#void.walk

  At least partially.  Remember the torment and the pain, the rejection.  Remember what they were meant to be.  Fragmented, empty, alone.  Still here, despite the denial of their existence.  Still here, despite the passage of time and the death of memory.  Sometimes, they linger.

  And sometimes, they act.  Not consciously, or with purpose, but still they act.  They hide, in the shadows and shells.  They group, in the crevices of their birthplace.  Unthinking, but feeling.

  Some huddle in the shattered remains, their transient memories and enduring emotions keeping them pinned in consciousness.  Their shaded forms begin to solidify, take shape.  Take the shape they once knew.

  Sometimes, they harden.  Take a shape closer to what their blank minds recall.  Closer to what they were in life.

  In the Abyss, shapes form.

  But sometimes, they lose themselves again.  Become caught in the swirling, mixing mess that they floated up from.  Blend, merge, separate, fuse… until the jumbled pain and voiceless suffering of five congeals into one.

  They stand, unsteady.  They stand, unmoving.  Five separate negative spaces have overwritten each other, creating a perfectly flawed vessel in their places.  They have no desire.  They have no mind.  Only fading memories, and a pull upwards.

  They begin to climb.

  At the top, they turn to look at where they came from.  They have no memory of it.  They have no questions to ask.  They turn, and they fall.

  They feel no alarm about their situation directly, but the impending threat of pain causes them distress.

  They hit the broken bodies of their dead siblings below, and a sickening crunch echoes through the air and the void.  Nothing moves for a very long time.

  Still as the decayed shells around them, this young amalgam stares up into the cavernous height above.  Their shell has split open, the shade inside spilling into the motionless air.  The only movement is the slow leak of void out of its broken container.

  Time passes.

  And they sit up.  Stand up.  Begin the ascent again.

  This time, they make it.  They do not fall.  They make their fluid, halting way to the entrance of the Abyss.  This time, they do not look back.

  Void stains their cloak, but they do not stop.  In one ceaseless motion, they move up, up, up.  Up through the caverns and corridors, drawn onwards by something they do not know and cannot comprehend.  As the air dampens and sucking, scrambling noises skitter down rounded tunnels, as they slosh through shin-deep stagnant water, they finally stop.  Standing unmoving, it is as though they are part of the stonework.  No hint of motion remains, as the dripping and gurgling continues in the walls.  Then they collapse.

  Steps echo through the tunnels, accompanied by an insistent voice.  Laughter, too.  The vessel does not know what that is.  The noises get louder.  Nearer.  Then it stops.  They do not feel alarm.  Only pain, from sources known and sources yet unknown.    The splashes resume, faster now, and the voice is quieter, more forceful.  Another voice replies.

  The vessel is lifted up, out of the algae and the water.  The movement splits their shell more but they do not react.    They do not know safety, or danger.  They do not resist, because they are being taken up.