The messenger arrived carrying a message.
No one knew where it had come from.
They asked what it said.
The messenger told them.
They asked whether it was complete.
“I don’t know.”
“What did you see?”
The messenger described what they had seen.
“Was there anything else?”
“There may have been.”
Before anyone could ask another question, a second messenger arrived.
This messenger had come by another road.
Their account was different.
The first messenger frowned.
“That isn’t what I saw.”
The second messenger looked surprised.
“It isn’t what I saw either.”
They compared their messages.
Neither contained enough information to explain the other.
A third messenger arrived.
Then a fourth.
None had the whole story.
But something strange happened when the messages were placed together.
The gaps began to have shapes.
The contradictions became useful.
The things no messenger had seen became easier to describe.
Someone asked:
“Which messenger was right?”
The oldest messenger looked at the others.
“Perhaps that is not the first question.”
And for a while, they simply kept listening.
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