Lise opens her eyes to the sight of two suspended shapes—one gleaming-white, the other tenebrous, lightless. Elineal stands next to her, looking down at her face. It takes a moment to realize the woman is in the undermind with her. Her face is lined, no longer the youthful facade. When she rises—unhindered—the woman’s eyes follow her; a level of awareness revealed.
‘I’m dying.’ Elineal says flat.
Lise is more surprised by her talking than the words themselves, ‘No, I poured panacea into your wound. You will be fine.’
She shakes her head, ‘You don’t understand. I am going to die.’
Her mind is still unraveled. She doesn’t know what’s happening.
‘I will save you.’ Elineal reaches up, putting her hands on Lise’s shoulders. ‘You saved me.’
She sounds… Worming into her, a feeling of doubt. But…
‘What do you mean you’re going to die? If I saved you…’
‘I cannot continue. I will not.’ Tears arise from her bright eyes, ‘I miss him… To think of him is necessary, and I will break. To live means to forget. I cannot. I will not.’
‘Please… I just want to save you. Don’t do it… please, don’t leave… I will save you…’
Elineal shakes her head. ‘You saved me. I will save you.’
Lise tries to understand, tries to grasp the threads of her thought, but she is coming undone again. The undermind’s current pulls her…
down…
down…
“Mom! Momma!”
Lise peeks out her bedroom to find Seli wandering the hall. “Quiet down.”
Seli jumps up, “Ah! You scared me, Lise! Don’t do that! It’s too dark.”
“I said quiet. I’m trying to read here, but you keep yelling.”
“I’m trying to find mom.”
“I heard.”
“Well I can’t find her and dad doesn’t know where she is either and I just–”
Lise grabs her arm and pulls her into the room. “Okay, I get it, just settle down.”
“Ow! Let go!”
What she’d intended to be a pull turns out to be more of a jerk, almost lifting her sister off the floor. She releases her, reminded once more of their newfound height disparity. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to…”
Seli purses her lips, glaring up at her while rubbing her sore arm. “It’s dark here too? You said you’re reading!”
“Well… whatever, it doesn’t matter. Mom is meeting a friend from school, she’ll be back later.”
“She said she would look at what I made.”
“…She’ll be back later.”
“I’m going to look.”
“…For what?”
“For mom.”
“What?”
“For mom.”
“I heard that.”
“Then why ask?”
“You can’t just go look.”
“She said she would look when I finished.”
“Well… anyway, it doesn’t make sense. You can’t go out alone, Seli. Wait for her to get back.”
“No.” Seli runs for the door, gets caught in the beads for a moment, then disappears.
Lise sighs, rolling one of her locks between two fingers. She glances at her desk, seeing into the drawer where she’d hidden it. She hadn’t had the chance to look at it long…
Pushing tongue against her cheek, she considers just letting her wander alone. Seli you idiot. And with that thought she climbs out her window. Their building is relatively easy to climb down, if not to get back up. The ledges are narrow but sturdy, and offer a good grip to swing down to the next floor. Lise has been doing it for several years now, rote. Though she is in some regards clumsier due the recent growth, her height makes the descent little more strenuous than the stairs.
She is waiting at the front when Seli comes bursting through, a grin marking her willful mischief. It isn’t until she’s moments from sprinting straight into Lise that her smile shrivels, mind catching up to the sight before her.
“We’ll go together.”
Seli frowns, then dashes past Lise. Well, you tried. She thinks, snatching her sister up by the back of her shirt.
“You don’t have your night-clothes on, also you don’t even know where she is, idiot. You’ll freeze, lost in some alley… Stop struggling, I’m trying to keep you from dying!”
“I’ll tell dad you called me idiot.”
“He’ll agree.”
“Then I’ll tell mom!”
“Then I’ll explain your plan,” or the lack of one, “and she’ll agree. Just… let’s go back and get dressed—it will only take a second, and then we can go together. Unlike you, I know where she is.”
Seli bites her.
“FFF–” Blood beads on her arm, trickling down. “OW!”
Lise glares after her sister, fine then…
When she is back in her room scraping away the frozen blood with a fingernail, half-wrapped in her blanket, she sighs, resigned. She knows she would regret it if something were to befall her sister, knowing she could have gone after her, knowing she is the only one who knows. I’m coming, Seli…
Eyes open in the present, blinking in and out of clarity. Glimpses are all she has. A green woman, climbing, climbing. She rises to meet death; life. Slipping time as night becomes day becomes night. Reality born.
Conception manifests. Glimmering green.
Rattle… rattle. Bump. Weep. Squeak. Rasp. Rattling…
Moon. Black. Shrouded moon. Black clouds.
Plip. Pip. Plip. Ploosh.
Rain. Pain.
Creak.
Stop.
Alone.
Lise breathes.
Everything hurts,
but her chest harbors Death’s real spite.
and her mind bears Life’s punishment.
A stone thrown over placid pond; the moon skips across the sky, ripples bending the stars. Eyes aflutter… blink… blink. She can feel time. It is slick; gripped tight, it slips out. Held loose, it’s loose! Cupped, it rests in her hands.
The wagon isn’t comfortable. She is cold, and wet, and in terrible pain, but the wagon isn’t comfortable. All the jostling, being jerked around against the hard wood. The wagon isn’t comfortable. She wants to get up. She tries to…
Nevermind that, she wants to stay where she is. In fact, the wagon isn’t the worst. Not bad, in fact, it is a fine place to rest. It isn’t rumbling anymore, at least. Besides, she can watch the stars from here. A fine place to rest. Peaceful. Not painful, peaceful. A fine place to rest. Nevermind ice crusting eyes.
Nevermind the imminent. Stealing seconds, silent. The present end. Breathing death.
“I don’t get it.”
Lise raises her hands in an awkward attempt to placate her sister. “Just… let me explain, alright? So you know how we need air to live?”
“I guess.”
“Right, but why?”
“We would die.”
“Yes, but why would we die?”
“Because we need air.”
“…Alright, think about it like this—you know that story from a couple years ago of that woman who sealed herself in a box and went underwater?”
“The one that died?”
“Yeah, that one. Well, when they pulled the box out, there was still air inside. She didn’t drown.”
“Okay…”
“She didn’t starve either. So how did she die if there was still air inside?”
“How should I know?”
“Well, I’m asking you because… Ah, forget it. The point I’m trying to make is that air might be similar to food. When we eat, we take out all the color and value of it, and expel it as–”
“Shit.”
“…Sure, shit. You can’t just eat shit again and again, you know? It’s not sustainable. What if air is the same, and that’s why she died. She was breathing shit-air.”
“Weird.”
“Does it make sense?”
“I guess. I don’t see how it matters though…” Seli kicks her feet, looking over the tower-tops.
A breeze rustles the stalks of sour grass lining the roof, ruffling her sister’s uneven locks. Though Seli’s attention is drifting, Lise buzzes with the potential of greater understanding. Even the glare of the midday sun can’t sap her energy. Even the glare of a bored sister can’t halt the rush of her thoughts.
“Well, this isn’t even my main point. Fire. Fire is my main point.”
“What?”
“Alright, so the other day, I was trying to cook something with a candle–”
“What?”
“Just hold on a moment, okay. To keep it short, I flipped a pot over and put it over the candle to see if it would heat the bottom up enough to cook on.”
“Well what happened?”
“Nothing. At least, nothing that I was trying to make happen. When I lifted the pot, the flame was gone. So I lit it again and started over. The flame died again, even though the pot was plenty tall not to touch the candle at all.”
“So fire needs air.”
