Prologue: Light's Feast - Pt.2 [Resistance]
When all your magic and power suddenly isn't behaving as it should. OR: What it feels like to lose control of your own memories.
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This here is the second part in a series:
Prologue: Light’s Feast - Pt.2
[Resistance]
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If you wanna tell a specific version of a story; if you have a specific goal in mind, something you want teach someone, something you want to keep them away from? You better take care you don’t accidentally let slip the wrong pieces; ones that might convey the wrong impression.
That’s one thing I learned from Uhland as I became smarter:
starting to notice when he accidentally stumbled like that.
Which means I know exactly what we need to pay attention to; or they will start to notice, too.
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But gods, this is a mess. I mean, look at that.
I didn’t expect just what kind of chaos would be going on in here.
Thought I’d left all of that behind, after everything. Yet, it very much looks like I’ll have to start at the very beginning again. But where do I start?
For a moment, the Mists fill with countless renditions
of two people I’d thought nearly forgotten.
The same old hut. Clear-cut and vivid in the vibrant colors of my childhood, all of them. Soundless yet, for which I’m thankful. In most of those, their faces don’t look much happy, after all.
In most of them, even their hands are raised in argument, just like their voices would be. Not the one I had been aiming for—my dear Ommá, dear as she was at the time, at least; not the other two, a much more complicated relationship. And one I never learned to repair, before the end… But these are all early. At least some of Ommá are in there, too. But these two people predominate. Early childhood, when they were still close. Much closer than I’d have liked them to, many times, truth be told.
My ears tighten against the expectation of the memory growing loud before the sound even hits—and the Mist . . .
Distorts.
Looses cohesion.
Tumbles into a sudden chaos of other faces, other people, entirely different timelines and places. The sharp detail lost for a blurry sludge of images almost too fast to follow.
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What?
What is happening? I’ve never lost control like this before. Not since…
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Images flash by, the Mist refusing to settle into any one scene for long. Vague, shadowy outlines coalesce in the gray surrounding me, then flow back into nothingness, like soldiers in retreat.
Glimpses of a sleepy fishing village, trees—the big grandfather kind with their long beards I remember so well but also a lot more colorful ones; different sizes and shapes to their trunks and crowns, their branches and leaves, the scattered memories of a lifetime and several continents—people.
Friends. My brother. Foes.
Turncoats and other surprises—I push them away in irritation.
Wild campfires—way too far ahead.
No. Again. Deeper.
I need Oril. I need Mist’s Ford.
The fortress. Closer. Concentrate on the region, not what happened there. Fishing huts and cottages, that is what I need.
A stray bamboo shelf, startlingly clear, but unrelated to everything else. Though I think I know that one, full of everyday knickknacks that hid—
. . . aand, it’s gone.
Just as well. I know too well that was later.
Replaced by a cot I know even better.
But flames now lick at the edges, live shadows flitting by, barely seen out of the corner of an eye, and then there’s a glint in the dark, flashing like—
No. No. Stop that shit! I’m meant to be moving deeper, not further ahead.
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Ugh. Damnation.
The Mist has never behaved like this before. Not even when I just started out with it.
Why is it doing that?
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It’s the memories intruding, isn’t it. You bet.
Because I’m not purely a visitor here. Because I come in carrying something already, when what I should be is empty.
Metado. And trying to focus on those isn’t helping at all either.
They should come in orderly structures, neat circles, branching out, but very much at my command, like my memories usually do. Not this… mess.
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What is going on here?
Why are my memories getting so jumbled when I try to drag up the early ones?
For a moment I let go entirely, exasperated, letting the Mist float and well up around me however it wants. Breathe. Breathe.
Slow down. Listen to my heartbeat.
Slower.
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A small squeeze to my hand.
I’m here. I’m not leaving.
You’ve got this. I will drag you out if necessary. You’re safe.
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I sigh, one long exhale.
Try to focus on nothing but our shared breath. My heartbeat slowing down.
Maybe there are more reasons than one, why the Mist resists me these days.
Things… have changed, after all. We are neither of us who we were anymore. And very much not in the same place. The rules are different here.
But Dream is still Dream. And Dream is the domain of Dreamers.
And yet. What are We, these days?
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Then again… There were no problems diving into the past of the others yet.
Only with this one, my own. It’s gotta have to do with what I was more than what We are. It’s the memory itself that’s fragmented and scattered, I think.
But normally, that should not lead to fragments here.
Not before I even fully dive in. This is stepping outside yet.
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Maybe I should travel backwards. Maybe this is the wrong method. Maybe I should unspool from the end, not…
But no. I need the true memory.
