SELFLESS

“Existence is a curse,” he muttered, half-under his breath, half-wanting to be heard, as he reached out with steady fingers to trace the surface of the shimmering celestial breach that, to him, seemed almost to mirror his curiosity, as if it were aware of him, meeting his touch mutually, eagerly, hungrily. He could see patterns dancing beneath its glowing skin, but they were utterly beyond him, a kind of otherworldly geometry his mind was ill-equipped to comprehend.

“Your existence is a gift,” she said, her voice coming to him from all directions at once, “A thing to be cherished, celebrated. How can you see it otherwise?”

He turned to look back at her, meeting her witch gaze. She was not like him—not like anything he had ever seen before, in fact.

How could he even begin to describe her?

“Must I be described?” she asked suddenly, having plucked the thought from his mind the same way he might reach out and steal a piece of fruit from the branches of a tree. “Must I be broken down, separated into component parts, analyzed, and cataloged away? Is that the only way you can understand me? Can I not be taken in the moment, experienced as I am, whole and realized?”

Did he upset her?

“Sorry,” he said, looking away, returning his attention to the alien rift etched into the immaterial space stretching out before him. He was certain now—it was looking at him.

“There is no need to apologize.” He felt her hand on his cheek. Her touch seemed to him so much like pale fire. “I forget, you are not like I am. You see only a fraction of things, never the whole of them, a trait surely owed to the short-lived nature of your species.”

She paused, reflecting, and then said: “That, perhaps, is a curse, for it has burdened your kind with a voracious desire to define, to classify, to systematize all that which you encounter—and most especially those things that are completely and utterly beyond you—rather than embracing and savoring those fleeting instances for what they are, windows and opportunities both to truly appreciate the depth and weight of your own being. In so many ways, you miss the forest in your zealot need to index each and every tree. Such is what it means to be human, I suppose.”

Indignation rose in him then, but before he could voice it, she closed the distance between them and leaned in close, locking eyes with him.

So utterly black.

If she perceived his thoughts, she chose not to address them. Instead, she smiled and said: “Though, in all truth as I now consider it, there is a beauty in your want of understanding; it is not so much an attempt to coldly reduce and dissect me, but an effort made to relate yourself, your person, to me and mine. It is endearing, and I think I love you for it.”

He felt a warmth surge in his cheeks at those words, made all the more potent by her ardent gaze, trained on him as it was.

“What… are you?” he whispered, transfixed.

“There you go again, indulging that human curiosity of yours,” she teased with that fey grin, her teeth glittering like radiant jewels. “Be at ease. I will share with you the knowledge you seek—even the answers to the questions you’ve yet to realize you have, lying dormant in the dark of your mind—but this will come later, once I am certain of your nature. Presently, I can think of... better ways to spend our time together.”

She loomed over him now, a terribly beautiful shadow, her darklight eyes peering into his, into him, and it was everything he could do not to lose himself in the alien vastness of that tenebrous stare. Annals of an otherworldly history long since faded into the ether of time shone within those sorcerous eyes, but there was something else in them, too; a quality he could only think to describe in that instant of hideous clarity as a predacious gleam crossed with a potent theurgic weight—

Ravenous moonlight.

—that suggested a far darker and much greater presence lurking beneath the surface of her undemanding angelic visage.

“So, you are capable of sensing it, then,” she mused in a sable-sweet tongue that issued from the featureless space around them, as was her way, “Good. I had hoped some part of you would.”

(What do you mean?)

It seized in him then like a shock, registered in both mind and body, that he could no longer move or speak. His question had been a projection from deep within his psyche, a thought instinctively conjured up in response to her cryptic assertion.

(Wait. Did you—)

“Yes. Be silent now. I will see you restored, made whole again, but only after we have finished. There is something I must know.”

She hesitated; then, in a low, rueful voice, said: “Prepare yourself, for what comes next will be quite harrowing. I will do what I can to hold back.”

(Wait—)

“No. I must be sure.”

“Please—” he choked out, the sound of his own voice alien to him. She seemed to regard him curiously at that, a speculative gleam passing into and out of her gaze in an instant, as if the act of his speaking—strained as it was—had caught her by surprise.

“Open yourself to me,” she whispered.

Something stirred in him then, faceless and ephemeral, but as to what it was or what name it might answer to, if any at all, he did not know—there was no time to consider it, that evanescent shade, as an immensity of color erupted suddenly within him, a psychic wave of bright viridescent-green, deep sapphire-blue, and burning crimson-red that flooded his vision and surged through his mind like the swell of a chromatic sea, the full theurgic potency of her presence unleashed upon him through her darklight stare. It tore away at the places it touched, peeling back the discarnate layers of his being, one after another, and swarmed past them, touching at his insides with unseen, questing fingers.

