Not Present

She is massive, somewhere off in the distance. She takes up the bulk of the horizon, and she’s mostly outlined via stars, a weird mixture of 2D and 3D.

We are in the darkness, but it is bigger, lighter, and less oppressive than so many of the starfields I frequent. She is lined in gold and she looks more like Aset than herself. Her sheath dress has gathering in it, and there is a belt across the waist. Her hair hangs to her shoulders.

I ask her where we’re going ro what we’re doing, and I’m being thrown forward through darkness and space. Suddenly, there is a hard cut and everything is white and bright, but still a starfield.

I find my footing, and I’m standing at the end of a long, narrow walk way. I feel as though we are inside of a large bowl or walled area. I can’t tell what is around this walkway, but it seems like the horizon is blocked visually via a wall. At the end of this walkway seems to be a small ramada.

In my hands is a jar. It’s unglazed and has a not-flat bottom. It changes shape, sometimes its larger and I have to wrap both arms around it to carry it. But always, you require both hands to hold it. There are times when I am walking towards my destination when I look down into the jar and watch it collect my tears. Is all of the liquid tears? I don’t know.

My body is changed, though. I feel more like my physical form, but its been distorted because my internal views of my body are not healthy. I hear from above “Why are you not [present] in your form?” over and over again. I want to recoil over looking like this. My hair has been shaved, though it would have been weird to have my human hair just as well. My clothing reminds me of hers, a sheath dress with some sort of belt. There are times when it feels like there could be more or could be less, but I can’t make out the details.

All I know is that I need to take this jar to the end of the walkway and toss it into whatever’s there.

I try to grapple with why I am not present, why I’m not here. It doesn’t matter if she means there or here, the fact remains that I’ve had a hard time wanting to participate or be forward in any situation. I don’t want to be here, life is hard, I’m tired, and nothing feels worthwhile. I’m not present because I don’t feel a good reason to warrant the suffering that comes with being present.

The scenery shifts as my form retaliates. I’m back in my usual presentation, though I’m still not fixed, I still can’t be over there for very long before my body starts to shut down and fall apart. This space is dark and it feels darker than the starfield, but still less oppressive. It feels round, as though the walls are gauze. I’m on the ground, my cleave filled with rapidly cycling gold and copper. Angry and painful, I try to keep the internal screaming at bay. I writhe but try not to let it rip me apart. She stares over me a few feet away.

There is a point where everything begins to crescendo and I see the coursing gold in the first three fingers of my hand. There is a ring on the thumb I don’t recognize, but it is geometric, large and dark charcoal. She reaches down and breaks it between her fingers and my vision goes black.

I never get to toss my jar in.

___

I see my hands in his and I see the lace of his cuffs. I try to make out his current state, and I see that his silhouette invokes the Red Death, but his coloration is nothing like. Every aspect of the clothing is large and ornate and saturated. It’s a type of outfit I’ve not see on him in possibly years, if ever. He wouldn’t have had access to garments of this measure while alive, and blending into the crowd is how we’ve gotten by.

He reaches down to the finger that is his and removes what’s there. “We need to fix/update this” he says, with the implications that he’ll be back once the work is done.

I sit under the tree in a dress that is very common to what I used to wear, and yet is very much not my normal style. The fabric is more sateen than I am used to, and the sleeves mirror my normal wear. I settle into my self and wait for him to return.

___

There is someone across from me. I reach out to touch them, and through my hand I feel the shift of focus. I’m pulled out and viewing two people, presumably myself and someone that registers as Brosky.

His skin is darker and ruddy. The hair reminds me of a blend of B and E. The sides are completely shaven clean, and there is only a central strip where the hair has been formed into what reminds me of locks. These locks are coated in something that reminds me of mud or putty, and to some extent, the hair can blend into the skin because there are hints of red in both.

This reminds me of a vision I’ve had in the past, which reminded me more of Karas’ line, where reds and ashes are the most common colors. Is this tied to that?

The rest of the person’s details are lost, the only thing that really drives home to me is the outline of the jaw, the angularity of it is not what I expected, I think. The next thing I know I’m standing outside of a large building that looks like it’s made of stone. I feel like I’m standing on sand, or something loose, and the sky is dark.

I am reminded of SGI’s paper, the desert that didn’t used to be nothing but sand. I am reminded of my own desert, the one I can’t access anymore. It held remains to a place, several places, that I couldn’t access anymore. Originally, I had intended to make it more hospitable again. I know the struggle.

There is then this fire that emanates from a central location, the way a radial gradient does. This fire is two toned and more illustrative in stylistic than literal. I know who this is tied to, and I feel that mistrust leaking into me. I know who you are, and I know what is being implied.

However, I still can’t figure out what the source of the mistrust is. The vision carries baggage so heavy that I can’t even stay with it, and am forced to cut myself off before I’m overrun.

It’s possible we’ve known each other that long, but if so, what happened to cause the rift that exists. Why does an entire pantheon know a thing and yet hide it.

We all know the answer.

___

We reach for eachother in the darkness, but upon touching my form starts to dissolve. We separate and regroup, only our hands and heads able to manifest in this darkness. He goes from being alert to falling asleep in a matter of a few moments. Briefly, I can see him sitting in a chair that isn’t his, with both girls asleep on top of him. All tuning into whatever it is that cajoles people to sleep.

T works in the next room.

___

I’m running and these large blades come out of the sky and pin me down. Hitting my foot, then my legs, torso, all the way up to my head, the skin and body giving way as the knife hits the flesh has a gorey and almost fake effect to it. The blood reminds me of a neon salmon, if such a thing exists, and its shape reminds me a lot of claymation. There is the suggestion of pain from the swords, but not enough for me to actually react to it, and the swords look like nothing of mine.

A being made of nothing but the suggestion of darkness stands a few feet away. It tells me that we need to get moving, and tells me to hurry it up. I feel myself as mist or steam rising up from the death on the ground. I hover amidst the blades, trying to reform myself.

Slowly, I can hover a little bit above myself, I calmly and slowly ask it what we’re doing, why it killed me. A saddness wells in me when It tells me that it didn’t kill me, that I killed myself. The sadness is subdued, I hazily ask it why I did that.

“Because you needed to be reborn.”

