Pieces Part Twenty-Four
May. 28th, 2006 12:33 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
measured_wordsI was hoping to get this done earlier today or tonight, but I am happy to get it done at all!
I am going to *try* to keep up my weekly posing schedule over the summer, but I'm not going to have regular access to a computer, so I can't make any promises. We'll see what I can do! I also still intend to finish Ice soonishly...
In anycase!
Other Pieces
"You've done a lot of things to help out my family." Raelia Sinister looks up at me over her cup of tea, a small porcelain thimble painted with black bamboo shoots. Her graying black hair is coiled artfully on her head, and she is dressed in black, befitting her status as a widow. Her body has not quite recovered from her imprisonment – her skin hangs loosely on her frame. She was not mistreated as harshly as other prisoners kept under the tower, but she is old and used to a much more comfortable lifestyle.
I nod in response. What does she want from me now?
"And to help me." She regards me with her piecing blue eyes, sharp and perceptive despite her age and her ordeal. I nod again. I haven't yet recovered from the fight with the monster that the witch made from Kush Langley, and my chest still hurts when I talk, or breath too hard. My right hand is bandaged, and the cuts sting. I don't remember cutting my right hand – no, the fingers were broken. I cut my left, deeply, but it seems fine now. Was it something they gave me? Are these cuts from something else?
"My family always pays its debts," she continues after a moment. "It's my turn to help you. What do you want, Mr. Graves?"
What do I want? I want answers. I want to know about Xellanosha, the witch from Madden Ur, and what she wants with this town. I want to know what her people want with this world, and why it is so important. Why I am here, what I can, and should do.
She takes a slow sip of her tea. "You already have those answers."
Of course I do. The fight with Langley, the subsequent rescue of Mrs. Sinister, the time I spent infiltrating the invasion force…. This was years ago now. We never had tea, though we did speak before I left Evergreen. This is a dream, though the pain feels real enough. What is it from?
The dark-skinned woman smiles. She is regal, and imperious. Her husband ran the city for years before his murder – he was a well liked dictator, patter familias to all citizens. They called him Don. Sinister was not his real name, of course – he was Japanese. I met him once. Why is she in my dream? "You know that too."
But I don't know. I suspect. I have hypotheses, but I don't know. It was when I found her in the Tower, when I fought Langley, and the subsequent rescue that things became clear to me. The world I'd found myself in after the Space Needle incident didn't play by the rules I was taught. There was no conflict, no war for reality. No paradox. Nothing – no rules at all. It took me a while to understand what this meant for me, in theory and then in practice. And it worked: the world worked. There were pockets of regulation and control, as in Brightflame, or Waveshore, or with the Technorgs, but they had no power to affect the way magic, or science, progressed. What's more, the people didn't suffer for this chaos. Mrs. Sinister is a powerful image from that time for me, but it could have been others: Kolko, Rae, Melody. Raffordy or Xellanosha. Maybe it doesn't matter.
Why am I dreaming this?
"Are these really the answers you want?" She seems disappointed, somehow. She is still smiling but the lines around her mouth are less taut. What should I be asking? "What happened to your hand?"
I am sitting across from her at the table. She reaches over past the tea cups, and takes my right hand in hers. I let her. A fabric bandage winds its way up my palm, binding my fingers together. Only my thumb is left free. There are some places where splotches of red seep though. I can't remember how this happened.
She starts unwinding the white cotton, with some amount of delicacy. "It looks like you put it somewhere where it didn't belong." The skin on my fingers and my upper palm is lacerated with dozens, or more, of long thin cuts. Most are shallow, like paper cuts, but closer to the knuckles others are quite deep. Sinister curls my fingers forward gently. The cuts sting, and some of them reopen. I pull the hand away.
"Isn't that what you want?"
I can smell the blood. It is mixed with some other familiar scent, something out of place here. I bring my hand to my face
It smells like Anna, like her hair. Her smell bleeds out of me. It's gone from me forever, just like she is.
"No." My voice is hoarse
I look up, but Sinister, tea, and table are gone. I'm sitting on the ground in an empty room. Shattered glass walls creep up from the white tile floor. It seems like there was an explosion in here – there are few shards inside. Outside of the room is darkness, but there is no shelter from it here. I've already broken this cage. I remember. The glass distorted my view, and made me see monsters everywhere outside. I haven't been in this dream for a very long time. Why am I here now?
There should be a garden, just outside. In other dreams, there was a garden. Anna was planting something there. I didn't know her, then. I didn't remember. Now, I've done something wrong and I've lost her. I'm just not sure how.
