55.1 "Ah, a story!" Says the world serpent. "Hmm... I shall tell you about my daughter, Yatase is her name. Now, I have always been the world serpent, marking the boundary between reality and all that other stuff... well, all that other stuff. And for the most part nothing I saw on this side interested me very much. I've seen the creator of the universe create the universe, and be killed by his own shadow, and then the shadow creating humans, and putting them in a desert to wander around, blind and deaf. But there was one woman, unlike the others, who though blind and deaf seemed to be searching for something with all her might, and so I thought...

"I wonder what she's looking for? Maybe I'll help her, and if she finds it, then I will know what it is." And as I am the boundary serpent, I have the power to remove boundaries as well. And I became the fire serpent of the kundalini, and entered her body and awakened her seven senses, as I sometimes do when my fancy strikes me.... "

"Really, now.. " Says Raymond.

"Yes. And she found the body of the creator of the universe, who was not quite dead, and he gave her his power to create, and she becam the first magician. But in the moment when the creator had relinquished it, but before the woman had taken it, Yatase touched it and brought herself into existance, Yatase, who was a combination of world serpent and woman, who had been conceived when our two essences touched. But Yatase slipped off before the first magician could notice her. She was afraid of her mother, who enjoyed bending spirits to her will, and hid in the body of a plant, a simple unobtrusive plant, a sage with no smell that almost never flowered. And she liked being a plant so much that she remained a plant even when her mother departed the universe forever, and is still a plant to this very day."

"Do you know where she is?"

"Last I heard, she was in Oaxaca, Mexico. If you're ever there, be sure to give her my best regards."

THE END