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The fabled Cosmos Key is said to be able to unlock anything- any literal, metaphorical, or metaphysical door. You could use it to traverse other realms, wander the depths of your own mind, or even become microscopic and take a field trip in somebody’s bloodstream.
Jane had it in her hands now, somehow. and she had to wonder. Anything, right. Literally anything? Could she….. see them again? Someone who doesn’t exist and likely never did? Does the universe have their data encoded in it still? Something, anything.
Jane rolled the key in her hand nervously, staring at it. It was gold in color but glittering unnaturally, and also intricately detailed, winged and decorated with ornate filigree and with indecipherable writing etched upon it. It stared back at her with an unseeing cosmic eye that shimmered in colors her brain could barely perceive. She continued to ponder the key until it started to give her a headache.
She looked back at the dead tree front of her. She always picked this struggling patch of forest to practice using the key on. Would feel less bad if she accidentally blew something up because most of the trees were irrecoverable anyway. She had yet to test the key on a person, she wasn’t close enough to anyone to want to go inside their thoughts anyway.
Jane sucked in a deep breath and closed her eyes, slowly raising the arm that held the key and positioning it onto the gnarled trunk. The door opened by the key can be the portal anything or anyone you can think of, but how do you conjure a passage to something you can’t even visualize? She still has that seed of doubt in her that her feelings weren’t even real, that nobody was ever really there.
She decided to focus on that empty feeling, the person-shaped hole in her mind. Every location that made her wince, every image or scent that made her want to cry. Library, sunrise, mangoes, calico cats, she didn’t know what any of it meant but it was something.
The key hummed in her hand. Was it working? She opened her eyes to see the door materialize in front of her. Usually the doors were ornate and hinted at what was inside, but this one was plain, unpainted wood, almost rotten looking. Not promising.
The Cosmos Key only really works on people when you have a clear mental image of them, and you can only enter someone’s mind or body if there is physical contact. So Jane knew she wouldn’t see them today, but she had to get a clue or something. Anything.
She swallowed nervously and stuck the key in the keyhole. The door didn’t budge. She jiggled it a bit, that did nothing. After a few minutes of kicking and screaming it finally bust open with a creak that almost sounded like a sigh.
Tired and angry and almost not wanting to do this anymore, Jane sighed and opened the door.
It was just white.
There wasn’t anything else.
But the door working at all has to mean something, right? Jane once tried to open a door to find the meaning of the universe and obviously nothing happened. Which was kinda stupid looking back at it.
Jane stepped inside, uttering a silent prayer to whatever god was watching that her soul would not be consumed by the white emptiness.
She squinted at the harsh bright nothing. Her head ached to the point there was tinnitus. This was a bad idea.
There was something that almost felt like wind, or the hug of a ghost. A familiar warmth. A trace of mango scent. Nothing else.
Jane started to cry a bit. She was hoping for something stronger than her dreams or her grief hallucinations. But there was a glimmer of hope, the key acknowledging her feelings at all had to mean she wasn’t crazy.
“Who are you? Who were you? What is this nothing that haunts all my thoughts? What’s your name? Your… gender? Your favorite color? Your favorite places to go? Your favorite things to do? What…” She started to sob. “…happened to you?”
She sat down, half expecting to just fall into a white void forever, but the nonexistent ground felt like wispy grass.
Jane felt nothing but that longing that chased her everywhere, though now it was so strong that it felt like it was crushing her. She started to break down sobbing.
She flopped face down and started to scream into the grass (or whatever it was.)
“FUCK! THIS WAS POINTLESS! YOU’RE NOT REAL! IM NEVER GETTING ANY ANSWERS IM JUST GOING TO BE STUCK FEELING LIKE THIS FOREVER!”
She felt a little nudge in the back of her mind, almost a “Hey, don’t be like that, it will be okay,” but wordless.
Something shifted. Jane opened her eyes. She felt something in her hands. She opened them and there was…. a seed?
Jane stared at it, tired and dumbfounded. It was brown and plain looking and gazing upon it didn’t make her feel any type of way.
“Ugh, is this the only thing I’m going to get? Tormenting myself for this thing was pointless. I hate this. I HATE YOU!”
In a fit of rage she swallowed it. It immediately sunk in that she was probably not supposed to do that. The nothing realm collapsed around her, the white crumbling like a piece of paper, and she jolted awake in bed. Her stomach hurt.
She felt a hot flash as her mind finally recalled something concrete. A name.
Steven.