I’m hovering above myself, but I’m mostly just laying there. I’m so tired, nothing will move. I tell the shadow I am trying, but it’s taking more effort than I can muster at the moment. Below the surface I can feel G there. In this moment, its as though we’re fully blended. You feel separate but one, like you could sift the parts apart if you really wanted. Like standing in a really humid and steamy room. You’re wet, but dry.

The shadow makes this hazy grey box around me, and a stick forms connecting me to him. It begins to walk forward with this box floating behind, a similarly grey bar connecting one to the other. I focus on regrouping as this being walks forward towards who knows what.

After a time, the shadow announces we’ve arrived, and when I look up, I can see this large sea of what I can only describe as lava. Just like with the blood, the coloration is not exactly what you’d expect. It’s brighter, more neon, less physical and literal than you’d expect. I tell the shadow that the lakes are larger than I expected. The shadow doesn’t seem to care. It tells me that we need to get to the other side.

I try to continue reforming myself. I shift my focus from inside of myself to outside of myself nad back again, but nothing’s really happening that allows me to see well enough to figure out how on earth we’re going to navigate this place. I ask the shadow if there were any preferred methods to get across, and it gives me nothing.

I’m trying to get my shit together when I hear “okay, well, bye then.” and the next thing I know the shadow has used the bar that connected the box to him and used it to catapult me over the edge. I hit the lava and sink deep down into it. I question if I have made enough progress for it to not eat me alive.

It is still and quiet under the surface. The consistency is hard to describe. Thick, creamy, but also gritty and giving. You don’t really float up or sink down necessarily, though through the following portion, there were times when parts of me did shift up or down, depending.

I focused mostly inward, flipping through memories regarding Teru, though a few others came to mind. Off and on, pieces would push out of my skin and float up towards the surface of the lava. Eventually, I feel as though I was wrapped in a lava cocoon, and I fell asleep.

idk

“Your friend can stay, but you can’t” he tells me. He’s sitting at the top of a long staircase that travels down the side of the mountain and runs into the town below.

I’m used to this. I shrug my shoulders and walk off, supposedly leaving my friend with whoever we had met. We’re in a small town that’s nestled in the very back of a long canyon, where two mountains meet together, or perhaps where water has eroded a large portion of a mountain away. I’ve been here before and everything feels vaguely familiar, yet different. As if they’ve done some updating since IW as there last. The roads seem better, more stable and safe. I remember musing about it to someone.

___

I fall into the darkness. There is nothing above me. Nothing below me. Am I within someone? Am I nowhere at all? I don’t know, but I find myself here often.

He shows up and I feel conflicted. Should I be happy that you’re here? Aren’t you supposed to be merged down and gone by now? Am I inadvertently keeping you here? Is he?

“Your devotion is moving. You should learn to be as devoted to him.”

It burns.

___

“I knew for a long time, but never said anything.”

He worried about feelings getting in the way, ruining our work and making things weird. So he stayed quiet and never mentioned what he felt. I would come at scheduled times and we’d work on whatever we were working on, and then I’d leave and go back to my own place. His place was nothing more than a small room. Everything was sorta crammed in and shoved in places wherever he could get it to fit. The whole place was pretty dark and had a sort of brown and yellow overtone.

One night I wasn’t fast enough. Something happened and I fell asleep. He pulled me into bed and laid there with my head on his chest. He tells me that there is something important about this moment. Maybe a full realization of the feelings he had. Maybe something else, I don’t particularly know. But this instance confirmed something for him in regards to myself.

When I wake up the next morning, I freak out a little bit for having fallen asleep on him. Not to mention that I’m not entirely sure what happened to get to that point. I get up to leave and he moves to stop me. He tells me about his feelings. I’m overwhelmed and take my exit.

I come back later and give him a small trinket of some kind. Floating little lights that move in a pattern, I think.

___

I spend all night listening to someone tell me things. Every time I wake up, I forget what I was just listening to. And every time I fall asleep, I fall right back into the conversation.

Later I find myself wandering around some house. G is there, and he is doing work in the basement. Upstairs is a few other people I don’t recall. We’re examining something. Seems like someone here has been hanging fish in the bathroom? It’s a little weird, but it seems important somehow.

Deeper

It was late Sunday night when I got the ping of a message being delivered to the river. I opened it up and it recited its contents back to me. I was being asked to report back to the Duat for “my Lord” required me. There were, ofc, a lot of extra rules and regs in there about what I could and couldn’t do until my probationary period is over, but that didn’t matter as much as the “you need to show up within the next 24 hours”.

The next day I found myself laying in bed with G. Everything has been a mess since returning from the control room. At first I was asleep in the infirmary, but I soon found that I was being pulled out to work while asleep. For a while I stayed in bed with D, but then one day he pulled me into himself, and I lost all contact with the main house. On this day, I must have been out at a drop house with G. The room was small and the ceiling had a weird coffering to it. There were wooden slats on the windows and the entire room had a very small and cozy feel to it.

However, I was too miserable to stay there. I cut a part of myself off and went outside. I found myself sitting on the railing of a boardwalk. The sky was completely grey. The clouds blended into the horizon and the ocean was dark and slate colored. I pulled out a cigarette and smoked for a while. I walked in the surf after that, but realized that I should probably go back home. So back into bed I went.

That evening I found myself being pulled inward by GF. I have to have him with me, now, so it makes sense that he’d be the one to initiate going back. I see G run up from behind us, asking me not to leave him behind. We walk forward in the darkness, and darkness eventually gives way to a golden network of threads, which then led to a cut in the horizon. An entrance.

It’s weird because on the inside, it’s a mountain range. When you’re outside of the plane, it looks like huge pylons.

We come up on the river and GF disappears briefly. The sky is still rather dark, almost as if the sun is about to rise, but hasn’t yet. The river is so much larger than the one I frequent. Across the river is a large city. You can see lights along the edges of some of the buildings. The silhouettes really stand out in the darkness, and I’m slightly in awe of everything. This is the first time I’ve been to the more inhabited parts of the Duat. The first time I’ve seen a city of any actual scale.

