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Tikal’s afternoons were woven of but breeze and warm caressing her body, while her staff held the world steady before her and in every direction.
Tikal had grown, like the trees, and the wrinkles that had begun to sketch themselves across her face were learning to reveal the shape of her soul.
She set out to cross a bridge, and the river beneath it came to a halt while the bridge itself began to flow.
Tikal pressed her palms together as if to form a barrier—one that could never have stopped such a current—and burst into laughter as the bridge slipped through her fingers like water.
“They say you’re the Guardian of Water,” said a man’s voice behind her.
“What a strange name…!” Tikal exclaimed with a smile. “Water is quite good at guarding itself; it just… goes wherever it pleases. Sometimes it destroys things,” she added thoughtfully. “Do you need anything?”
“I wish to gain wisdom,” the young man replied, bowing.
“That’s easy: you just need to make mistakes.”
“There are people who make mistakes all the time and never stop repeating them,” the youth protested.
“What’s your name, dear?” asked Tikal.
“Snow.”
“A good name.” Tikal greeted him with a handshake. “You must understand—those people who seem to err endlessly are not really making mistakes. Only those of us who do err can be wise; those who don’t can only become cycles. Their fear is stronger than their curiosity. And besides, in this life there is room and time for everything—nothing remains.”
“But wouldn’t you want those people who err to learn?” the young man ventured.
“Only someone who doesn’t understand the world would want every day to be sunny,” she said in a quite vague poetic manner.
“Don’t you feel compassion for them?” he asked, incredulous and furious.
Tikal stepped closer, her warmth disarming.
“Could you mend something you didn’t know was broken?” she asked gently.
“But I do know what’s broken!” the young man objected.
“Yet you couldn’t repair what you don’t see as broken. So have compassion—for yourself and for others.” Tikal laid a hand on his shoulder. “Do not judge. Judgment robs us of empathy for whom we cannot understand.”
“And if someone I love makes a mistake and refuses to see it?”
“Then, before you try to understand the deep fear of the one who errs and refuses to see it, understand the deep fear that makes you want to control who errs and refuses to see it. Empathy…”
“Your wisdom is a fraud,” the young man spat, cutting her off with the bitter fury with undernotes of resentment of someone long disappointed.
“That is, at the very least, semantically debatable,” she replied. “But you’re right—in the end, all I do is refuse to resist life, and flow with it.”
“And you just let people you love hurt themselves?”
“Only if I’ve glimpsed a cycle they have not, and they refuse to listen,” she clarified calmly. “I cannot go around handing out life lessons. I have no grand answers: truth is nothing but a question mark, nothing more,” she apologized.
“They said you were a sage,” he muttered, frustrated.
“Wisdom is everywhere, Mister Snow. I regret with all my being not being what you’ve imagined.” Tikal bid him farewell with a deep bow, heart to heart.
Tikal used her conviction like a slide, gliding over the clouds through traces of orange, pink, and green light.
Mistakes do not lead to wisdom: wisdom is mistakes seen from the other side.
The caress of the suns tasted like chocolate, and Tikal’s laughter filled the air.
She laughed at the thought that anyone might call her a sage—it was endlessly amusing. Although… wait, perhaps she was wise, in the way trees are wise, or rivers, or squirrels…!
Then she remembered a time when she had fallen in love with someone much younger, and her master had encouraged her to confess her feelings to her loved one.
Her master—the old Yayotal—had suspected it would not work, and Tikal herself recognized the obvious: she was immature, unready for a true romantic bond, one that required presence, uncomfortable conversations, one that wasn’t just fun and ice creams. That was why she had fixed her gaze on someone who could neither demand nor give her emotional depth.
Tikal had suffered deeply, for she was never one to repress her feelings, and she had been intensely in love. But she thanked her master for encouraging her to confess her feelings, for trusting her, because it allowed her to face the reality of her own immaturity.
If Yayotal had simply told her not to fall in love with that person, Tikal, in her immaturity, would have taken it as something merely circumstantial—and, blind to the pattern beneath that warning, she would have later fallen for someone else who would be just as unattainable.
Perhaps someone who felt no interest in her, or who was already bound to another.
The pattern was the true reason she had fallen for someone who could never be emotionally available.
Love was not wrong, but her fear of not being enough was a perspective error.
Tikal was brave: she longed for an honest world, one that would care for her, and so she strove to be sincere and empathetic.
At times she wondered what became of those poor, so formal souls who believed maturity meant repressing their feelings, as though feelings would never return. People trapped by the past, imprisoned by mistakes they could not even see—like Snow.
That business of trying to be a “serious adult” was not for Tikal.
Besides, her heart could not be broken: it was like an air bubble forced underwater, always rising to the surface despite all efforts.
Navigating between doubt and resolve, Tikal reached the Tree of the Nameless Gods, immense as the world itself, beneath which an abyss descended.
Yayotal, old and bent, awaited her patiently, playing on his wooden flute a tune that seemed to pause time itself in contemplation.
“Beautiful melody,” Tikal said.
“Thank you, though much of the merit belongs to the melody itself.” Yayotal bowed to her. “How do you feel today?”
“Well. I met a fool with a beautiful name,” she smiled. “He was trying to catch the wind in his hands,” she explained, puzzled. “But don’t bow, old man—you’re far too frail for that.”
“I think truth is not meant for everyone,” Yayotal replied.
“We can’t go around expecting from others what they cannot give themselves,” said Tikal. “Though you never know when a cycle might turn into wisdom.”
Soap bubbles floated around them, some bursting, others letting themselves be carried away by the wind.
Meanwhile, silence made its way in.
? © 2025 by Marta Roussel Perla is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
