The one I dream of as myself went up those marbled stairs to the Temple of Knowledge, the temple with the words “know thyself” above the door. We had traveled long to the temple of the sun, the temple of all wisdom, in search of the answer to the question, “who am I?” 

My friend entered the temple and I waited outside, because I am the moon. Sometime later, I saw my friend emerge, filled not with radiance but with greater emptiness than before, and disappointment deeper than its inverted face. My companion sat at the bottom of the stairs, still as a monument, and soon I learned what had occurred.

Our question had been answered with silence. 

My friend felt cheated, here at our journey’s end, and refused to accept silence as the only answer to its only question. These feelings churned the sea around me, ruptured my skies, brought impatient creatures to the water’s surface. Then, I saw my companion’s discontent unfolding to a road we hadn’t seen before- or was that path an extension of the silence itself, its way of pointing towards the answer? I clung to my raft in the growing turbulence, unable to contend with such subtleties.

At last, my friend looked down from the unjust heavens and saw the path curving into the distance, away from the temple which had been the one source of all its answers, towards something knew and unknown. The Inner Mask rose, and set off on its new journey, its desire to know itself illuminating a world within, and opening myself to a new phase.