It was the eighth day of the eleventh greater moon cycle, and all of the disciples of the Mane had assembled for the Feast of the Little Moon. Many and diverse were the sugarmeats, and sweetwine flowed as easily as the river Baal’rawl. The disciples and the diplomats and even the common cats congregated in the immense house of Rid-t’Har ri’Datta, joined together to praise His Serenity, the Sweetness of Sugar, the Light of the Moons.

After some time a common trader called out in praise, “Rid-t’Har, you are our mother and our father! From you drips the sweet light of the Moons! Bless us with your words, that we might delight in heady intoxication!”

The Mane, who had been gazing through sugar-stained glass windows at Jone, looked down at the small merchant and smiled. He called out to his assembled guests, and spoke the following:

“You speak of blessings, my sweet kitten; yet, as is our lot here in this wilderness of iniquity, my words must be as bitter as they are sweet. For what cat can know the sweet from the bitter, who has not experienced both?

Know this, my dearest light: Though you may stand next to your neighbor, or caress your lover in your arms, I am ever closer. Verily! Within your most secret of hearts is my glorious radiance, the cure to every cursed darkness, the sugar which fills your soul to its amazement and delight.

My precious child, you may know the solitude of the dead, the introspection of the desert-cats, the loneliness of the separated lovers, but I am not afforded such a blessing.

A thousand nations cry out before me, their love blinds me, their tears drown me, their anger rends my heart asunder, and I am thrown into the heavens, to wander throughout Eternity. Would you walk the winding paths of the Moons? Would you drink the sweet waters of the Never-Was, and return a thousand times to our prison-palaces, here where our mothers punish and our fathers lurk in the shadow, ever ready to devour us, their hapless kittens?

Whenever I awaken from the place within the eternal light, that void of closed eyes and quivering heartbeats, I hear the roar of my lovers, ever ready to raise their ears to my voice, to scratch their claws upon stone and clay. They call out to me, “You are our God!” And I say to them, “And you are mine!” Oh, my dearest, my closest, my precious jewels! The sweetest sugar, the gentlest winds, could not compare to one moment in your company! You are my Moonshadows, giving shape to the fullness of the light. Even in your wickedness, I see around your flickering tails the Light of Eternity, and I delight in this play!

You are a tribe of Gods, fractured and afraid, unwilling to let yourself create in your infinite glory! If only you would open your eyes and leap up into the Greatness, you could fashion worlds innumerable, sing songs without sound, and travel a thousand stars without moving! You praise me for my miracles, yet I have done nothing but whisper into the ears of my darlings, “call out to the Moons, and they will dance for you! You are the King of Kings, and I am your humble throne. Ascend, Great Cat, and take your birthright!”

Listen, my kittens! My voice shall not always be so clear, for even my flesh shall wither, even my voice shall fade away, and only the darkness shall be the reward awaiting my most ardent followers. I am the Void as well as the Light, and in my absence I shall be even closer to you than your dreams. I am as the humble beggar who wished to worship the Moons on their most holy day of Second Ascent. He forgot his budi and stumbled over his tail, and was shamed by the priests. They mocked him, whose heart was Void and whose eyes flashed with Light, and unaware of their blasphemy cursed their God. But ignorance is no excuse, and as those crooked-tailed temple-cats learned soon enough, it is the Riddle of the Light and the Dark which is the Key to the Gate, and it is you who must open the door, and it is you who must walk through.

Do not mistake me for your fathers, for I will do what your fathers did not, and cry out for my own destruction. Hear me, kittens! You are blind, but only because I hold your eyes shut! If you love me, deny me; if you hate me, love me more! I am the Key to the Sugar-Store of the Stars, and it is I that opens into the Treasure of Love, which alone is not an illusion, but the Truth!

I have spoke enough words. Go to your priests, and they shall tell you the necessary lies. Go to your chiefs, and they shall sharpen their claws on my words, and sugar will spill onto the sands of our dread Mother.”

And with this, the Mane retreated to his innermost chambers, and left his disciples to bicker and argue and drink each other’s sugar. But in the shadows lurked Dar’Datta, who had heard the Mane’s Words, and knew too the will of Lorkhaj, and went to the kitchens with poisoned sugar, and prepared for his Sweet Lord the last meal that Rid-t’Har ri’Datta would ever eat.