Man in the Sand

I found myself standing in the desert in the darkness. I mulled on which desert this was. It couldn’t be mine – the sand color was wrong and it was nighttime. Two strikes too many to be mine.

I decide to fly around this space and see what there is to see. I throw sand around to stretch my muscles. It feels amazing. In that moment, I realized how it might be possible for larger beings or elementals to create natural disasters on whim. To stretch out and to feel your muscles work under the strain. It does feel good, and I’m sure anyone caught in my sand flinging would disagree with me.

But it was nice.

I flew around some more. Some small entities came after me, but they were quick work. My clothing was full on desert gear at this point, so I suspected some level of DD involvement.

The mere mention of him make my arm burn. The red ribbon appears around my forearm and travels off into the darkness. I follow it, the only lead I have. I fly across the dunes for what felt like forever. I’m suddenly yanked down as the ribbon juts straight into the sand. I hover above this space. I already know what is gonna happen. We’ve done this dance before, you and I. And you and others. Always in the sand. Why?

I move the sand around, trying to clear enough of it to pull him out. He’s down deep this time. Probably somewhere btwn 4 and 5 feet. But I eventually pull him out. He is unconscious, and I bring him up to a flattened part of a dune nearby. His clothing looks threadbare and I wager he’s been there for a long time. I start to unmangle and unknot his head wrappings when he wakes up and flips shit.

I rock back onto my heels and place my hands up. He is holding two silver daggers towards my neck and wanting to know who I am, why we are here, why I am touching him. I am demanded to stand up at some point. Again told to clarify who I am. I try to tell him that I don’t know, I just showed up here, but he is having none of it. So I let my subconscious take over. I remove my head wrappings, and I find that my face has tattoos on it. The look on his face is that of confusion. On each hand that is up, a dagger hands from my middle fingers- same make as his daggers. My hands are coated in what reminds me of henna.

He slowly drops his guard. He slowly accepts that I found him buried. That I have no clue where we are.

He helps to re-wrap my hair up. He looks up at the sky and tells me that we’re about a day away from … some city that I can’t remember what he called it. Malgydah? Maybe? idk. I poke at his clothes and tell him that he looks like shit. I dig a finger into his rib and he gets all pissy, and I simply look at him smugly and amused.

Eventually, It ell him I can’t stand his clothing looking like shit, and I touch it, and energy eats away the old stuff and puts new clothing on him that reminds me of what I’m wearing. Most of the clothing and energy reminds me of blue. Interesting, because he is supposed to be tied to green.

Maybe the blue line is different from the green line? And the orange line is another separate thing, too? jfc Too many.

I talk to Big Man about this, and he freaks out “I’ve been looking for this piece!” he drags this piece of DD out of the desert and into me. I remember him asking me, “Miris’la, what is this many talking about?” one of the only times someone has used a name with me without hesitation. This man wears his heart on his sleeve. He is open about everything. Very odd for this line. I have Hinman talk to him, to try and explain to him what is going on. By that point my medication has kicked in too much and I pass out.

Nothing makes sense anymore.

TKO

It has been a few weeks since Big Man showed up at my house. He sat next to the bed for the first week while W lay with me and rested. But one day, W got up and decided he’d rather be in the living room. He could no longer stand to be next to BM.

Upon it just being me and him in the room, BM left his post next to the bed, undid his head wrappings and laid in bed with me. From time to time E would join us. I assume he was checking up on me, as well as resting, but also checking up on BM while he slept. Nothing is ever as it appears on the surface anyways.

One day, I fell into BM. I found myself in his star field, attached to a silver white thread. The star field makes me wonder- since E carries stars, too. Are they of the same make? I don’t think so, since one is stars and one is fire, but there seems to be an overlap there. Of celestial bodies, perhaps.

I sadly forget a lot of what happened while I tracked this threadwork down. I imagine there was some fighting, some falling through things. I know the part that matters most is the end when I landed on cracked ground. I shot a flare up into the sky and soon after, BM was there and threw me on the back of his horse and we rode.

I knew this place. The dry lake bed from the illusion before. The small village where the old woman lived. The place where Kat learned her trade.