I stand up and head towards one of the broken walls. My hand still stings, and I try to keep it still. It is easy to see into the blackness, but in places where the walls are higher I still see, or imagine, monsters beyond. The real monsters are not so easily spotted. I look for a section where the wall is lower, so that I can escape. There is no place low enough to step across – I'll need to climb but the walls are jagged edges, keeping me penned here despite my clarity of vision. I might be able to jump, but I can't see what is on the other side. The ground is littered with more broken glass. This landscape still conspires against me.
I know this metaphor. The glass is the walls the Technocracy built in my mind. While they were in place, I couldn't recognize things. I couldn't remember. I saw what, and how, they wanted me to see. When I was away, on Nas Unara, in the void, wherever that place was, I was outside of their control. That world was foreign, and to survive and adapt I needed to recover what they'd taken. I started to remember Anna, and realize all they'd done. I broke the walls.
But I'm still here, I'm still hemmed in. I can see, but I haven't escaped yet. Is that what this means? Must I break the walls further, or do I just accept that in order to leave this behind, I will need to accept more pain? What will those cuts make me lose?
Walking around the perimeter of the room, I have come to a place where I can look out and see the garden, if that’s what it was. I remember her digging, the shadowy shapes surrounding her. The glass is still high here, and it is hard to see over even when I stretch as much as possible. It is hard to discern anything in the darkness – I can't see anything beyond 70 feet – but I think there is a tree, and possibly a mound of some kind. Is her work here done? Could I find her out there? How would I make my way? This room has the only light, and I'm not sure of the source.
I'm already so tired. How can I be tired in a dream? I'm not ready. I don't know where I'm going. There are things, dangers, in the darkness. I'm confused. I have no where to go.
But this is only a dream. I don't want to think about it, and I push it away. The light grows brighter, reflecting off the glass, blocking out the walls, and everything beyond. It's gone.
I open my eyes, and the room is dark and still. The air feels heavy. My throat burns. I don't want to move. There is no escape even in dreams. I scared Anna. She doesn't trust me, or love me. I don't even know if she'll help me, now. I still don't know what I want, if that matters. I'm still tired, and everything seems out of place. I reach for my glass of water, but it isn't where it should be. It isn't where I think it is, and that shouldn't happen.
I look over, and see it, but I'm not reaching where I think I am reaching. I'm off by an inch, or maybe two. I'm not lying where I think I am, everything is out of place, just a little. Breaking the rules always has a price. I look at my hand, trying unsuccessfully to compensate for my skewed perception. There are no cuts, no stinging. It was just a dream. I don't want to get up and I don't want to dream more. I close my eyes and try to empty my mind.
I am going to *try* to keep up my weekly posing schedule over the summer, but I'm not going to have regular access to a computer, so I can't make any promises. We'll see what I can do! I also still intend to finish Ice soonishly...
In anycase!
Other Pieces
"You've done a lot of things to help out my family." Raelia Sinister looks up at me over her cup of tea, a small porcelain thimble painted with black bamboo shoots. Her graying black hair is coiled artfully on her head, and she is dressed in black, befitting her status as a widow. Her body has not quite recovered from her imprisonment – her skin hangs loosely on her frame. She was not mistreated as harshly as other prisoners kept under the tower, but she is old and used to a much more comfortable lifestyle.
I nod in response. What does she want from me now?
"And to help me." She regards me with her piecing blue eyes, sharp and perceptive despite her age and her ordeal. I nod again. I haven't yet recovered from the fight with the monster that the witch made from Kush Langley, and my chest still hurts when I talk, or breath too hard. My right hand is bandaged, and the cuts sting. I don't remember cutting my right hand – no, the fingers were broken. I cut my left, deeply, but it seems fine now. Was it something they gave me? Are these cuts from something else?
"My family always pays its debts," she continues after a moment. "It's my turn to help you. What do you want, Mr. Graves?"
What do I want? I want answers. I want to know about Xellanosha, the witch from Madden Ur, and what she wants with this town. I want to know what her people want with this world, and why it is so important. Why I am here, what I can, and should do.
She takes a slow sip of her tea. "You already have those answers."
Of course I do. The fight with Langley, the subsequent rescue of Mrs. Sinister, the time I spent infiltrating the invasion force…. This was years ago now. We never had tea, though we did speak before I left Evergreen. This is a dream, though the pain feels real enough. What is it from?
The dark-skinned woman smiles. She is regal, and imperious. Her husband ran the city for years before his murder – he was a well liked dictator, patter familias to all citizens. They called him Don. Sinister was not his real name, of course – he was Japanese. I met him once. Why is she in my dream? "You know that too."