Lise points confirmation with her finger, “I’m fairly sure, and that got me thinking about people needing air and that whole thing with the woman who died, but that’s only sort of related in the end. What’s really interesting is how it made me think about what else we have in common with fire.”
“What do you mean?”
“Eating.”
“…Eating? Fire doesn’t eat.”
“Or does it? What if what we call burning, is really just how fire eats? Say it’s wood, right, what happens when you feed wood to a fire? It comes out different. Burnt wood is just fire-shit!”
“Weird…”
“My conclusion is that, since fire eats and breathes, it is a living being.”
“But… Huh…” Seli looks baffled, but no longer waiting for the end. “But is that all it takes to be a living being? What about thinking?”
“Do flowers think?”
“…I don’t know. Do they eat or breathe?”
Lise shrugs. She gestures to the emptied jugs around them, “Well, we know they drink, at least. We could seal a plant in a jar and see what happens.”
She grins. Seli laughs.
Overtaxed, undermined; off the clock, I’m out my mind. Lise struggles past delirium, flailing for clarity. The current sucks her down. Mind—faltering, falling—overturns. Her feet touch down on the underside, thoughts upended. In antipodal reality, left suspended. She sees the world as it is: distorted, surreal. False mind manifests true; intra turns extra.
Prescience…
Agony comes first, then misery—and last, conscious thought. I want to go home.
Her breath is weak, trembling in her chest, a puff of vapor, successive breaths fading further. The pain is fading with it. She can’t feel her legs or arms. I’m dying. For some reason, the fact strikes her as hilarious. Laughs come out more like coughs, spitting wet. If only her chest were cold as her limbs. The tears free her frozen eyelids.
Nictate. Nictate. Nictate.
Sight returns slow, reality sliding into place. It seems to be having trouble settling in by how much it shakes around her. Then she realizes she is the one shaking, not the world.
I’m dying. Aha. All alone. I’m dying.
The night sky is clear, moonless. It inspires awe. Expanse rendering her small. Life held minuscule before death. Death: fathomless, encompassing life, extinguishing; life: a lonely flicker, consigned to oblivion in death’s eternity. All the stars turn dark, gone…
And Lise laughs alone.
Get up. She doesn’t. Fire.
Her right arm rises, and falls over her eyes. She doesn’t feel it. It moves like a separate entity, sliding over her face, insensate. Creeping beneath her head. It prods around, clumsy—prying, pulling, and at last, freeing a flick-lighter from its pocket.
Her satchel, sheltered under her head, is her salvation. With numb fingers she slides the lighter safely under her bandages, reaching back up to find the kindling she keeps wrapped in wax-dipped paper. She clutches the wrap between both shaking hands, struggling just to keep from dropping it.
The hard part… She tries to roll. The wood bars on either side of her would have stopped her anyway, had she managed to shift even an inch, but she hadn’t.
I’m going to pass out. Prescient at last.
“RrRGHcK!” In a single, desperate lurch—bypassing fear by way of impulse—she throws herself from the wagon.
The fall never ends, she continues beyond the smack against mucky ground, plummeting into darkness.
She surfaces still sizzling with slow-burning resolve, kindling visible inches from her fingertips. Wriggling, she brushes it, and with a pain-defying thrust, grabs it. She doesn’t breathe, lying in wait for the agony to pass. It doesn’t, staying to slaver over her.
In trying to free her left arm from under her side, the slick, muddy sand aids her effort. Searching fingers, she scrambles to grab the lighter before… she has to breathe. Intake, black out.
The lighter slips from her grasp, landing somewhere in the muck. Her vision swims with flashing specks, breath coming in shallow rasps. Searching, searching… There. She tries to wipe the sand off the palm-sized cube of engraved metal, fearing it would stick in and damage the mechanism, but all she manages is to smear it around.
No… She can feel her mind sliding, drifting, eyelids fluttering. Frantic, she presses the button on its side, begging the flame to catch. Click, click… She holds the wrapped tinder over it. Click, flick, click…
One more breath and she stills, forestalling the fall as long as she can. Click, flick, flick, flicker… flame. Lungs burning, she holds the lighter to the kindling, not bothering to unwrap it now. The wax-paper catches, shimmering droplets sputtering in the heat. Again desperation breaks past fear, lending her the courage to make one last effort.
She pushes herself up on her left hand, leaving the lighter in the mud, and sets the blazing tinder in the center of the wagon, pulling her satchel down with her as she falls. The moment she lands, bag clutched to her chest, she loses consciousness.
Hot, she thinks. Too hot!
In opening her eyes, the fire blasts away any moisture they’d retained. The wagon had become a great blaze. Steam rises from her rain-soaked cloak and the wax on her poncho glistens in the firelight. She can’t move, despite the blistering heat. Or perhaps because of it, since some of the numbness in her limbs had dissipated, allowing pain to rein her in once more.
Most light I’ve seen since sunset. The odd thought comes randomly as she stares into the flames—watching as they dance over the wagon, transfixed. Thank you, fire…
When Lise wakes again the wagon is charred, few embers remaining to offer their glow. And soon after she drifts into sleep.
\\//
Lise opens her eyes to the undermind. The ground is solid enough—sand-dusted slate the color of rust. The sand is made up of indistinct blues and blacks, near the consistency of water when she tries to gather it in her hands but it remains distinctly gritty. As her memory returns, the sand darkens, sticking to her hands, falling in clumps.
Where am I?
She rises, scanning her surroundings. Plateau. It is unmistakeable. There must be some mistake… She hadn’t been here before, had she? No, I was in Dejed…
Elineal. The answer is obvious. It can be no one else. Unless Pelezel came back from the dead to drag her all the way here. This plateau is the same she had seen in Elineal’s memory, overlooking the city called Kellean.
Even the most possible answer is impossible. She shakes her head, trying to resolve the dissonance of her present reality and past knowledge. Kellean is at best a two week trek south-east of Dejed, and Elineal was severely injured. Beyond that—though her recall is unreliable—Lise is spitting-close to certain it hadn’t taken two weeks. I don’t understand how…
‘Oh, good night, fellow. I didn’t expect to find anyone up here.’ A woman in hooded green robes appears behind her.
‘Elinea–’ No. Lise stills, ‘Who are you?’
‘You were about to say Elineal! No, don’t shake your head! I know it! Hah, it’s been a while since I’ve seen her. More than a while. Too many whiles, really. How are they? Wait, how do you know her? You look like a Luman. Or, well, you look like a native of that area, I should say.’
Lise looks at the woman’s face, recognizing her from Elineal’s memory. What was her name again? Alien?
‘Forgive me, I got carried away and didn’t even introduce myself,’ She begins. Oh good. ‘I’m Aleen, though I’ve been told Abony would be more appropriate.’
Lise blinks, recognizing the tone of humor but not finding the reason. ‘Why? Your skin is as pale as I’ve seen.’
‘…Ah! No—I mean… oh, I see—not ebony—it was a joke about how… Oh nevermind, it’s not really worth explaining.’
‘Right… Well, I’m dying and in terrible pain, so I don’t really have time to talk. Could you help or send someone to help me? Otherwise…’
‘Oh… That renders my levity grim. Forgive me. Is this where you are in reality?’
Lise is conscious when they come. Four or five of them, all green robes and fast talk. They bustle about her like people who carry clipboards everywhere. There weren’t many of their sort in Opis Luma, but The Dwelling had more than enough. Many of the Students she’d known there were like that. Even in her stupor, the comparison strikes her as absurd as—in her sight—few of the Students she’d studied under had ever shown even a mite of concern regarding anyone’s well-being. The thought of them trying to help her in this way almost brings a sense of humor to the surface. Her lone articulate thought: Fool…
While one of them checks her for open wounds another is wiping her face with a damp cloth, “Can you hear me?” He asks. She can. He peers into her eyes, a pasty face gleaming from under his hood. “Can you speak?” He asks, breath hot on her brow. She cannot.