We went to her, sat down before her. She took things from him and crafted a ring which was placed on my right hand, next to W’s. Both pieces next to one another. more stable that way. Parts of him to be kept safe by me. I am told by E later to not show this to W.

We went into this tiny little mud hut and fell asleep. We are still asleep there. I woke up and sat outside to smoke the other night, only to be told that the old woman wanted to see me again. I was taken to her, and she gave me her blessing. Those lines she lit up on my forearms the last time I as there are now gold instead of red. Apparently I am on my way to clearing out the debt I racked up (debt? idk?) and that the blood that must be paid is nearly finished. And because of that, she gave me her blessing to be his Keeper. Because he kept oathing himself to me, basically.

It….. only kinda makes sense.

But it is this half that is important to understanding the other half. The half that won’t tell me anything. The half that has been out of the house for nearly a week because he can not stand to be in the same house as BM.

I go to his heart space last night and wait for him there. He hides initially, only watching. I tell him to either come out or go away. He takes me into the house, which is pitch black for once. We sit there and I watch him fret and worry and evade. He goes to make tea, I tell him that I deserve to know. My healing session with DD is nearly finished. You said you’d tell me when things got stable. They are stable. You owe me at least some answers.

He tells me to leave. To get out. Even though his home is resting within a land of my creation, I am ordered to leave, and I do so. But D pops out in the process, and he won’t be made to leave.

W sits down with his tea, and I watch D push the correct buttons to elicit an answer.

When he starts the conversation, W has no horns. By the time he’s done, his horns are protruding out of the back of his head, his hair has taken a life of its own, and his eyes are rimmed with gold and orange. He digs grooves into the wood work of his chair.

I forget if the pain started before I left or after I left. I’m pretty sure it coincided wit leaving, to be honest. I could feel the shard digging into my core. I can see memories of W or Loki-Lookalike grabbing me. Trying to get close. And the pain and taint spreading through me. I am reminded of L who came in contact with the taint and lost her battle to it. Opposites can kill one another. Darkness kills light. Taint destroys light beings.

I am the story of L. L’s story is my story. Though it wasn’t D who infected me.

It was W.

D shows up in the darkness. I can feel parts of me writhing from this knowledge. Part of me passed out in D’s study, black taint oozing from my mouth. Another part of me is with E, muttering about how it hurts. And E pulls me out of bed at the house and forces me into a bath to help combat where this is going.

D is tired of waiting. And so he pushes the buttons to push forward the answers.

What happens when the moon meets the sun? Technically nothing. However, if the moon is unstable and infected, the moon could taint the sun and kill her. Except I can not be killed. What happens when an unstoppable object meets an unmovable object?

In this case, I was destroyed and reborn with different structure (because trapped across two people) and he was fractured into two pieces, both of which with varying degrees of taint and moon-bits.

It’s all very… weird.

I tell D that it makes no sense to hide this from me, and he laughs at me. Because technically it is this fracturing that causes so many problems. Causes us to drop down a planar rung. Causes us to meet Teru to be dragged into the machine. To meet Keets and thrown into the Circle. Everything folds into everything else. The start of a Game that is just barely starting to meet its climax. And the fractures mean that going back up a planar rung is likely impossible. It brings multiple meanings to “there is nowhere to go back to”. Forever in diaspora. Forever unable to go home.

I mull on the meanings of mirrors, the layers of symbolism. The fact that I am a mirror. I reflect to W his error and mistake. DD is nothing but a pawn. But an effective one. The mirrored shards can’t help but be attracted to one another. You move him, and my bits will follow, ever trying to catch up. Move my bits, and E and W and DD will follow because everything is tied and knotted together.

We’ve only got one shot to fix this. It echoes in my head.

It becomes so much simpler to control people when they are all tied together somehow. Throw in some madness and some animosity and hormones, and it’s a damned free for all.

The weight of it all. The pieces shifting together. It all sorta coming together. It’s a lot to take in.

The Price in Blood.

How far are you willing to go?
That is what I awoke to ringing in my ears. How far are you willing to go?
Over the edge and back if I must.
It’s too late to be asking me that now, anyways.

