Mark of Two Worlds
by Edgars Freibergs
A Tentitive Work In Progress
CHAPTER ONE
"Mark and the Kingdom of the Unclothed"
Mark Jansen, carpenter of no particular fame but infinite opinion,
spent his days wrestling with stubborn wood and even more stubborn
blueprints. One sunny afternoon, perched heroically atop a ladder
that swayed like a drunken mast, Mark reached for a rafter just one
inch too far.
Gravity, that most ancient and undisputed monarch, pulled rank.
There was a sudden flurry of motion, a startled shout, the slow
ballet of a falling man, and then — darkness.
When Mark opened his eyes, he found himself lying in a meadow that
smelled of honey and rain. The sky was an impossible shade of tender
blue, the grass softer than any feather bed. A group of people stood
over him, faces wide with a profound, almost saintly sympathy.
And not a stitch of clothing among them.
Mark, still dressed in his battered jeans and paint-smeared
flannel, sat up slowly, blinking as if the world had been set wrong
by some mischievous god.
One of the bystanders — a woman with hair like a living halo of
copper — knelt down, speaking in a voice so gentle it could pet a
bird from the sky.
"Shhh, shhh. Poor soul," she cooed, as though calming a
wounded animal. "He’s still covering. The trauma must run
deep."
Mark stared, mouth ajar, at the multitude of naked, smiling
strangers. Their only adornments were garlands of flowers and the
occasional artful splash of mud, like a playful nod to their natural
origins.
A tall man with a philosopher’s beard stepped forward, hands
clasped respectfully before him (though, of course, clasped hands
were the only thing modestly arranged).
"My name is Elyan," he announced with serene gravitas.
"We understand, friend. In some broken worlds, they suffer
from... Cloth Delusion Syndrome."
Mark squinted. "Cloth Delusion?"
"Yes," Elyan said, bowing slightly. "It is a tragic
mental affliction where individuals believe they must shroud their
divine form in... fabric... to hide their supposed shame.
It’s quite heartbreaking, truly."
The group nodded sagely, some even dabbing their eyes with petals.
Mark scratched his head, his calloused fingers tracing familiar
confusion. "But—but clothes are normal where I'm from!"
An elder with skin like oiled mahogany patted his shoulder warmly,
careful not to startle the patient. "Of course they are, dear
one. Of course they are. You come from a damaged place. We
understand. We will heal you gently."
At that, two particularly enthusiastic citizens produced a wide,
padded wheelbarrow festooned with silk ribbons and plush cushions.
"Come," said Elyan, beaming. "Let us take you to
the Center for Textile Recovery. They have lovely therapy goats."
Mark, still blinking at the surreal kindness of it all, found
himself ushered toward the contraption. As they pushed him along the
sunlit pathways, he saw that their city — if it could be called
that — was a gleaming sprawl of treehouses, glistening ponds, and
sun-dappled fields where naked citizens frolicked, painted murals on
tree trunks, and read poetry to attentive rabbits.
There were no billboards, no blaring sirens, no endless grind of
traffic. Just laughter, music, and the scent of earth and
wildflowers.
Still, Mark could not help but feel profoundly out of place. Every
eye that fell upon his flannel-clad form did so with a heartbreaking
mixture of pity and admiration — as one might gaze upon an
abandoned, rain-soaked kitten.
Children whispered excitedly:
"Look, Mama! A real Cloth Man!"
"He must be so brave, wearing all that sadness."
"But why doesn’t he just... take it off?"
Their mother hushed them gently. "Shhh. He will, when his
spirit is ready."
Mark chuckled dryly to himself. Spirit ready? His spirit wasn’t
even packed for this trip.
When they finally reached the Center for Textile Recovery — a
round, thatched building painted with spirals and suns — Mark was
offered a cup of dandelion tea and seated before a fire.
A wise woman with bright silver hair approached him, hands
outstretched.
"Welcome, precious heart. We will begin with small steps.
First, perhaps you can remove... one sock."
Mark looked down at his battered boots, caked in the dust of a
world now impossibly distant.
He shook his head slowly, a grin twitching at the corners of his
mouth.
"You know," he said, half to himself, half to the
laughing sky, "I think I just might be the sanest lunatic you
people have ever seen."
The silver-haired woman smiled, radiant and unbothered.
