{
  "$type": "site.standard.document",
  "canonicalUrl": "https://serpentsquiggles.neocities.org//posts/fiction/illurien",
  "path": "/posts/fiction/illurien",
  "publishedAt": "2024-12-22T00:00:00.000Z",
  "site": "at://did:plc:ivoe7cntxuy6at7uzmxzs2ft/site.standard.publication/3mfk6cpprzt2t",
  "textContent": "just, imagine walking alone, so far from civilization, no one aware of\nwhere you've gone, and feeling profoundly known as the sky darkens,\nas a drizzle of rain falls, as thunder is heard as a distant\ncrackle-roar above while the winds begin to whisper and sing.\n\nbut it's not just the wind.  or maybe it is --- are you hearing\nthings?  susurrations at the edge of your hearing, faint words or\npareidolic noise.\n\neither it's nothing, or... you're being beckoned.\n\nyou're drawn forward, even as the storm, the atmosphere all around, is\nchilling you, arousing gooseflesh.  the cold pierces through your\nclothes.  you shiver and can't steady yourself.  unsteady, coming\nloose, drifting.  you think of the drafty chill of a door left\ncracked, the flutter of pages right after a bookknife slits open an\nuncut tome --- you imagine an arrival after a blade were taken to open\nreality itself.\n\nin a word, something is different.\n\nyou could run now.  any creature with half a brain would --- any\nperson with sense at all would say this feels wrong.  you don't run,\nand maybe that's why this is happening.\n\nyou're being beckoned.  the winds speak with a hundred hushed voices.\nthey ask your name, and the answer springs to mind, dances subvocally\nat your lips, and that's enough.\n\nyou see that dark silhouette in the distance first.  but image is\nhardly a reliable primary source.  you feel a presence, her.  the\nvoices are all hers, her intent crafted the rhythms and inquiries.\n\nshe's breathing in your brain, a warm, feminine soul-hum that\nreverberates from your instinct to your identity --- like a tuning\nfork tapped curiously against a glass.\n\nand then she breathes in.  before, you were being beckoned, but your\nfeet move with the gravity of falling, step by step as mist parts\naround the dark silhouette and grants her color.\n\nshe wears the wide sleeved robes of a martial arts fighter.  the\nfabric almost seems woven of fine silks --- if, that is, every thread\nwere a rivulet of water.  she floats draped in a waterfall, with only\none thing solid against the flow: a sheathed weapon sitting at her\nside.  the exposed inches of blade glitter like ice, catching your eye\nwhile the rest of her is shadow.  she has a bend to her legs and a\nswaying readiness --- as if violence were but moments away.\n\nand yet you walk on.\n\nthen you stop yourself midstride, wrestling back control back of your\nsteps... and then you redouble your steps toward her.  but, cautiously\nnow!  still, you are curious.\n\nand so is she.  she asks you about the last book you read, as the two\nof you finally meet eye to eye.\n\nshe's so much taller than you --- can you even touch the top of her\nhead if you reached, tip-toed?  when you're near enough to see her\neyes, you have to crane your head up.  her face is a blank mask --- a\ncareless abstraction of a woman --- two dark yet silvery eyes that\npeer, as if in scrutiny alone those holes could drain the world like\nthe waters that clad her.\n\nthe eyes focus on you, and you answer her question.  you name the\nbook, the subject, recount the themes and the most thrilling and\ninsightful moments.\n\nyour legs are moving again.  you've sat down now, the two of you, and\ntogether watch the rain fall, the lightening an inconstant flame in\nthe heavens.\n\nyou tell her of the town you hail from, skimming briefly over the\nlife you live, exams and studies.  she breathes faster now, the hum of\nher presence so loud and the persistent tug at your being recurring\nwith less reprieve.\n\nscooting back some, putting some distance between the two of you, you\nstartle at an orbit --- several globules of liquid float in the air,\nand more rise from the dark water of her skin.  little bridges of\nliquid maintain a connection, like the stem of so many flowers\nblooming\n\nif you moved further, tried to stand up, there'd be no escape.  then a\ndroplet splashes against your face.  it's cold, and leaves you\nshaken unsteady again, fluttering from another blade to the skin of\nthe world.\n\nyou see the stars, too many to count, moving too fast to parse shapes, or\nmaybe moving too fast not to see the shapes, the vision pouring into\nyour mind so fast you can't discard any of it as unnecessary, refine\nyour focus, and it's a million points of light to fire a million\nneurons and you're thinking of countless worlds all at once.\n\nyou're coughing --- or were you screaming enough to leave your throat\nraw?  but you hear the rain again, you feel the hum of her presence\nstill at every cortex of your mind, but you can't ignore the\ndissonance in the vibration now.  the tuning fork strikes anew with\neven greater force, merciless in investigation.\n\ncold.  like tears on your face, and they're not your tears.  you see\na graveyard, you see bodies piling up and pyres alight and grieving\nthrongs clad in attire you can't place, with banners of nation you've\nnever been to.\n\ncold.  