The Day My Dream Died

59 - The Dwelling

— 59 —

The Dwelling

//\\

"It's nearly midnight," Pelanea says, glancing up at the moon as she and Eclait draw the cart. "I've never not been in Kellean during a solstice."

"I'm glad to be gone of it," Eclait says. "Kellean's a piss house."

"What? How could you say that?"

"The Kelle says I can say what I like. The Kelle is all I like about Kellean."

"But the people... Your family?"

"They're all the same. And as for my family—I don't like them, and they're not from Kellean anyhow."

Pelanea huffs, "Well, I love my family."

"Good for you."

"You don't have to be an asshole about it."

"Watch your mouth or Harmony might take it from you."

"You just said Kellean is a piss house!"

"I'm not beholden to Harmony."

"...Well, Lise, you liked Kellean, right? You love your family?"

Lise blinks, looking away from Bente's fidgeting form. "What?" She's only been half-listening. "I don't know how the two are related."

"The girl is just doing the whole Harmony thing—wanting people to be like her." Eclait cackles.

"What's wrong with wanting to relate to others?"

"What will you say to Lise if she don't like Kellean? What if she don't love her family?"

"Well, I don't know..."

"What if she's like me? In this circumstance that turns you the unharmonious one. Ever think about that?" She cackles again at Pelanea's stricken expression. "Shit, it don't have to be hypothetical. What is it, Lise? Do you like Kellean? Do you love your family?"

"I didn't see much of Kellean. How I feel about my family varies."

The two are unable to respond immediately, grunting and puffing as they drag the cart up a hill. Lise is going to try walking to lighten their load when Pelanea growls and starts to heave with renewed strength. Eclait, laughing, matches her effort, and they crest the hill. Their destination winks on the horizon.

The Dwelling is an azure jewel; the black of night an austere dress for which this effulgent brooch was chosen. A dome of triangles of triangles of triangles—cobalt in dark, cerulean in light.

Pelanea and Eclait gasp for air between cries of glory and glee. Lise feels their elation yet cannot mirror it for several reasons. For one, as they stood aside to marvel, the cart kept rolling and now she is left grasping for a rail it lacks. The other two turn to yelling as they realize too late. Lise grabs the edge of the cart with her disfigured left hand, pressing Bente's unconscious form against the near vertical cart bed with her right.

When she is aware of herself again the cart has gone halfway up another hill, and Pain has come crawling from her cavernous chest to scream in her ear. It drifts to a stop between the hardened hills. As the sky rolls over her, she finds in the vastness an equal weariness. Gaping, it sucks away Pain's scream in its indomitable rumble, and Lise's care with it. Left is Lise and her pain, and a terrible tiredness of spirit.

"Lise! Are you alright?!" Comes Pelanea, calling.

Bente shifts under her limp hand, and she pulls her arms in, cradling her chest without touching it. She can't bring herself to reply and looks up at Pelanea's concern with no more than lidded eyes.

Eclait sees to Bente while Pelanea pesters her. "Lise! Can you hear me? Are you alright?"

"I don't know what alright means." She says. "I don't know. I'm wrung."

The desire to NON comes without compunction now. It is the most natural thing. Down and down. Lise remembers a glimpse of blue, a destination sighted, and draws back from NON.

\\//

Lise floats. She is with the stars, gazing. Watching the world floating.

          To remain here...

                    To remain...

                                                                To remain there...

Her thoughts follow her descent. She retrospects with starry eyes. Wanting to live above the world, to walk the tightrope between planes—yet down and down.

If, in reality, The Dwelling was a brooch on night's dress, in the undermind it is the centerpiece of the world's diadem. From either side of the dome wraps a city teeming with pinprick diamonds.

Lise drifts gently down, arms extended. She alights the cart, and the hills obscure the city. Looking upon her companions with the same dying gaze, she knows neither hope nor despair—in their place a curious emptiness opening. Expecting nothing, she is prepared for anything. It is with this in mind that she perceives change.

Pelanea is manifest in the undermind as near humanoid. A cluster of bone-white geometry, fragments shifting pale pinks and deep greens, twined in the shape of the young woman. Lise watches with dull interest as she takes up the cart, alongside Eclait's spark—which appears slightly diminished—and they take to trudging again, the color of her head shapes turning from pink to scarlet and spreading to her shoulders.

Bente is a dim light the size of a woodball, and she almost cups him in her hands by instinct. She draws her hands away, and a new understanding settles over her. He looks like he's been chewed at by fiends, the surface of him tainted with a patch where no light emanates. She can hardly maintain her detachment.

I'm sorry, Bente. I should have tried harder to convince you. I should have gone nearer and seen the structures for what they were. I should have... Her lamentation collapses in on itself, hollow. What use to you are my 'should haves'...

In that undoing, she recognizes a pattern. 'Who benefits by your suffering?' She knows Akota's words and struggles with them. She distrusts the ease they permit. (So brash) should she brush off responsibility?

No... she comes around, it's not to brush off responsibility, but to not be so blinded by blame as to miss what responsibility I can take... She hesitates, or something like that... I need to talk to him more. More than ever... What relief it is to remember once more that Akota awaits her in The Dwelling. She can persist on that thought alone, for now.