They slide her onto a stretcher, tying down her arms and legs. When they bind the strap over her chest, Pain kicks away the kernel of consciousness she clutches.
I feel so fuzzy. So soft. La di da di da di da. Dream this for song a sing. I want to slumber forever. Life, care for my sister while I’m gone. World, remember me gently. NON, lead the way. Death, cradle my head, I’m ready to sleep. When I wake, I want to exist in eternity. Sing a song for this dream.
Lise rolls a bead around in her hand, watching it glitter blue in the sun’s dimmed light. Alone, she feels crowded into her room by the bustle of everyone beyond its walls. The Dwelling is an interesting place, full of interesting people, but she recoils at their incessant busyness. Every empty moment has to be filled, every silence needs breaking; no time to marvel—this same second, uncovering beauty in a bead picked from between street cobbles, is deemed a waste. She misses Opis Luma nights for the slowing… the quiet… the patience…
So why won’t you open the letter?
It rests on the desk between her propped elbows, in the periphery. The first letter she’s received since arriving here. If she is being honest, she hasn’t been waiting with bated breath—at least, not until Akota disappeared a week ago. Then, friendless, her feelings of displacement grew past periphery and into focus. She despairs over the letter, desperate to read Seli’s words and hear her voice in her head as she does.
So why won’t I open it?
She knows why. It isn’t difficult to pinpoint. Guilt. That is all. Just guilt. Guilt that she left her behind, guilt that I abandoned her. It is fear of Seli’s condemnation dragging her away, while hope of a sister’s reciprocated yearning draws her to it. Pulled taught, she’s paralyzed.
Won’t I open it?
As it is, she bathes in hate and love, uncertain of which is true.
Open it.
The bead, beguiling, falls between her fingers to plink off the desk and be lost beneath.
Open it.
Lise laughs at her own foolishness. What Seli wrote in the letter… is a whole lot of nothing. Explaining what is happening between her and her friends, a relationship ending and another beginning, and what new people she’s met. It is stained in the blinding vibrance of youth, sickly pinks and greens tinging every description. All accentuated by numerous doodles in the margins. In another circumstance, she might have dismissed it for the usual prattle, but nearing a quadrant away from home she treasures her sister’s meaningless word spew, unique in its emptiness. This unfamiliar footing threatens to fall from under her any moment, but here she finds a branch to embrace.
She pulls out a piece of paper, smiling over it. What should I say…
“How long have I been here?” Lise tries to rub her eyes, but her arms are tied down. “Where is here?” The light is too bright.
“Kellean, and you’ve been here three moons.” It sounds like Aleen. “Here, let me undo these bindings; you kept thrashing about in your sleep.”
She breathes in slow, taking in the sharp scent of alcohol. “I’ve been asleep all that time?”
“Well, how much was actual sleep I couldn’t say, but you weren’t conscious.”
“Right… I need to get out of here.” Lise wipes the sleep from her eyes, trying to see past the light.
“Probably a bad idea. You’re so full of scozedine you’d fall right off your feet. Can’t you feel it?”
Her arms do feel heavy, now that she mentions it, and the pain is screaming from a distance rather than straight into her ears. She can’t let this quiet go to waste.
“I need to get out of here.”
“Yes, you said that.”
“It continues to be true.”
“Why are you so eager to leave? You have been terribly injured, and your body needs time to heal.”
“Are you the physic?”
“No, that’s–”
“Then send for them. I need to leave.”
“I think you should reconsider.”
“You don’t understand.”
“Really? I had the opposite sentiment. When my people brought you in, death’s hand was on your neck.”
“I understand that.”
“Does it not give you pause?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“I… If it were only my life under death’s hand, I would allow pause.”
“Well, pardon my prying past ambiguity, but what is that supposed to mean?”
“It means I need to leave.” At once, she catches a glimpse of the person sat beside her. It is Aleen, as she’d suspected, though something about her leaves Lise on edge. She can’t articulate what chafed her, however.
Eyes drooping, she watches the woman rise, resplendent in green and gold robes, a halo of purest white blooming behind her. Her face is cast in darkness as she looks down on Lise. “What is your name?”
She smirks, lidded gaze shading her expression sardonic. “Lise, but Lose is more apt.”
Aleen chuckles, “We’ll finish this discussion later. In the meantime, don’t hurt yourself too much during your attempt.”
A blink and she is gone.
Or, what felt like a blink… The light is dimmed now, a single sputtering candle. Shoddy, she thought, watching the flame spit flecks of wax.
She shifts slow, turning to her right side, sliding left leg first off the cot. The polished stone is cold on her bare feet. At least I can move. Careful now, she pushes up, letting her right foot fall. Pain prickles, but veiled in the telltale tingle of good drugs its hideous face is rendered tolerable. Breathing heavy, she totters, balancing herself on the table beside her. It rocks, ill-balanced, and topples, sending the array of physic’s tools skittering over the floor.
Arms flailing, trying to catch herself. The thunk of her shoulder on the hard floor is quiet, but Pain hears it. It approaches her, sedate, knowing she can’t escape. Looming over her, Pain lifts its veil for Lise to whimper at its gory visage, and it grimaces at Death’s humbled form. Its gaze alone stills her in time, a forever moment in the color of agony.
In the stretch between Pain’s pause and present’s return, she recalls Aleen’s warning, followed close by Akota’s, ‘Skip the part where you thrash about and run head first into a locked door.’ She’d heeded neither.
Footsteps approaching, someone speaks in tired tone, “Hello?”
Lise is mute.
“Hello? Is anyone there?”
She can’t do anything but lie there, eyes clamped shut, blood let from her bit bottom lip. “…hel…p…”
“Huh.” They leave her unheard.
Left to lie alone again…
Breath fluttering, shallow, all she can handle. She remains where she is, on her side, head tilted awkward, afraid to move. I can’t do it. I can’t… Death’s mark on her chest. At once, she knows that redemption is beyond her. Seli is beyond her. Stretched to her limits, it had been at her fingertips, so close… But this pain has wrenched away any semblance of success. She will never see her sister. She will never right her wrongs.
The last dream, dead.
Lise weeps.
Not just dead, killed.
She wants none of this to have happened. She can’t carry this weight. She can’t live with this pain. She can’t live, I want to die…
Knowing that the death she dealt could never be balanced, knowing that any good is beyond her. She has done irreparable damage, and to look upon it is too painful. Knowing that there is no point to her suffering, no point to the suffering she’s caused. She can’t continue. There is no point. Her last dream died that day, kept alive in her mind alone; now, its strings revealed, she sees it for the farce it is: a shambling corpse held aloft by a mind devoid of reality. Fooled into thinking its rot is the scent of hope.
The scalpel, reflective edge dancing in the candle light, peeks from under her pale blue blouse. It is so close she can touch it with her breath. A turn of her hand and it’s between her fingers. Picked. She holds it, staring at herself in its blade. The world becomes small, that single glistening eye, staring back. Such pain…
To the only end, I walk alone. I beg I never dream again. I’m sorry, life…
Lise holds scalpel to throat, trembling from pain, fear. As its blade touches down, a chill skims over her, dimpling skin. Heat dribbles from her neck. Breath quick, she tries to think of her last thoughts, but nothing comes. It is her and the end, beckoning.
“What are you doing?”
Lise starts, scalpel slipping from her grasp. Her mind reels, everything undone by the silence broken. No thoughts, but shame boils in her, spilling from her eyes. “I–” She can’t think, can barely speak. Voice cracking under the strain, “I… don’t know…”
Aleen stands over her, utter bafflement lifting her brow. She shakes it off, kneeling beside her. “Are you alright? Hold on, let me get some help to pick you up.”
