Topic: Out of the Darkness

Wyheree · Date: 2008-02-04 20:49 EST

Darkness. People imagine it as a void, a lack of light, a lack of 'being'....most don't realize that it is a thing in itself, a power of its own - it moves, it crawls, it lives. And sometimes, it hides things.

This particular little bit of the Dark was special....it was unique. It was not an emptiness, it was not a lack of 'being'. It was....memory - a life-that-was. Time was irrelevant in the Darkness. A day, a month, a year, a lifetime - it was all one. The particular set of impressions that are under scrutiny now had been there for what we would call perhaps a year or less - but it was just an echo of a heartbeat, and an infinity, all at once.

The word "Choice" is actually descended from earlier words, meaning "to kill" - for options and possibilities die when you choose. So it was here, but in reverse. A decision, a choice that had been made, had killed a possible future. But yet, something had not died....something lived on from that choice. While one possibility flamed into being, bright and open....there remained a residue, a thin veneer of darkness that was left behind. It should have died, that darkness, on the day the decision was made - but it didn't want to. And so it lingered, drifting endlessly through time and un-time, through reality and unreality. It slowly became aware - and its first awareness was that it was angry, although it did not know why.

"Betrayal! Murder! Abandonment!"

These thoughts and more became solid in the darkness....sharp-edged as a crystalline lattice, pulsing with the energy that only those emotions can give. At first, all it knew was rage. Rage at being abandoned, cast out, unwanted....while it slowly began to be aware of what it might have had. What could have been. And the rage grew, though with nothing to push against, nothing to react to, the rage had nowhere to go. And so it just swelled slowly.

There was also bitterness....at the abandonment, at the loss. There was sadness, to know that it was never meant to be, never meant to have a purpose. It was the unwanted child, the shamed one. Then, there was a realization of self - it *was* being. It had life, of a sort....for it was slowly coming to understand *understanding*. It ? was.

With that realization came new strength, though once again that strength could not be measured....for it had nothing to measure it against, in the endless darkness. Occasionally, flickers of light shone in; remnants of happiness in the world it might have known. And they served only to make it angrier, at first.

But in the end, it knew that a new sensation. Dim and uncomprehended at first - but it knew "hope". And so it waited. It had, after all, nothing but time.

Wyheree · Date: 2008-02-04 21:16 EST

How long it had floated there, alone, it did not know. It only knew it *was* alone, because of the occasional glimpses of contentment and happiness that flashed into the darkness from outside - flashes of intimacy, of love, of friendship, that gave it something to measure its existence against. Enough to know a new sensation ? jealousy. In those flashes it perceived something else - an echo similar to its own, something akin to itself. It felt it stronger still when certain guards were let down, daring to mingle together so close to the edge of unrecoverable one-ness.

In that brief and shining moment, it knew. And it knew its superiority, or so it felt the sensation to be. For they were akin, and yet it knew it was stronger. And another sensation became aware....*power*. But even so, it was meaningless power. It could not be turned against them, or anything else for that matter....it was alone as nothing in the history of time ever could be. And it began to know despair.

And so it went on...steaming and stewing and knowing only bitterness at the perceptions of what-might-have-been - until the world began to change.

It felt a new sensation, bright and piercing and unbearably hot and white - pain. But it was aware that it was not itself in pain. It was like the flashes of happiness....it came from....not-here, but out-there, and not from the same source. It came from another - a source that despite not being the sameness or the near-sameness....bore a strong affinity. It began to focus on the pain...for it was nonstop.

For the first time, it became aware of a presence that was not its other-self, or its other-self-connected....it became aware of Wyheree - her pain, her despair, her absolute nightmare. They were bright and powerful, like a shattering scream in the utter silence of night. A path had been blazed with the other, and it had never been forgotten. The Darkness had never known her, and at the same time it knew her easily.

This new presence drew it eagerly, and it tried to understand what it was perceiving. It felt rapid things pass it when it studied her....and nothing as strong as raw 'need'. Need for her, though it did not yet know such a thing for what it was - what might be called love, or attraction, even the more basic and primitive notion of lust, all these are only the civilized veneer laid overtop raw and desperate need for *someone*. It knew her for what she was - she was a friend, and to the entity she would always bear the marks of that gentle friendship to it. But it did not have the same sensations that it had for this icy white angel it perceived. It remembered lust....it remembered desire, it remembered desperate wishes of love. It remembered feeling rejection....and of course, that was only half the truth. But to the entity, it only knew that it had once desired to be with this shining white angel, and had been rejected by....something. It felt betrayal - but it also felt her need as well, a need for help, for comfort, for anything outside of her private hell. It felt anger, but it also felt desire. It felt despair - hers and its together, but it also felt hope...or something like it.

Suddenly, it began to feel something NEW - its own personal hell, now truly being defined - for it knew there was an outside, knew there were Others....and knew it was barred from them. And in the same moment it knew that, it knew that there was a way out. Because as Wyheree slipped into evil dreams, the entity felt the opening that was forming. It knew that it could not yet leave this Darkness. But it could reach out tendrils of itself into the small hole she had made with her presence, her dreams....and it could manipulate the dream-reality it found in her mind.

Of all the confusing things it knew....one jumped out and acted without the Entity's conscious control. It comforted her - just a remnant of a song, something from its memory that they had once shared, and just that soon, it was gone. But the opening would come again.

Wyheree · Date: 2008-02-04 23:50 EST

The Entity had no real perception of the travails being inflicted on Wyheree. It was no voyeur, it was not a hidden eye....it had no perception of the 'real world' at all, save what it knew from Wyheree herself. As far as they were concerned, It did not exist. And as far as it was concerned, they did not exist. There could be no awareness between them, because the world in which they and she lived, was outside the Darkness. But it knew Wyheree's pain, and despair....and when she briefly fell unconscious, or even into waking dreams, it knew an opening.

Now and again that instinct reached out to offer her comforting words. But the Entity did not understand *why* it was happening. It may not have truly understood what it was doing yet. All it knew was that Wyheree, her pain, her torment, and her now very vulnerable mind, were like a brilliant candle in the darkness....and the Entity flocked to it like the proverbial moth.

She was never truly allowed her to be unconscious, never allowed her the blessed respite of sleep (even tormented sleep), and so the Entity could not do much. It could only gain tiny glimpses of the mage's mind, of what lay beyond the walls of night. But every time it did, it understood a little more what was.

Gradually, it became aware that the brightness was more than just some Other. It became aware that if the opening grew enough....if she fell asleep and truly *dreamed*....that it could pass out of its prison into that new world within her mind. And with that realization, the Entity knew its time had come. It could not truly understand hope, and it was not impatient, for it did not understand Time. It only waited. Until, unbeknownst to it, Wyheree was ultimately released from her torments, back into the Inn. And inevitably, night would fall....sleep would come, and she would dream. And the Gate would swing wide.