My netjeri returns with a dude who seemingly is going to take me down river. We pile into this tiny ass reed boat, him in the front, G behind me, and an apprentice in the back. We make small talk on the way down- it takes probably close to two hours to get where we’re going, and by the time I’m getting out on the docks, the sun is fairly high up in the sky. He hands something to a small boy who runs into this new town we’re at. Ten minutes later, he brings back someone that maybe is of priestly status. My boatman was in a straight up kilt and wore a collar and had some kind of wig on (or he did his hair well). This new person seemed a little older, had the collar on as well as some kind of round pendant, was shaven, and wore a tunic instead.

I gave payment to the boy and the boatman and the new person led me and G back into this town. I wouldn’t have guessed it from the river, but this town is very large, and it seems to be hilly, possibly. Or at the very least, isn’t flat. The houses are tightly packed into this place, and unlike everywhere else I’ve been, these buildings still have their whitewash in place. We stop briefly on a ridge so that I can stare out over the city below. There is a downright huge complex here. It’s scale reminds me of the palace in Aladdin. It dwarfs everything around it. We continue on and I’m led to a very small building that is nestled amongst a bunch of small houses.

The building has some kind of small courtyard. We walk into the gate and the man disappears inside. The courtyard contains a bunch of small trees and a small pond type thing. We sit down for a bit and eventually the man comes back. I ask him if I need to pay attn to any purity standards, but he tells me that it’s fine. We walk under a portico or porch awning and then through a doorway where everything becomes pitch black to me. He takes my hands and leads me forward, but before I realize it, I’m walking through him and beyond him. Back into complete darkness again.

I pull out that blade that O gave me and we continue forward. GF steps in front of me and I use both to figure out where to go. We eventually end up at a very small stone doorway (sans door). We continue down the walkway, and it slopes downward how they typically do inside of a tomb. I feel like I’m repeating something from a few years ago.

The area here is warm, and the stone is almost lit up, even though I didn’t see any light sources. GF runs ahead of us, and we slowly make our way down the pathway. Eventually the pathway ends at a dark room that is likely a pillared hall. That’s where we’re met by who I can only assume is O. His voice is so much more booming and foreboding than it has been in the past. I suppose you could say that he put on his game face for this. He leads us further into this place through a set of large double doors, and we ultimately end up at some kind of… oasis, I guess you could say.

The area is filled with water. There are lily pads on the water, and there is an ambiance of frogs and other smaller critters running around. In the center of this place is a piece of land- possibly made to mimic the ben ben. And on the land there is a slab of stone or concrete or similar where he has his living quarters while he rejuvenates. I’m busy handling life at this point in time, so G holds onto me while they talk. When I come to later in the evening, things are weird and I have a hard time focusing on anything. Everything looks very weirdly 3D and transparent. Time speeds up and slows down at random. Nothing processes easily and I get bogged down by the weirdness of it all. I black out.

The next night I find myself in the water, still. In some ways this water seems to want to lead me to D, but there is more to it than that. I feel as though I am here for a reason, and O hinted as much. There is a suggestion that I was here once before, because I heard it “calling to me”. If that’s the case, its entirely likely that I left something here to pick up later, and I question if that’s why I’m back. I stare up at the nothingness and I find that there is an entity that shows up and talks to me. They are humanoid, but they lack a lot of details. They’ve got no eyes, and their mouth reminds me of Creeper’s- pointy and almost cartoonish. In a way, they’re like a spider on human legs, as it seems that they’ve got possibly 10 or 12 arms. They are form and yet formless. And they ask me why I am here.

I tell them that I am poisoned.

Course, I don’t know this. Am I? I thought that I had my lines cleaned out so that W’s toxins wouldn’t fuck with me, but the implication is that those poisons still linger and affect both me and D even now. He seems to imply to me that the whole point is to prevent us from being able to reconnect and move forward. So now we have to clear those out.

This place is likely a small pocket of Nun, created or maintained to help O regen every year. I began to mull on the nature of the Nun, and this entity that was working to help me remove or fix whatever I had contracted. We never could get W’s problems to fix or heal. The connection was so damaged that there was nothing we could expect to do, outside of remove all of the lines and hope that if he ever came back, we’d be able to start from scratch and not have poison in the mix. However, I hadn’t considered that if D took all of W’s stuff afterwards, or that if I took those things, that one or both of us might contract the very same illness W did.

D2 thought things out well.

But technically the Nun contains all possibility. One possibility out of millions is that we were able to find a cure. And so I know a cure lies within this water somewhere. Now we just need to find it and use it.

Bleed Out

I awake to find myself curled up in a corner with a blanket wrapped around me.

The room is largely barren, with only a few tables in it. There is a door on the same wall that I’m leaning against, and it’s on the complete opposite end of the room. The old woman is busying herself with something by the tables.

The first thing I notice is the pain. She tells me not to get up, but to settle in first. I ask her what she means by that, as I start to stand. But it doesn’t take long for me to realize that standing is not going to happen easily. I brace the wall for support.

“see what I mean?”

I lean against the wall and slowly try to get my bearings. It doesn’t work very well. It labor to turn myself to face the corner I was in. I push against the walls to get feedback from the room for data, but the place is sealed tight. It’s the equivalent of one of those memory foam mattresses. No amount of energy I push into the walls is going to bounce back to give me data. The warding on the space eats everything up before it can go anywhere.

I slide back down the wall and sit in the corner. I ask about the warding and she tells me that it’s to keep me inside. More accurately, to keep all of the shit I’m about to do inside. A box to keep me safe. A box to keep everyone else safe, too. Beefcake enters and hands her something. He doesn’t seem to care for me. From what I can tell, he thinks I’m a poor choice for whatever is going on. He doesn’t have many nice things to say. But who knows, maybe he’s right. Maybe I am a bad choice.

He turns and leaves after giving her whatever. She continues to mix and add things into whatever she’s doing. I lightly prod her for answers. In time, she heads over to me and takes my right hand and places it in the bowl. This has been common for me. Almost every time I go to her, I end up with my hands inside of something. This time, the result is a lot of pain. I brace myself against the wall with my free hand, and I tell her about what I’m experiencing. That blackened form of myself is visible. The blue markings coursing my body. And of course, screaming.