She hurries off, calling out for the aid, leaving Lise alone with her guilt. It is terrible, the pain, but she can’t keep back the sobs. How hideous she is, bawling in a puddle of her self-loathing. I am a coward and a fool…
Aleen returns with a nurse and two orderlies. She makes quick the process of lifting Lise back into the cot, directing with a deft hand. She is fed painkillers and as the nurse is going to strap her down, Aleen stops him. “Leave it for now, I will handle it from here. Actually, bring me a wheeled-chair.” Lise half-expects one of them to question the instructions, but they leave without a word.
The woman sighs, palming her right temple as she seats herself beside Lise. Candle guttering, the last sound in the room. For a while, they simply rest in the reborn silence. She tries to process what she’d almost done, but she can’t make sense of it. Nothing in her feels right, nothing in the world feels right. So distorted her thoughts have been—lying there, feeling the medicine kick in, she is a different person from moments before.
As the peace stretches, gradually, it tenses. Lise is near certain that Aleen had seen her in full, scalpel to her throat, seconds from suicide. A glance reveals the woman with face downturned, staring at her laced fingers, contemplation weighing down her slight features. What does she think of this? Of me… Who have I become that I would even consider that while Seli yet lives… I…
But this isn’t new… No, she’s considered this many times before. It is, in many ways, akin to her desire for NON. The difference this time is that she hadn’t merely considered it, she had leaned over the edge, one foot already off. She had come seconds from the end, and Aleen stopped her. I wouldn’t have stopped myself.
It is that knowledge that shakes her—a new unease rattling in her depths.
Neither of them is the first to break the silence; instead, it is the nurse, returning with a wooden chair built onto a set of broad, rubber wheels.
“Um, what should I do with it?” He asks, hesitating in the doorway.
“Just leave it over there for now,” Aleen says, gesturing to the open space in front of the cot. After the nurse has been gone a minute or so, she turns and meets Lise’s eyes for the first time since the incident, “Do you feel up to talking?”
She hesitates, heavy-lidded; she shakes her head ever so slight.
The woman nods, standing with a groan. She kicks her left leg, popping her knee. “Ooh… that’s better. I suppose you’re a bit young for creaking joints, huh? Well, you’ve got more than your share of aches… If you aren’t ready to talk, at least let me push you around in this chair; I need to get these old bones moving.”
Lise really doesn’t want to do anything, let alone get up again. She’d much rather try to sleep her problems away. “…Okay.”
“Great.”
The chair judders as Aleen pushes it down the steps outside the infirmary. Lise grits her teeth at each bump, grunts at each jerk. She is trying to be gentle, but she isn’t the strongest, nor is Lise the lightest.
“Sorry about that,” is all she says, pushing her along again without respite.
“Slower–”
“Ah, of course…”
The street is smoother, fortunately, with great black slabs set interlocked in the sand, darkened further by recent rain. The sand is nearer gravel than Lise is used to, smaller grains of dark blue and gray with smooth black pebbles mixed in. From it grows many thick, red-brown stalks; creeping over the ground, rigid and quick to snap underfoot. Small, four-petaled flowers bloom along the limbs, glowing orange and yellow.
To either side of the street stretch a variety of off-white almost-cubes. Each building as near-white as the last. Some are larger, smaller, shape altered here and there, but all share that color. Lise can’t pick one as distinct from the last, even knowing—seeing—they aren’t exact. Like a fever dream, trying to find your place in this monochrome city…
Few people walk the street, and those that do wear green. Other than Aleen, who wears snug thermal underwear with loose shorts and shirt overtop, barefoot. Lise wishes she had something more substantial than just the blouse and her cloak, struggling to keep from shivering.
“Have you ever been to Kellean before?”
Lise shakes her head.
“I imagine it’s a bit peculiar, then.”
“A bit, yeah.”
“You said you’re from Opis Luma, right?”
“I didn’t, but I am.”
“Then it must be particularly peculiar.”
“…Yeah.”
“What’s the biggest difference you see so far?”
“The people.”
“Really? Usually people say the architecture, the clothing, something like that.”
“I can see why.”
“Why do you differ?”
She shrugs, quick to regret the motion. “I don’t.”
Aleen pushes her along the meandering streets, starting to avoid bumps and cracks after Lise asks. They draw gazes, an odd pair; Aleen, bouncing along lighthearted, pushing Lise on a wheeled-chair, stiff and dark with death’s touch. Even ignoring the pronounced difference in surface appearance. Some continue to stare them past, others simply acknowledged them and went on their way.
“You’ve noticed their looks.” Her courier whispers. “Do you wonder why?”
“There’s a lot to look at.”
She chuckles, “Yes, but you’re missing something.”
“I am addled.”
“Of course, in that case I will make it easier: they’re not looking at you.”
Lise watched them, noticing them take her in, curious for a moment, but transient. The chair? No, it probably wasn’t as strange to them as it was her. Then it hit her. Their looks were not those of someone seeing something strange, but those of seeing something familiar. Familiar and revered.
“Who are you?”
Aleen restricts her outburst to a snicker. “Addled, but not blinded apparently. Since you can still see, take a look ahead.”
Lise blinks, squinting, trying to see what she wants her to. It takes a moment, all the buildings blending like flowers in a distant meadow, but as they near it becpmes clearer. Individual shapes clumping together, no spaces between structures. They are already within it; an extensive network of buildings, branches leading out from an oblate dome formed of clustered cuboids.
“Who are you?”
“You asked that already.”
“You didn’t answer.”
“Maybe you are blind after all.”
Lise holds her exasperation, feeling it is exacerbated by the drugs. “Who are you?”
“I figured we were past this. I am Aleen.”
“That’s not what I’m asking.”
“Then ask what you’re asking.”
She starts to take a breath to calm herself, but chokes on it, the talons in her chest digging deeper. “Fuck…” Her eyes twitch rapid, flicker flick, out of control. When she opens them again, they are entering the cluster, a gap in the fused structures leading into a courtyard.
Centered in the courtyard, between shaped trees, framed by a stone bench, a sculpture of interlinked circles, triangles, and rectangles; pentagons, hexagons, and heptagons… silver and gold, together the shapes made one four-sided star.
“Hoo… Finally…” Aleen slows to a stop before the sculpture, rounds Lise and takes a seat across from her. She leans one hand on the bench, picking at the chipped green paint with her nail. “Well, now that we’re here… Wait, what were we talking about before?”
“Who you are.”
“Ah yes, do you have the right question yet?”
Lise looks at the woman—small, almost delicate. Her diminutive frame is evident under the tighter clothing. A lantern lit at the heart of the sculpture sets light coruscating around her. A pleased grin lines her face, cleverness glitters in her gaze. “Do you wear a veil?”
“Yes, do you?”
“Yes. Do you wear a mask?”
Aleen’s face does not move, nor her expression; fixed clever grin. She does not blink, watching. Lise feels her focus like a finger in her face—pointed, potent. “You are perceptive.”
She didn’t expect that response. “I’m high on suppressants.”
“That makes it more impressive, not less. Anyway, to answer your question, sometimes.”
“Why sometimes?”
“It depends.”
“On?”
“Circumstance… Do you do this often? Speaking under the conversation?”
After the respite, Aleen brings her further into the complex. Here are more green-garbed folk, bustling through the winding corridors. There is nothing marking the halls apart, nothing to tell where they are within it. She pushes her along a path Lise can’t follow, at times pausing to fix the carpet where the wheels scrunched it. Stairs lead up and down, but they remain on the base level. At last, she stops her before a wooden door matching every other she’s seen in the place.
