Of the Myriad Glares

just, imagine walking alone, so far from civilization, no one aware of where you've gone, and feeling profoundly known as the sky darkens, as a drizzle of rain falls, as thunder is heard as a distant crackle-roar above while the winds begin to whisper and sing. but it's not just the wind. or maybe it is --- are you hearing things? susurrations at the edge of your hearing, faint words or pareidolic noise. either it's nothing, or... you're being beckoned. you're drawn forward, even as the storm, the atmosphere all around, is chilling you, arousing gooseflesh. the cold pierces through your clothes. you shiver and can't steady yourself. unsteady, coming loose, drifting. you think of the drafty chill of a door left cracked, the flutter of pages right after a bookknife slits open an uncut tome --- you imagine an arrival after a blade were taken to open reality itself. in a word, something is different. you could run now. any creature with half a brain would --- any person with sense at all would say this feels wrong. you don't run, and maybe that's why this is happening. you're being beckoned. the winds speak with a hundred hushed voices. they ask your name, and the answer springs to mind, dances subvocally at your lips, and that's enough. you see that dark silhouette in the distance first. but image is hardly a reliable primary source. you feel a presence, her. the voices are all hers, her intent crafted the rhythms and inquiries. she's breathing in your brain, a warm, feminine soul-hum that reverberates from your instinct to your identity --- like a tuning fork tapped curiously against a glass. and then she breathes in. before, you were being beckoned, but your feet move with the gravity of falling, step by step as mist parts around the dark silhouette and grants her color. she wears the wide sleeved robes of a martial arts fighter. the fabric almost seems woven of fine silks --- if, that is, every thread were a rivulet of water. she floats draped in a waterfall, with only one thing solid against the flow: a sheathed weapon sitting at her side. the exposed inches of blade glitter like ice, catching your eye while the rest of her is shadow. she has a bend to her legs and a swaying readiness --- as if violence were but moments away. and yet you walk on. then you stop yourself midstride, wrestling back control back of your steps... and then you redouble your steps toward her. but, cautiously now! still, you are curious. and so is she. she asks you about the last book you read, as the two of you finally meet eye to eye. she's so much taller than you --- can you even touch the top of her head if you reached, tip-toed? when you're near enough to see her eyes, you have to crane your head up. her face is a blank mask --- a careless abstraction of a woman --- two dark yet silvery eyes that peer, as if in scrutiny alone those holes could drain the world like the waters that clad her. the eyes focus on you, and you answer her question. you name the book, the subject, recount the themes and the most thrilling and insightful moments. your legs are moving again. you've sat down now, the two of you, and together watch the rain fall, the lightening an inconstant flame in the heavens. you tell her of the town you hail from, skimming briefly over the life you live, exams and studies. she breathes faster now, the hum of her presence so loud and the persistent tug at your being recurring with less reprieve. scooting back some, putting some distance between the two of you, you startle at an orbit --- several globules of liquid float in the air, and more rise from the dark water of her skin. little bridges of liquid maintain a connection, like the stem of so many flowers blooming if you moved further, tried to stand up, there'd be no escape. then a droplet splashes against your face. it's cold, and leaves you shaken unsteady again, fluttering from another blade to the skin of the world. you see the stars, too many to count, moving too fast to parse shapes, or maybe moving too fast not to see the shapes, the vision pouring into your mind so fast you can't discard any of it as unnecessary, refine your focus, and it's a million points of light to fire a million neurons and you're thinking of countless worlds all at once. you're coughing --- or were you screaming enough to leave your throat raw? but you hear the rain again, you feel the hum of her presence still at every cortex of your mind, but you can't ignore the dissonance in the vibration now. the tuning fork strikes anew with even greater force, merciless in investigation. cold. like tears on your face, and they're not your tears. you see a graveyard, you see bodies piling up and pyres alight and grieving throngs clad in attire you can't place, with banners of nation you've never been to. cold. a fish swims in a dark river deeper than chasms, deep like oceans. swimming against the current, and then it