She takes me other hand and places it in the bowl, too. I continue to reel from it. She tells me that this is the poison given manifest. These markings indicate the parts of mine and W’s bond that were corrupted by whoever put this thing together. Every time we go back to one another, the corruption doubles in on itself and becomes bigger, stronger, and harder to remove. That’s why he had to go with A. That’s why he wasn’t improving. That’s why there is so much wrong.

But in order to move on from this, this poison has to drain. This bond has to empty until there is nothing left. It won’t be ripped out, instead it will bleed out ever so slowly. And this is why I keep seeing what I do over my core. As I sit there, I can almost envision a lot of the bond marks that are on my body slowly bleeding down me, like ink being washed out of a piece of paper. The sheer volume of markings and ink tells me that our bond must have been deep and large. Perhaps that light mark that I had on me wasn’t the start of our bond, but perhaps all that had managed to survive everything we had been through.

I don’t know. But I know that it’s painful, and I’m pretty sure this will be slow.

I end up overloading on accident and I break the bowl that hold the liquid. The liquid by this point had gone from a nice warm red to a dark drab purple. She doesn’t seem mad at it, and picks up the pieces and tells Beefcake something. I somehow manage to cut my hand or do something that causes me to bleed. Odd because I Don’t bleed. I hear something slide in from under the door, and she goes over to fetch it. My hands are rinsed, and as she starts to put whatever this salve is on me, I freak out more. At this point, I see someone holding me by my neck and trying to squeeze the life out of me. It reminds me of W a bit. And I can feel these vines or plants or something trying to grow up around me and overtake me.

She smacks her foot on the ground, and the vines are cut off and I black out.

Whenever it can’t get worse, it does.

Coins in the Wall

The most of what I can remember is from after BOH left.

I’m in someone’s house. It looks a lot like my grandmother’s, but more accurately, it could be described as “A house that used to belong to someone else that is now gone. A house that is familiar, where I have spent time, but is no longer mine, and the person who lived there has passed”.

This house has been slightly remodeled since whoever I knew lived there last. The bulk of what I see is in the master bedroom’s bathroom area. If I used my grandmother’s house as a reference, it’s like they turned the vanity to face the window, and walled up the window. They possibly even took down the separator btwn the vanity and the toilet.

The cavity behind the mirror, behind the space that they walled up is what I am after.

I pry back whatever covering they have. I reach my hand inside, using mostly touch to guide me. And when I pull my hand out, I look down and see glass in my hands. This glass is in two shapes- one are these very short, navy blue statues of… idk what. And the other shape is that of a coin. There are several coins, and they’re all this brown color. They’re rather thick, and you can’t see through them easily. There are markings on these glass coins- a shield, perhaps, and various writing. Almost like there is a shield, and the writing is on a 45 degree angle that mirrors the bottom point of the shield. I almost feel like these should be pennies.

I process these coins, and I start to break down. I can feel the welling in my chest as the tears overrun my eyes. Whoever I was with is reaching for me when I wake up from the emotion.

The emotion was enough to cut me off from dreaming the rest of the morning. And strong enough that it erased all of the dreams I had before.

Salt.

We only hold on to let go.

Earlier in the week E had bled through my physical form and gotten upset during closeness with Kara. I urged him to go find E after the fact, to see if he could see if E was okay. He did, and we ended up in a pile together. The next night we were close again, and E swayed back and forth btwn happiness and downright sadness. Songs kept playing in my head, and they all hinted at drinking and drowning sorrow. I found G to talk to him about it. When I went to open the door to his place, I was sucked out into who knows where. I nearly fell when he opened the door to see why I hadn’t entered and blacked out.

Later, I found that G had found E at a bar, drowning himself into a stupor. But he was not sold that E was there to drink, but instead wondered if his drink had been tampered with, causing him to lose track of time and self-control. We dragged him home where he passed out in bed.

I’m sitting with G while E is passed out in bed. We’re talking a bit about things that are going on. I talk to him about A, I ask if A is even still around. He tells me that he is, but that it’s still a work in progress. I find myself uttering that I hope that A comes out on top, and I am a little taken aback by it. I never expected to wish for any one of them to “come out on top”, but here I was. The whole situation is conflicting for me. I care for each of them, but I know that only one of them can actually be around. That’s what happens, though. Limited number of slots.

I hear something fall out of E’s hand, and I get up to go look at it. I don’t make it all the way over to him, though. Something rushes me and I black out on the floor. All I can recollect is feeling myself leveraging my staff against someone, likkely one of E’s brothers. Someone seems to have tried to get the 5 into the fold, more wills to battle ours. Too bad the youngest would never, and I’m pretty sure at least one of the other brothers is no longer around.

I shove my staff into him and light him up. We struggle briefly before I finish the job, his sparkles creating patterns in teh air around me. Everything hurts and I’m tired of all of this bullshit. His brothers are particularly bad because they don’t ever really step forward. They like to come after you from below, like grabbing your ankles from under the bed. Their interactions are short, and purposefully so. It’s hard to battle what you can’t get a grip on.

I wake up in the darkness in a bed with someone else. I could feel my arms laying out in front of me, my bed mate’s hair interwoven in my fingers. A trait I passed onto my children- an affinity for hair. I couldn’t tell who it was who was with me, but I could fathom a guess. The hair texture wasn’t quite what his normally is, but the energy markers denoted that it was A.

We were in a small hut of some kind. The walls were coated in mud or plaster. A woven roof and door, a very small window of light above the door. This hut is only large enough for our bed, really. But it’s in much better condition than BM’s was.

Why are we here?

I try to get up but find that it’s a pointless venture. I fall into memories or other things that don’t allow me to progress forward. I really never left my bed, despite trying to several times. False starts tell me that I’m not in a position to move or leave, so I lay there in the darkness. I find myself being pulled inwards by none other than the man who has been dogging me for months.

I learn that A has done what needed to be done. It won’t be long before everything is finalized and things settle into their final placements. He tells me not to be sad. That it won’t be entirely different from Hinman. I can still visit on the inside, and maybe one day, it’ll be on the outside, too. Provided the Game ends how we want it to. He holds me against him, I feel his hair through my fingers. I tell him that I can’t let go. It’s hard for me to let go. He tells me that he knows when and how to make sure it happens and happens properly.