“Just wait here a moment, I don’t have my keys…” Already jogging ahead, “I’ll be right back!”
The words exist around her for a moment, dissipating before she thinks to catch them. She watches her fingers, bending and trembling, gripping and releasing. Trying to hold them steady, but the more she tries the more they shake. What has become of me? Who is me? These hands aren’t hers—they can’t be. When did I lose me?
Potted everflowers lined along either side of the door cast a rich purple glow, crystalline petals cracking in her curious grasp, borne away as glimmering mist.
“Um… Hello?”
When Lise opens her eyes someone appeared. She nods… off… then, blinking, nods a greeting. It is a young woman, probably around her own age—pale of face and hair, inset eyes racing over her. In her arms she clutches a woven basket, brimming with plump brown mushrooms and grotesque tubers. After dismissing her as incapable of speech, the woman looks around her for a handler.
“Do you need help?” She asks, enunciation excruciatingly slow. “Nod for yes, shake for no.”
Lise lifts an eyebrow. “I’m fine.”
She straightens, surprised. “Oh. Oh! Um, are you here to see The Kelle?”
“No.”
“Then… Oh! You are… a friend of Aleen…?”
“Sure.” Leave me alone.
“Pelanea? Are you bothering Lise?” Aleen drifts down the hall, now adorned in emerald and gold.
Pelanea startles, turns, and bows in a single awkward movement. “My… My apologies! I was just coming to ask–”
“Again? I told you I would send for you when I heard any news. Please trust my word; your concern is endearing, but you build my irritation with each iteration.”
The young woman sways, taking each word like a blow to the gut. “I… I’m sorry.” She never lifts her head, running away in tears.
Lise looks at the basket’s bounty left behind. “You spilled,” she muttered. Neither Pelanea nor Aleen hear her.
Aleen sighs, kneeling down to gather the dropped food. “Sorry about that, she’s a bit notorious for her worry. She didn’t prod you too much?”
She shakes her head.
Setting the food in a pile beside the door, she reaches up and unlocks it. “I don’t normally receive guests here, so excuse the clutter.”
Lise nods, looking over the apartment through wilting eyes. She pushes her through the narrow foyer and into the front room. Stale air tinged with past smoke. The supposed clutter is nonexistent, as far as she can tell. A couple plush couches surround a table of gnarled red, a miniature cactus growing in a terrarium set into the wood, prickly flowers budding along it. An unlit fireplace rests opposite the entrance, two closed doors to either side lead elsewhere.
Aleen maneuvers the chair up to one of the couches, “I’ll help you get situated.”
A few minutes later, Lise is curled under a blanket, staring into the crackling fire. The drugs have her feeling fuzzy, experiencing everything through a haze. Fire flicker, dizzying, it buzzes, one moment blurring into the next.
“Teeeeeaaaaa?” Aleen slurs, off-kilter, holding up melting kettle.
Lise hovers, an object stretched out slow, putty. The world pulls apart.
\\//
Lounging, Lise falls first into herself, then the undermind. The couch sucks her into its folds, drawing her down and down. She will never get up again. World vibrating, she lets the zzzzz take her further.
‘Take my hand!’ Aleen reaches out.
She watches it extend, bend, swirl—drifting away without care. Distance is something she could feel. Far far far away a sister seeks freedom; here, fraught with failure, she watches, fearful for fate names her foe.
‘JUuuust rrrrreach ffffff–’
Lise dwells in death’s mantle. NON is near; an end made clear when all other paths are seen through tears. The fool’s choice: pathetic persistence, or a pauper’s prescience…
//\\
Shaking shoulders, pain pours through her. “LLLiiiisssse,” she hisses. “Caaaan–”
Lise opens her eyes, air whistling through her nose as each intake comes quick—cut off, unable to breathe. She can’t get enough air, the pain restricting her to hyperventilation. Eyelids fluttering.
“Lise!” Aleen peers into her, holding a candle up to her face. She watches the flame dance to the tune of the woman’s words. “Lise, can you hear me?”
She nods, trying to ease her breathing, tears dribbling down her cheeks. “I’m… pain…”
Aleen sets down the candle and ruffles around her pockets, pulling out a bottle of green-black pellets. She pours a couple into her hand and holds it out. Lise takes them.
“Hold on, I’ll get some water…”
By the time she returns with a glass, Lise is grimacing at the bitterness lingering on her tongue. She drinks the water anyway.
Grinding teeth, she tests the limit—she focuses on her breath, trying to find the balance. Aleen leans on the armrest by her feet, rubbing her brow. Let the disquiet dissipate in quiet.
“I planned to wait for a better opportunity, but at this rate I may be waiting for something that will never come. I think we should discuss… what’s happening.”
It is a terrible time for her throat to tighten, sorrow-strained. I want to cease. All she could say was, “Okay.”
“Where to begin…” Aleen murmurs, pouring hot water over the tea leaves. “Do you want honey in yours?”
“Sure.” The new medicine has kicked in, lending her the tolerance to sit up again.
“How much?”
“Just a spoonful.” Seeing the size of the spoon, “Maybe half, actually.”
Aleen nods, stirring in the sweetener before handing the cup over. Lise breathes in the scent of the dark leaves, a touch of spice sharpening it. She blows on it, watching the red-brown tea ripple. The first sip is hot but the taste is good. The fragrant spices are unfamiliar to her, yet redolent of the traditional Luman teas; almost savory. She sets it back down on the table.
“Who are you?” Aleen asks at last. “I know next to nothing of you besides what scraps I’ve collected talking with you. You bear a gaze that speaks of significance. To look at you I would guess a warrior of some kind, a hunter, but your manner is different from those I know.”
Lise shakes her head. “I trained to be…” she suppresses a cough, clearing her throat feebly, “…I trained to be a hunter when I was a bit younger, but circumstances led me elsewhere. I can’t claim any importance in and of myself. It’s more the mantle I’ve assumed, I assume. Not significance, perhaps significant purpose.”
“You like playing with words?”
“Mm… I suppose I do. It’s more of a habit, honestly. One of the people I… spoke with a lot was incessant with it, so I sort of picked it up.”
Aleen nods patiently. “What mantle? Some kind of profession?”
“No… No, responsibility.”
“A responsibility to what?”
To life. “It’s difficult to explain.”
“Just what you can, then.”
“Right…” She’s really going to press me… “I’ve been following my sister who fled home on the solstice.”
“…Huh. I feel like you’re leaving a good deal out.”
What to say… “In Opis Luma, a new kind of fiend was born. It took control of my sister. I’ve been pursuing her to stop its spread… and…” her throat constricts, “and I’ve failed.”
Aleen falls back against the couch, “I… see.”
“Everyone… Everyone is dead because of my failure.” The sobs come unbidden, and she can’t keep them down despite the pain begging her. “I… I can’t right it…” I can’t even speak it… barely graze it with my mind without weeping…
What discussion there had been devolves into tense silence and choked crying. It comes to a point that Lise can’t say if she is still crying for misery or if her reason has become the agony of the act itself.
“Take a drink,” Aleen says, leaning forward to push her tea closer. She sets a few more medicine pellets beside it.
Lise takes the cup up in trembling hands, sipping slow, eyeing the medicine, hungry for it. She wavers, knowing well the peril, but takes the pills anyway. What’s the point when I won’t see the end of the night?
“You say there is a new form of fiend. Can you explain?”