__

The illness kept spreading. Blackened blood poured out of him like a waterfall. And in time, that pitch would find me, too. Instead of waiting, I decided that being proactive was the better choice.

Fate favors the bold, right?

I search and ask all of the relevant people. They tell me there is nothing to be done. They can’t give me the answers to the man they are only tangentally related to. I am pushed away and out from all of them. Only the core spirit in the records room proves helpful. She shows me the binding that has been formed. Though the specifics of where or how are not clear. It’s better than nothing.

I rail against the things blocking my path. But the mountain will not bow to the wind. So I choose something far more rudimentary in nature. When in doubt, go back to your basics, to your foundations. What worked in season one still works in season five.

And so I return to the river. I return to the door that leads me to the answers that I need. They may not be the answers I want, but it will at least show me what I need.

Hinman sees me off, telling me he has faith in my abilities. I’m not so sure I believe him, but I have to try. Sitting around will get me nowhere. I walk into the water and dive beneath its surface. I am embraced by the darkness and ushered into the man I am trying to save.

The way forward is cold and dark. This man shouldn’t have this much moisture within him. I am concerned as I press forward. Suddenly, the darkness gives way to a snowy realm. I am up in the mountains and standing in front of a large stone building. I climb inside to find something guarding the door. I force the necklace forward, trying to get the light to send it back, or perhaps to hope that the bond will prove my permission to be here. but this being doesn’t give a shit. My hand is slammed against the door behind me. We tussle and I run into neighboring rooms to light the brazier before I am cast out into another realm.

Sand at night. I know this place. We spent many days here. He steps forward and throws me forward hundreds of miles to the tree that lives in the middle of nowhere. It is dead and dried out. I know I need to heal it. I funnel as much energy as I can muster in my current state until everything begins to turn green again. But then the tree swallows me whole.

I awake to a narrow hallway. I move forward slowly until I find a door. And when I throw the door open, I see that I am on the side of a sheer mountain face. There is only one way out of this- down. But I won’t be climbing down from this. I already know the price that must be paid. I hurl myself off of the landing and land onto trees below. If blood is the price you ask, then it is the price that shall be paid.

I am hurled towards more parts and places. My body pays the price of these places. In the end, I end up battered on the ground with a Game Player hovering over me. The usual words are exchanged, and when I can no longer tolerate it, I send my dogs to consume him whole. It certainly won’t be the end of him, but it’ll give me some peace as I die in the darkness.

Eventually I am found and whisked away to the ocean where I can die.

Necklace in the Tree.

Healing this man has opened up a pandoras box of fuckery. Lately, I’ve been waking up to illusions of my home, only to break through them and find myself face to face with assholes who want to kill me.

I can’t remember the illusion I woke to when I checked in at night, but I do remember pushing through someone and shoving my blade into a man and explosions. I jump onto E’s back and we’re off.

But shortly after, I fall asleep.  A grueling evening meant I didn’t have any energy left to do any other work.

Amidst my falling asleep, I remember contemplating a vision I had a long time ago in LV. I remember standing there, in a temple, and looking at a basin of water. And in the water you can see the moon. I remember looking outside the window, and not seeing the moon. If he is the moon, and he was not outside at the time, that would mean he was in the water. I remember falling asleep mulling on him being in the water. And that there was significance in that (except he was actually in the sand when everyone found him…).

I spent most of my night running around. Most of it is a blur now. I remember riding a tram through a city- twice. I suppose I went somewhere early on, and then saw it again when I went home.

The most important part of my dreams involved a tree. A group of men was digging it up- and I’d swear it was at my gma’s house out in QC. Again, some of the most important stuff happens there. Many things dealing with DD have happened there. Odd, because he’s got absolutely no ties to this land.

These people were pulling this large tree- I couldn’t catch it’s make, only that the roots looked like the color of white pine. They were pulling it out of the ground, I remember a short cactus being pulled up with it. It seems the intent was for the tree to be pulled out and then placed back in. It’s almost like they were removing something that was hurting the tree. And maybe in the process these pieces of jewelry fell out.