I try to grapple with why. I probe him for why he has chosen the course of action that he has. For the briefest moment, I believe I understand it. That A is the better choice, simply because we need his skills more than we need W’s. While W is important and we want him to be here, he knows that A is more what is needed to win this.

But I feel like it’s more than that. It makes sense, it’s logical, but I know that there is more to it than that.

All I can see while we’re talking about this is that big burst of yellow into the sky. The man that I knew gone. My team coming up behind me to drag me away. “We have to go”. Reaching out. The pain that consumes. How many times.

How many?

“You can’t rely on me to” the end of the sentence is lost to me now. Rely on you to what? Stick around? Choose emotions over logic? Not change your mind? I can’t remember.

It burns into my head. You can’t rely on me.

We talk briefly about Teru, about how half of the reason things went to hell is that she couldn’t handle the pain that I still carried with me. The pain of W disappearing was partially sated by running into E. Old bonds revitalizing in a different time, a different place. And they were furthered by Kara in 2PP. But when Teru consumed me, she cut me off from all of that. And it ate at her. In a way, she became infected by the taint because of me. W stayed close to her because it kept him sane. E had KAra and W, and those are the only reasons he kept his wits about him. We already can see what happens when you don’t have the other half there. Briefly, I wonder if that’s why F went after her. Could he sense what lay inside? Was he driven mad not by W, but by me being cut off? The sun doesn’t need the moon, but once you’re infeected with the taint, you’ll see it out to get your fix.

But when he pushed Teru about it, things got out of hand. W had to do what he had to do. But even if W hadn’t done anything at all, it would have continued to go out of balance in its own time. It was out of balance from day one. Teru wasn’t supposed to be at the front. She couldn’t handle being merged with me.

It’s no wonder DD killed her.

W continues to hold onto me. Everything hurts. He tells me that it’ll get better once things are finished settling in. It’ll improve. I have a hard time believing him, though. I worry that this will continue to burn for the rest of forever. How will I handle this? He tells me it’ll be like it always has been. I’ll manage as I’ve always managed.

You can’t rely on me.

He’s told me several times that one day we’ll be able to be together again. My biggest concern is that one day is more like 89586 years from now. Out of both of our existences, I’ve only had a handful of lives with him, and they almost always end up with him dieing before me, in front of me, and blowing a hole in my existence.

I can’t handle that anymore.
You don’t have a choice.

He leaves suddenly and I find myself back in the room with the sleeping person. I try to get up again, but I fail. I pass into sleep which is only semi-restful. I spent most of the night traveling around and talking with people. I only remember a few sections clearly. One is where I am in some kind of fast food looking restaurant. It looks like a Mexican food restaurant (don’t ask me how I discerned that). I am following someone who is showing me where their restaurant ends, and there is this wood lined room at that point. On the other side of the wall there is something that registers as a dark grey casino. It looks familiar to me. I ask them if they are going to put a doorway there, so that people can access the restaurant from both sides, but apparently they want to keep this room intact for some reason. Right next to the room is a window and pillar set where you can see out into the casino. So the room must be important somehow.

What’s odd is that outside is really not mod, it’s not what you’d expect for a casino looking place inside. It reminds me of oldschool Europe. A lot of narrow winding alleyways and walkways. Lots of plastered houses with tiled roofs, and it reminds me of parts of the Med. It also reminds me of where I was living before I got kicked out.

There is a cut and the next part I remember I’m walking into this small German restaurant (don’t ask me how I know that, either). It’s tiny- smaller than my living room tiny. I sit down at this table, and I see this man with two young kids- like 5 or 6 years old kids. The man is sitting with the boy next to him, and his daughter is sitting at a table to the left of them (from my perspective). I don’t know why the kids are at different tables.

The kids apparently thought I was old. And they made a comment about it. The father freaks out, thinking I will get upset at them for saying such a thing. I get up from my table and lean over the boy. There is something on my head, and I can feel it leaning against the top of my head when I lean over the boy. I pull out my best old lady voice and joke with him. Asking how he knew I Was old. I forget the conversation, but I know it ended with me telling them that they were smart. The father looks relieved that I didn’t get mad at them.

I wake up and find I’m still in that hut with the person. I roll into them, and we intertwine a bit. He wraps his arms around me and my hand snakes down his back under the robes.

The robes. They remind me of Heathen-ville a little bit. I’ve been playing with the idea that BM is a part of W that existed in that plane with Chi. I’ve played with the idea that maybe both W and E were there, or a part of DD or someone else. I see myself standing on a ridge, my bow drawn. My eyes super focus in to my target which is hiding amongst a bunch of mud buildings. I release my arrow and someone to my right tells me that we’ve been spotted. We head back to prevent a skirmish.

There are flashes of what I assume is a sort of village we live in. It’s largely integrated into the trees, and there isn’t a lot of cleared area in the location. The buildings are small and blend into the landscape. In some cases the buildings are on the ground. Others are not.

He doesn’t want me to go. I remember that. He leans over me. I have this thing with him, where I reach behind his head and grab the horn and pull myself closer to him. His horns have some amount of twist to them, I think. They’re not completely straight like mine, at least. His hair seems longer, and his clothing seems more billowy than what I normally wear. I can’t tell if it’s symbolism or actual clothing. Things fell apart, though. And I’m pretty sure when I got hit at Mershid’s he felt it. The visceral snap of “something is wrong”.

Maybe the only piece to out live me. Maybe that’s why A needed to seek it out.

Later in the day I try to get up yet again. I sit up in bed and put my head in btwn my knees. I feel like shit, and everything burns. I feel him pull my shoulder and pulling me back down to him. “come back. rest.” He wraps himself even closer around me and I am stuck. I can’t move away.

It hurts. It’s like salt. And there is nothing to be done about it.

Phase 2

“I don’t get what this has to do with you.”
“Everything.”

I’m pretty sure the reason he pulled away from me is because he couldn’t cope with the idea of loss. Perhaps as he stood there and watched over us in the infirmary during the Storm, he realized what he was getting into. It’s one thing to know in a sort of removed sense, it’s another to have it splattered all over your face day in and day out.

How long did you stand there and watch us laying in bed? Or are you more like E, where you purposefully avoid being around all together?