a fish swims in a dark river deeper than chasms, deep like\noceans.  swimming against the current, and then it stops, forward\nmomentum stolen from it.  there was movement ahead of the little fish\n--- vast, vast, vast!\n\nyou're on the ground writing.  she glances down at you, then her\nattention drifts away just as quickly.  each attempt to climb to your\nfeet gets you another droplet, another vision of something, somewhere,\nsomewhen that isn't you, isn't here, isn't now --- is it even real?\n\na man with a face ringed with lights.  a mountain crumbling as if a\npillar deep below the earth were removed.  a crowd hurrying through\nstreets of dark stone, while pustule-crusted bodies that might be\ncorpses line the alleys.\n\nin the brief glimpses you claw back of the real world --- is it real,\nor just a recurring dream? --- you see her again, floating now, the\nblade still like glittering ice --- now drawn, its full length\nexposed.\n\nyou'd seen this first --- her violence, always just moments away.  and\nwhat weapon was more decisive, more deeply destroying, than knowledge\nitself?\n\nshe is a downpour.  all these mere glimpses of what comprises her\nsurge into your lungs, treacherous like the sea and just as fain to\ndrown you.  you're no warrior, and if you were, how many have fallen\nto her blade?  how many were even worth to achieve that honor?  no,\nall warriors drown.\n\nknowing that you can't withstand or outmatch her --- there's peace in\nthat reality.  in a way, you're lucky: all these visions of\ndistant lands and times are a treasure.  each might be something few\nhave ever seen --- but all together?  there's beauty, there's wonder,\nbut most of all, there's more to all this.  some of these distinct\nevents are clearly related in time or in space, and some you've heard\nof before, in your own life, in your own studies.\n\nas you stop fighting, you start trying to put the pieces together.\n\nand then you hear her, more clearly than ever.\n\nso you understand.  confusion proceeds all learning.  every fear is a\nfear of an unknown, great or small.  so many feel that prick of\nreality's uncompromise, and they run from it.  they dry themselves in\nignorance; and they cannot grow.  that is true death, even before i\nconfirmed it.\n\nbut you're different.  and that's why i cannot let you leave me.\n\nif you aren't leaving, then you'll be staying with her?  how?\n\nyes.  (she cannot smile; she has no mouth.)  she tells you: this will\nhurt.\n\nand maybe there's still a part of you, animal or wise part of you,\nthat craves survival and fears this thing, so vast her presence can\nsurround every part of your being.\n\nyou could try to run, but there's no escape.  you already knew that.\nshe would let you start running, though.\n\nand just as soon, you hear the crack that isn't thunder.  your\nvision would go white, and not from brightness.  warm wet would pour\ndown your back, and it would not be the rain.\n\n(her blade was already drawn, after all)\n\nit's not a sword; the blade is segmented, water bending in and around\nit to mold its shape.  longer now: it's like a whip, a snake curling\nin her grasp.  she strides forward, legs long, and without one\nhesitation she strikes you again, another lash splitting open your\nback.  you fall.\n\nshe asks you about your favorite book.  you sputter, and ask what\nshe's talking about.\n\nexams?  studies?  life?\n\nshe bows to your agony-twitching form.  cold, cold hands touch you,\nsoaking and drenching you.  you feel a sharp lick, and then she's\nsliding off your clothes, and your skin.  droplets fall, and this\nvivisection-execution is interrupted with the distant unfolding of\nscintillating fractals, ceasing warfare of ocean waves, the\ncrystalline lattice of metal annealed.\n\ncold, cold hands touch spasming muscles and exposed bones.  storm\nwinds craft sheets of water to wash away the rivers of red, but there\nare subtler winds murmuring.\n\nshe's breathing so so fast now, you can feel it, her mind humming and\nengulfing your.  there's so much care in her, so much desire, so much\nintent --- so much like a hunter carefully taking choice cuts of her\nfresh carcass.\n\nwe're taking away everything, everything that matters in you.  but\nthat's theft, isn't it?  but this should make it fair.  we'll give you\nback something just as valuable.\n\nshe tells you who she is.\n\nand that's the last question she asks you, to repeat it back: who am\ni?\n\nIllurien, you say.  she drives the length of her tempest\ninto your personhood.  her blade sinks down to the hilt, and she\ncarves.  you're taken to pieces, wet and dripping as cold cold hands\ngrasp the round forms from your abdomen, squeezing.  you're weighed\nand measured, studied, and then she cuts again among what parts\nremain.\n\nwith your last breath, as your mind flickers in and out of visions,\nyou're repeating that word worth your whole being.  some would say it\nfeels wrong, but it sounds so beautiful in your mouth, harmonizing with the wind.\nIllurien  Illurien Illurien.\n\nthen you can't think about how it feels, either; the thoughts are\npeeled and plucked out one by one, and yet you still feel.  horror,\noutrage --- and perhaps some insecure, rejec",
  "title": "Of the Myriad Glares"
}