Next thing I recollect, I’m sitting outside with a small group of other people. One of the men who was digging the tree up comes up to me and hands me a small manilla envelope. On the envelope is a listing of what’s inside and the cost/value of each or something like that. I pour the contents out in my hands. The man (I think?) who gave it to me tells me that I need to wear them at a certain time in order to do a certain thing… which I don’t remember anymore.

I pour the necklaces out in my hands. It’s a silver piece that reminds me of the necklace pDD gave me a year or so ago. A circular piece with the same danglies on it, except these are blue. There is a second piece on the necklace. It’s a small, tiny silver piece… diamond? and inset into it, there is a small piece of music. I can see notes and the lines. But it’s downright tiny. The paper color is aged. I put the necklace on and the dream cuts.

I vaguely remember being at some sort of yard sale. There are a lot of boxes. I remember some lady that looks like Tammy looking through them. She is holding a small box and mentions it to me. She says that it suits her. And I tell her that she had given that box to me. I remember a small sewing box.

There are such small pieces. Too bad I can’t remember most of them.

When I wake up in the morning, I try to connect into the house. But I find that everyone is in the living room playing cards. There is someone’s arms around my stomach. They wear a ring I don’t recognize. I see that G is drinking. Everything feels off. I try to jump out of bed, but I can tell things are amiss. I break through and find that I’m in yet another illusion.

I find myself face to face with someone or something that is large and black. I reach through it and kill it and run as fast as I can. I run into the sky and cut through into a hallway made of stone and stained glass. I keep running until I hit a foyer or a dead end. I turn and find that a huge black bird is destroying everything that I was running through.

I wake up in my actual house. I reach for G.

But then I am cut out again. I’m laying in the dark on the ground. A huge dark being hovers over me. It’s hands are so large that each hand covers the entirety of my arm. I try to ask it who it is or what it wants. But I don’t hear it answer. I’m not sure if it can’t communicate or if I just can’t hear. I sit and wait, and after a point I decide to fight it with the only thing I’ve got. Light.

I flood light into it from my arms. I watch it course through it’s body until it explodes. And in that moment, a body covered in grime and sludge lands on me. I can’t move. I can’t speak. I spread the energy around us to lock us up and keep us safe. I send out a beacon and hope that they come to find me. Because my ability to move is gone.

It will take awhile, but they will show up.

Pools of Blood.

I wake up to find him sitting at the foot of the bed. I reach out to him, but he’s not really awake. I wrap myself around him, and I try to rouse him, but it’s not working. He mutters to himself in his sleep. I become concerned and ask E to take a look at him at the house. I ask Hinman to assist me in creating a pool of water for me to work in. I reach inside of him, hoping to find something of use. I find myself running through the darkness. I come upon a piece of him that appears to be trapped in threads, all of which are black and gold. He struggles. I manipulate the area and break them all apart. He reeks of void, and I rip it out of him. I hold him as I try to rouse him from the outside, to no avail.

My form shifts inside. INto the horned woman with the robes. She picks him up and carries him through the darkness. They come to a set of very tall doors, and she enters inside. She stops at water. At first I think it’s a pool, but in time I’ll find that it’s an ocean as pitch as the area surrounding them. She lays him in it and manipulates the water. Outside, I feel that he has tons of toxicity inside of him pressing against my hand. I dip into the water and let it flood out. By this point in time, E is inside of the small room with us.

I let the wound drain, but have to pause it to refresh the water. We’ll do this three or four times before the wound begins to even remotely slow down it’s drainage. I pull a huge, long shard out of him. Taint? I’m not sure. Doesn’t feel like taint, but it’s certainly not good for him.

I see a weird part of him inside of the darkness. He stabs me with a short blade. I kill that part of him. I hear E tell me that he has a bag of tricks stashed inside of him. Better that those tricks be released under my supervision than under theirs. We’re more equipped to handle them properly.

I’m beginning to lose my stability by this point. The taxation on me, btwn keeping him stable, draining the wound and being stabbed is starting to take it’s toll. They brace me as the wound continues to drain. I drop him down fully into the water, into an ocean and let the wound completely empty. I dress it upon coming out of the water. By this time, the horned woman has let him go into the water, and he turns into a gold lotus that floats off. She falls to her knees and watches.