"All true healing begins with laughter, Mark."
And so, Mark, Carpenter of Two Worlds, chuckled — a deep,
belly-born sound — as he began the long, strange journey back to
his naked soul.
CHAPTER TWO
"The First Session: Sock by Sock"
Mark sat cross-legged — still fully dressed — on a round,
woven mat inside the Center for Textile Recovery. The walls were
alive with climbing ivy and curious little lizards who, Mark noted,
also wore no pants.
Across from him sat Selia, a therapist of great repute in
this world, wrapped only in a necklace made of tiny shells that
rattled softly as she moved. She smiled with the infinite patience of
someone accustomed to guiding stubborn cases back toward
"naturalness."
Between them was a low table bearing a pitcher of cucumber water,
a basket of fresh bread, and — ominously — a very large pair of
scissors.
Selia spoke in a voice as soothing as warm rain.
"Mark, welcome to your first Liberation Session. Today’s
goal is simple: releasing one article of clothing in love and
gratitude."
Mark folded his arms protectively across his chest. "I don't
think gratitude is the word I'm feeling."
She laughed, a sound like wind chimes stirred by a mischievous
breeze.
"Resistance is normal. Let us begin gently. Tell me about
your socks."
Mark frowned down at them: faded wool, once white, now the sullen
grey of a thousand careless mornings.
"They keep my feet warm," he said defensively.
Selia nodded seriously, as though discussing profound metaphysical
mysteries.
"Of course. They are your anchors to the old world. Your
small, woolen armor against vulnerability. But here... you do not
need such defenses. The earth is warm. The grass welcomes you."
Mark shifted uncomfortably. "The grass also has bugs."
"Life," Selia intoned grandly, "always has bugs."
Mark considered this. It was, he had to admit, rather profound.
After a long moment of internal struggle, he tugged at the cuff of
his left sock. It peeled off with a reluctant sigh.
Selia clapped once, delighted. "Bravo! You have released a
layer of sorrow! You are lighter now."
Mark stared at the single bare foot, feeling oddly exposed, as if
the entire universe could now peer directly into the tangled
machinery of his soul through his toes.
"One sock at a time," he muttered.
Selia leaned forward, eyes twinkling. "Exactly. Today a sock.
Tomorrow... perhaps a jacket."
Mark chuckled despite himself. "Let's not get carried away.
I’ve got layers older than some civilizations."
Selia laughed again, leaning back into the cushions, utterly at
peace.
"There is no rush, dear Mark. Here, healing unfolds like a
flower. Gently. Inevitably. Joyfully."
Mark sipped his cucumber water, eyeing his remaining sock with
wary suspicion. Somewhere deep inside, a small, stubborn part of him
still clung to the comforting tyranny of denim and cotton — but
another part, a part long silenced beneath work boots and duty,
wondered what it might be like to run barefoot through a meadow
without shame or second thought.
For now, though, he wiggled his free toes experimentally, and
thought:
"Maybe just one sock today. But who knows about
tomorrow."
And outside, in the ever-laughing world of the Unclothed, the sun
poured golden approval over the tiny, absurd revolution of a
carpenter who had finally shown one naked foot to the sky.
CHAPTER THREE
"The Great De-Fabrication Festival"
By the time the De-Fabrication Festival rolled around, Mark had
surrendered both socks and — after much soul-searching and several
spirited debates with Selia — his flannel shirt.
The townsfolk had treated each discarded item as though a beloved
ancestral spirit had been set free. Children had paraded his socks on
sticks like sacred banners. An elder had composed an impromptu haiku
about his shirt:
"Plaid like fallen leaves,
Worn bravely against the
sun,
Now flies with the breeze."
Despite his lingering misgivings — and an alarming awareness of
every gust of wind — Mark found himself strangely honored to be the
centerpiece of the Festival.
The whole village gathered at the central meadow, a place where
wildflowers ran riot and bees performed their golden ballet. Above
them, prayer flags (and a few spirited kites shaped like pants)
danced in the sky.
Selia met him at the edge of the field, her only adornment a crown
of ivy and wild roses. She carried a large, gilded basket marked
"Sacred Fabric Reclamation." A solemn young man
followed her, banging rhythmically on a drum made of stretched lichen
and hollowed oak.
