We go within.

Distant realms flow and vanish, siring a new vision.

At first there came a flickering of buoyant awareness.  Then a light, the shimmering reflection of a pool’s surface, opened and enveloped everything.  A sensation of floating throughout a bright space.  Images.  Surfaces.  Pillars, stairs, blocks…  Everywhere white…white.  All of an alabaster smoothness uniform and geometric – a mathematician’s ideal dream.

But without doors.

False dimension.  A sense of depth merely painted among square projections, incomplete columns and floors.  A deceptive sense of extending space, flowing snow marble geometry.  Nowhere to go – only places to return.

A foot glided gently to one such surface, followed shortly by its mate.  Their owner felt the fullness of his weight gradually rely upon his legs, as if someone once holding him now eased away their support.  It was then that he came to himself as a body, clasped by gravity, an owner of its own projective forces.  With faraway regard, he noted he wore loose pants of the same ivory luminosity as his surroundings and, seemingly, nothing else.

There was an unnatural tightness about his cranium as if something were fixed there.  Explorational probing indicated some sort of papery cloth was wound around his head.  Without much forethought, he sought to remove the material as one would remove a circlet or crown.  It gave easily, fastened like a headband – tight, but not glued – unrestricted by his short hair.

Bandages.

Indeed, the fabric resembled an ordinary belt of cotton gauze, but felt rather thin and non-absorbent.

He wondered whether he had sustained an injury to merit such a dressing.  Certainly at that moment, he felt no discomfort where the bandage was secured.  Yet there seemed to be a latent stiffness along the right side of his neck.  And not just a sensation of stiffness either.  Almost a kind of numbness…

With his left hand, he touched the questionable area – and reflexively jerked his hand away in surprise.  It was rough contact, alien skin, like brushing one’s fingertips over a lizard’s pebbly flesh.  A black knot of anxiety coiled in his stomach.  What the deuce was that doing there?

Hastily he looked over the rest of his body.  His feet and left arm appeared to be normal – by human standards, that is – as well as his abdomen, flanks, and chest.  The scaled scar abnormality seemed to extend from his right shoulder, around the nub of the clavicle, to the right side of his neck.  He did not know how far down his back it extended.  And from glimpses in his peripheral examination of his right shoulder, the anomalous flesh was golden in color, a sun-orange metallic hue.  With his fingertips, he explored the extent of the region from shoulder to neck, following it to the back of his head, where spine and skull intersect.

As if triggered by the contact, a searing dagger-blade of pain punched that very spot, melting through blood vessel and neuron.  The thudding, surging sound of his own cardiopulmonary system rushed in his ears.  His entire body jerked with the pain, contorted as if an electrical current ran through it.  He made as if to cry out.  Washed out searing light overtook him.

And a new – yet not new – experience came to him.

He squinted, his vision overwhelmed like an arctic traveler’s as sunlight reflected off endless stretches of snow plains.  There was a strange sound about him.  Like the music of sea creatures, warbling, clicking.  Singing.  Blinking, the radiance grew less intense.  Darker shapes faded into view, pushing back the brilliance.

There were pale faces, lacking mouths, and dark round eyes like jewels of the cosmos.  From their position he grew aware that he was suspended on his back, his body draped with an odd degree of ease.  One of them touched below his right cheek – gently, a warm soft tendril following his jawbone back to the ear.  It seemed to be singing to him, comforting him, with the voice of a dolphin.  Looking into its eyes was like gazing into twin globes of a grand night sky; a celestial spectacle.  In his mind he sensed it speaking to him with a silent voice.  It named him “Solus”.

Behind his head he heard the keen whine of a mechanical device twirling into position.  He tried to move his head, but found he could not.  An unseen force held him.  Heat dispelled from his skin in clammy droplets.  He swallowed, finding his mouth dry.  His throat tightened like a fleshy manacle.  The comforter brushed his right shoulder softly, gentle fingertips.  All the while, the dark eyes of the universe watching over him…

A fierce pang of fire flashed through his head, like the yolk of an egg bursting forth, but not yet succeeding.  Something lukewarm and rough clasped the right side of his neck.  It started settling into his own flesh – probing – a shivering spider-leg sensation.  He started to cry out.

Then he blinked.

He was on smooth white floor, kneeling, seated on his heels.  Air came in taut gasps, his chest heaving in and out.  There was no noise, save his own; no singing sea sounds, just glaring silence and the thudding of his heart.

Subduing his breathing, he placed a hand on his knee and looked around.  It was the same as before the flash of pain – an ivory hall of linear form, etched with inset pillars, cube-stairs leading to the top of blocks, and down, and evermore.  Yes, it seemed the patterns extended limitlessly, down vaults and corridors in all directions, giving the impression of a haphazard collection of sculptures and patterns all bleached to match.

A room without doors.

With the calming of his heart, he unfolded from kneeling and rose.  Exploring the area would be pointless, he knew intuitively, as it was the nature of the room to only convey a sense of endlessness.  But like the reflection of a mirror through another mirror, it was an illusion of infinity.  Wherever he walked, he would still be in the same place.

To move forward is to move backward.  Everything returns to itself.

At that moment, with his head bent down in thought, he noticed the circlet of bandage lying coiled on the floor.  Realizing he must have dropped it during his—that he must have dropped it earlier, he cocked his head at it and started to squat down to pick it up.  As he moved his hand over the top of it, he stopped.  Darkness likened to his arm and reaching fingers obscured the ring of gauze from view.

Darkness below; light above.

Withdrawing his hand, he pushed himself upright again and stood.  A prickling sensation fingered its way up the back of his neck.  He raised his head and looked into the swimming radiance above.  It was so bright – the brilliance of a sun amplified by its cloak of pristine clouds.  His eyes fluttered at it; he closed them, looking into a gray-lit twilight.  An ache twittered in the back of his head.  A deep breath, focusing on the bright spots before him.  The pain ebbed.  Lengthy, controlled exhale.  A lifting sensation, dream-like in essence, like the lighter portion of him was gliding off, leaving the cumbrous portion behind.  Thought, like a leaf riding a stream, drifted through.

We go within.

We go without.

He opened his eyes.

Dreamscape Navigation