Extracelestial.

I don’t remember who I am.

I forget because I make myself forget.

There’s a voice in me I created.

It started with the first deep loss.

It hates me.

It makes every person I speak to

Every thing I do

Every motion I make

Tainted.

Telling me I’m ulterior.

That I only seek what I want and do not care.

How dare you?!

When all I have done is my best to love other people,

Despite you whispering poison into my ear

And flooding my eyes with red.

It is me who has created you, around this deep and ugly wound.

You are its insecure guardian, always tapping on my shoulder to remind me that you’re there.

How wrong.

I have become impulsive, thoughtless.

I have become my pain, because my pain never stops begging to be known.

I ache so deeply.

I recognize also I am ENORMOUS!

When in those rare flashes, the reins are back in my hands

The Chariot of me shines so beautifully

And all is ambrosia and gold.

The ones who embody true love I can See

And I can Feel

And I am There, in that moment, with them.

Then I’m snatched back down again

Into some abysmal Magellanic Cloud.

Too often!

Too much.

So now I see.

I see you did your best.

I know you tried, and know I did too

Once I heard the second hand again, the pages slowed their scorching pace. I Saw better, Read more, Felt less, and Listened. The pages were different again, with new faces and unique scenery. I began to count the days again, and the days counted me, too.

I could write a novel

Full to bursting with living text

A world in all its glaring light and empty darkness

And you’d never see the words.

An author’s soul pours into their pages

Where they find a piece of themselves in everything.

I’m the volcano beyond the mountain ridges

And I’m the child with two toned eyes watching the smoke rise from the summit.

Eruptive words fly like brimstone from dry, cracked lips.

But when the flames subside, the world around is dead

So I speak less.

I live in a bubble

Watching through a window, terrified of outside

Confused about the sleepy darkness inside.

Fear is a construct.

Being Seen is not fearful at all.

I didn’t say enough.

I am afraid.

It was as if my oldest friend and worst enemy had a place at the table

That my hands had set for them.

Holes dug in my heart

With the tools I was given by others.

I try to decorate and gloss them over

As irrefutable parts of me and invaluable beyond measure.

I filled them back up when I Saw.

I long to find the undo button

To return to the beginning

Of so many ill-placed stitches in my tapestry.

To ravel them

And no longer ache in a space I sealed myself.

Despite everything

I am still a good person.

I Saw

In moments where new people loved me and were kind,

I shied away, terrified.

I need to be set free.

Freedom isn’t a house where you live in one room.

“Someone opened it,” Epheme gasped, sitting bolt upright as if she’d woken from a nightmare. No sleep lingered in her eyes, which cast about to several different places in her room as she stood. The first place she looked was the window, a large round sky-light set several feet above her bed, to see the first Moon, large and silver, high in the sky with its tiny buttercup yellow counterpart trailing a handbreadth behind. It was nearly midnight. The second place she glanced was at a desk, set catty-corner and lit with candle and oil lamp. They had been unlit only moments before, until Epheme had placed her eyes upon them. In the center of the desk, placed almost ceremoniously, lay a silver-backed hand mirror, glinting mischievously with the yellowy-red light of the fire. “I must be sure,” she said softly, belaying the anxiety building a knot in her stomach. She threw herself at the desk, gliding across the room in one smooth motion, then turned the mirror over, blanching at once with what she saw in its reflection. She regained her color and composure quite quickly, however; she rose one arm up, and with a flourish of her hand, drew a shimmering golden line in the air. From it fell glimmering sheets of gold and cream that enveloped and obscured her, and once they touched the floor, began to fall and reveal her form once more.

Where Epheme had worn a simple nightgown negligee, she was now donned in her full set of clothes: a tall, pointy broad-brimmed hat, midnight blue and littered with bright silver stars, with a tunic to match. The sheer sleeves and breastplate shimmered and flowed around her neck and arms. The bodice of her ensemble cinched at the waist with a belt equipped with tools deemed essential: a few tiny vials for collecting any manner of strange thing, living or not; a tiny pair of magical shears, made to change their size to fit the need; and an ocarina for wood-magic. She wore stirrup leggings beneath that, completely barefoot, and a shimmering black cloak over all. Another flourish of her hand and a wand appeared, which she tucked into her belt, and grabbed the hand mirror as she moved quickly out of her house and into the night.

