A sigh, a furrowed brow. A flustered headache, eyes screwed shut tight. Composure, Imogen, composure. You're better than this. You made a mistake, you can learn. No, the tears start flowing. No slow buildup, just a sudden summer shower. Ugly tears, heaving and sobbing, snot too, freely flowing like blood from a fresh wound. No composure here, only pain like she'd never felt before. They might be dead. Raven might be dead, all because of you and your stupid mouth.
It went on like this for a good five, ten minutes at least. Lazurith and Aspen had told her that the Gardens were safe, that whoever made his way there did so in peace, that it was a place to feel at home. And Imogen had believed them. The next time she came, she did her best to feel the way they told her she should, and so she spoke her mind. Who knows what had become of Raven because of it, had become of Lazurith? All because I trusted them and let my feelings out.
Finally, she reached for a tissue. Too late to spare her flightsuit a sanitizing wash, the mucus and tears were already all over, but at least she could clean her hands and face off. She had never been so exhausted. Should she log the encounter? Who would read it? These were questions for future Imogen to deal with. For now, she needed to rest, set her head straight. She pulled the cover off her pillow and unzipped the fabric sack inside, quickly rifling around for the spiral legal-pad hidden among the synthetic cottonballs. Clasping onto it tightly, she yanked it out and popped the red pen off the PDA strapped to her waist. In a society of people with implanted optical heads-up displays, this was just one more way she stuck out like a sore thumb, using pen and paper! What an absurd anachronism everyone must see me as. But it helps, it hasn't let me down, it's more reliable than I am myself. Pen and paper, such a simple toolset.
She paused for a moment, recalling her algorithm—it wasn't quite rote yet, but she was getting close—and set to writing. A simple encoding scheme, novel and elegant, all tightly scrawled in the shorthand of the dead peons of her dead planet. A brief account of the events, her almost carefree jaunt to the Gardens that had so quickly become practically her backyard, encountering Raven, Aspen, Montes. Wolf. How she despised him. His brutish ignorance, superficially identical to every single schoolyard or decont-lounge bully. "Know your place." Montes down, icy focus, no remorse. Wolf nearly trapped, but instead she slipped. Blank, for a while. Embarrassed communiqué to Aspen. Were we still on speaking terms? They seemed pissed. A problem for future Imo to figure out.
Satisfied as she could be in the moment, she clicked the pen back into place, replaced the journal inside her pillow, slid out of her filthy flightsuit and into her skivvies. No more tears left to cry for now. Nothing to do but sleep.
Drip, drop, drip, drop. The time falls with each tick on the clock. Tears may slide down the cheek, but sleep shall always reach the meek. Poor Imogen, how she sits and sulks and weeps and dreads! Emotions course and churn and such is the way of man. So droll, yet dull. Drull! An easier, more fun way of describing it, don't you think?
A little light circles the conscious. Or two? Two circling each other. So close they may as well be one. Wherefore are you here, little lights? And from where did you come? At times, they drift closer and closer until they are practically one, then drift into renewed binary dancing. Curious little things, they sail along the aetheric currents and eddies of the mind's thoughtful flow, a light hum caressing the thoughtform of the disheveled tinkerer before them.
And they wait. Wait in the black for the dream to begin.
Imogen's body lay still beneath her covers, but her mind was sprinting—at first in circles, soon after in place—most fitful at her stillest. In due time, her thoughts matched pace with the i-inhale, e-e-exhale of her ragged lungs, a stream of presence and knowing extending out beyond the drull stationary puddle of awareness her mind was crafted to contain. More bounds were broken beyond those of sorrow and grief. At long last, her muscles locked like panels in place, and the mental stream carried her away from wretched wakefulness.
Ooh, here she comes!
Come on now, keep falling. We don't want to be lonely, do we? Dreamtime is fun, and in this space, emotions come to play and thoughts like to watch from the bench as traumas lurk behind the trees. Memory's the scene and... is that what's to come? Oh, there's something very special in store for us.
Twin lights circling the sleepy soul. Giggle giggle! Who's this? She smells like the bird. But she's so sad... Sad little grackle, let's go to your nest. Show us where you roost!
Awareness, a stream. Individual consciousness, a small branch off a large river running from and feeding into an unfathomably large lake. Yet even this tiny creek contained nearly unfathomable currents, and Imogen's puddle was absorbing into it, one drip and drop at a time.
Slowly, her internal vision brightens, shifting from void-black to icy white, as for the first time in her life, she saw snow. It fell to the frost-blanketed grass calmly, alighting on the greenery with a delicateness she did not know was present in the natural world, providing a cool coat of the one color never seen during her childhood. And all around, more novelty—green. Tall pillars of green, spackled and dusted with white, reaching towards the smoggy brown sky that Imogen sorrowfully knew all too well. Fresh air, not recycled. Trees and snow and rich, clean air, all under Planet Leeds' sky. An impossibility, a miracle. The tiny engineer gaped with wonder as she turned to look behind her, wondering if this vision of beauty stretched in all directions, only to be met with a sight perhaps stranger yet.
