In the Zone

My friend picks up.

“It's official,” I say, skipping the preliminaries. “I'm in the zone. Peak obsession.”

He laughs. He's a ritualist, too. He totally gets it.

Oh, this ritual. Three years in the making. Now we're nearly there.

I pity those around me. They must be utterly weary of hearing about it. I can literally think of nothing else. I fall asleep thinking about it. I woke up this morning thinking about it.

Gods, I love this.

For a big-ass, elaborate rite with lots of moving parts like this one, you have to think through every tiny, obsessive little detail beforehand.

(Why? Because they matter. That's what we believe, that's what we know.)

Of course, you never quite manage to think of everything. For any ritual, no matter how simple or well-honed, there's one certainty, and one only: it will never go exactly as planned.

Co-priest for this ritual, my friend must have seen tens of drafts over the last few months. I make one tiny change. “Now it's perfect,” I think, and send it off.

Then I think of something else. So far, we've seen a Final Draft, a Final Final Draft, and the Final Draft to End All Final Drafts.

Finally, I just started a new file.

I'm walking in ancestral footprints here.

Ever since our people first began, we've enacted ceremonies.

Ever since our people first began, ceremonialists have obsessed about every single, bloody detail.

Not for all the world would I trade it.

Why did the gods make the world? Not hard.

The gods made the world because—as any ritualist can tell you—Making is the best very drug of all.

Months of my life I've put into this ritual, months.

Man, they are gonna owe me a whole herd of cows for this one.