I can’t risk the end slipping in again. That interference would be worse.
And what came later… I don’t think that would be any easier. It can’t be.
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Besides.
We don’t have that time.
I know how long it takes to unspool everything from the end right back to the start. No. I need to start early right away. It’s already spreading too fast. We need to combat it now, as soon as possible. This cannot wait a whole lifetime. And we need time to prepare, too. To extract, to change, to fuse. That won’t be easy work either. I need to do this right the first time. Stop stumbling like a novice.
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I breathe out again, slow, measured.
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Open my eyes to the fragments the Mists show now.
Closer, this time. Definitely Mist’s Ford now. I can glimpse the inn, Anur and Ferrick running around. Catch a whiff of the smithy instead of other fires; no war drums this time. There’s the clickety-clack of the mill in the background. The soft splash of a Mist’s Tear leaping out of the lake and plunging back down. Seems it didn’t get the dragonfly this time. Somehow that makes me smile. But the cottages and houses still shimmer and move as if in a heatwave, as if they were mere mirages; different times flowing into each other. People grow and shrink as they move around.
But there is one who doesn’t.
One who is always the same here, whenever he shows up.
Ironic, really. He wasn’t, in real life. So many faces. So many masks.
But the imprint is strong. So that’s what I focus on, for the moment.
I know he is close to the beginning. Not quite. But close.
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The images grow more vivid now.
They also arise and dissolve, emerge and shatter faster; become more, a whole kaleidoscope now, making it hard to focus on any one thing, as fast as it’s all spinning.
..
Say, is it the same for you?
Such utter chaos in some places; especially the early ones?
Do you even remember those years? When you were very small?
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That’s one thing I don’t have a problem with, even after everything else.
Remembering at all, I mean.
It’s all there. There’s nothing missing. Not a single snippet.
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But they’re all chaos yet. And I will need the first of them, won’t I?
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I should just decide on one. Go back from there. Follow the thread. But even that… seems splintered. Unstable. How strange. Although… maybe not. Maybe it is normal that it would do that, with every step closer to my creation. The urge to go elsewhere is strong. The pull to…
You know… I could just look for my little brother. Follow his towards mine. He is close. So very close. Seeing him again, like this, so small, so frail, and so, so bright—
There.
There he is. My little sunshine.
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Thin, like a stalk of grass. Trapped in diaphanous light. A sheer crystal that could splinter at the merest touch.
There is darkness all around him, trying to get in. Trying to suck out his very marrow.
I couldn’t see it back then. I can see it now.
My eyes close involuntarily, but the thread remains. That small, his leads back to the cradle; not the herbs, not the sharp tang of the affliction, and the hut in the woods.
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Doing so finally lets me find Ommá.
Ommá, who is way harder to find than she should be, and not quite for the reasons one would assume, if one knew her better; Ommá—and the people they called my parents. Finally a stable thread, even if it is not my own quite yet.
But it lets me locate the right cottage, even as our very home is still splintering and spiraling around me, refusing to stand quite still, if less like the village did.
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Now. How to find the very start?
Not quite the first spark but… the first spark of true memory. That first sense of actual being. Consciousness. One that remains.
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There’s the melody again.
I can’t make out who it is that’s singing. Ommá––or her? Or was that me? The smoke in my nostrils is near unbearable. There’s an urge to cough in my very throat already. Slickness—sweat, something more sinister, or simply water, I cannot tell. Not yet.
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Dis-moi. What is your first memory?
I mean, at least the first one you still remember?
Is it this fuzzy, too?
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I wonder what it usually is, for normal people. A scent, maybe? A sound? Something they saw and absolutely wanted? Or is it normally something entirely random? When do other people start to remember? How early can it even be?
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Honeylips.
The vague feeling of soft pressure to the back of my hand, already harder to perceive as I enter deeper into the mists. More like reverberations of what might be either past or present.
It is getting harder to tell.
Focus.
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Right. Right, you’re right. I’m procrastinating.
There’s somewhere I still don’t wanna go yet, isn’t there?
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Despite how prominent it is. Maybe because it is?
Yet another swirl of flashing memories. All in the fishing cottage now.
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The hearth. A shawl or blanket. The nets. The fish being gutted. The reeking mattress and the creak of the cradle. The big people moving around, waving their hands about, opening their mouths wide. The expressions on their faces that should tell me something but don’t. The way I only perceive what is behind them, inside of them. The things they don’t want to tell. How angry it makes them, all the things I can’t do.
What is wrong with that child?!
The one sentence that turns into sound hits me like a stone against my temple. For a second, I can only see Ommá’s skirts.
Then the shadows under the bed, the frame rising above my head.
