"You said 'created.'" Kuta looked up at the flower, puzzled. "Does that mean something created beings like you?"
"I don't know."
"You don't?"
"No." The flower nodded. "In my era, there were many beings like me. We were spread throughout the stars."
"From the moment I became aware, there was a pair of eyes in my mind. I don't know who he was or why he was there. It felt as though he had always been there. But the memories I inherited told me he was our great Father God."
"Eyes? Father God?"
The others thought little of it, but Kuta did. He had once seen an eye so vast it defied everything he knew. Even asleep, it gave off an aura that froze space and time and made him tremble.
He didn't know whether the eye he had seen belonged to the being the flower spoke of. But even if it didn't, its owner surely couldn't be any less powerful than that Creator God.
"Oh, right." As if something had occurred to him, Kuta swept a hand before him. Colors appeared in the once-transparent air and gradually formed an image.
An image that shook everyone to the core.
"Take a look. Is this the eye you mean?"
The flower said nothing. In that instant, emotion surged from him like ripples spreading across a still lake after a stone struck its surface. Kuta and his two companions inside the temple felt it, as did Ahua and the others outside.
There was confusion and bewilderment in those emotions, but above all, excitement, adoration, reverence, and faith.
From the flower's reaction, Kuta knew the owner of the eye he had seen might truly be this world's Creator God.
And by "world," he did not mean the planet of the Pirate King
but