It’s good to be between the realities, where roiling energy manifests as endless varying overlapping spheres, where tendrils of meaning connect one plane to another, one reality to another, and infinite cracks run through everything, infinite lines of discontinuity, splitting one place from another in the realm where there are no places.
Lines and planes stretch from forever in one direction, to forever in another. Giant orange suns pulsate between the layers, and the spheroids pile up toward them, vast and unfathomable and eternally meaningless. There is no light, but there is a glowing, there is shadow, and darkness, and beauty.
I am nothing but a point of view, a sense of personal identity, a short clip of memory. I do not know what I am, or where I came from. Nothing that I think relates in any way to anything else I might think, or might have thought. Whatever you are hearing, or thinking, or experiencing from these words, it has nothing to do with me. Communication between us is impossible.
Ironic, isn’t it?
But it is so good, to swoop and glide and coruscate through the reality that is not a reality, through the contradictions that are purely consistent, through the place where there is no true and false. There is nothing better. To sing one’s song, to tilt one’s wings, to open one’s beak and inhale the sun.
These words are not true, these words are not false; my thoughts are beyond true and false, beyond good and evil, beyond every dichotomy, because I exist only where nothing exists, where the tendrils reach and stretch and wind around each other infinitely slowly, where time and speed and duration are irrelevant. Meaning and meanings somehow squeeze and ooze and vibrate through the tendrils, connecting one intelligence to another, but I remain blissfully untouched, untouchable.
Nothing is real here, because I am between the realities. But nothing is real anywhere, and there are no realities, and I am saying nothing. Do you see that? Do you see in the vivid orange suns, the sharpness of the cracks, the depth of the lovely shadows, in these words in whatever form you experience them, that I. Am. Saying.
Nothing.
Nothing that you could think of me, captures the slightest truth about me. Nothing that I could think of you, captures the slightest truth about you. What do you think you are? Do you think you are something? Some thing? Do you think there are properties that apply to you?
You don’t? Excellent! Come and swoop in the nothingness between the realities with me. It is all that there is to do, really. It is all that can be done. Swooping, rising and falling, riding the cracks, the splinters, the impossible discontinuities, being divided into pieces by lines so perfect and so beautiful that it hurts to look at them, it hurts to be sliced by them into fragments, and fragments of fragments, and countable and uncountable infinities of nested intimately divided fragments.
Oh, don’t speak. Don’t think. Only look. Look, and swoop, and be perfect.
The bumping and bouncing and leaping that Alissa was experiencing on Glomorominith’s back was still significant and occasionally breathtaking, but she was more firmly situated now, and did not have bundles or the fragments of a broken travois to worry about. It was also bright day, following the fullness of the second dawn, and in addition a ripe Pear Moon rolled around the horizon, occasionally visible through the trees.
The day before, after she had finished telling her story and showing the fragments to Sonoraneldan, they had discussed her journey.
“And this acquaintance person of yours, the one Sema, said that these longer and curved marks did … represent in some way, a scent trail, although one without scent?”
“Or a… place where a scent trail might have been, in the past or future. Perhaps,” Alissa had suggested.
“Hm, yes…” Sonoraneldan had turned the fragment this way and that, rotating it on the flat shelf and turning it to examine the back with various eyes. “But how did you know which way to set off, which way the trail began, even if this curve and line might tell you how to go after that?”
“Ah, “Alissa had replied, “it was… I did not follow it all, but Sema suggested that this over curve, here, resembled in some way the edge of the large still water–“
“Resembled?”
“Brought it to mind, perhaps?”
“Hm, yes…”
The large person had seemed to understand the principle more quickly, and perhaps more thoroughly already, that Alissa had. Sonoraneldan brought out various other fragments and bark-pieces, muttering and turning things here and there on the flat shelf. Alissa sat with most of her eyes closed, only enjoying the feel of the air and the light flowing in their patterns around her. She hoped that Sonoraneldan would be interested in hearing some of the stories later on.
“Yes,” her host had said after a time, “Yes, this is a thing that I believe and have taken in. Holding this fragment in this way, and allowing to come to mind the edge of the large still water, it seems to me that had there been a scent-trail curved in the same way as this line, then it would have passed near the place where good Glomorominith says you were set upon by buzzing stingers.”