The forest city of Deep Knot was silent and peaceful, the natural phosphorescence of the flora giving the shadowy parts a glow ranging from warm vermillion to piercing emerald, where the light of the first Moon didn’t breach the canopy.  The Elaran capital, though the largest settlement in the forest of El, harbored a modest population of twelve hundred or so Elare natives, dispersed seamlessly between and within the monolithic redwoods of the deep forest they exclusively inhabited. Between the trees ran ancient wooden bridges, shaped over the millennia by their avid caretakers, generation after generation. Indeed, Epheme noted silently, the Elare—her chosen group of Memnians—truly loved their home. She, too, loved Deep Knot and all its wild secrets, the endless mystery of El like its moody mists, that depending on the time of day you approached it, could be different colors and affect any range of malady or embellishment upon animal or Elare who innocently came into contact with it—and so many other things besides. Even after her millennia of life, Epheme still discovered all manner of new things in the woods, and yet the things she found years before remained as well, filling the finite forest seemingly endlessly, as if there were no edges to its dense greenery.

 She moved down from her house, perched above the Witch’s Square and into the square itself, the fountain of the Goddess Sestina of the Starshine Song laughing and dancing in the center of the reflecting pool, water pouring from her closed eyes and outstretched hands. As Epheme passed the statue, she paused, bowed her head with clasped hands, and whispered a prayer before she carried onward, directly east out of the square and toward the forest in the distance, beyond the glowing fungi and flowering plants. She cast her eyes, a luminescent orange, up at the sky again, seeing through the trees the moons were directly above her now. The yellowy light of the second Moon was at its strongest at midnight, and so bolstered the silvery light into effecting a twilight over the land, to which the flora reacted in kind. Epheme could see without the aid of the natural flora anyway, and was aware besides of the state of most of the fauna within the Woods. She knew which animals were awake at this hour, where and when they would feed, and where they may affect other creatures of the night to move. As such, she moved with a muffled urgency as low as she could, so as to draw as little attention from her companions in the woods of El as possible.

As if to thwart her, the mirror audibly shimmered, a piercing sound that rang into the night just as she crossed the outer bridge of Deep Knot, thankfully muffled slightly by the rushing water beneath her. In a moment of mastered panic, she dropped to one knee to obscure herself beneath her jet cloak and whipped the mirror to attention in a single motion, her eyes gazing into the glass with an intense focus.

The glass revealed to her a scene in front of a construct Epheme knew well. “The Ivory Pinnacle,” she sighed, knowing that this indeed was what she feared, and what she’d seen within before leaving her house. This time, however, Epheme noted that the entryway of the Pinnacle was left open—impossibly so, as well, being that the only key in existence lay in her possession alone, as was her charge and duty. The shimmer had been the door being magicked open—and likely away, with that much panache, thought Epheme bitterly—and the alarm signifying exactly such an event. The Wood Witch considered her options, pushing the fear to the back of her mind for the time being, until she knew beyond a doubt what exactly she’d be dealing with. Checking that the area was clear, she shot silently forward into the darkness of El, into the Hallowed Pathway that lead directly to the Elaran altar of Sestina, known as the Ivory Pinnacle to Memnia at large.

 Within the Hallowed Pathway lay many traps, beset by Epheme herself behind the regular exodus of the Elare to and from the Pinnacle, as well as magically placed flora and fauna, deigned to remove any wayward being from approaching the Pinnacle without permission or from beyond the Elare known to worship. While the religion itself was neither rigid nor secretive, the spirituality itself is incredibly sensitive, and as such, any of the Elare who rightfully so may choose alternative styles of life, oftentimes much to the benefit of their people, cannot ever be allowed a change of heart for the very real possibility of tainting the other Elare within the congregation by proximity alone.

 As Epheme ran, she waved her wand to dispel the hexes and jinxes she placed on the gently sloping soapstone walkway and considered what the state of things would be when she arrived at the tower. She closed her eyes and silently consulted Sestina. “Mother Memnia, Guardian Giantess, might I have caused this? Was it I who neglected my duties and found within our congregation too late a dissenter?”

As she moved, Epheme cast her eyes about at the glowing orange-green flora and the beautifully still forest beyond, the fauna steering clear of the Hallowed Pathway, regardless of it being walked or not. When she spoke to the Goddess, she knew that she would not hear her voice in return. No one, save the Wood Witch herself and the Eternal Queen of Guenevia in the Heartland, had even heard the Goddess speak, let alone know her presence in the flesh. However, she had developed a short-delay language of sorts with the world around her, being that the Goddess still existed in Memnia’s earth, if not in a flesh of a fashion—and knew how to interpret Mother’s words, broken and stilted as they were wont to come through.

