Violant

You remember, and that's almost worse than the forgetting. Connections push themselves through the gaps and embed themselves where you are sure they will not be dislodged. You smile grimly. The knowledge is not pleasant, but you must bear it.

The taste of blood wells in your mouth. Have you bitten your tongue? Or is it the crimson, burning shade swirling around you? It hardly matters.

Tiny pinpricks of pain build around your skull. You try to ignore them, to push through to the memories forcing themselves into your skull faster than you can remember them. Then new eyes burst open, forcing in yet more dazzling violant light.

It's not enough.

Cosmogone

They say you'll never see the sun again.

Everyone who lives down here long enough comes to accept it, or so you're told, but you can't. Or rather – you can, but you won't.

Fortunate, then, that there is a substitute. Maybe slightly saccharine, but still considerably better than the alternative. Parabola’s false-sun illuminates you, warming you gently as you lie back. You have lost much. You have, too, gained much. And everything you can't get back, you can bear to have lost.

Flowers bloom around you, and, though you know they are not real, they seem it now. Maybe it's just nostalgia, but things seem right, better than they were before.

Viric

Drifting in viridian brightness, you find yourself slipping into reverie, half-awake half-asleep and ever light. You're hardly sure that you're real, and isn't that wonderful? To exist beyond the bounds of what is, what can be?

Your eyes softly close, the jungle around you fading to darkness, the darkness fading to a yet-more-brilliant shade of green. Around you, plants writhe and twine themselves about branches that Are-Not, twisting reality into dream. You smile. You could never forsake what Is entirely, but the land of dreams is a pleasant enough place. Perhaps you will stay here a while. Let yourself forget your woes, for a time at least.

Sleep comes easy, then.

Apocyan

You shift your bishop diagonally across the board; its apocyan crags catch the light and pushes to the forefront of your mind the memory of your first victory in a game of chess. You look your opponent in the eye – or try to. They are rather too focused on the game. Such a shame! Would that you could sway them to a more interesting focus!

You drum your fingers against the gleaming shard of blue scintillack by the chessboard. It cost you a small fortune, but, if the light catches it just right –

There! That's it!

Your opponent smiles at you. A conversation that never started resumes. And you smile back.

Peligin

Lightless, starless, you watch. You are something other than human. Some would say more than.

Something shimmers in the distance, and your eyes turn to slits. Yet still, you only watch. Patience, after all, is key. Your prey will wait. You will wait.

A sudden movement, a flash – again – of silver scales. It's coming closer, and it doesn't know you're here.

Is that a twitch off-course? Perhaps. You are unsettling, even unseen. Eyes like the abyss. Still, it's coming closer. Why wouldn't it? Your trap is well-baited. Ignoring its whispers, you ready your harpoon.

Then you strike. The serpent's blood pours from its wounds, the same peligin shade as your eyes.

Irrigo

You've forgotten your name again, of course. It's hardly a strange sensation – you are, in fact, used to it. Occupational hazard. Probably. You do not remember your occupation, either, but surely that must be what drew you down, to London, then down again, to here. The nadir. Where irrigo twines around your mind, serpent-cruel, and –

Where are you again? Wherever it is, it is gorgeous, all violet (violet is the wrong word – it is – something else – but what?) and glowing. And yet – you are alone. What a shame that no others know of this place! You would tell them, but for the fact that there is, of course, nobody. A shame!

Gant

You are being haunted by a colour.

You are not sure how it found its way into your lodgings, but it did. And it's a greedy thing, swallowing the hues of everything else it touches. You know it only by its absence, and by the way that, when caught in your field of vision, it obscures whatever's behind it. It's blurry, something you can never quite focus on. You might almost mistake it for a migraine, if only the headache did not feel like gnawing.

You've been feeding it, occasionally – it seems to calm when you leave bright things out. Ill-advised, perhaps. But you just want it to leave you alone.