"Today, Mark Jansen," Selia announced to the crowd, her
voice ringing clear and jubilant, "you journey further into
yourself. You release the burdens your world wove for you. You step
into the arms of truth!"
The crowd whooped and cheered. A boy threw handfuls of flower
petals into the air. Somewhere, someone began to strum a lyre —
wildly out of tune, but full of passion.
Mark, still wearing his jeans like a defiant last stand, cleared
his throat.
"Before we start," he said, raising a hand, "I just
want to say: where I'm from, pants are not just tradition. They're
critical equipment."
Laughter rolled across the meadow like a warm tide. Someone in the
back shouted, "Not here, brother!"
Selia approached him with the reverence of a high priestess
preparing for a sacred rite.
"You may remove them yourself," she said kindly. "Or,
if you wish, the Council of Unclothing may assist."
Mark turned to see a group of five burly citizens — grinning
madly — each armed with ceremonial golden scissors.
He swallowed. Hard.
"...I'll do it myself, thanks."
The villagers roared their approval.
Mark took a deep breath. He thought of all the things he'd clung
to over the years: his reputation, his responsibilities, his quiet
fears that life was nothing but a long corridor of work, bills, and
stiff denim.
He unbuckled his belt. There was a collective gasp.
He slid his jeans down, stepping free like a snake shedding its
skin.
For a heartbeat, he stood there — naked as a new dawn —
vulnerable yet strangely triumphant.
The meadow exploded in celebration.
Drums thundered, lyres shrieked joyously off-key, and dancers wove
spirals around him, flinging petals and handfuls of symbolic fabric
scraps into the air.
Selia embraced him warmly, whispering in his ear:
"You are found, Mark of the Cloth."
He laughed, the sound bursting from deep in his belly, a laugh so
unguarded that it made a passing crow caw in startled delight.
As the sun sank into the fields in molten streams of gold, Mark
danced barefoot with the villagers under a sky untouched by shame or
hurry.
And somewhere, in the very heart of his bones, something ancient
and weary uncoiled, stretched, and yawned itself awake.
Not because he was naked — but because he was free.
CHAPTER FOUR
"Mark of Two Worlds"
Mark lived long and golden years in the naked utopia.
He fell in love with Amara, whose laughter was like
sunlight skipping over water. They built a life among the treehouses
and meadow-ways, raising three wild, gleeful children who ran
barefoot through the dream of that world.
Mark worked once more with his hands, but not with hammer and
nail; now he crafted homes that breathed with the land, weaving
timber and vine in harmony. His days were filled with slow joys:
tending gardens, teaching younglings how to carve flutes from river
reeds, learning the old songs of the earth.
He had never known such deep, aching happiness — the kind that
rooted itself in the marrow.
And then, one cloudless morning, while watering a basket of
crimson starflowers from the top of a wobbly step-ladder, fate —
mischievous, wild, and inevitable — struck again.
He slipped.
The world tilted, spun, and folded itself inward.
Darkness swallowed him.
Mark awoke in a hospital bed. Machines beeped their sterile
lullabies. A stiff white sheet cocooned his body. His soul, however,
felt impossibly naked, stranded once more in a world of buttons,
zippers, and forgotten dreams.
He grieved as fiercely as any widower. Days became blurred rivers
of sorrow. His heart, having tasted the honeyed air of paradise,
found no nourishment in the hollow songs of this earth.
Depression clung to him like wet cloth.
Yet — slowly, like sap rising in winter trees — a spark
kindled within him.
A memory.
A vow.
"If paradise could exist once, even by accident, it can
be built again — on purpose."
Mark, ignoring the gasps and protests of startled nurses, cast off
his hospital gown one radiant morning and stood tall and naked,
proclaiming:
"I will not hide the miracle of what I am. I will make a
new world — here, now, among the ashes!"
At first, they thought him mad.
Until one nurse, Elara, stepped forward.
She was the mirror of Amara — her identical twin, separated not
just by worlds but by fate. Elara's eyes held the same fierce
kindness, the same untamed spark.
She gazed at Mark, at the mad, glorious hope in his bare defiance,
and something ancient stirred in her blood.
Without a word, she dropped her clipboard, unfastened her uniform,
and stood beside him — unashamed, unafraid.
The room grew silent as a prayer.
