The mind of Vil’veren sprawled out before him, the world around him falling away to darkness as he slipped into trance.
Everything began to take form. Memories merging into one another into tight lumps, putting down roots that connected them to one another. A garden of thought in need of a tender to assure it didn’t become too chaotic.
The work was difficult, but there was catharsis in seeing it all sorted out. Pulling some from the soil and planting them elsewhere, untangling roots from one set and connecting them to their proper sequence of events. Pruning here and there, trimming unnecessary and redundant details, letting him step back and admire the foliage without interruption or irritation.
And, of course, digging up, chopping up, and burying those unwanted weeds.
Days like this, it was easy. Everything fell so neatly into place that he barely needed to work, the aberrant growths handled with no effort. Everything sorted, trimmed, and settled in their own little plot. Everything in order. Everything beautiful.
And some days it wasn’t as simple. Tangled weeds sprouted from his fertile imagination, fat off a diet of fear and fury to grow thick, thorny, and black. They clung to his memories, tainting them with pain and anger. It pulled at his carefully organized thoughts, tearing them from the tended soil and tangling them them into configurations he couldn’t stand, making connections he would never give credit to on his good days.
Those days, it hurt. To pull at those thorny vines sliced his hands to ribbons, staining his mind with further tormented frustration until he could no longer stand the sight of them or work up the energy to deal with them, allowing the bramble to grow unchecked. Clawing, stabbing, tearing, piercing, shredding the memories and weaving them into the picture of a world he could not fix filled with people he could not help. A world where his every action did not matter and, in fact, simply brought his painful destruction ever-closer.
In his early days, it was impossible to deal with. He had no choice but to let the bramble consume his mind; he saved what he could, he fought to trim the thing back, but every foot of space he reclaimed was overtaken the next day as more of his memories were added to the calamitous collage. More fuel, more decay. Every day it inched outwards a bit further.
But through the will of Astra, he had found his salvation. A sky-blue trowel had formed in his mental arsenal, the mercy of the fungus he had consumed, and it let him cut through the bramble with startling ease. Suddenly, the foot of progress he had made became five, ten, twenty, forty. Step by step, day by day, he had reclaimed his mind.
Today was one of those days. The trowel let him move his memories around with no difficulty, and easily dispatched the few thorns that dared to grow outwards, clinging to the previous day as it sought to contaminate the memories with wicked sneers and whispers behind his back. Already he could see them forming--the pointed fingers or hushed tones that had to have been directed at him.
None of that. He hacked the pierced portions of the memory away, like one would sever an infected finger. Not a productive line.
The thorns were severed, savaged, and buried once more with the shards of yesterday that they had tainted. One day he may find a better way to deal with them, perhaps some stronger fluid than what Mimi can make. But for now, day by day, this work was good enough.