Searching him.

He wanted for nothing but to look away, to turn from the auroral intensity of her witch gaze as one would from the blinding radiance of the sun, but before he could even think to try and indulge that mercenary impulse, she reached out and curled her lustrous form around him.

“Don’t fight it,” she said, her breath the faintest saccharine whisper on his cheek as she pressed herself against him. “Open yourself to me. I must know the truth of your nature, of you—your very essence.”

He offered nothing in way of response. How could he? His mind had been reduced to a sputtering mess under the totality of her fey presence, the immeasurable weight of it inundating his consciousness to the point of fugue through sheer sensory overload.

How much more of this could he take?

“Forgive me,” she sang in that sonorous tongue, “but there is no other way. To allow even the most infinitesimal sliver of that wretched shadow to leave this realm—to leave me—would surely mean the undoing of Truth itself. I must be absolutely certain no trace of its dark potential endures within you. Such is my duty, my responsibility… as your maker.”

He froze.

The wildfire frenzy that had only moments ago threatened to consume him whole was all but extinguished in a matter of seconds by the grotesque realization seeding itself into his brain. His frayed mind, strained nearly to its shatterpoint, turned her words over and over and over again, endlessly, unable—or perhaps unwilling?—to grasp their meaning in relation to himself.

“That isn’t true.”

Only after a moment’s passing did he apprehend those words had been his own—projected not through mind or in thought, but by way of body, voice.

Could he resist this?

He was quick to test them again, to be sure, struggling: “It i-isn’t true, I know I’m—”

“Real?” she mused, “Are you certain?”

He felt the alien warmth of her sunglow touch build then, intensifying, as she took his chin, studying him with those arcane witch’s eyes. He realized he could once again register the sight of her, her terribly beautiful form, and the empty space that stretched on endlessly around them, his senses returning in full—but it was at the height of that restored clarity, its apex, that he glimpsed it a second time: That selfsame spark of guarded inquisitivity that glimmered in and was gone again from her knowing stare.

“Of c-course, I’m s-certain,” he stammered, pulling away from her.

It took all the willpower he could marshal in that instant not to give away in mind what he’d seen in her eyes—but why? Why hide it?

He brushed the idea away and hissed: “I n-know who I am.”

“Might I know, then,” she asked suddenly, “Who are you? What is your name?”

He paused.

“Can you even recall it?”

“I—” he began, his thoughts churning as he searched himself, reflecting.

“Surely, you must know,” she teased.

“Enough. I’m th-thinking. My name is—”

Again, he hesitated.

She regarded him silently. After a moment, he shook his head and looked away in a base refusal to acknowledge the truth.

There was nothing.

“No, of course not,” she said, reaching out with a glimmering hand to touch his cheek. “You cannot recall your name because there is nothing for you to recall; after all, I have yet to give you anything beyond the plainest trappings of an identity—no, you are an iteration, if even that.”

He started in protest when it hit him—

‘Your existence is a gift,’ she had said.

His eyes widened.

“Yes,” she whispered, having snatched the thought from his mind by its tail, “My gift to you—a gift of you: Actuality. Individual particularity. Life. Call it what you will, it is all the same.”

“But—how? Why—”

“Would you even believe the half of it?” she asked, withdrawing her hand as she turned from him, the pressures of her alien gaze suddenly gone, lifted from his mind and body. It was all he could do not to faint dead away then and there.

“No,” she sighed, “there is no longer any cause for such guarded secrecy. I have looked within you, searched out the dark places of your person, and have found no measure of corruption, no lingering trace of that terrible black in your heart, mind, or spirit—yes, you are everything I wished you to be, exactly as I envisioned: The splintered fragments of my humanity gathered and made whole again, realized in such brilliant form. I might once have called you Tridius, but you are so much more than that now; so much more than who I was.”

She glanced back in his direction then, having sensed both the tired confusion etched into his haggard features and the strain of his muscles as he struggled even in standing, and said: “And now that I know this with certainty, now that I am truly sure of your nature, it is time for you to sleep. When next you awaken, you will find yourself in a world I hope will be as home to you; but even more so, I wish it a chance for peace to find you in the way it never could me. Perhaps we will meet again. I would very much like to.”

She reached out with a glimmering hand to silence his mind—

“Wait, hold on,” he interjected suddenly.

She paused, regarding him with an amused stare.

“It’s just… before I go—”

“You have questions.”

He paused, considering, then: “Many questions.”

“Of course, you do.”

She grinned roguishly, knowingly, her smile made all the more inviting by her charmed laughter. “Very well, there is time enough to answer them; and I did promise you as much. Ask what you will.”