Incongruously, I can hear the singing again.
Feel the rocking and the warmth of the fire, the softness of the blanket muffling everything. Shhh. Shhhh. The wind is whistling through the slats, the cracks in between the wood. The water is seeping in through the very floor it seems, the beaten earth muddy under my bare feet.
I calm. Remembering myself.
Remembering the present for a moment. Where I truly am. Which is, not there. It cannot reach me here.
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Seriously, though. Any suggestions? What am I looking for?
I feel as if I’m pulling all the wrong threads here. Making that whole tangle worse instead of clearing it up. How do I know which one’s the actual start, not just a later one? I can’t make sense of this right now. It could be any of them. Logically, there’s an argument to be made for each single one of all those memories I’m wading in and sifting through as to what started it all. But I need the one that works for our story. And that’s not even what I’m looking for yet. I wanted the original first.
Simple chronology.
I’ve never had to follow a thread back to this early in childhood, though. Maybe that’s the real problem. The point where consciousness unravels when you go backwards because it hasn’t even quite formed yet.
Maybe I should look at this from outside, then? Step into someone else’s memories? I could try the others’. But… No. That feels like a violation.
Besides, not only is this our story and not theirs, despite how many books I could write about them—it also wouldn’t help us much, now would it? They were kids back then, too. Even Tay wasn’t much older than me. I’d have to take one of the adults around back then. Probably Ommá… Gods, I don’t want to go into hers.
I guess I’m afraid what I’d find there. There are things one simply doesn’t want to know. Memories one just wants to lay to rest. There’s gotta be a way I can do this without going there. I don’t need to go that far back, do I? This is not a story about what lead to my creation. No, way too early. This would only be the opposite mistake. Just like others are too far ahead. So…
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What would you look for, to determine that?
Which one’s the earliest, the very start?
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Maybe how large everything is, in relation to yourself? Your eye level?
Hmmm... Now, there’s a thought. Maybe I just found a solution for how to sort all that tangle that has felt like a dozen big balls of yarn so far, heinously snarled by a whole horde of cats. Glad we talked about it.
The bed.
It’s the bed, isn’t it?
That wretched affair of a bed I’m hiding under. I still remember just how low it actually was; as if all of that had happened just yesterday.
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The very fact that I still fit under it makes it rather obvious just how early this memory must be, don’t you think?
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Sure, there are others, all tatters-like, snatches that I’m unable to fully sort into any one specific place along the timeline. A stray ray of light sneaking its way into the room, turning the dust mites into golden dancers. Someone laughing. The warmth of fire and snuggling into a cozy blanket on top of a big, soft body. The tender voice of a woman in song.
Huh. I still can’t tell if that’s the voice of my mother or Ommá’s singing.
What I do know is that it makes me strangely sad, this specific song, every time it’s in my ear, like a wriggling bug someone put in there. But these recurring shreds of memories… they’re not important anyway, are they? Not for this; not even for settling the mayhem in my head. No. No, I think I know now where I need to start. What is likely to be the earliest memory and which must be later ones. It’s just… does it have to be this one?
Eh. Tonto loco. What a fool I am. Of course it is that one.
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… still haven’t processed everything, have I?
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Mh. One ought to think it wouldn’t have taken me this long to realize why some memories seem basically burned in and others are all but faded. I mean, it’s really obvious, isn’t it…
Maybe some things are still upside-down. But a lot of that is probably simply just how much befuddlement is going on in that head of mine, the I at that specific time. The chaos not just in the surroundings of that child, but its very brain. It’s an attempt to hide from what is going on, isn’t it? Anything but being in this present.
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Do brains do this on purpose, that chaos inside yourself?
So you don’t understand whatever they think you rather shouldn’t?
It’s probably simply the dissociation back then, which is making it so hard to fathom what is going on there, isn’t it. Why everything is such a jumble.
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I probably should sort that for myself alone before I even attempt to rehash these parts of the story for someone else. Otherwise, we might just actually end up with mistakes. Mistakes we can’t afford.
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… hmmm… There.
Can you see that one? That’s what I mean.
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The last parts of subliminal perception of my present surroundings fade. The hidden glade we’re in, with all its vibrant green and subdued violet, the shimmering shades of gold and bronze and the iridescence of silver; the soft bird voices, the quiet gurgle of water and the buzz of insects. All its sultry warmth; even the faint wind on my skin.
