#reified

It had been a long, long time since she set foot on the mountain. Back then, the lava flow had barely cooled. Mount Ranier’s face had changed since the Dance, that was certain, and the rocky outcroppings she had grown familiar with had long since been replaced by volcanic rock and reformed glacial ice.

Still, Chaotic Blue knew the way.

Her private train out of the Underground had led her to Eatonville southeast of Seattle just inside the Salish Sidhe, and then a bus there took her north and up the mountain to the visitor’s center. She’d taken the face of a human climber on the way, masking herself so as not to draw attention. It was under the cover of darkness that she began the trek up the mountain, diverging from the paths to seek out the dragon’s estate.

The pack on her back pressed her into the snow as she climbed, levitating over the tall pylons that served as the estate’s perimeter. The air was different here, warmer. While the late summer winds whipped across the mountains, here it was still. Here it was calm. And beyond the expansion of the garden maze at the front, the estate, by large, looked the same as when she had left it nearly sixty years ago.

Chaotic Blue took pause as she stepped onto the cobbled stones of the garden’s main walkway. Heat from the fountain--the thermal spring--at the garden’s center had melted most of the snow and ice here away, leaving the stones stained a deep grey. The lights were on at the house proper, the face of which had been carved into the rockface. A set of double doors beyond the fountain lay closed, yellowed light seeping out from the windows on the side of the cliff.

Shifting the pack onto one shoulder, the elf closed her eyes, dropping her physical mask and returning to her natural form. Her long, blue hair was tied back, braided and bound so as not to whip around with the wind. She removed her hat and gloves--no need for them now--and took a few, cautious steps forward into the hedgemaze alongside the main path. She had to assume the fountain was still rigged after all these years, of course. No use getting stuck with a dart if she didn’t have to.

Something in the bushes rustled as she moved, stopping as she did. She took another step. So did it.

Of course. A smile broke across her lips, and she knelt, extending a hand forward into the maze.

“Mordecai, my dear, it’s been too long.”

The flutter of bird’s wings sounded overhead, landing somewhere beyond the nearest hedge wall, and through it came a small stoat that approached, testing the air in front of it as it came. It regarded the elf with caution, stepping forward slow and steady. And then with a flutter of movement, the stoat exploded into the form of a winter fox, nuzzling its muzzle against Chaotic Blue’s palm. Its form glowed brightly on the astral plane, shifting and morphing from one form to the next as it danced around the elf, radiating with pure joy.

“It is you!” rumbled the creature, its voice echoing from its belly.

It shifted again, disappearing and then reappearing on Chaotic Blue’s shoulder as a cat, legs sprawled out behind her neck like a shawl.

“It’s been too long, my Lady. Mordecai has missed you.”

Chaotic Blue stood, giving the cat a scratch beneath its chin.

“And I you. Tell me, where is he?”

Mordecai was gone. An owl appeared at the head of the maze, behind the elf, and ruffled its feathers.

“He does not leave. He does not let me inside. But the garden is mine.”

She was afraid of that as she took learned, remembered steps through the maze. The spirit followed, its voice continuing on as it shifted between forms--sometimes running as a mouse alongside her feet, other times soaring high overhead as a thunderbird.

“I’ll talk to him, dear child.”

“He is unwell,” called the spirit.

“So I have heard.”

Chaotic Blue moved forward through the garden maze, leaving the spirit behind and approaching the front doors. As she pulled on the handle, swinging one of the massive doors open, the spirit called ahead one more time.

Moscovici described two kinds of reality:

The Reified Universe: the one scientists inhabit where reality is subject to hypothesis testing & experimentation.

med dgag gnyis - chn the two kinds of absolute negation; {med dgag rdzas su grub pa} reified total negation; {med dgag rdzas su ma grub pa} nonreified total negation [IW]

med dgag rdzas su grub pa - reified total negation [IW]

med dgag rdzas su ma grub pa - non-reified total negation [IW]

'dzin pa'i sems - subjective mind; reified mind [RB]

'dzin yul - reified object [RB]