He and I are dragged into bed. They watch as I slowly black out.

The White Room, 2

The days drag on into weeks. And weeks move into a month. Not much has progressed in a month.

Many days I wake up and find that he is off staring at the nothingness outside. He refuses to sit next to me. Refuses to talk to me. Refuses to touch me or look at me. Its as though I don’t exist. The only exception being when we’re asleep. It seems he likes to be as close as possible while asleep. But as soon as he wakes up, he gets frustrated at me and goes away.

He avoids the seating area like the plague. He refuses to do anything with anything for anyone.

One evening hte horned man is back in the room and DD is passed out on top of me. The man places a flower in my hand. And for a brief moment, I remember where I’ve seen this before. The flower. The man. It’s all very familiar. THe next morning, DD is excited to see it, and places it in a small vase on the nightstand. “We have permission” or clearance, or something similar to that, from him. For what? I don’t know. But the news seems to excite him.

However, the news is short lived and he quickly moves back to being moody and mad at me. He wears more clothing again. He seems to dislike every moment of being around me. One evening I sit down on the bench at the end of the bed, and ask him why he keeps avoiding me. He tells me he can’t trust me. Tells me I look like her and smell like her and he can’t trust me.

WE are in the middle of a standoff.

There are days when he gets frustrated at me. He gets mad, and so I get up and sit in the seating area, which makes him madder. He screams and looks for things to throw, and upon finding nothing to sate his anger, he gets even madder. At one point, I decide that I will sit in the seating area and not leave. He gets angry. Accuses me of trying to trick him and broods in teh corner. The next day, I will find him passed out inside of the seating area. Someone must have forced him to stay down there.

The new game now becomes skirting around the edge of the seating area. If I move towards him, he will shift and move to the farthest point away from me. We play this game for a while and I pass out for a bit. I return to make tea, and he stares at me from across the way. He refuses to come near me. As I sit there, a big bloody spot appears on my chest, bleeding through my shirt. He freaks out a bit, wondering what is wrong with me.

Wounds, I tell him. Wounds from another part of me. Likely some piece of myself dieing somewhere. The wound size is too large and too fatal to survive. Images of myself being on the ground, and getting shot. Images of E’s piece being held back. Images of things I can’t control. I clean up the spot on my shirt and tell him to ignore it. Luckily, this has brought him to the table, so he continues to sit there. He muses off and on on things I don’t remember.

In the end, I remember I got an opening, though. And I put my hand into his stomach and phased into a space inside of him. Deep red and maroon. I stand in front of a large crystalline structure. Inside I can hear a person screaming. Almost like they are on fire or dieing. I can’t pierce the crystal, though. It’s too strong. I try to funnel energy into it. The lines light up, but still- nothing. W and the DD-source come to my assistance. Eventually, we break open a part of the crystal, and a hand reaches out to grab me. He looks scarred from top to bottom. Like he had lived through being burned alive. The pain sounds immense. We work to heal and I pass out in the process.

Again, it harkens back to figuring out how these two are related.

We stay passed out on the ground there for a while. I’ll wake up off and on to see him drinking tea and staring off. My mental health plummets as my brain eats itself alive, so I don’t bother to wrok with him. However, I awake one evening to him picking me up adn taking me to bed. I’m guessing he convinced someone to let him move in order to help me. He sets me down and these lines appear on his skin. Almost like feathers coming out of his skin. It’s odd.

He tells me to calm down. I black out.

The next time I come to, I’m sitting inside of him with him sitting across from me. Core spirit? He says no. But he’s separate from the man sitting outside in the room. He seems to imply that he contains all of the information about him, and who he is. But he got cut off from t hat part of himself. Hence the problems. Not sure if I believe, but I can only take things at face value at this point.

I create a tree to help with the energy in the area. I funnel it in in hopes it’ll help.

