Fated, caustic, independent (Tyrophagi)
Casually discarded, and often ignored (Frondpass)
Unimportant (Klu’no)
Simplistic (Paxa)
Unworthy (Wech’sa)
Unwanted (Yung)
Unneeded (Lormuun)
Why do they mock me so, Oh Jaxxa? Why do they mock me so?

- excerpt from Vol. 2, journal of St. Mirab, the Lesser Justice, translated from the original Hyphaxian manuscripts. Passage refers to Mirab’s Prayer (see footnote). Often spoken by soldiers before battle.

Glittery trees through the morning dew by way of a rising sun. Catch that early morning breeze in my left hand. Let it wrap and coil and furl itself around and about until I’m ready to let it out into my right hand. And reach out with my right hand, out past the trees and up the mountainside to where I joined with the space of this place, and plunge into it, back to where those towers lay. And up those rose-gold streaming sunlit pipevines and climb high, back into the deepwell vacant hole of my old life back there and touch…Gently touch and caress those absent vapors.

Long hand, right hand of the primary, touch it, feel the wind and how its purity has been engulfed by the nature of those towers. Wrap and pulse it back, back through the gold gate down to the canal where the leaves blew from nowhere and back through the break between worlds and back to me. Coil back up around my left hand once more.

Long tendril out from my left index and across my nose. Inhale. What do I smell? I spit out the bitter and the sour. I am not after those tastes. What’s left? Summer smells, faint. Of bright reds and streaming purples. Rose. And lilac. Oh Angassa, what did you do?

Did she know? It was too coincidental, wasn’t it? Oh Angassa. My guide…

We spent a month there, gathering the things that were needed to provide an appropriate passage. I trusted her to choose what we needed, even if she didn’t fully appreciate it. Or at least she didn’t seem to appreciate what was being collected. What happened that first night? It was more significant than I had understood at the time, I’m sure now…

This sleep awakens, from the colored depths. And after the nightfall wash, the stars grow quiet and a silent blandness descends on the forest. Even the night bird has ceased her lament. I am awake again, in a land I do not know.

I can’t say I’m surprised. My old life with the six…five. No. With the six. That was there, it was still there, it was still happening. I could prevent it. I could stop it. I could help them. I could help myself. I could undo it all. Tug the threads and watch the whole tapestry unravel before my eyes and then, then I’d see the red skies of my homeland once more.

And Angassa? She was there. My guide through this ordeal. Was she a demon herself, of the world I had left? She was the one who had picked out the moun’il a’ja, the objects of our escape from the world of battles and of war. Her fairy books and a stuffed animal. Scents too. Lilac and rose.

I paused on considering this.

A stuffed animal. Hound-like. What was that beast which haunted us, hunted us in that forest primeval? A great hound of the fairies.

Scents and smells and the narcotic air in the rose-gold towers too. Was there lilac and rose underneath the other cloying odors? I wonder…

A crisp, early day mountain walk. A sun high in the sky. A runoff stream trickles down a slope. An afternoon sun, while a figure pauses to drink. A tree-line down below. An evening sun as a figure enters a forest. A bank of rolling fog. A heavy mist descends. Bae’eun joxinca. A fire is lit. A circle is drawn. A woman gathers a mass of leaves and needles.

It is too cold and I am naked. Weave the leaves together. Ruun’onkwala ser em pax’i. Now like leather. A coat on my shoulders and a long dress of brown.

A night bird sings at a darkening sky. A figure lies in a circle with a beating heart of fire. A feeling of warmth pervades. A quiet night, filled with a moon’s light that touches everything. Long shadows touch the edge of a circle and recoil. A figure watches and, satisfied, drifts off to sleep.

Is this a dream? Have I just been dreaming of her? Of my guardian and my ward…?

I catch myself. Maybe the dark voice in my fever dream was right. I lie away my failures. Convince myself they’re not real, like they belong to somebody else. A different life, a different time, a different world. Not me. Not mine. Not mine.

