handles the pieces, holds the pieces, passes them on. The lessons of the D'ni, the writings of the DRC, the experience of those called to explore. In the darkness of the Cavern, by the light of the lake, a New Tree grows.
Surprise.