Off and on, for the next few days, I will feel these overwhelming emotions coming from him. I see images. Feel things. All of which are kinda disconcerting. I roll with it as best as I can. He moves around off and on, but all in all, he’s asleep. Healing, I imagine.

WE’ll see if he’s better once he wakes up.

The White Room

I wake up to a room. Well, I can’t really say I woke up. At least, not the first time.

The first time I fall into this place, the air is gauzy and I’m sitting on the edge of what I’d later find out is a bed. He sits between my legs and complains about something while I braid his hair. His arms are draped over each leg, his hands swing back and forth as he frets over whatever is on his mind.

In the beginning, I couldn’t tell if it was the past or the present. A memory, or a current location.

And then in a wave of courage or something else, he turned around and planted one on me. Slowly, as things progressed from there, I realized that we were not in a memory, but in a current location. Whether it started as a memory or not, I can’t tell, but it’s moved into full present time.

Whatever present time actually is, though.

Everything is a crisp white for me. THe light that shines through the open walls is blinding, and I can feel the breeze that always is around. If there were trees beyond the walls, you’d be able to hear them, because the wind is always moving here. The bed lays at one end, and a sitting area in the middle. My clothing is a mixture btwn illusion world’s tunics and waist ties, and the desert’s pointed boots and embroidery.

Nothing makes sense. The clothes. The setting. The purpose.

I will wake up later to find a different form of him sitting in the room. No longer clad in white, he is wearing the typical black pants he is known for. I can see his tattoos on his torso as he stares off at whatever is outside… if there even is an outside.

Small talk. I convince him to lay with me, to calm him down, and we do. This is when I fall into him and remove that blockage. He’ll sleep for a few days after that.

Last night is when I actually wake up in the room. I sit up and see someone standing at the edge of the wall on the opposite end of the room. I phase over there to see who it is. He is the typical 7 foot tall type. Someone who has power, likely, or is older or from the realms that create such tall entities. As I look up at him, I see the horns that come out of his black hair. Pale and ashen, his horns and his skin match, and their structure isn’t too far off of the kind that I have been known to sport.

He looks down at me, he acts as if he knows me. He’s certainly not put off, surprised or pissed at my presence. And in the time it takes me to get from bed to wall, a short sword has appeared on my left. Though I didn’t realize it at the time, I take this to be a token of trust.

The first notion to pop into my mind is that this is a core being. This is the same calibre of person that DE and SD are. This is the same branch of W that I’ve seen, and on the same level as D. Entities that will screw you over if you’re not careful. People get nervous around gods, I get nervous around people like this. He moves slowly, deliberately. He is very calm and poised in his responses. He answers things in full words, not in contractions, and he is respectful towards myself and the situation.

Or at least, that’s the impression I got.

He is different from most of the people I meet. I remember being told about beings being from higher and lower realms, and if the rest of us are on lower realms, this bloke certainly had a lot of the characteristics of being a higher realm entity.

Above all, though, he knows me. He knows of DD and he knows of W. He knows, but he won’t share. He tells me the timing isn’t right. That this has to be done right, because if its done wrong, it’ll take so much more extra work to fix it. And so he’s watching, waiting, trying to make sure that everything goes as it should.

I ask him if I need to be doing anything to make sure it goes well. He tells me no. It’s mainly on the other pieces. I’m just here to facilitate the transition.

I ask him where this room is. All he’ll give me is that it’s somewhere safe.

Most of his answers are clear, but they dont’ really answer anything at the same time. OUr conversation is short and he leaves. As he leaves, I think he touched my shoulder, or something. A flash enters my mind, and I see a gold necklace with a large jewel being shoved into my hands. The vision is emotionally heavy and panicked. He tells me that I have all of the answers buried within myself, but that he’d prefer I keep them buried for now, because timing.

I set the blade on a shelf and go back to bed.

_____

I stand outside of W’s door to see where it will lead me. I want to make sure he’s okay.

I open the door and find that htere is nothing but black and grey wind and smoke outside. It reminds me of the void. When I ask E about it, he tells me that things are reseting. And not to worry.

