1184. Borromean noumenal, 7
(Armylè)
Once more something happened.
Lightning caused a flash through the night and everyone’s sleep.
A stream of colder air reached Elyne’s head.
It felt like someone slamming a door in her flat, where she thought she slept alone.
She was asleep, but the cold, icy omen was now there as well. That deep cloud, so heavy, that had always followed the twins, since her birth and even before. It was there, increasing the weight of things around it.
That invisible reality relentlessly following them since they had been alive and never had let them go.
Elyne couldn’t see that shade, even though it covered her as she slept. The temperature was dropping in its presence, now far heavier than before.
She was disturbed in her sleep, and reaching these cognitive patterns where her brain created a different level of awareness. It was the situation where she wasn’t in awaken reality, but still kept some access to her normal lucidity and faculties.
She was held down there, where it was easier to reach for something else.
Elyne felt as if she opened her eyes in the obscurity of her room. She thought she saw a silhouette. Her eyes couldn’t quite see it but her brain told her there was something there nonetheless.
The odd feeling of anxiety was gripping her, when she couldn’t name what was happening. She was trembling.
She saw mist as she exhaled, signifying the air was terribly cold. Too cold.
Lightning struck again somewhere close, making her jolt. The unease only grew.
She stood up to do something else, feeling too uneasy to try returning to sleep right away.
She didn’t feel her body reacting normally, that she wasn’t really awake wasn’t obvious immediately.
She looked outside, and it was still raining heavily.
It looked like it was raining grey paint to her. The night landscape was unreal. Parts of her brain picked that up.
Elyne felt tired still and returned to bed without thinking about anything.
She was too weak to react, even if her entire environment was cooling down and shrinking.
The shades were like wider sheets. It covered all of her, and everything. It wrapped itself over everything.
The anxiety felt no longer like a presence following her, but a part of reality permeating everything in this little world. Maybe it was already covering the entire world...
Elyne was in aguish, but unable to move. She was trying to calm herself down.
The rumbling noises she thought first being silence was unknitted and intensifying.
Elyne heard the thoughts freeing themselves from the tapestry. Unbound, the voices returned as memories played by her brain.
She recognised her own voice mostly, in remembrances she didn’t control.
Things she had said to Maya the other day, and then older. Melodies her sister could have sang returned in background music scratching her heart.
Other things were emerging out of nowhere but her collection of memories. The fabric of dreams was weaved in another way. Around her sense of identity, all was hers and was a part of her. This exposed collection still felt strange to her. Hearing again all the voices her sister had been able to make as she played.
Something was reaching out through this pool of floating sounds and thoughts.
Clearer sounds rose, gradually harmonising in an audible way. The unity was growing more clear. The sound of her name being spoken, in rising clarity and repetition.
Elyne was feeling weak and bare hearing this call. In this situation and context, she was feeling exposed and anxious.
Although behind the fear, there was a hint of insane hope resurfacing.
The wish to hear her again. The desire to see her one more time for good. Optimism was swelling, pushing her forward in that direction.
Elyne in her contrasts embraced that possibility and contact trying to reach out.
Through this obscure sketching of a lower reality, because what might be this voice animated her.
Elyne had no clear picture of her own body in this world, but still did everything she could to progress, structuring muscles and nerves in the right direction. She didn’t hesitate.
As if she was running or climbing. She just rushed against the resistance of the hollow in her way. Facing resistance as if a wall was blocking her, she gathered more will against it until she could flow around or force her way through. The figurative space she was touching and walking through continued to vibrate in reaction. She was going further than ever. Hearing the sounds permeating slightly through the void, they were muffled as if the other one was behind a very thick and sturdy wall.
E - Prume?
Elyne tried to call, unsure of how far her thought could go. The sounds she heard in response soon after, they replied.
A shock, and a thrill of relief washed through behind her, making Elyne almost lose grasp.
E - Why sis... Why did you die?
The distant sound probably replied, but was soon hidden behind a much closer ruckus.
Something more loud and bright and infinitely closer to her was also reaching out.
Elyne shivered, realising this lightning striking throughout her dream was something else.
The odd terror used its roots already settled deep inside of her.
The violet glow was emerging, terrifying her.
Elyne was focusing more defensively toward that immediate presence now. She couldn’t see anything physical, but felt that overwhelming presence getting closer.
Elyne was facing obscurity, feeling as if a wall was getting closer, or something too immense to comprehend was falling against her. She was trembling, losing her thoughts.
She had her older instincts activating against this threat, and couldn’t focus on the voice trying to reach out from further outside.
The terror of the closer threat was making her panic, with every cell of her body reacting seemingly. She wanted to run away and losing her composure. Elyne was trying to step back from it, even if it made her step away from the gleam of hope beside.
Elyne was calling for help. Now she could begin to see it, making its way toward her through the obscurity of this construction. From the other side and the foreign lands where she stood, perhaps Prume could see it too.
The floating flamboyant glow, violet and bright. The obscurity was forming the lids around this burning violet eye. It was piercing Elyne’s mind, terrifying her. She felt as if it was engulfing inside of her through her sense of sight. It was invading and overwhelming her thoughts, her memories, and everything that made her.
Elyne was feeling violated, the foreign light digging forcefully through her mind and heart.
She fought everything off in growing desperation. Tremors grew.
The terror went over what could be held and Elyne woke up screaming.
She was trembling and cold once more in her bedding.
She had sweat a whole lot again. It took her a moment to get her hands to stop trembling. She was holding her wrists, nervous and shaken. Elyne struggled to understand what was happening to her.
The last memory of this bad dream was the piercing glare of the violet eye upon her.
A very different form of terror against Prume’s dying gaze, inverting light and dark in this painting of a nightmare.
The icy sweat was incommoding, but Elyne struggled to find the strength to stand up and head to the shower.
She left herself lie in dampness a while longer with sadness.
The panic and adrenalin were simmering down. She felt a tear flowing along her forehead.
She brushed it with her hand and smelled the rancidity of old blood. She sighed and managed to move toward the bathroom. Her body felt unusually cramped and sore. She had nervous twitches, as she had a hard time relaxing.
Under normal light, she found the exhausted reflection of her face that wasn’t honouring her. Scales of dry blood scabs were messy along the hair roots in the middle of her forehead. She always had had this oddly hairy root line descending in the middle of her forehead. It never bothered her. Now it grew infectious along the side of the implant and often bleed and caused headaches. Something was meaning to break out.
Elyne washed her face and head without thinking too deeply about it, trying to calm down.
She stood there for a while, facing her reflection, trying to reconstruct her thoughts following the moment of panic.
This day and sleep had played her emotions sharply again. She was not feeling as if she was repressing a lot of childhood traumatisms. Still, there were these vivid sensations surfacing when she was sleeping.
Her traumas rolled around Prume since early childhood. She didn’t remember losing that eye still white but there.
Losing Prume remained the widest and most disruptive hole in her coherence. It felt unreal, still to this day.
It felt altogether as if the world was ending, and not. Because obviously it didn’t. That was being dramatic. A part of her rational brain still knew that, and reminded her of it.
Elyne sighed an entire dream away.
Training her body to great improvements had been easier than mending and training her persona now would be. She realised that a little.
She returned to rest for now.
Elyne didn’t want to get swallowed by nightmares, without reality to them. But she still felt awfully exhausted emotionally. She needed Prume, and she wasn’t there.
Elyne fell asleep muttering and ruminating again that all she needed to get better was her.
~