She tries to order her thoughts, “I don’t know… I can only say they are far more malignant. They learn, or… well, adapt is more apt.” Incessant… Even indirectly, the thought of Akota, killed, brings her to the breaking point again. “Everyone in Opis Luma is dead. And in her wake the fiends have devoured town after town, village after village—all the children—so many dead and I’ve tried to save them only to fail again and again and again… so many bodies all lined up piled up pulling me down…”
Aleen stands, beginning to pace. “This… I can’t imagine… This is foreboding. Not foreboding, it’s already happened, happening, it’s… a catastrophe. I don’t know what to say, I’m sorry Lise. When I brought you here to talk, I didn’t expect…”
“My last chance was to stop her, I was too slow; I’m crippled; I’m a failure dragged, stretched, dragging along like a lame leg, propped by the hope of balancing my wrongs; but it was always impossible for me: a lame leg dragged along by a prosthetic. This hope, fabricated, crumpled under the weight… I’ll never walk again.”
“Do you know how the new fiend came to be?”
Lise looks up from her torment, held tight. “What do you mean?”
Aleen thumbs the bridge of her nose, “I mean, do you know where it originated? Where it came from?”
“No.”
The woman looks at her, and stares at her, “You’re lying.”
“What.”
Something clicks into place—whether it is her understanding, or Aleen’s mask… A different woman stands before her. “You lied.”
Her eyes fade over opaque, deathly cold. The gentle cleverness sucked away so emptiness can fill its place.
Lise sits straight, and, feeling the peril, speaks carefully, “On my mother’s ashes, I swear I don’t know how the fiend got to my sister.”
The woman locks on her eyes, reading… then, like a drop of dye in water, warmth saturates her gaze. “My apologies.” Aleen inclines her head, “That was deeply inappropriate—cruel, even—please forgive me.”
“It’s okay, I understand…”
“Thank you. I trusted an intuition, and I’m sorry I reacted how I did.”
Lise clears her throat, “No, no, it’s alright… I’m not innocent of that either.”
“I’m relieved, then, that you’re so understanding—I feared I might have thrown away what rapport we’ve had.”
“If you were right, then I’d think your reaction justified. To deceive about something so serious…” would be akin to fooling with fire.
“Lise, I will do what I can to help, and you might find my help more significant than appearances would tell. Kellean has among the strongest support systems on the continent, with perhaps only The Dwelling eclipsing us, for obvious reasons. We will send word to the major cities—and once the danger is assessed, offer assistance. This will not be the end for humanity, I promise you. You will be safe as long as you remain here.”
Lise wants to feel comforted, wants to let the weight from her fall, that she might stand again. Yet responsibility has her in its grip, has her gripping the weight ever closer to the chest. She nods anyway.
“In addition, I have a deal for you… When you can walk to the top of the plateau I met you on, I will send you off with the resources you need to catch your sister. You may leave whenever you wish, but any sooner than that and I fear I would be delivering you to death with my blessing. I will not be party to that.”
Lise considers it, rubbing her pinky nub with her thumb. “Will you give me a cycle to think?”
“Of course, there is no time limit. In the meantime, you are welcome to stay here or return to the infirmary. There’s a bed in that room there that you can use.”
“I couldn’t take your bed…”
Aleen waved it off, “I rarely sleep here anyway, I have another apartment upstairs.” She winks, though the full significance of it is lost on Lise.
“In that case, I will take you up on your offer.”
“The bed one or the other one?”
“The bed one. I still need time to think.”
“Right, of course…”
It is strange being alone in a stranger’s home. Stranger still to lie in her bed, cozied into her blankets. The first moment alone since… since trying to kill herself. She doesn’t want to think about it—wants to forget it, but it sticks to her, coagulated on her neck. Looking up into the dark, she can think of nothing else.
It isn’t good. It isn’t productive thought. Not questioning, trying to work it out. Just, dwelling in the same space, feeling mortified at her own mind. Trying to climb out, her hands slick with the blood, she slips. To merely reach the rope again is beyond her.
Why try…
Forget the plateau, she can hardly climb out of the bed on her own without a deadly amount of painkillers. I’m only wasting time. It will be years before I see the top again. Yet reaching Seli in her condition is an even steeper ascent. She’s tried, but as she is, another attempt is pointless.
So why try…
A rap at the door startles her from the dark. She listens as they knock again, but doesn't bother getting up. It is someone bringing her belongings, probably; Aleen had said she would send for them. When they pound harder, Lise longs to take from the glass bottle on the nightstand, brimming with painkillers.
Instead, she calls out, “Come in!”
Her voice is too feeble to reach them apparently, as the pounding persists, now a knock knock knock knock knock…
Her body tingles—heavy with the potent medicine. She reaches over and plucks two off the top, popping them in and swallowing. Grimacing at the bitterness, she takes a breath, preparing for the pain now inherent to every action.
“I’m coming in!” A voice calls with the opening click of the door.
Lise sighs—first frustrated, then relieved.
“Hello? I have a bag of your things… Where are you? It’s very dark.”
“In here…”
“Oh! Here’s a candle. Do you think it’s alright if I light it?”
“I don’t know, it’s not mine.”
“Then maybe I shouldn’t… What if she’s saving it for something?”
“Just light it.”
“Are you sure? You said it wasn’t yours.”
“I lied. It’s mine.”
“Oh, well, you should consider not doing that. It’s bad for your spirit.”
Lise is half-certain it was the same girl from earlier, based on the wispy voice. “I was testing you.”
“Ooooh, I understand… How do I light this?”
She struggles to remain patient, “There should be a flick-lighter with my things.”
“Why do you carry around this little book? Wait, is this a claw? Oh, is it this box thing?”
“Yes, the box thing. Bring it to me.”
Though she sees nothing, she hears her bump, trip and stumble her way into the room. Breathing heavy, she feels around with her hands. When Lise feels the cold fingers pressing against her cheek, she reaches up and takes her by the wrist.
“Hold still. Hand me the box thing.”
“I-Is that you? Are you touching my arm?”
“Yes. Give me the lighter.”
“Oh! Harmony has shielded me, I feared the worst!”
“The lighter.”
“Here you go.”
It lands on her chest.
The remnants of the most vehement FUUUCK! she’s ever thought hiss between her teeth. Plunged into cold agony, shivering, suffocating, she doesn’t attempt to surface for the pain isn’t worth the next breath. Her lungs burn, quaking in her chest, but no matter her body’s disagreement she doesn’t inhale. Her head throbs, hot and bloated. Then nothing.
Clammy hands prods her face, squishing her cheeks, feeling. It takes her a moment to remember where she is, what happened.
“Thtop.” She growls, spitting out a salted finger.
“Is that you? I can’t see. Why weren’t you responding?”
“Lost consciou–”
Pain waits at a distance, shrouded in smoky black. She can’t see its face, but knows its leer on her skin, prickling. Fear. Fear it will near again, peel away its veil. Fear. She takes a moment to breathe, watching her pain, wary of its silent step. It will creep up again, patient in its predation, but she can manage that with some vigilance. It is the lurch, the sudden leap—catching her on her off-foot, consuming her whole—that she really fears.
She clears her throat, never turning her gaze. She speaks in soft bursts between strained breaths. “Pain… I lost consciousness… Lighter landed… on me.”
Careful, she reaches up and lifts the flick-lighter from between her breasts, and presses the button. It lights first try.
Pelanea, wide-eyed, staggers back in shock. “Oh!”
“Yeah…”
“Wait, was it you this whole time?”
Lise looks through her, trying to feel anything but drug-addled ire. “No, I just got here.”
“…Really?”
She breathes. “Hand me the candle.”
“You know, you don’t speak all that much. Why? Shy?” Pelanea says, helping her sit up in the bed.
“I wouldn’t call it that. I speak when I feel like it. Often, I don’t.”
