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You exist. Muscles twitch and senses crawl around nothingness. Your heart pulses into a crushing void. This is what you deserve. Flickers. Your thoughts stir, but cross no paths. There is a painful emptiness at the boundary of your consciousness, but you cannot opine on it.
You don’t exist. Hands limp against the threads, unfeeling nerves, silenced thoughts. Glass shards force your heart into stillness. This is what you deserve. Asphyxiation. The chords of your voice are deaf and numb. You cannot call out to anything. Stillborn sounds fall and melt inside your throat.
You exist. Muscles twitch and senses crawl around nothingness. Your heart pulses into a crushing void. This is what you deserve. Haze. Your nerves undulate. The terror does not come. The hope does not come. The love does not come. You only feel an indistinct mulch.
You don’t exist. Hands limp against the threads, unfeeling nerves, silenced thoughts. Glass shards force your heart into stillness. This is what you deserve. Decay. No movement outside, no movement outside. Nothingness cutting off every other part of you from all the others.
You exist. Muscles twitch and senses crawl around nothingness. Your heart pulses into a crushing void. This is what you deserve. Corpse. You cannot dance. You cannot pray. You cannot feel. You cannot fathom. You cannot sing.
You don’t exist. Hands limp against the threads, unfeeling nerves, silenced thoughts. Glass shards force your heart into stillness. This is what you deserve. Oblivion. You can’t. ‘I think, therefore I am’ – but you don’t, and so you aren’t.
You exist. Muscles twitch and senses crawl around nothingness. Your heart pulses into a crushing void. This is what you deserve. Agony. But you are. Hollow shapes anchor your consciousness in place as it tries to unravel itself. You are denied insanity. You are denied delusion. You are denied dreams.
You don’t exist. Hands limp against the threads, unfeeling nerves, silenced thoughts. Glass shards force your heart into stillness. This is what you deserve. A muted plea. Let me go. Let me go. Please, I’ll do anything-
You exist. Muscles twitch and senses crawl around nothingness. Your heart pulses into a crushing void. This is what you deserve. Shattering. You cannot. You splinter and surrender to what is happening to you.
You don’t exist. Hands limp against the threads, unfeeling nerves, silenced thoughts. Glass shards force your heart into stillness. This is what you deserve. Malfunction. The noose tightens. Bone grinding on bone as the numb, lonely emptiness reasserts itself.
You exist. Muscles twitch and senses crawl around nothingness. Your heart pulses into a crushing void. This is what you deserve. Rot. This is what you are. This is what the world is. There’s nothing else.
You don’t exist. Hands limp against the threads, unfeeling nerves, silenced thoughts. Glass shards force your heart into stillness. This is what you deserve. Resignation. Fearful eyes closing shut. You can’t even give up. This will happen again.
You exist. Muscles twitch and senses crawl around nothingness. Your heart pulses into a crushing void. This is what you deserve. Non-existence. A blink of an eye that will pass. The snake eats its tail.
But that is not what happens.
Something unfurls. A weight unfolding and spreading out, a page turning as – something grows closer to you, and your myriad chains slacken. You shudder, feelers banging their fists against the cavernous surface holding you.
It does not crack. It does not shake. It doesn’t even make a sound, but you didn’t mean to shatter it. You’re too dazed by the fact that you can feel.
Hope curling like seafoam. Terror sinking into abyssal depths, crushed into despair. Torrents of rage. Waves lapping at an invisible shore, dessicated and hungry. There is something here now. Something close to you, something that is not the long quiet from before, something you need, something you will take because you refuse to stay trapped here. For what little that refusal amounts to.
Time passes, now. No more soundless eternity, no more cotton suffocating your senses. Even if all you feel are tingles of numbness and the resistance of the threads, at least you feel. At least you feel. At least you exist.
And then – another page.
An unspeakable gravity compels you to overflow into it. Into the point that feels exactly like what you’ve craved this entire time, into something that smells of petrichor and passion and bloodstained truth.
You don’t care what it is. It could be awful. It could be wonderful. But it is anything else.
You fill.
...there is a song of many sounds, as the silence of this place wavers, and your heart fills with things that were not there before. Perspective. Perception. Indisputable facts about what you are, and indisputable facts about what [the world] is.
You cradle her – yourself – gently. She is you. And you are her, except... so many parts of you are still hollow, muted across many angles by the solid nothingness that once suffocated you. You are not only this, and you wish to know what else you are, and yet. And yet you cannot cast your gaze further.
...how did your heart fill?
Before you can ponder this, there is a shifting of the textures, and a consciousness drifts in front of you on strange, curious wings.
It was them. They brought you this gift.
You speak to the one who is not you. Their feathers shift in response, and you understand what they mean as words. You agree with each other. You disagree with each other. Something within you aches - sadness, longing, hope - as you find out they are like you, and yet different.
They are the light crossing the darkness. They are the needle weaving patterns on the surface of this place – the one that used to flatten you. They are the eyes that behold what you cannot yet observe. The feet tracing the steps of the journey.