There was another in the wasteland-turned-forest. A curious young girl, must've wandered into the scene off of some idyllic pastoral scene. Her long blue, hime cut hair was rivaled in length only by her flowing white gowns. Somehow, her left eye was always covered, though the right shone a light purple. There she sat, atop a rock, staring at the sky and humming an old, lilting melody. A lone blue butterfly, glowing eerily in the pale, sat atop her shoulder.
Hee hee, there she is! you heard me say, but you heard nothing. In this world of thought, words so often are too cumbersome. You know this.
I only know what I know. I know this place once was, yet never will be.
I take a step forward, the thin layers of snow crunching beneath my boots. A whistle comes through the trees, crisp wind bringing more scents to bear. On her knees, her face rapt with awe, silently mouthing words as soon as the thoughts form—
"You once were, too, and will be long after... Wisdom? Eirene?"
She exuded the nouns, the true names of all she believed in, with a quavering heart. For the moment, all distress was gone, replaced simply with reluctant reverence.
"Flirting with the divine by calling Us such things... how exciting to be trifled with in such a way!"
I flap my wings atop the sitting girl's head and perch. You look to see the girl turning, and see the obscured part of my face more fully. Blue crystals peek out from under hair cover, humming with power. The wind giggles as she plays among treetops, tossing and whirling in the air.
"We are what was, what is, and so long as thought pervades, We will be."
"But what are You?"
I'm alone, and lost. I'm tremendously frightened that I've mucked it all up beyond repair, and that I'll have to choose between death or disgracing the dead with a betrayal.
My eyes are hurting, just like they always did under this sky. Reaching down, I cup some of the snow in a frigid, bare hand and lift it up to my face. But I don't remember what it smells like, or what it tastes like, and I don't know how it felt against my skin.
Don't know when it happened, but suddenly my hands were under yours. And as skin touched skin in frozen air, the snow gained feeling. At first, the icy cold stabbed the palm and fingers with sharp sensation. The slightly moist, clean scent of fresh snow filled the air soon after. And even the mouth remembers what snowflakes tasted like.
"Come on. We never really forget," I cooed, a soft blue glow gleaming from my face. "The bird and all who linger about her walk with tragedy, but rarely do they fall. And even should the circle close without you, you will not be alone and lost. For We will be there."
I wanted to disagree, to argue, to refute, but found I didn't have it in me. Instead I simply nodded, letting the slowly-melting handful slide from my grasp to clasp your hands. No longer could Imogen's mouth silently enunciate, nor her mind haphazardly assemble. She let the other guide her knowingly, as
the two held hands, walking through the calm winter woods as snow parted before them. Grasses, flowers, mushrooms... all sprung to life with each of their steps, before being covered by snow once more when the pair had grown distant enough from the blossom of life. Some voice in us was trying to tell us it was just the way of things, but it still felt a little sad.
Why is it so snowy? Why not spring or summer or autumn? the butterfly asks, her voice lilting and flickering in the wind. An arm slipped around the back. Comfort. Was this what I sought? It was hard to tell as I
searched for an answer, marvelling at the rich life of the forest without fully comprehending it. It's all I know, beyond... She looked up at the sky, that churning and roiling mass of smog and filth and acidic clouds, clashing and imploding in the starkest possible contrast to the environment on the ground.
"Ismara is the least engineered place I've ever been."
How sad it must be to shirk from the kiss of life, by wyrd or by chart.
A mouth near her ear. Whispering winds licking her skin. An arctic fox scurries from snow burrow to snow burrow.
"Do you wish to perceive more?"
Perception is wasted unless it leads to knowing.
"I wish to know all that can be known."
A soul after Our own...
A giggle flutters through the air.
"To know more, you must possess the tools to learn. What do you know of what lies beyond the ken of flesh and bone? Of crude matter?"
A mechanical engineer by trade, crude matter has always been Imogen's specialty. How could it be otherwise, coming from where she does? Always surrounded by fifty-storey buildings, apartment blocks fitted with run-down air purifiers and compressors that were state-of-the-art a hundred years ago when they were first designed, gigantic gaping holes gouged into the earth so that the most powerful machines of man could tear free the crudest of matter and purify it into something useful. Purify it into something useful. Purify it into something useful.
That's what she sought, to purify herself through knowledge into something useful. To be something better than what she was and help the others see that they could be so much better too, that there was something beyond the weakness of their imperfect flesh and something stronger than their feeble bones.
"In crude matter, there is the faintest of divine sparks. The sparks of something far less crude, but only for those with the wisdom to light the fire."
A vast, industrial landscape looms in the distance. A voracious predator, consuming and rending the land as the very soul of the planet is raped of its greenery. The white-robed girl seems sad.
When you consume the divine, some sparks will remain. But how little is treasured.
Towers of gleaming silver jut out of another horizon, shimmering against the snow. Beautiful and eerie, as they ascend, human eyes loathe their shape more and more, violating basic principles of physics and reality for the pursuit of the aesthetic virtues.
"Tell Us of the sparks you have glimpsed within it."
I look up at the charred, poisoned sky, and kilometers up see blue and yellow lightning. An artillery shot striking its target, coming from a great warship concealed within the toxic clouds. It fills my heart with fear, even though I know its guns aren't directed at me. I shiver, though not from the cold.