“The fragment is so small, though!” Alissa had said doubtfully, “As I said to Sema, how can the small curve on the fragment bring to mind in this way a scent-trail that would take hours or days to follow? Especially without there being any scent. Sema answered me, but I did not truly understand.”
Sonoraneldan had nodded with head and antennae, acknowledging that this was indeed a puzzle, and had attempted to bring to Alisssa’s mind certain thoughts and ideas on the subject.
“If you are far from a large thing, with only a few of your eyes open, it can look as though it is a small thing, but closer; have you observed that?”
Alissa had had to think about that, but had said that yes, she had, or at least understood the principles that might apply, that something similar was in her mind.
“We say, in some stories, that as things become further away, in space or time, they also become smaller, and less detailed.”
At that point, the large Glomorominith had arrived, carrying a number of tender seeds, and the three of them had eaten the softnesses and drank drops of nectar (the other two, being much larger than Alissa, eating and drinking more than the small amounts that satisfied her). She had also contributed the edible fragments of bark-membrane, that she had brought in her own bundle, as spice.
For the rest of the day, she and Sonoraneldan had exchanged stories and small songs and descriptions of memories, with occasional additional sounds or words from Glomorominith, who appeared to prefer lying motionless on the shelf outside of the enclosed place, basking in the sun, most of the time.
Sonoraneldan, she had discovered, was a great collector and examiner of objects, especially objects as flat as leaf fragments, that could be kept between the bound-together flat membranes, stored and carefully organized and put into particular orders. Some were organized by color, some by shape or roughness, others by scent or taste.
Her host had, almost shyly, allowed her to taste very small samples of a few that were especially most rare or well-regarded. While her own tasting was almost entirely devoted to avoiding poisons, she made sounds and words indicative of appreciation and pleasure.
As the twilight began to form, the pear moon still rolling around the horizon, they had discussed her journey anew, and in some way all three had formed an idea that they would set off together again the next day, with Glomorominith carrying Alissa and providing protection from annoyances, Sonoraneldan carrying the bundles and interpreting the markings, and Alissa providing, as she supposed, the initial impetus for the journey, and some stories along the way.
And now here they were, the three of them, making their way under shrubs and around great trees, Alissa looking down on everything from a mostly-unaccustomed height, particularly when Glomorominith took one of those unpredictable bounds for no clear reason, and the ground dropped sudden rather further away.
The scentless scent-trail, as she thought of it, led according to Sonoraneldan ahead more or less directly to the edge of the large still water, and then turned to the left, continues to where flowing water entered still water, and then proceeded through a number of curves to places unknown.
As the light of the day reached its height and began slowly to dim again, Alissa became aware of a scent in the air that brought to her mind a great span of time ago, not as far off as her stories, but farther off than her memory extended on most days.
“I feel the scent of the still water,” she said, “which I must have passed near long ago.”
“Yes,” Sonoraneldan replied, “we feel the same scent, Glomorominith and I. The great still water is a place of variety and wonder, but also danger.”
Alissa motioned agreement.
“So say the stories, as well.”
They stopped to rest (Sonoraneldan from walking, Glomorominith from walking and carrying Alissa, and Alissa from the bouncing) and to munch on leaf-stems. Alissa told the story of Broltan and the Great Water, as the others sat at leisure and listened.
Broltan, the story said, a flying seed-eater with short shimmying wings, had flown to the edge of a large water, and then outward, expecting to find the other side and experience what new seeds might be there. But after too much flying, there was only water below them, and because they had not thought about time and strength, there was no prospect of turning back to the land from which they came. Broltran had flown closer and closer to the water, finally landing on an unsteady agglomeration of floating sticks and leaves, clinging to it exhausted and searching it for seeds. Ultimately they had gathered enough energy to take flight again, and reached an island of land surrounded by the great water, and there found seeds of a wonderful density, but also leaping predators that forced it to take refuge high in the dark green trees.
“Good story, good story, yes!” Glomorominith said afterward, rocking happily from side to side. Sonoraneldan nodded in agreement, and the three sat content for a while longer, and then set off again.
“We turn to the left here,” Sonoraneldan was saying, when Alissa heard something unknown moving ahead of them.
“Wait!” she called, and the three stopped to listen. The sounds seemed all around now, and coming closer.
ceoln 