Work Text:
You wake up mired in the cloying embrace of your own fragmented theorems; each breath feels like mist; you blink and oh, you aren't awake at all, relatively speaking. Somehow that doesn't seem relevant.
Time lapse. Your body...no, no? Your self-projection, you catch on fast, Einstein! Your self-projection flickers from one instant to the next, hooked into forward motion, inertia granted from an unknown source. You are surrounded by your own knowledge. None of it applies here. (Well, none of it seems to. You'll learn. Oh, will you learn.)
The syllables had tasted like metal in your mouth, and your—
hands trembled as you spoke; you are not a superstitious man, but you've seen too much to distrust ancient writing now. Wait. Now? Why are you recalling this now? Nothing happened. The lantern flame fluttered softly against the silence. Nothing happened, still, and you fell off no precipice of forbidden knowledge, though your guts clenched in anticipation...
Oh. Oh! NOW!
“HIYA, SMART GUY!”
▲
You don't remember if you finished his game.
The tea tasted like the memory of liquid, and you never noticed drinking it, only knew it after you'd sipped. You moved an interdimensional chess-piece, and the liquid memory tasted like intellectual pursuits. A starfield filled with eyes, all looking at you, blinking approvingly at your work. An eyefield, and every gleam held something in store. The tea never ran out. The game...
You remember the board swept aside, his hand? appendage shaking yours: so unlike a hand, more freakish even than your extra digits, an awful comfort. This is how it begins. Between you the crackle of energy; the hairs on the back of your neck prickling even as you wake.
'...but I'm getting ahead of ourselves,' he said. That should have been a warning.