“Well, then what makes you feel like speaking?”
Lise grunts, the pain is dizzying. She is exhausted, yet sleep seems the furthest possibility. “It depends.”
“On?”
“Circumstance.”
“Then, what about this circumstance? Why don’t you speak much now?”
Too late she realizes the potential for offense, running full tilt, the line mere feet before her. The halt is clumsy but she manages it, “I… There’s a lot.”
“Oh… You sound like you don’t feel like it. Like, I can feel your thoughts underneath and there’s a lot more than what you say. Is that what you mean?”
“…Something like that. Sorry, but I don’t think I got your name.”
“Oh, yes! I’m Pelanea.” She reaches out her hand, and Lise looks at it. “Right… Um, I don’t know your name either.”
“Lise.” Though Lies would be truer.
“Lise? It’s very small for a name. I was imagining something different.”
She frowns, uncertain how to interpret that. “Why?”
“Oh, well, I don’t know… I just thought it would be something like Vesselgar… or Graviielle or something.”
“…Are those actual names?”
Pelanea shrugs. “I don’t know. They just sound more like you than Lise.”
“It’s just a name. No name will ever encapsulate me in full.”
“…I don’t really get what you mean, but okay.”
“Well, do you think your name can convey all of you?”
“…Yes?”
Lise frowns, “So, you’re saying that to know your name is to know you?”
“I don’t know…”
“Do you think you know me because you know my name? Can you read the fullness of my life— my thoughts, my emotions—all in a single syllable?”
“Well, no…”
“That’s what I mean. To expect a name to capture all that is absurd. A name is as inherently faulty as any other word. They are an expedient way of knowing, but imperfect. You shouldn’t expect more from it than that.”
“Right…”
Lise stares past Pelanea’s fuddled expression, “…Thank you for bringing my things. I’m going to try to sleep now.” She reaches for more medicine. “If you don’t mind.”
“Oh… um, I was told to stay and help if you needed it.”
Three pellets roll in her hand, leaving a faint, oily residue. “You got any techniques for sleeping when you feel like there are talons digging into your chest?”
“I… I’m afraid I don’t. Is that–”
“There’s a couch. Out there.”
“Y-Yes, of course…”
She feels relief as the door clicks shut. It is taxing, trying to hear her thoughts when pain is waiting, its mere presence deafening. It demands attention and screams louder when it doesn't have it. The tension in her neck, her back, the sweat beading her arms. Sucking her teeth, she rolls onto her side, trying to find any position less painful.
A battle to pry sleep from Pain’s clutches. She takes the medicine.
Lise slides down down. Deep, beyond mere sleep, past Pain’s bounds. The undermind. Further… Slipping. No grip. Toooooo Mmmuuchhh…
She doesn’t try to stop.
Lise pulls the blanket tight around her, trying to stave off the midnight chill. She can feel it in her bones, like cold growing-pains. Seli is out here somewhere, lost and alone, freezing to death. Idiot! Foolish idiotic imbecile! Why couldn’t you just listen?! She is edging on panic, fear for her sister’s fate frothing. Damn it, damn it!
She turns down another alley, near crashing through the group smoking around a small, wispy fire. One of the men grunts as she bumps into him, but none speak as she hurries past, cursing under her breath. “Damn you Seli, if you’re still alive I’m going to punch you in your chattering teeth…”
She drifts in the undermind’s current. Pulled along, uncaring. She sinks into another mind.
Pelanea watches the black circle of the moon slide over the sun, turning her gaze as the light begins to warp, bending over the ground, dancing with the shadows.
She sits, dangling her feet over the rooftop, watching as her brother says his goodbyes once more. Her father, aged last day, withered twice so this day, holds him in a feeble embrace. He kisses his forehead and sends him off. Pelanea just watches.
Again she watches as he leaves, wordless. To where he goes, she never knows for sure; to what purpose, neither. She watches hope leave with him, and can’t bear to watch longer.
Lise lingers, aloft, life’s weight light, looking in on lurking excruciations. In the dark, loving the dark, a spectator to pain. Coming to NON’s edge, facing it. She doesn’t want to perform anymore.
She leans against the craggy wall, sliding down in defeat, uncaring of the jagged edges scraping up her back. How do I tell them? How can I tell them I didn’t save her? How can I tell them I failed? How can I tell them when it’s my fault she’s gone? Tears crust on her lashes, falling as crystals, pooling in her hands.
Legs quivering as she stands, she can’t think past her grief. It would be better to just… disappear with her.
A moonless night sky, chilling in clarity, Lise stares into the eyes of everything and sees nothing behind them. Conscious of a precipice she can’t see, something she’s never felt before, it seems a single step and she will fall up into infinity.
The need to breathe comes back in a rush of cold air, and she steps away from the edge.
What… was that? She blinks, looking around, lost. Trying to find purchase, something familiar to get her bearings by, and though her eyes know the environment her mind sees it uncanny. Another blink and the feeling dissipates, leaving a sticking residue of disquiet and bewilderment.
Holding a hand to her forehead, pulling the blanket tighter in the other, she begins walking. She knows to where she walks, but it is involuntary. A strange kind of awareness, watching herself from beyond herself. It is from this vantage that she views the first fold pulled back.
To wake in pain—of pain. Lise takes of the container four more pellets, consuming. Teeth grinding, clenching muscle, sweat beading. She begs escape. Given none, she lets flow her tears, waiting on the medicine’s respite. What life.
Glass reflecting the candle’s flame—the vessel, full with a potential end. She wants to reach out, take it in her hands, and pour the painkillers down her throat until she knows the weight of emptiness in her palm. Again, the end beckons.
She hears voices outside—Aleen and Pelanea, she thinks. And another…
Knock, knock, knock. Tap.
Shock.
Door click unlock.
Lise, unblinking, turns her head. Unreal.
“Hello,” he says.
“Not real.”
“Intuition,” he taps his temple. “You’re always more right than you first realize, Akota.”
His lips spread in that lopsided grin and she chokes on her grief, trying to hold back sobs, tears spilling.
“Want anything?” He asks, so casual Lise can hear the way things were in his words. If not for the pain in her chest she might be able to pretend a moment of peace.
Despite that, she is compelled to answer as always: honest. “…A way out.”
“You already have that. Something you don’t.”
“…A way forward.”
“You have that.”
“How? How can I do anything as I am? I can’t bear this weight, I can barely stand.”
“You abase yourself, Akota. A self-serve sentence. Why do you bear it? Who benefits by your suffering?”
“I… I don’t know. What do I do, Akota?”
“How would I know? Sure, I might be the world’s sanest man, but I can’t speak for anyone but myself—and barely that much. Do as you will; we all see the same end, one way or another.”
Lise turns away, unable to meet his eyes. “What if I just ceased?”
“Ceased what?”
Where Akota was standing seconds before, Aleen scratches her head. “…What?”
“Were you talking to me?”
“What?”
“I take that as a no. Do you need a moment?”
Lise realizes tears still trickle from her eyes. “I… Um, no, I’m okay. What… What was it?”
“I just came to hear your answer.”
“My answer… of course…” She feels the weight. “My answer… I… I fear that by the time I touch the plateau top my sister will be long dead… I am drawn between options, and in all I fail to save her. I appreciate the idea, but feel that you’ve just given me another false hope.”
Aleen nods, inexpressive. “I see… Is saving her possible at all? Would my contributions be futile in all scenarios?”
“I… don’t know… I want to believe it is still possible, but I don’t know. I’ve failed so many times… It bears me down and down, and I can’t shed its weight. I’m buried beneath a prison of my own creation. The only way to free myself is to let go of all, at which point I will drift… and drift, floating, for nothing remains to ground me. All reason cast off. Bearing the weight, I am a fool. Letting go, I am nothing.”