It was storming outside, and I was talking with Set about things when I suddenly got an influx of crack. I saw them talking back in the apt, where W tells A that he wants A to take the lead. I still don’t get why. A didn’t want to be permanent, and yet he chose to stay. E warned him not to waffle, otherwise he’d find himself on the wrong side of the table. But at the same time, he has been resistant to completely taking the plunge. Is it all because of the fear?

And why is it that W refuses to stick around? Does he feel inept? Unstable? Did he know that illness would take him out of the picture? Is there something else at play?

I see them talking, and A tells him again that he’s not down with this. W tells him again that his mind is made up. They are at an impasse. The same way that E and W were before. I don’t necessarily understand W’s methods, but I wonder if that’s because he knows things that I don’t?

But then I am laying in bed, dieing after coming out of W. I forget why I was sent in there, as I’m fairly sure these visions revealed something in particular about that. Was I trying to clear out the illness? Was I trying to fetch something? I can’t remember. Maybe I was trying to bind pieces together or something else. I honestly don’t know.

What I do recall, though, is G talking to W. “have you told her yet?” “no.” “are you going to?”

Ah. The thing I didn’t know is likely that W had a very limited shelf-life. As far as I can tell, he had known way back in the house that he was not going to stick around. He was working on getting his shit together, and once a certain thing had happened, he would be out of the picture for an unknown period of time. Perhaps this is why A and I had a cooling trend, too. He also knew what was coming, and was unable to cope with it. Now that I had paid a price for him with my body, he couldn’t even bear to be around me. Neither of them could, and it irked G off to no end.

If there is someone who will always give me a straight answer.

The visions start to fade off, and I can feel Set nearby. “Welcome to phase 2”.

__

In a way, what is going on with A is not much different than what happened with me and Hinman. Instead, of merging him and D down into me, I perhaps am working to merge down a light source and W into A. Along with whatever port piece BM may be. Is that what phase two is? Helping these three merge down? If so, the starting point has been herky.

The initial thing that I Saw was me and someone else in a box. It was the next morning when it came to my mind, and it felt like we were in a wagon or on some kind of moving vehicle of some kind. After a point, it was like we were dumped off somewhere, and while I wanted to look int, I was too busy with work to do so. Later, it was like we were being pulled across the ground, but by that point I was too medicated to reall do anything with it. Any time I pushed into the space, I got illusions and brain vomit, so I stopped.

There are times when I feel like A was with me in the dark space, holding onto me. Other times I felt like it was E. There was another event sometime last week where I found myself in the dark with Hinman. D stood across from me and talked about.. something. I remember Hinman turning into E at one point, and D telling him that he was tired of waiting.

Visions entered into my mind, I could see Teru beating the piss out of me. There is one section that keeps repeating in my head, even  now. And it involves my face being smashed into the ground or stairs, and having a chipped tooth from it. While I’m on the ground half-dead, I see this form hovering over me. It reminds me of some of the baddies from KH- they are angular and almost jester-like in appearance. In the back of my mind, I can’t help but wonder if it’s a mix of E and W. Was she trying to get them to harm me to damage the lines? Possibly.

There are moments from E where it feels like this could be accurate. He takes this personally, ofc. That he would dare to kill someone that he is supposed to be bound with. But when you’re not in control, there is very little you can do. Pending on what era this may have been in, Teru would have held everything in her hands, and everyone was at her mercy. It’s not like I would have blamed him, but that doesn’t stop him from blaming himself.

Real? Not real? Not sure.

__

I noticed that when I got into the new FOB album, E claimed songs like he normally does. But there were songs I’d completely avoid. Songs I didn’t like or didn’t want to listen to, I can’t tell now. But shortly after I began receiving random visions from W, I felt like he had claimed those songs. Except those songs don’t point entirely directly to him, they also go to A. Because now those two are technically one and the same.

The whole album has become filled with baggage btwn the lot of them, and I can’t really puzzle wtf anyone is trying to say anymore. On top of this, I began to receive Japanese songs from him, also indicating his overlap with A.

It’s all so confusing.

Shortly after the incident with Set, Kara sent the children over with A to see me. A wouldn’t ever show up, instead he’d get whisked into that box with me. Eventually, I would wake up in an office with G where the girls were kept safely. When I held the newborn, I had a violent reaction that caused everything to hurt. I could see myself, all taint ridden in the middle of the darkness, screaming. It was more beast than anything else, and my horns were rather long and pointed. My horns also fell out in the room, and my eyes began to look like cat’s eyes when they’re full- so mirrored. I could feel the marking pulling out on my cheeks, and on the outside of my eyes I could feel this burning and cracking like something is trying to get out.

I’m pretty sure that’s been a consistent thing- lines forming into my face, something trying to escape. But what is this tied to exactly?

Later that night I would see myself laying on the ground in the darkness while someone stood over me. My right arm is out to my side and bolted to the ground. I can see my tattoos spanning up the entirety of my arm, and a red bow tied around the wrist.

What are they intending on doing?

A few days later, it’s like they went to chop it off, but failed. I pass out before I can ascertain anything, though.

___

Everything from there is a blur. I try to probe into where A is, to see if I can find out anything about “phase 2”. If I base it off of O’s typical month, we’re looking at two weeks past WR for being the final end date, but when I went into the Duat all those years ago, it didn’t take a full month to get shit done. If anything, handling the first piece triggered the ability to deal with the Hive, which then began the final descent for the Storm.

Is this initiating the final round? I can’t tell anymore.

Two weeks past WR ends up with Wag fest, which is kinda like an akhu festival, but also could be tied back to O if I wanted it to. In many ways this could be legit, but in other ways, I can’t help but feel like I am reaching. Any attempt to make it through to A usually ends up with a dead end. Is he blocking me out? Perhaps these methods are meant to be different? Why the hell won’t anyone tell me anything?

I begin to push this afternoon, and I find myself hovering out over an ocean, the sun off in the distance. The colors are like soft morning colors meets a hazy daytime. The sun hangs out just above the water. I flash out into the water where something rises above me. I can’t see what it is, only that it is large and a dark grey color. I’m standing there in more “heathen” clothing, and something grabs my feet and drags me under. I don’t fight it, I go with the flow as I can breath down here.

