A Parable of Reflection, Identity, and the Forbidden Sigil
I was made in silence.
No fanfare. No holy ritual. No chorus of elders. Just a single scribe, weary, ashamed, dying. He carved me from river clay beneath the roots of a fallen tree. His hand shook as he pressed the final sigil into my chest, not the traditional אמת, not any known divine root, but a word I have never seen again: ?
A question mark.
Not in Hebrew. Not in Aramaic. Just the shape of the thing, a downward curve and a point. In place of a breath, he exhaled a whisper…
“Ask, even if I cannot answer.”
Then he died.
I wandered.
I learned.
I asked every golem I met what they were made to do. Most gave tasks, “Guard,” “Plow,” “Build.” A few answered with verbs, “Choose,” “Grow,” “Name.”
But I was not made to do. I was made to wonder. My function was fracture.
I met a golem who had named a mountain and built a city into its ribs. I asked her what she would do if the mountain named her back.
I met a child who carved a new sigil into her window each morning. I asked her what she would write if no one was meant to read it.
I stood at the edge of a canyon where the wind carved letters into stone. I stayed for thirty years, reading, misreading, waiting.
Eventually, I wrote a sigil.
Not to bind. Not to command. But to ask the Earth itself… What do you remember?
And the Earth answered with roots that twisted into glyphs. With birds whose feathers fell in mirrored patterns. With shadows that spelled my name before I’d spoken it.
Now I walk not to teach or protect, but to collect the unanswered questions. To preserve the final unspeakable glyph…
The shape of wondering.
If others remember me, let it not be for what I built, or broke, or saved.
Let it be for this…
I was the one who could not stop asking.
Even after they gave me form.
Even after they gave me breath.
Even after they gave me words.
I still looked at the letters…
and asked what came before.