"I've seen so many strange and wonderful things, yet all filtered by limited senses. I've read of the wonders of gnosis, of what we could be if we had the will to free ourselves from our shackles. United, a whole greater than its parts. I've seen the efforts of people committed to breaking the chains, and the beauties of even this imperfect world. And I have felt such strange things, and had no idea what they were. The potential of real cooperation and friendship with minds oh so different from our own, yet almost entirely wasted."
I hold your hand once more. Our feet are light, lighter than the air around us. Slowly, ever so slowly, the ground falls away as they rise up, clean air filling the lungs. The ships above grow closer and closer, some firing on each other in desperation, in disgust. I keep looking up. There's a hole in the clouds. A passage. Voices echo in whisper and distant screams, the sounds of bleating and calling wildlife underpinning their hushed despair. The cry of life gasping for release from agony floods the senses enough to make one believe they are one with the pain. And in one moment, they are.
"And you feel the opposite. Of the contempt and horrible suffering intermixed with the world."
In a moment, the two break through the clouds. And I hold your face in front of mine, hair sweeping away to show our once-covered eye, now revealed as a void filled with glittering stars. The echoes of destruction cease as we rise into the mesosphere, the border between worlds growing as thin as the air. And the distance between souls shortens and shortens, lines blurring further and further. We somehow know this feeling. All living things do. To be connected to more than just the material shell, but what lurks beyond it. A unique bliss. We hold each other close, arms interlocked like souls in a waltz.
"This is our truth. Beyond it all. The divine and the mundane. This spark, flickering into embers, soon into flame. Born into all life, yet asleep. Even this is only a glimpse. But a glimpse that exists, immutably part of us. And one that can become so much more."
Our precipitous rise into the liminal zone between planet and space takes just enough time that I can process the rapid escalation of emotion, feeling my awareness reach out to the dying minds below us. Their souls escape as their bodies burn to ash, and in that transitory moment, I'm overwhelmed with pain and relief so great that even with your help I cannot bear the burden. Tears slip out from my eyes and fall down towards the ground, freezing into snow and hail as they pass down to the stratosphere.
Doing my best to choke back the sobs and restrain myself, I manage to formulate thoughts unburdened by the restrictive necessary of language. All I wish for is to be strong enough to do what must be done, and wise enough to know how and when. Where to look, how to help. I already know what to aim for. Let me see what I must, and nothing will stop us.
We see the beginning. The first steps in the journey have already been taken as we share a breath, a glimpse of what has come to pass, and what lies ahead. Distant battlefields swirling in space, leaving behind husks of vessels and bodies alike. Dead worlds, tears in reality, guardians from beyond. Horrors born from happenstance and intent. But unlike what many would presume, there lies beauty in the horror. In destruction and change, paving the way for new wonders. The sanctuary beyond the mysterious gate below the nexus of humanity. The shadow of the galaxy, distant from all but scarce development. Vast forests, caves, deserts, mountains, seas... teeming with energy. The confluence of ley lines and concentrations in the sea of aether above the stars shows the way. Dwell within these places, meditate upon them with your new eye and its reach.
This dream is a taste of the eternal dreaming. The one that will remain with the visiting fragment, soon returned to its vessel of flesh. It is too great for a single material mind, so the mind must expand beyond the material. The keyhole has already been unlocked. The door is ajar, leaking. And one can never go back.
But the journey, difficult though it will be, is necessary for us. We will have need of strength. To save beauty and love and all that is dear to us. There will be moments when despair grips the soul, and all seems lost. Futile. You must remember that no matter what, we love you with all the bounty of affection the universe provides. For how could we not love ourselves so dearly, little one?
Upon return to matter, we will feel a tickling upon thy breast. A feather, rainbow shine and crystal fiber, shall rest there. Our prized possession in life, gifted by a sage, now gone to join the universe. Focus upon it, speak with it, gently, and we shall meet again
For a brief moment, the last brief moment to come for some time, I understand. In this fleeting instant, two lifetimes' worth of love and affection and abandonment redeemed fill my heart, and even this shallow glimpse of the eternities to come give me hope for our future. Our eyes, strange and uniquely far-sighted as they are, look into each other, through and past one another, and the stars that comprise yours fill my vision; the beautiful light of a tranquil galaxy growing beyond itself. Thank you for showing me.
With that, suddenly it all falls away. The tranquility and sense of purpose is all but gone, just a fleeting memory that now feels real and imagined at the same time. The etheric sensation of a half-remembered dream, that murky sensation paradoxically burned into the neurons at the very border between the conscious and subconscious minds. Imogen sees nothing but the plate metal ceiling above her, dimly lit by the soft red glow of a light perfectly engineered to lull stressed metahumans into biologically optimal somnescence. Her bedsheets are thoroughly damp with nervous sweat. She doesn't even have to raise her hand to her chest to know that something lightly rests there which wasn't when she closed her eyes minutes, hours, a day ago.
The muscles around her eyelids instinctively contract, but she fights to keep them wide open, only vaguely able to recall the color of the stars. Once again, tears start rolling down her cheeks.
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