stops, forward momentum stolen from it. there was movement ahead of the little fish --- vast, vast, vast! you're on the ground writing. she glances down at you, then her attention drifts away just as quickly. each attempt to climb to your feet gets you another droplet, another vision of something, somewhere, somewhen that isn't you, isn't here, isn't now --- is it even real? a man with a face ringed with lights. a mountain crumbling as if a pillar deep below the earth were removed. a crowd hurrying through streets of dark stone, while pustule-crusted bodies that might be corpses line the alleys. in the brief glimpses you claw back of the real world --- is it real, or just a recurring dream? --- you see her again, floating now, the blade still like glittering ice --- now drawn, its full length exposed. you'd seen this first --- her violence, always just moments away. and what weapon was more decisive, more deeply destroying, than knowledge itself? she is a downpour. all these mere glimpses of what comprises her surge into your lungs, treacherous like the sea and just as fain to drown you. you're no warrior, and if you were, how many have fallen to her blade? how many were even worth to achieve that honor? no, all warriors drown. knowing that you can't withstand or outmatch her --- there's peace in that reality. in a way, you're lucky: all these visions of distant lands and times are a treasure. each might be something few have ever seen --- but all together? there's beauty, there's wonder, but most of all, there's more to all this. some of these distinct events are clearly related in time or in space, and some you've heard of before, in your own life, in your own studies. as you stop fighting, you start trying to put the pieces together. and then you hear her, more clearly than ever. so you understand. confusion proceeds all learning. every fear is a fear of an unknown, great or small. so many feel that prick of reality's uncompromise, and they run from it. they dry themselves in ignorance; and they cannot grow. that is true death, even before i confirmed it. but you're different. and that's why i cannot let you leave me. if you aren't leaving, then you'll be staying with her? how? yes. (she cannot smile; she has no mouth.) she tells you: this will hurt. and maybe there's still a part of you, animal or wise part of you, that craves survival and fears this thing, so vast her presence can surround every part of your being. you could try to run, but there's no escape. you already knew that. she would let you start running, though. and just as soon, you hear the crack that isn't thunder. your vision would go white, and not from brightness. warm wet would pour down your back, and it would not be the rain. (her blade was already drawn, after all) it's not a sword; the blade is segmented, water bending in and around it to mold its shape. longer now: it's like a whip, a snake curling in her grasp. she strides forward, legs long, and without one hesitation she strikes you again, another lash splitting open your back. you fall. she asks you about your favorite book. you sputter, and ask what she's talking about. exams? studies? life? she bows to your agony-twitching form. cold, cold hands touch you, soaking and drenching you. you feel a sharp lick, and then she's sliding off your clothes, and your skin. droplets fall, and this vivisection-execution is interrupted with the distant unfolding of scintillating fractals, ceasing warfare of ocean waves, the crystalline lattice of metal annealed. cold, cold hands touch spasming muscles and exposed bones. storm winds craft sheets of water to wash away the rivers of red, but there are subtler winds murmuring. she's breathing so so fast now, you can feel it, her mind humming and engulfing your. there's so much care in her, so much desire, so much intent --- so much like a hunter carefully taking choice cuts of her fresh carcass. we're taking away everything, everything that matters in you. but that's theft, isn't it? but this should make it fair. we'll give you back something just as valuable. she tells you who she is. and that's the last question she asks you, to repeat it back: who am i? Illurien, you say. she drives the length of her tempest into your personhood. her blade sinks down to the hilt, and she carves. you're taken to pieces, wet and dripping as cold cold hands grasp the round forms from your abdomen, squeezing. you're weighed and measured, studied, and then she cuts again among what parts remain. with your last breath, as your mind flickers in and out of visions, you're repeating that word worth your whole being. some would say it feels wrong, but it sounds so beautiful in your mouth, harmonizing with the wind. Illurien Illurien Illurien. then you can't think about how it feels, either; the thoughts are peeled and plucked out one by one, and yet you still feel. horror, outrage --- and perhaps some insecure, rejec