“I’m afraid I don’t quite understand… What weight, what prison do you refer to?”
“Responsibility…”
“You consider that a prison?”
“It is. It confines me to certain paths. Because of it, I must pursue my sister, I must try and save who I can. Even if I fail at every step, responsibility pushes me along. It has pushed me through more pain and suffering than I ever imagined experiencing, let alone fighting past. Yet, as the pain, the weight, grows ever greater, even responsibility cannot move my feet. I feel its falseness. It frays—its illusion failing—and its power fades with it. It seems, before I knew it, I have already given up hope of saving anyone. I don’t know if I can save Seli. I don’t think I can. It’s rending me, flaying my mind, trying to carry the weight, because I know that the moment I fully release it I will simply… cease.”
“I… understand. Not completely, but better than before. There is something I feel I’m missing, and I think once I get that everything else will click into place. These are very heavy concepts, and I need some time to process what you’ve said. I will reconsider my earlier proposition; perhaps you were right to forgo it, but I’m struggling with your perception…”
Lise slowly nods, drained. “Yeah… I’m struggling with it too.”
To process everything seems a grasp for the unattainable. Where to begin eludes her. Drawn between conflicts, taut, tearing her in two, three, four…
Had she imagined Akota? How had Elineal dragged her all the way to Kellean? What should she say to Pelanea, knowing her brother’s fate? Where is Seli and can she still save her? Will this pain bear her ever downward? Forever the fool, is freedom possible for her? Is it real to begin with?
Prying apart gradually, creaking and snapping.
Lise struggles to stay with one thing long enough to reach any kind of understanding, even the semblance of it. Pain pesters her, pulling her away. She needs to think, needs to work past this haze. Pain plucks every thread of thought. Left a frayed mess. Sick of it all.
A moment of reprieve, she feels her self separate from herself. Pain dulled, distant, experienced and forgotten the next second. It’s only a matter of time. The self-awareness gained in that brief detachment dissipates, but its echo rings in her empty mind. It is only a matter of time…
The only end.
Pain’s hot breath fogs her lens once more. Still, she earned an insight. First and foremost, she has to clear her head somehow. The state she is in precludes even the semblance of understanding. If it isn’t the pain, it is the drugs, the sleep deprivation, the grief, the guilt. To peel back the folds and see beyond—that’s what she needs.
There is a place of ultimate clarity. A state where all excess is abraded. NON. It is next to death, an end she desires so dearly—but if she dwells in it with the intention of rebirth… is the risk justified? She might awaken weeks, quadrants, even years from now—long after the clarity would be of use.
If she could reach the undermind uninfluenced she might find respite from the pain there. But that would mean abstaining from the painkillers and getting some sleep, which are mutually exclusive just now.
She yearns for it still. NON. It is within her, an emptiness, just a breath away. It does not beckon. It needn’t. It is a matter of time. Let go. Reality will be pulled from her, she will be pulled from her; all slipping away, left with what cradles everything.
But Lise clutches reality. Full with the fear of loss, afraid to lose herself again. Afraid of what will happen in her absence. Change, constant and irreversible, irreparable. In the same cloying, clinging clutch, she refuses the face of reality. Rather than love, an embrace from terror. Hugging truth and coveting the comfortable lies over its shoulder.
From that embrace she bears out something horrible. The marriage of her contorted perception and reality, consummated. Pain’s progeny is birthed in her wake.
Wailing, screaming; it tears from her. Pain breathes through her, and she watches their child writhe, stagger, and rise. And she can do naught but scream at her own pain and terror manifest—an infant fiend, suckling at her breast.
It is worse.
Clinging to her, the fiend chews at her undefended mind. She can feel it, gnawing feebly, but is too far gone to act. Doing little more than let it feed, weeping as its venom seeps in, further clouding her mind with pain and fear.
She rolls in the bed, desperate, clawing at the blankets, needing escape. The pain crests with her panic and she loses the fight in moments. Vision narrowing to pinpoints in the dark, she trembles and whimpers. Begging death.
“What happened?”
Pain pain pain. What greets her as she blinks awake. Eyes filmy with poor sleep. “What…?”
“What happened? Did you dream?”
Lise trembles, a dream… Had she dreamed? “Where am I?” The tremble touches her words. She feels wrong… disoriented… violated. “What’s happened? What is this?”
Pelanea… Yes, that’s who speaks in the darkness. Pelanea leans forward, peering at her. “Are you alright? You were speaking in your sleep and kept crying but I couldn’t wake you up. Do you need medicine?” She whirls the bottle, sending the pellets rolling around the inner glass.
“Please…” And again she takes the medicine without water, bitter.
“Are you in pain? No, I mean, that’s obvious, but how much? Should I fetch a physic? Aleen?”
Lise struggles to recall her dream. She feels its lingering terror more than she can remember it. If it was a dream… Dreams, as experienced by non-dwellers, had become a rarity for her. She can only interpret it as confirmation of what she fears. Pelanea’s questions hang around her, untouched, as her spiraling thoughts draw her down and down.
She is water. Rushing, rushing. Flowing through life. Frothing with vitality one moment, growing to a great roaring power, and the next moment she is slow… placid—but always flowing. Even as parts of her trickle away, lost to life’s strand, she flows. Here, she feels the dregs of her drift to a stop, and at last she perceives the whole of the crater she fills. Stagnant. And her fresh mass turns foul.
She begs a sun come burn her away, lest she fester further. Better to expedite her end than live this gradual putrescence.
“Are you alright?” Pelanea asks, watching the slow creep of despair blear Lise’s gaze. And when she again gets no response, “I’m going to get Aleen…”
Lise hears her, but can’t care.
Everything… stills.
When Aleen comes, she knows. Under upheld lantern, she looks into Lise’s eyes and sees the end in her. The breath she takes, controlled, speaks more than words.
“Pelanea, send for Bente… and Alestier. Tell them to meet me there. Then bring Eclait here—if she resists… you may use my title.”
\\//
‘There! Don’t let her slip away! Hold her!’
She feels their hands on her, touching her mind. Aleen pries the clinging fiend from her chest, lifting it up by the nape like a cub. It does not struggle—hanging limp from her clutch—then it does. The fiend thrashes suddenly, slashing at Aleen, and they go down in a grapple.
When next she becomes aware, the fiend is sealed in a cage. Aleen looks worse for it, significant chunks taken from her forearms, gashes leaking red along her ribs.
‘Harmony… Come feel this,’ one of the people who holds her, prodding around her boundaries. ‘What is this? It’s… there’s a hole… or something… I can’t figure it.’
Aleen takes a breath, concentrating on the fiend’s container a moment more, then comes to her. She looks down at her. ‘Lise, are you conscious?’
Lise doesn’t know. She feels herself like water, and can’t move.
‘It’s probably something to do with that mending gray we found. She needs time to–’
‘I don’t know, it’s strange. Forget that for a second, and feel this…’ They take her hand and guide it. ‘Right… there. Does that feel like mending gray?’
Glazed with fatigue a moment before, Aleen’s gaze sharpens. ‘This… I know this…’ Her thoughts slow, stopping, and start again frantic. ‘Pull back! PULL BACK!’ She shoves the other two away. ‘Don’t touch it again.’
‘What? What is it?’
‘I don’t know…’
‘You said–’
‘I recognize it, but I don’t know what it is.’
Lise knows it.
Too late. The hole. Lise feels herself like water, draining. And even as they realize it, she is beyond them. Trying to catch her they come away with wet hands. She bleeds into the void and knows vastness. And knows nothing.
NON
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