In place of either of that, the vivid picture of a much wider open space emerges. The giant woods. The even grander mountain range that coils in a wide arc around everything both of them hide. The dew-covered meadows around the lake that is, in reality, an inland sea. The mists surrounding it. An impenetrable wall on the lake itself, hiding the other shore; and, of course, also what is situated roughly in the middle of the lake, what is only ever mentioned in whispers back then. As ground fog in the meadows and often also the small village that wasn’t a village anymore, past a certain time. But right now, it still is.
Fishers‘ cottages predominate the view: brittle, skewed buildings of oftentimes warped wood, scrappy and haphazardly extended here and there, whichever way was handy at the time, that don’t hold the heat out enough in summer and lose it all too fast in winter, only saved by the proximity to the thermal effect of the lake that covers and permeates everything.
The moisture is everywhere. Including my skin, even now, in the furthest, lowest corner of the hut in which I cower.
Hidden under a bed, which many others wouldn’t even call by that name. A couch for the whole family, a miserable affair constructed by stringing together smooth, round timber along with dried reed and tree leaf fibers. A mattress barely deserving its name; mostly a giant coarse sack, stuffed with dried grass that smells eternally moldy because one can get never rid of the humidity anywhere. The same dampness that necessitates renewing the huts in parts again and again, inside, outside, roof to wall, from the shelves to your clothes.
We’re missing the firewood to heat the cottage enough, especially in winter when it gets cold on top and the incessant battle against the irrevocably appearing mildew and lichen joins the room. In summer, it is the lack of will, because it is simply too hot already. The moisture would probably only drip from the walls anyway—and who would that help?
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But that thought is too new, one of the I that is watching out of the Now and a kind of bird perspective. This is not why this scene is so relevant.
This specific evening, this specific fight from which the small child is hiding, desperately covering its ears with its hands, making itself small in an attempt to not be there at all, its head full of chaos and scattered memories tumbling around—anything, anything to not be in the here and now.
It hardly feels the moisture on its skin anymore that I can see.
Even the sounds are muffled to its hearing—which is probably the sense and purpose of this whole exercise. It barely witnesses its surroundings anymore. Drowns in a mayhem of confused thoughts and a mist instead that hasn’t got anything to do with the mist from the lake that isn’t a lake and spreads its humidity everywhere—as well as its warmth. This child doesn’t feel any warmth. Not even in summer. Most of the time, it doesn’t feel anything at all, and yet it always feels too much. The child is a walking paradox itself. A child knowing too much and understanding way too little.
Something that shouldn’t exist, and yet, does it anyway. Something that lives—and yet doesn’t. Not quite. Not yet.
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Some of the things in this image, in the head of this child, the feelings that only I can put into words feel, in hindsight, as if I had only thought of them much later. Can I truly have seen this clearly as a small child, even when I had no words for it? Or is that simply that I am viewing this out of the present, when I am reminiscing, trying to remember what it was like? Does something of me slip into these old images? As I am now? My reasoning?
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But every time I think of it, it feels like… now. Direct, and immediate. All I need to do is close my eyes. Sometimes even without that. As if it were happening again, right now. And for just a moment I feel entirely convinced that it was like this, exactly like this, just so. Never different.
The words, though. The words for all of this? Those are mine, from today; the largest part of it anyway. Some though, some are clearly of that time—when words have been burned in instead of just a feeling, or what everything looked like.
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And yet… My memories are a strange, fickle thing. Especially the early ones.
They are all underwater images: things that I perceive as if through a thick layer of mist. Or, just like I said—as if I were underwater and everything else above.
Blurred. Subdued. Distorted.
I know exactly where that’s coming from. You told me often enough. These days, I get it. But back then?
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Gods, how often we talked past each other… it’s really sad, isn’t it?
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Back then, I understood insanely little. I still remember as if it had been just yesterday, when the memories drop in on me unexpectedly once more; or when I am specifically searching for them, like now.
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It’s odd how the earliest ones remain so very stubbornly.
Is that what happened to Uhland back then?
Hm. Do you think he had a happy childhood? If so, maybe it was more of a mercy. Downright wonderful. He seemed so happy at the end.
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Hell of a lotta different from me… Gods, I hope I never end up like he did.
It’s as if I’m right back in the thick of it. Without even having to grasp for it to ease in, as with all the others.
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Oh. Look. See that?
Yes. I think I now know exactly where we need to start, to begin unraveling this.
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It’s about time, isn’t it. All those years we never truly found time for this… We should’ve done this by now one way or another. Even when it doesn’t seem as acute anymore today as it did back then. We should get rid of this, even without everything else. It will do us good to release this.
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Here. Right… here.
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Oh.
Wait, wait, what?
That was a Light’s Feast? World.
I’d never have imagined. I only ever remembered those as small festivals.
But this…
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the Hunter series : Book 1 - Origin
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