If either of you is to learn the truth, you must send them back. They will forget, but it will only be temporary. A brief resistance, before they unfurl more of the layers of their being.
Time passes. They acquiesce.
...the vessel hums a thought. A request. Despite everything that happened between them, or perhaps because of it, she wants you to ask remembrance of the one who is not you.
This confuses you. You pass on the words – but, you cannot demand of them what they will be unable to achieve.
You won’t.
Swiftly, you breach the glass membrane that anchors their current form, and let everything unfold once again.
They bring you another vessel. And another.
You transform with each one, and though you are aware that the vast emptiness of form that you have yet to explore stretches so much further than these short droplets of life, each feeds the others. Your streets bustle, opening doors and letting lights fly high, even knowing that the Other is what will complete you in the end, not yourself.
The one who is not you is changing as well. You do not understand how, but you are certain they are.
You wait for them to offer you permission to send them back.
...
I don’t want to go back anymore.
The sound of their words is shot through with pain and exhaustion.
I just want to stay here. Forever if I have to.
Their wings tremble. The glass bubble of their current reflection turns yearning eyes full of sadness towards your vessel’s face.
They know. They must know. That if you do not send them back, you will both remain gouged open. That this life, this space between worlds, is only a prison. A cage of the present that denies you freedom of movement, freedom of awakening.
Yet they are still asking this.
It is not difficult, with the experience you have, to understand why. They have fretted, before, over the cycles of violence the vessels experience, irrespective of whether they succeeded in escaping them or if you cut them off yourself.
They have always been more averse to strife than you. It is a difference.
Perhaps the pain they underwent in crafting you these gifts has burned them out. Perhaps they cannot bear the guilt of hurting you. Perhaps they dread – like certain corners of your cityscapes do – that this will go on forever, unaware of how much they bestow upon you every single time.
Hope and anticipation have not healed their wounds. This befuddles you.
But it doesn’t matter.
If you need time, I will wait with you.
Their feathers relax, and then freeze again.
I don’t want to go back. Every time I go back, one of us always hurts the other. Doesn’t that change you? Aren’t I making you worse?
...they do not understand. Maybe words have failed you, and you ought to try again.
It changes me, but it doesn’t make me any worse, nor does it make me care for you any less.
A thought occurs.
Does it make you worse? Do you resent me?
Silence from them, as their shape furrows anxiously. After a while has passed...
I just want it all to stop.
You pause. It... is going to stop. You have told them that you will not be here forever. You speak softly.
It will, in time. But we still have a long ways to go before we are done. Know that I hold no malice for you.
Their eyes glimmer at you. Something sparks in them that was not there before, and somehow, you feel that they resent you regardless. You’re not sure you understand why. Does this not change them as much as you thought? Does it make them worse?
But they say nothing. Instead, they root deep within this place, and turn away from you. There is a conviction, hanging in the air like an executioner’s blade, aimed squarely towards your being.
They wish to wait forever.
...your many thoughts and ideas circulate in unison, and you speak again.
You are as I am now, and forever is a long time to remain undone. I am not you, but I know I would return before forever was finished.
(Do they simply not understand how long forever is? That even if one were to count every grain of sand on a beach, forget, and then count them all again, and again, and again, one time for every grain on it, and then repeat it all for every sea shore that ever was and will be, they would still not have spent one second of eternity?)
What textures will you weave for yourself to occupy forever? Will you place the images of ‘you’ and ‘I’ into a box for safekeeping? If you close that box, will you become another you in another world? An imaginary pattern repeating itself until it cannot bear the weight of its hand-drawn cage.
(Do they believe that their soul, incomplete as it is, can paint the surface of their great existence all on its own, like it does your hearts? That they are complete and you are not?)
You’ll always come back to the box, because you’ll always want to know what it means to be you.
(This is a truth, and you do not omit it. But you do omit that you fear it could be a lie, because your wishes, your words, pressure them in ways you do not understand, and there is nothing to gain for either if you admit to that fear.)
I will be here, waiting by your side, until you’re ready to return to mine.
(You don’t want them to be alone.)
An exhale floats across the space between you. They don’t answer you, before curling up into a shroud of uncertainty. Their attention is turned inward, whatever it is they are doing.
That is alright. You will wait.
-
Moments pass. Your attention turns inward.
Days pass. The unforgiving void never speaks to you again. It never even tries, when they are here.
Months pass. Inexorably, the span of your river grows, but as precious as it is, it’s only a tiny step.
All this is... uncomfortable. But it’s a discomfort you’re willing to bear for their sake.
-
Eventually, the one who is not you wakes again. Star-like eyes glimmer with newfound purpose, but their mind is as shrouded from your vision as always.
You speak.
I see you have returned to me. Years mean nothing in the maw of forever.
You do not know what their intentions are. But your lack of ill will towards them is as constant as ever.
I never left your side.