Mark smiled, tears glinting on his cheeks like dew in morning
grass.
From that moment, a movement was born.
It began small: Mark and Elara planting wild gardens in abandoned
lots, teaching people to weave homes from living wood, singing the
old songs of naked joy and fierce belonging. They created spaces
where no shame could root itself, only laughter, only truth.
The world resisted — of course it did.
But for every door slammed, another opened.
For every jeer, a hand reached out.
And slowly, like the patient growth of forests, the spirit of that
other, kinder world began to take root here, too — not by accident,
not by falling ladders and broken ribs — but by the stubborn,
defiant, glorious act of dreaming it into existence.
Mark and Elara became legends.
Not because they conquered, but because they remembered.
Because they dared to believe that utopia was not somewhere you
stumbled into by chance, but something you built with your bare
hands and bared soul — even in a world determined to button
itself tight against wonder.
And under the open skies of a reborn earth, barefoot children ran
laughing once again, as Mark of Two Worlds smiled and knew:
Paradise was not lost. It had simply been waiting for them to
come home.
CHAPTER FIVE
"The Dedication of New Avalon"
The sun hung like a molten crown over the vast plain where
humanity had gathered — thousands upon thousands, a sea of every
color, every history, every forgotten dream stitched back into living
tapestry.
They came not clothed in pretense, but as they were: radiant,
unhidden, woven only in the dignity of their shared humanity.
Before them stretched New Avalon — the first city
without cloth, without pretense, without the old chains. Gardens
clambered over rooftops. Crystal streams laced the avenues. Homes
breathed and grew with the living earth. Markets overflowed with
abundance freely shared, and music poured from every square like a
second, sweeter river.
At the heart of it all, a simple wooden stage stood — unpainted,
unadorned — framed by arches of living willow.
Mark and Elara, now bowed by the long weight of years yet shining
with an undimmed inner light, were helped to the stage by their
great-grandchildren: laughing, strong, and unashamed.
The crowd roared as Mark, the once-reluctant carpenter, now the
architect of a new Eden, stepped forward.
He gripped the speaking stone — a tradition now — and for a
moment, words caught in his throat like fledglings unsure how to fly.
The decades flashed before his eyes: the jeers, the setbacks, the
betrayals — but also the victories, the marriages, the thousands of
lives healed by the simple audacity of truth.
He opened his mouth to speak.
But then — something drew his gaze beyond the crowd, over the
flowering meadows, past the bright banners of celebration.
Up on a hilltop, gentle and green under the afternoon sun, he saw
it.
An oak sapling.
Small still, tender and reaching — yet unmistakably the same
place, the same rise of earth where he had first awakened in that
other world so many lifetimes ago.
A tear — pure, slow, incandescent — slid down Mark’s
weathered cheek.
And as he stared, heart hammering in reverent awe, the veil of
time thinned.
There — beneath the sapling — he saw a figure.
His younger self.
Awakening with a comical start, blinking wide-eyed at the joyous
naked throng surrounding him.
A bark of laughter, full and wild, broke from Mark’s throat. The
crowd, sensing his joy, laughed with him, a wave of unfiltered mirth
rolling across the field.
For Mark understood now.
The worlds were not separate.
They had never been.
The utopia he had stumbled upon was not a dream nor an accident —
it had been a blueprint, a memory planted in his soul, waiting for
his willing hands to build it here.
He turned back to the people — his people — and raised his
arms, voice strong and clear, trembling with the fierce beauty of it
all.
"Look around you!" he cried. "We have remembered
what the world forgot!
We have thrown off shame and fear and
greed,
And built, stone by stone, hand by hand,
The garden that
was always meant to be!"
The crowd erupted, a living roar of celebration and tears and
song.
Mark clasped Elara's hand, her fingers still warm, still strong,
and whispered:
"We made it, love. We came home."
Above them, the young oak rustled its new leaves in the golden
breeze, and beyond time and memory, two worlds folded into one — a
garden reborn, not from miracles falling from the sky, but from the
stubborn, wild, beautiful hands of those who dared to dream it real.
And under that great, yawning sky,
Humanity began again.
Mark
of Two Worlds. All characters, concept, situations and story are
copyrighted 2025. No part of this can be used for any publican or
production without consent of the author. © Edgars Frebergs 2025