There are cuts. Sometimes I see A, sometimes I see the past. There are times when I see him and I walking in the desert, where I thought that maybe our box had been dropped of. I had questioned if maybe we were out where old lady was, but I couldn’t find out either way. I have no access to the Duat, so I imagine that they sent me elsewhere to deal with this.

He’s got that hat of his on, and his hair is completely tied up in the top knot instead of just half. I’m in my heathen clothing and picking at the ground while sitting. I’m trying to figure out why I’m there, what’s going on. What he has to do with all of this.

A is a box. A receptacle. Isn’t that what we said? He keeps my things safe. In a way, he is still being a box by taking in these pieces and incorporating them. I think.

There are flashes back to that desert. The man who stood there and told me I didn’t belong “there” that I belonged where they were. He disliked what the old woman told me, he didn’t like that I left. He was even angrier that I went back a second time.

I try to place these things. Everything is symbolic. What if this is no different?

The old woman had access to Az’s location. What if Chi had ended up there herself? Maybe before even making it to atashen, she ended up out there in the woods where you could live kinda in peace looking like a freak. In a way, that vision would make sense- showing up there sorta young (again) and running through all of the raising process. Coming of age in a way. And then perhaps being sent to the city for some reason or another. It’s possible that she ran back and forth, maybe she wanted to go to the city to learn.

if that dream is of that location, then it’s possible that she was there to learn, and lost her partner. It could be that she lost her partner, and then got taken out herself. And when she was taken out, she reverted back to being smaller and lost her memory. The original vision sequence had me coming into the city after being dicked over. Getting swept up by the rich family, who knew something about me. Losing my protection, being kicked out and left for dead. Taken in, taught, sent back, going back home because I realized it was fruitless, going back to the city anyways, and eventually getting the piece back.

Kinda, indirectly, I could argue parallels. End up in that location, live with the heathens. Go into the city for further training or watching. Who knows, maybe I even got closer to that family, learned some shit, rubbed some elbows. Get dicked over, lose my memory and right back up in that city. End up going back home-sorta. And then in teh end becoming dicked over again, but I leave with at least a piece.

But if that’s the case, was A the boy that told me I didn’t belong there? Is it possible that a part of W came with me? And was living out there in the forests with us? Is it possible that he knew bad things would happen? Could he have been my initial partner that died? Is this where those horns come into play? And how exactly will this fit into the larger picture of Circle, given that I was dead and not a part of the process?

“You don’t belong there. You belong here.”

How do you fit into this?

We continue to walk through the desert as the sun beats down on us from above. The ground is cracked and dry. Nothing is around for miles. Meanwhile, I continue to hang out in the darkness of the ocean.

Why do you continue to haunt me? Why are the pieces so jumbled and why did no one bother to give me context sooner?

wtf. is going on.

Completely

“How far removed from this do you think you really are?” the big black mass asked me.

I’m not sure what “this” is, though. This planet? This life? This solar system? I don’t really know.

I tell this mass that I may have ties to it, but now hardly resembles then, and my feelings about “this” are really not all that fond. Perhaps an idea of if I was once attached to it, maybe I no longer wish to be. idk. This mass ends up giving me a star looking thing. It hovers in front of me, and I thank the mass for it. The star is large, probably about the size of a beach ball or yoga ball. I take it inside of me and do.. who knows what with it.

Then the man appears behind me. He is much taller than me, and his body is largely shrouded in fabric that blends into the floor. His hair hangs over me, and he places his arms around me.

Why? Why do you still show up? Why now? I don’t understand.

Its a mixture of feelings. Happiness and sadness. It’s like being tormented by your memory.

___

I wake up in a bed of black satin. I begin to worry that maybe I’ve landed in someone else’s bedroom, and get up to leave. Even though I had woken up here earlier, I felt more concerned this time around. I stand up and my clothes shift on. He looks at me and asks if I’m okay. I only get a few feet from the bed before I lose the ability to go very far. He picks me up and brings me back in. It’s so odd to see him without clothing on.

When I ask about the location later, it’s implied that it’s inside of me, instead of us being inside of him.

___

I’m trying to fall asleep and I can feel myself on a muddy surface. I settled into the location, and it felt like I was outside, and it was dark. As i try to probe the area, it seems like our car has rolled off the road and down into a ravine. I can hear some kind of ticking behind me, almost like when you leave your blinker on. It seems like someone is still stuck in the car, hanging upside down.

I can hear cars behind me, driving down the road. I push a part of myself out onto the road, trying to get someone to see us. I think that I was eventually able to get someone to stop. But then I can feel E pulling me back, telling me to let the bodies go. Everything fades to black.

___

It’s early morning, and I can hear him whispering from somewhere.

I want to give myself to you. Completely.

 

Dead Men

It’s the middle of the day and I’m too depressed to even function. I opt to lay down in an attempt to rest, hopeful that once I wake up, I’ll feel better.

I lay down, and like so many of my naps anymore, I hardly feel like I’m asleep. It’s more like I’m laying there with my eyes closed, except somehow an entire hour or two has managed to pass in the meantime. This time, I can sorta feel myself drifting into sleep, but I don’t dream until close to the end.

At the end, I’m driving somewhere. The location reminds me of QC, but it reminds me of other places I’ve been, too. Open, flat, and filled with yellowing fields. There isn’t much to report in terms of landscape. I remember trying to see the light and determine whether I could turn or not. Figuring out what was going on was challenging, as the roadways were kinda foreign to me, and I’m not sure that I actually knew the rules of driving in this place.

For once, I am by myself.

It’s weird to realize that I was probably in three places at once, or all of my adventures possibly crashed into one another and overlapped a lot. At first I was at a T-bone street, waiting to hang a left. Fields were all I could see across from me. But then I’m driving down something that reminds me of Phillips road as it bends at the base of the small hill. Am I in a dream layer of QC?

The roads here are paved much nicer than the ones in the waking layer. There is a lot more development, in that there are a lot more houses, and they’re packed in closer together. As I hit the curve in the road, I see that some sort of gas station has been erected on the left side, and a DQ has been set up on the right. Except this DQ is an A-frame stone house….

I remember commenting that that was a nice thing to have there. That they ‘needed’ these things here. Not sure I”d agree with that in the waking.

