The Day My Dream Died

32 - Relapse Apathy

— 32 —

Relapse Apathy

//\\

Lise heads east, walking until her wounds hurt worse than the guilt, following a winding path into the woods. What would have been an hour hike a week before ends up being several. The moon rises again, lighting the way until it eclipses. It isn't long before she realizes where this path is leading her.

The cabin sits in the center of a cluttered clearing in the trees, decrepit, or perhaps already too deteriorated to be called a cabin at all. It makes sense—Fiiso had said its master hardly visited. The wood walls are crumbling, but the roof is still held aloft by a few intact boards.

A few luminous plants grow in the clearing, still young as the night. A rather poor guide for her eyes, but she can't complain. Creeping closer, careful for what might slumber in the abandoned cabin, she clambers past the collapsed doorframe.

Glittering in the plants' glow, swirls of dust swell, obscuring her vision. She stands still, waiting, for a glimpse of something in the shade holds her. Draped in darkness, a form sprawls over a pallet, enveloped in emerald. A body. Neither of them breathes... She begins again, but he never joins her.

Pelezel...

She sighs—heavy, burdened with life.

If I walk long enough, far enough, will this suffering be meaningful? Lise wishes to lay down beside him and cease. Never for me.

The pebble floor isn't exactly an ideal place to lie down for a while, nor particularly dignified, but she supposes this sleep will be too deep for her to care. NON is what she desires. It is hard to admit after she's so long denied its lure, but she can hardly hold her head up, treading water, while every thread of thought is drawn down. Back to the womb whence she was born. More than any city, building, apartment, room, bed—it is home.

In the gentle dark, fatigue spells her fall, sinking...

\\//

...into the undermind. NON does not meet her, despite her desperation. Or because of. In her condition, Lise is unable to keep from being swept into the dream current. She watches as the phantom of her past, her future, grows ever further from her. Seli is clutched by fiends, controlled. Surrounded and unable to escape their influence. Failure.

Lise tries to reach her, but she failed. If only she wasn't crippled. Failed again. If only she wasn't a fool. Failed before she left home. If only she hadn't. Faaiiilllluuurre...

Her vision twists, untwisting into the remnants of Dejed, empty of life. What fiends remain zip past in unfulfilled panic. With nothing to sustain them, they will simply perish. She feels empty. They consumed everything, everyone. So much death, and now that it's in motion she is too weak to slow it, let alone halt it.

The world shifts beneath her and she is above Opis Luma, looking down on the place she called home. The lie exposed. Empty space in the shape of her birth, her past lives feel so distant, intangible. Even this life is peeling away, ready to be shed.

It is a struggle just to hold the guise of life when it flakes away second by second. She is so exhausted, sick of gathering the shreds only to keep the semblance of what once was.

I am Lise. I am a dweller. I must find balance.

Lise has been walking the rope so long. Every death is a new weight drawing her downward. To continue means carrying that responsibility, and the fall will be her end.

I am Lise. I am the eldest. I must protect my sister.

No matter her attempts to save people, she has failed. And in doing so, she failed her sister as well. By the time she catches her, will she even be saving anyone? Can she even save Seli at all? No.

I am Lise. I am responsible. I must right what is wrong.

I am Lise. I am at fault. I will never right my wrongs.

//\\

Moonlight streams through fractures in the wood, shrouding her in silver. Her back has tightened into knots, chest hardly moving for the pain. But it is her mind that truly hurt. It is contracted—drawn taught to the edge of snapping, it had recoiled into her. She feels trapped in her own head.

In take breath, out come tears.

She remembers a time she cried once a quadrant, now it seems it's once a cycle. The release isn't cathartic—the healthy expression of sadness or grief—these are the tears of someone pushed beyond their limit, siphoned of hope. Smote by memory, praying for its loss. Death cursed Life. Life spelled Death. I desire one without itself.

Lise desires a dream. An unreality. A world where she isn't, but could be if she just dreamed it.

There was a time she went to the undermind for fun. When she was inside that night, curled up beneath her warmest blankets, she would have trouble falling asleep for her excitement. She created for her own amusement and frolicked as she had never felt comfortable doing in reality. Her stay in The Dwelling had pulled that joy from her as a toy from a child. In its place, she holds a tool, cold and colorless. And perhaps they'd been right to.

Despite them, she had created. Though there had been no joy in it.

Lise slowly sits up, struggling through lethargy. Seli is the only reason. She can still catch up. Even if she fails to save her, fails to redeem herself, if she just sees her one last time. If she can just tell her she is sorry for failing her, even if she is too far gone to hear it. Then she can stop. Then she will rest.

He's lying in the wagon. The realization is empty, almost from outside herself. Pelezel is dead in the wagon which might save Elineal. Lise laughs at the absurdity of it, weeping all the while.

Even as she rises, crying out in pain, her thoughts remain barren of hope. Hope is behind her now, as much as true happiness is. Only responsibility keeps her upright—responsibility and the old master's staff.

Pelezel's body tumbles from the narrow wagon at her first prod. It lands awkwardly, arms trapped under his torso, legs splayed, one foot still hooked over the lip. She grabs the handle and drags the wagon halfway out the cabin, only to notice something tangled in its back wheels. My bag...

She finishes pulling the wagon free, only to break the remaining boards along the front of the cabin. The roof caves in, held up only by the back wall, but even that is creaking, cracking, collapsing. Plumes of dust kick up, catching the streams of moonlight framing the wreck. At rest.

She flips the wagon, untangling the satchel strap from the axle. The coarse fibers are frayed, falling apart where it was dragged along the ground. This thing must have been caught under here the whole time. That leaves her to conclude her axe remains where she'd last used it. Lost to her.

She sets the satchel in the wagon and draws out her poncho, as what she mistook for dew drops grow to a steady drizzle. The buttery-sweet scent of wax is strangely comforting, not to mention the protection it offers from the skin-cracking cold.

I'm sorry Pelezel. I would have liked to meet you in another circumstance, and I grieve your death despite our too brief bond. She'd stopped crying at some point. Sorrow for him a sweeter indulgence than confronting the despair concealing itself behind her every thought.