I’ve ran so many times. So many times from so many problems. So easy to do, too. I can run anywhere. I don’t have to care. I don’t have to care about anybody but myself. I can slip away and lose myself a million times over and never have to worry about what came before. So easy. So easy.

The scars linger though, don’t they? How many have I lost? Six became five. We became me. And she was lost.

Peaceful contract. In a wash aware of the simplicities present in my situation. It glides about, thoughtless and carefree. This place…it is thoughtless and carefree and delves into the heightened pleasure-sense awareness.

I muse about the mad sun, far distant now. Were I to join with the madness, would I see the beauty in it? Or would it still be the maddening streaming lightglaze upon my eyes and mind and singsong beauty wreaked havoc upon my mind and soul until I lost it all into the huff of a humming tune.

I could hear the drums playing on, with their endless rata tat tat tum tum drum drum sounding like a gunshot from under my nose and ears and I sat in rapture. The beat of the drum, from the grass to the pipe to the water to the far distant tower. It had its own mood for this place and I thought I recognized the new sound in my far distant memory. Of clothes now gone, of a body clad in sky, and the grass stains all over my arms and legs.

No place. No place for me. No tree despite the leaves. And I recognized that I must leave this place behind. I was at risk no more. Now dark voice, let’s even the score between us.

Circle. Hy’uun en ap’Ondroxia. Dirt cascades away and the grass lifts up to the towers. Thank you. I won’t forget this kindness dear demon. Coddling me, keeping me safe while the sky weakened above me and faded back into black backed nothing.

My circle was out and I couldn’t hold myself to this place any longer. Cast. Cast out against the wall of this place. The gold and rose and clearing I was on. Cast out and touch the edges. Edge away from it. Find the new. Find the new. Find the newly breached wall. Wall in the westward falling grace. Grace in the greatest of ease. Easy. And out. Touch it. The wall, touch it all and find the sour sounds. The sounds of freedom and of your once captivity and hear it all in its full capacity.

Drink, drink it down and hear it drown down the sound until you find yourself on the ground once more. A soft, sidelong thing. Full of worms in a cocoon of dreams and wispy smoke. And even that passes on by. Ach’un. They draw me further on. What are they playing at? Laughter. Mirth. At my passage, I’ve made the children laugh and sing and sigh their breath and I am warmed by their glow and heed their call to follow where they go and I drift past them into the places beyond them. Thank you again demons. Demons of the world behind.

And what saturnine wonder is this now? What was it that I was after that I feel like I falter in its pursuit? My ward. My guide. My Angassa. It was so easy to forget her. Too easy.

I open my eyes onto the face of a mountainside and I sigh. I am no closer.

And I was awake in grass. Lush green velvet retreated from my body and my back stung still. Fever sweat too. I didn’t want to sit up, but did anyway.

Nobody out here with me. No narcotic smoke either. Gentle breeze along the water. A leaf blown across the water’s surface. No trees though. Strange. Golden clouds above, and to either side was the endless sky.

The sun at the horizon had shifted. The mad sun above was far distant, and the other sun had started a long trek to displace it.

A naked figure huddled in a window frame. A breeze from below. Hij’ala fex’un. A figure rolling off the edge. A figure drifting downwards towards a canal. A parasol flight. A woman lands next to a clearwater canal and grass. A naked woman stretches out and joins with the grass. A patch of grass sleeps.

More mad dreams of far off places, only half-remembered. A plane of glass and dull brass filled with mountain-shards and ribald bronze rivers. Slept there too, didn’t we…I? Was as bad as now, then.

And a place of the deep sounds against grey ground. Ringing ringing ringing, like the whole world was singing with a soundfurious noise. Spent my time there too. Spent and spent until I was. And I loved it. Every moment. I was lost and found there so many times over. Was it still there? Should find it again someday.

Violent pause and a hardstop image in my head and hands, as they both felt the edge of that lastword. That was the place to be and I couldn’t help my curiosity from running rampant in the place. I was young though, and it showed on my face. My bright eyes and curious stare. And you weren’t there yet, were you brother? That was two lifetimes ago. Couldn’t help it. Couldn’t help it.