As if on cue, a root of a nearby tree rose up and caught Epheme, stopping her short. Stopping herself inches above the ground, she stared wide-eyed hovering above a broken soapstone tablet in the paving and squeaked with an internal epiphany. “I’m getting ahead of myself. This is something beyond me. It’s much more than I presently understand.”

With that thought, the darkness of the forest around Epheme suddenly broke into a meadow awash with midday sunlight. She had entered the Holy Ground, the immediate area surrounding the Ivory Pinnacle at the heart of El. All around, verdant bushes and flowering swathes of greenery emanated a silky sweetness, with bees and butterflies and all manner of insects flitting about innocently, as if nothing else in the world existed—and to them, it didn’t. The Starshine Song was strong around the Pinnacle, maintaining a perfectly lit, perfectly temperate environment for a sacred garden to flourish infinitely. And, for those who could hear, soft music could be heard the closer one approached the Pinnacle, until a full chorus of notes rose and fell as one placed their hand upon its smooth white stone surface.

In the center of the meadow stood a massive white-and-gold tower of stone, made of its namesake, tapering to a point far above the forest canopy with a chamber halfway up for communion with the Song—for the Elare that desired such. Epheme stood at the base, her bones ringing in unison with the Song that vibrated from the Pinnacle, staring at the open entryway with a mix of awe and disgust. The magic used here was incredibly powerful, from what Epheme could tell—and also very wrong, a profanity of spellwork the likes of which did not previously exist in her awareness.

“This is not magic,” said the Wood Witch softly, touching the edge of the opening, more a wound than a doorway to her ancient hands. The stairs lay just beyond the opening, as they always did, intact and seemingly unaffected by the dissonance caused in tearing open the sacred tower. Epheme plucked a vial from her belt, scraped some of the stone loose and stowed it away again before bowing her head again. “Protect me, Mother. I move for you,” she silently prayed.

The bubble pops. Immediately within, like a terror matryoshka, a sea urchin of nothingness lay: a spiky, dark spherical trickster, laying in wait just behind the glamour. She’s enamored nonetheless, bringing it close as her hands run with inked blood.

“It’s perfect. This is exactly what I’ve been looking for.” Over and over, in a whisper, a fully-toned statement, inside; “Perfect. Exactly what I wanted.”

She takes it in—“I’m so hungry, this will fill me—“ But it hurts! It’s so sharp. She cringes and cries. She doesn’t understand. Candy-handed, she pops bubble after bubble, tries to fit all their insides inside. She cries out and sheds tears, giving the room an altogether different sparkle to add to its collection. They all were perfect. They had to be! “It was what I wanted,” she said. Again and again she says it, a perfectly good record player stuck on a deep ring in an old vinyl.

She threw them away, one after the other. They did not bounce, the precious things; no, they float away like dandelion seeds to land on the floor, and at once fade like smoke as if they never existed. Around like a carousel she spins until there was nothing she can snatch and futilely, stubbornly, angrily use.

“This is what I want!” Spite slammed her arms, crossed, against her chest. Somewhere deep down, locked and vaulted, she wailed in pain.

“It is not.”

The light above flickers once, and goes out. The dark twinkles in her ears all around her. Every part of her ached so deeply. The spiteful cross became a self-embrace of respite and she began to weep, together with herself.

A light?

A glow. Faint, the bubbles come back to her. Where’s it coming from? She looks down at her hands. Hands that aren’t hers, she realizes. They are void, empty-looking against the dim floor, but substantial, a macrocosm embodied. At the same time, she noticed something else.

It emanated from within.

The edges of herself gave it away. As she looked upon herself in her infinite dark, she felt a vice of paralysis grip her, transfixing her like stone. The walls, distant in the dim, came rushing in around her now, without windows or doors, and seemingly stripped bare of their former cloying glow. Austere and distant grey wrapped her then, the bubbles a clustered bouquet around her head. She didn’t understand. Frozen, transfixed, she saw her Gorgon reflection and turned to stone.

Still, the light persisted. With a turn of her hand, the glow caught her eye again and at once, the walls rushed back, the stone fell away and it grew brighter.

“It’s wrong, and I am not.” She looked down at the precious little thing, now repulsive. How pained she was! She put it down. It shuddered against the floor before becoming immaterial, dissipating into a puff of smoke and whisking away into the distant dark.

The light persisted, continuing its gradual brightening. She saw it. She didn’t understand it. She was void; empty, dark. She hungered and ached and could never satiate it, and she told herself she knew.