But I don't know. I suspect. I have hypotheses, but I don't know. It was when I found her in the Tower, when I fought Langley, and the subsequent rescue that things became clear to me. The world I'd found myself in after the Space Needle incident didn't play by the rules I was taught. There was no conflict, no war for reality. No paradox. Nothing – no rules at all. It took me a while to understand what this meant for me, in theory and then in practice. And it worked: the world worked. There were pockets of regulation and control, as in Brightflame, or Waveshore, or with the Technorgs, but they had no power to affect the way magic, or science, progressed. What's more, the people didn't suffer for this chaos. Mrs. Sinister is a powerful image from that time for me, but it could have been others: Kolko, Rae, Melody. Raffordy or Xellanosha. Maybe it doesn't matter.
Why am I dreaming this?
"Are these really the answers you want?" She seems disappointed, somehow. She is still smiling but the lines around her mouth are less taut. What should I be asking? "What happened to your hand?"
I am sitting across from her at the table. She reaches over past the tea cups, and takes my right hand in hers. I let her. A fabric bandage winds its way up my palm, binding my fingers together. Only my thumb is left free. There are some places where splotches of red seep though. I can't remember how this happened.
She starts unwinding the white cotton, with some amount of delicacy. "It looks like you put it somewhere where it didn't belong." The skin on my fingers and my upper palm is lacerated with dozens, or more, of long thin cuts. Most are shallow, like paper cuts, but closer to the knuckles others are quite deep. Sinister curls my fingers forward gently. The cuts sting, and some of them reopen. I pull the hand away.
"Isn't that what you want?"
I can smell the blood. It is mixed with some other familiar scent, something out of place here. I bring my hand to my face
It smells like Anna, like her hair. Her smell bleeds out of me. It's gone from me forever, just like she is.
"No." My voice is hoarse
I look up, but Sinister, tea, and table are gone. I'm sitting on the ground in an empty room. Shattered glass walls creep up from the white tile floor. It seems like there was an explosion in here – there are few shards inside. Outside of the room is darkness, but there is no shelter from it here. I've already broken this cage. I remember. The glass distorted my view, and made me see monsters everywhere outside. I haven't been in this dream for a very long time. Why am I here now?
There should be a garden, just outside. In other dreams, there was a garden. Anna was planting something there. I didn't know her, then. I didn't remember. Now, I've done something wrong and I've lost her. I'm just not sure how.
I stand up and head towards one of the broken walls. My hand still stings, and I try to keep it still. It is easy to see into the blackness, but in places where the walls are higher I still see, or imagine, monsters beyond. The real monsters are not so easily spotted. I look for a section where the wall is lower, so that I can escape. There is no place low enough to step across – I'll need to climb but the walls are jagged edges, keeping me penned here despite my clarity of vision. I might be able to jump, but I can't see what is on the other side. The ground is littered with more broken glass. This landscape still conspires against me.
I know this metaphor. The glass is the walls the Technocracy built in my mind. While they were in place, I couldn't recognize things. I couldn't remember. I saw what, and how, they wanted me to see. When I was away, on Nas Unara, in the void, wherever that place was, I was outside of their control. That world was foreign, and to survive and adapt I needed to recover what they'd taken. I started to remember Anna, and realize all they'd done. I broke the walls.
But I'm still here, I'm still hemmed in. I can see, but I haven't escaped yet. Is that what this means? Must I break the walls further, or do I just accept that in order to leave this behind, I will need to accept more pain? What will those cuts make me lose?
Walking around the perimeter of the room, I have come to a place where I can look out and see the garden, if that’s what it was. I remember her digging, the shadowy shapes surrounding her. The glass is still high here, and it is hard to see over even when I stretch as much as possible. It is hard to discern anything in the darkness – I can't see anything beyond 70 feet – but I think there is a tree, and possibly a mound of some kind. Is her work here done? Could I find her out there? How would I make my way? This room has the only light, and I'm not sure of the source.
I'm already so tired. How can I be tired in a dream? I'm not ready. I don't know where I'm going. There are things, dangers, in the darkness. I'm confused. I have no where to go.
But this is only a dream. I don't want to think about it, and I push it away. The light grows brighter, reflecting off the glass, blocking out the walls, and everything beyond. It's gone.
I open my eyes, and the room is dark and still. The air feels heavy. My throat burns. I don't want to move. There is no escape even in dreams. I scared Anna. She doesn't trust me, or love me. I don't even know if she'll help me, now. I still don't know what I want, if that matters. I'm still tired, and everything seems out of place. I reach for my glass of water, but it isn't where it should be. It isn't where I think it is, and that shouldn't happen.
I look over, and see it, but I'm not reaching where I think I am reaching. I'm off by an inch, or maybe two. I'm not lying where I think I am, everything is out of place, just a little. Breaking the rules always has a price. I look at my hand, trying unsuccessfully to compensate for my skewed perception. There are no cuts, no stinging. It was just a dream. I don't want to get up and I don't want to dream more. I close my eyes and try to empty my mind.
