shape decomposition

Who are you?
What are you looking for?

— FROM ENDLESS DREAMS, YOU AWAKE.

if you close your eyes any longer, you’ll be pierced through by the light. you already have that memory. you don’t need that to happen again.

( ONCE UPON A TIME, you woke up on the face of a darkened star. this one was not consumed by a void of your own making: this one was doomed before you ever lived. you were bleeding, cut open, your aether undone and unmaking. suddenly the feeling had gone, but the phantom memory remained.

someone hugged you, tight enough your ribs could burst and your body threatened to give in again. you’ve been left in the dark for so long that you don’t remember who anymore. )

the scarlet sand is so deep, stretching farther than your eyes can see, and it drowns you in a warm embrace. it smells like copper, it smells like heat, it smells like blood. it isn’t yours. it’s not from anyone you know. it’s all the fishes and crustaceans and barnacles without water, it’s the tidepools whose names are nonsense now, it’s all the animals who lived here that have lost their homes and their past and their lives. it’ll be you soon enough. the hume or hyur or human body does not live long without water, and your life reignited has deigned to grant you a similar affect. you have been without water, without food, without sleep, without light for ~▮▮▮?▮??~ days. this might be the end already.

maybe that’s for the better.

someone misses you, probably. it must be the wind. no, you just want to curl up in the desert’s embrace and let it take you in again. this isn’t a home, but this is the only place you can call one anymore. where you began has gone, where you ended was never yours. where you rose again is far off and away, where you ended was meant to be all. where you rose again is no longer yours. where—

this all has to be false. nothing in your mind accounts for it. but if you curl up and rest here, then why need to dwell on this? you could be safe here. the sky is breaking apart and burning, but it doesn’t have to take you here. at the end of days, alone and awake, this is the safest possible place to be. even if you are the only one who understands.

and yet—

— SOMETHING VAGUE, YET URGENT CALLS YOU.

a voice lingers in your mind. how long has it been calling to you? how long has it been lonely? perhaps as long as you. finally, you would have someone else left to understand the hollowness of eons. you don’t think it necessitates love, but you’re certain it could be called close.

you don’t remember rising to your feet and brushing bloodsand away. the light drowns the world in flame and blinds your long march on. one step, then another. how long until you find your way home? how long until you’re deemed wanted?

ONCE UPON A TIME, IN A FAIRYTALE TOLD SOME TIME AGO, you were a puppet dancing on her last strings. memory at least grants some clarity: it must be almost a year now. how time passes in the eyes of the mortals who rise again and again. in that tale, the strings were cut free and your knees gave way. the dragon was pierced on her own lance. she was no longer needed to guard the wicked queen’s tower. she had no use in the new world. she was meant at first to go.

how did that tale end? you just can’t quite remember.

IN ANOTHER CHAPTER, YOU’RE A HERO WITH A TERRIBLE CURSE. this is the hubris of the ones most praised: in the eyes of half of the world that remains, you’ve turned into a monster. few people understand the horror in plain view. you’ve been struck by the burden of the people who rely on you most, and now their hearts have linked to your own. all their fear, all their hatred, all the world’s despair and anger. this is yours to cloak like crown and robe and this is yours to slay their source of hurt.

there are so many of them. every individual, even under common threat, will have their own fears and woes. someone is praying for her child. someone else mourns for their friends. it’s like today, when the universe was ending and pulled apart at the seams. a universe cannot be healed by the hand of a single other, even if all their hopes are placed onto her. it’s too hurt to try.

what are you doing here, caught at another end? you don’t have anything to stop it anymore. you never did, even when you were one of the first to try.

you find one of the last rifts—one of the last stable to even cross—and you enter. you leave behind a world that’s forgetting itself yet again, and you find yourself in one that knows nothing of its suffering. just—

love. this is what lies at the end of the road.

— TO DIZZYING HEIGHTS IT RISES, THE GLEAMING SPIRE: ITS TIP THREATENING TO PIERCE THE BLINDING CANOPY.

you can see it even from down below. every crystal glitters from above.

love. the saccharine-sweet love of a city littered with corpses. the clouds are rising and giving way to rain. you start to remember this city again, the one meant to be your home away from home. you hope hythlodaeus has been taking care of all of the pets; that he’s been able to survive that. you hope kirika’s coyote at mare hasn’t been lonely. you hope—

no. you’re not the best person to hope when you know how this tale is meant to end.

this rift is of your own making in an incantation you remember from the heart. that familiar violet glow opens its maw yet again. you step through and give your aether to air. you already know where this tale will end. you already know where you’ve been asked to go.

you open your eyes to the landmark founded in your absence. the crystals of unfamiliar corpses are a sight you try not to behold. some earth has been kicked up and moved already. so, this happened some time ago. after your hand fell back to murder and turned yourself inside and out, all stardust afloat in the empty. before you began to forget against your will, again.

lucky you to be one of the last to respond to a wretched call. lucky you, to do so between walls and walls of sacrifices. were they happy when they gave up their lives? was it worth it to bleed themselves dry? at least the crystals never sought to creep further along and take kirika’s pets with it, or you, even, in this makeshift grave.

ONCE UPON A TIME.

you don’t want to hear this story.

ONCE UPON A TIME, you had the luck to love someone. now, it’s too many people to remember. ONCE UPON A TIME, your heart was so fractured that you thought you would never be able to mend it. it was a heart as open as the sky and as hollow as it seems above the cliffside today.

and yet, you had the fortune for it to change. someone, a warrior of light who’s long gone now, will tell you that it was you who did that: you who got up off your high horse and stitched your heart back up yourself. it’s a terribly good thing that mer is far away now not to see how you’ve ripped the stitches apart.

he’s gone. kirika’s gone, lahabrea’s gone, esmeralda’s gone, and erichthonios. you miss him, you miss him, you miss him so much and you don’t know how to deal with it. you’d seen your coworker gone by his own folly, you’d seen visions of the warrior of light crushed by ascian heel, but you had the luck to turn your face away to the last. how do you forget the way you chose to long ago? how can you go back? the tale’s given way to reality now. it’s funny enough you could laugh if you had the voice to. now your heart is empty and doomed to never be whole again.

TODAY, THE TALE ENDS. at the end of the chapter, there still is love. you can glance down at the city from the dizzying heights, hear the faux chatter of a blissful city, and you can know it still exists, still awaiting you. this is supposed to be a comfort. someone is waiting with open arms. no matter what, love will never leave you.

is there a love that’ll change you as much as the last one did, enough to tear you apart? you can hear time slip away at the overhang and the seconds drop beneath your feet. if you’re going to give into love again, you think, you’re begging for it to save you. if you beg for anything, it’s to be torn like scrolls of old paper, the kind in a book that crush to ashes under nails. you’re tired of hurting. you’re tired of longing. you’ve lived for too long to have a love that falls away. you’ve lived for too long to have a love that you won’t care for. you’ve lived for too long to want anything else.

( in your heart, in that shred of sense, you’re aware that this will not make things better. you don’t have anyone to hold you back to acknowledge the fact you no longer care. )

THERE, IT WILL ALL BEGIN ANEW.

you move past the last of the corpses and make contact with the false radiant. this time, it does not kill you. this time, it swears that it loves you.

the next thing you know, the violet rift takes you. the last of it, before the world ends: you’ve been toppled over by an anxious corgi and an angered crab and a ribbon in a room that’s collected your stardust. the cracks of the sky form a pool around all of you as you await what you know must come next.

the phone buzzes thrice and falls silent. it faintly registers behind a longing rush for rest. you close your eyes on the ground and you wait for it to fall still.