I push through into the void out of reflex. My clothing shifts into desert wear as I move forward. I pass through a number of places and visions that I no longer recollect. I never find the man, I only pass out somewhere along the way. I’ll wake up the next morning back in the heart space. SOmeone must have brought me back overnight.

Bleeding it Out

Bleeding the wound. You can’t bleed the wound until you have managed to cut it open and remove what is inside. If you heal the wound and close it up before you’ve removed the contents, it will only succeed in becoming an abscess. By the time it has festered and become infected, it will be twice as hard to fix.

Don’t you see what we’re trying to prevent?

Why is it that you want me close, and yet will never let me in.

Out of all of the pieces I have worked with, you have proven the most challenging.

He sits next to me on the bed and buries his face into my chest. It’s obvious that he is distraught. Lost. But unable to do anything about it. He knows the path he should take, but can’t force his feet to move forward. I ask him to lay with me. I don’t expect anything of him, and I reassure him I won’t try anything, but I press that he lay down with me, to relax, to see what comes forward.

And so we do. His natural instinct is to remove the light from this room, which is hard considering how open the place is. I create a star laden tent above us to help shield from the light. It’s sufficient enough for him to calm down.

You have something inside of you. You know it needs removed, but you won’t let anyone near it. When you are around her, you feel the pull of that piece that you protect so dearly. The closer you get, the harder it tugs. The closer you are to her, the more likely that piece will come out of you.

And that’s why you avoid.

I fall into him on accident and I’m carried away into memories. Each are split seconds long. Shards. Pieces. Fragments of hte man who once was.

He stands in a dark room. The man with shined shoes picks up a small vial off of a silver tray.

“You see this?” he asks, looking the vial over carefully. “you know what this is, yes?”
He doesn’t answer. He only glares at the man from underneath his brows.
“Do you know what makes you you?” the man asks. “What you value most” he answers his own question.
He continues to look at him angrily.
“I know you value your past. That’s all you have anymore. Nothing else is of value to you.”
The man drops the vial on the ground. “And when you mess up, I will remove from you what you value most.”
His heel smashes the vial into tiny bits. Fragments of the past waft up out of the glass into nothing, disappearing. He drops to the ground and writhes from the pain. He can’t remember. That’s all his mind can tel him.
“If you screw up enough, you won’t remember a damned thing. And that will leave a nice blank canvas for me to work with. Remember that next time you fail.”

Remove the past. Wipe the harddrive clean. That’s how you detach a core from a living being. You create a husk that can do whatever, and you have a clean slated core you can do whatever you want with. It’s perfect.

“I can fix some of that” my spirit whispers to his. “But you must let me in. You must trust me. I can’t do anything without your consent.”

Intuitively I reach into his stomach and pull out the jeweled shard that is the item he holds onto. I do what Teru taught me so well and shift the jewel into a huge lotus above us. It fills the sky with golden light. And in a flash, the millions of petals break apart and flay back into the man they came from.

There are many more flashes I don’t remember. A merge, a shift, and a purge of myself from him. We black out on the bed and settle into the nothingness.

Maybe we will have better luck another day.

Falling Up.

When you fall into the sky, you will know that the time has come.

He took his staff into his hands and struck it where the horizon and the sky meet. As the clouds lifted up and around us, the hole formed between me and the ends of time.

I stare down into the hole that has formed. For the briefest of moments, I hesitate.

But then I am shoved into the hole. I fall down and then fly up into the abyss.

I land with a crash and awake to see him knocked out on the ground with me.

2 plus 2 plus 2 is 3.

You will need him before this is over, he told me.

Mirrors

“Isn’t it a bit soon to be drawing blood out of me?” I ask him.

“Well, I’ve got to get my fuel from somewhere.” he responds.

__

I dip into the darkness and he meets me in the depths.

“I came back to help you with this. This specifically is the reason I am here. You’re going to need my help to figure this out.” he tells me.

Mirrors. It comes back to the mirrors.

“You’re going to have to master this in order for it to work”.

___

We float opposite one another in the darkness. Ten feet or so between us.

“Of all of the people you had to pick to torment, why did you decide that it had to be my door that you showed up at?”

He looks up at me and replies “I don’t know.”