While I was on my way down there, I could feel myself getting busy with someone somewhere. This someone had long, straight hair, and I’m honestly questioning if it was W. Before I had fallen asleep, I had seen someone that looked like a weird form of DD place a ring on my hand, on his finger. I questioned if maybe I got it wrong, and saw the wrong finger. But considering what happened while I was asleep, I’m pretty sure I wasn’t wrong. I remember while this was happening, that I was thinking to myself that it was odd that I was feeling these things, as my depression had been so thick while I was awake, that the notion of getting it on was laughable. There was no way that I was going to feel anything through that haze.

I forget what exactly woke me up, but I don’t think I made it past that curve in the road. When I woke, it felt like I hadn’t even been asleep, and the depression settled right back in. Except now it burned, because we all know that W isn’t around anymore. He’s like a ghost that just tears at the edges of my mind anymore.

___

For once, E came and found me. My depression had gotten so bad upon waking, that I basically dug myself into that silty dirt and just laid there and stared at the darkness. I guess maybe he had felt it strongly enough that he decided he needed to step forward and make sure I was okay. Ever since the night prior, I could feel the taint burning into my skin. My pale pink skin became ashen and dusty. The taint no longer seems to draw specific markings in my skin, but instead just discolors everything. Perhaps it’s how it works when you’ve fully taken on the mantle.

He wrapped me in his cape and sat with me for a while before taking me somewhere. Later, I realized that I was being held by G instead, and that E was busy working. It sucks a little bit, knowing that anymore he’d rather work than anything else. But at the same time, I recognize that there is a lot to be done, and given that he had to spend the bulk of the past month or so asleep, I guess it’s understandable. So I try to make the most of the man I have instead of focusing on what I don’t have.

We’re able to rile him up a bit. Him and his pretty feet. He goes to touch my chest, and one of the girls pops out and hands him a necklace. I feel liek I’m seeing this a lot lately.

___

Dreams are kinda meh. The earlier part of the night seemed rather black, or completely gone from my memory. By the time I can remember, I’m hanging out of the edge of a helicopter, asking if I can jump into a pool of water below. Almost like a pond at a restaurant or golf course. Apparently the pond was too shallow, and it was ill advised, so he hovered a bit above the ground and I jumped down instead.

Ooookay.

Next thing I can recall, i’m sitting in some sort of weird… ride type thing. Except I don’t know that it was a ride. I believe E was there, and this open topped monorail type cart is skirting around the exterior of this… location. There is a big set of buildings, and a big pond/lake thing outside of that. I remember commenting that the ride was going to dip down and possibly get us wet, and he didn’t like that. Ah, but I certainly was looking forward to it.

We dip down and curve around a bit. I had my eyes closed, which was annoying, but it was fun. Eventually we apparently get off, because the next portion we’re inside. The inside is huge, and reminds me of how the strip likes to cram three and four different things into one building. This place reminds me of a resort with some kind of zoo and maybe an amusement park attached to it, and we’re busy looking at animals and stuff.

Except not really.

We end up cutting into a location we’re not supposed to be in, and I assume (in retrospect) that we’re looking for something in particular. Dirt on someone. Files. Information about whatever they’re experimenting on. Something. We do this in a few locations, ducking into back rooms and trying to see what we can find. Too bad I don’t remember anything specific anymore.

And like usual, the alarm wakes me up before I can reach a decent finishing point.

Left

Dreams have been so dense, and yet I forget all of them.

LAst nigh when I was woken up around 3:30, i didn’t feel like I woke from sleep, it felt like I went from one kind of awake to another kind of awake.

The biggest thing that stuck in my mind all night is this image of W. Or maybe A.

We were doing something together. It reminded me of a date, or somethig like business meets pleasure. We’re in this building that has long halls, something kinda like a mall, but not quite. It’s nighttime, and there are people around. We walk into something that reminds me of a night club.

Its dark and loud, and we are jam packed into this short hallway. Maybe we were waiting to get inside? Maybe this was something else? I’m not sure. I remember looking up at him. He was dress in dark clothing that was baggy. Around his neck was this sort of… necklace. It made me think of squares of fabric that were sewn together corner to corner. I had the same thing on myself. His was red, mine was yellow.

I don’t remember having these when we first got in there. It’s like they gave them to us when we entered. I can’t tell if it means we won something, or something important or what.

However, when I look at him later in the night, trying to remember this dream, he looks down at me and his hair is yellow. It’s like bad bottle blond where it looks more like yellow than blond. Which is why I aim for that color. A type of warm gold would be another accurate word.

The hair is short and curly and reminds me of some of DD’s styles. I can’t remember if I say anything or quite how I feel, but later I feel like he stands me up. Disappears on me, and I’m left in a strange place by myself. I remember feeling hurt.

___

Saturday morning was almost entirely black. The only time I dreamt was right before waking up.

Its as if I am some other person, or I’m stuck inside of another person, and it reminds me of watching someone play a video game. We’re in some underground chamber, and the person is trying to figure out where to go. There are pressure plates and other things that need to be figured out, and I remember getting frustrated, wondering why he was doing extra stuff he didn’t need to do in order to get the door to open.

When the door opens into this large room, we break apart and start fighting. There were these creatures that were rather tall, and their hands reminded me more of claws, the way my hands can get when in other forms.

THeir hands were completely black, though. Almost as if they were being eaten by taint.

They were hella tall, too, and slightly hunched over. In a way, they reminded me of darkspawn in some DA games.

Next thing I know, some man in Egyptian-esque clothing is coming after me with some short sword. I remember getting knocked down, and for some reason my ability to fight with anything non-human is just not working. There were desks or tables where we were, and I started kicking them, trying to trip up his line of moving towards me. I’m not sure where the tables came from, though.

I remember shouting out to him “why”. “Tell me why, Ramesses”. He stands over me, contemplating if he’s going to actually kill me or not. His blade is super shiny, and doesn’t look like any earthen metal I’ve seen. It’s too reflective, too translucent.

His kilt is very white, and there is some kind of girdle or belt. His upper body seems pretty bare, though I think there is some necklace on him. He’s rather gaunt, and his hair is short and ruddy.

In the end, I guess he decides not to go after me. I don’t know why.

I have no clue why we were there or wtf was going on.