Falling is a strange sensation. Do you understand where you are? Your position is absolute only in that there are no absolutes.
Each step traversed an eternity to reach the next. A drop of a million miles next to the movement of a foot. Nary a moment between each singularity, each motion saw a microcosm of collisions between nothing at all. Simple sensations erupted between what words could not describe, a pressure that existed in instances too small to quantify.
There was no name to speak of, nothing to speak of.
There was no knowledge of how long the journey had been. Many different presences could be felt, but the eternity of each step was universal and unilateral. You could not consider any known dimension as real, not even time. What did time mean to pure existence?
Strange.
Eyes upon the throne. The blade continues its path.
Between the riptides and whirlpools, the lone wanderer splits the waves of the abyss with naught but its feet. The surf nips at its perceived heels, but the blade does not care. Its eyes remained glued to the throne, the beacon, it is tithed.
Time has no meaning, yes, but it would not be absurd to say that it has walked for centuries. Perhaps this is what it is? The blade does not care for this either.
Purpose? The word tumbles gently from upon chapped lips, and a faint impression on its mind. The word loses meaning with most, yet remains like a faded photograph on a corkboard. Definitions have aged.
One foot in front of the other. One foot in front of the other. The gulf between each step stretched further and further through the cutting wake of nothing. Dragged by nothing. Nothing.
Yet…
See me, feel me. Speak to what I am. Should I falter, what shall I be? Should I release, what shall I know? For the first time that the blade recognizes, iron strikes iron once more.
See me, feel me. Learn the experience anew. Regain what you lost since before time immemorial.
Presences draw near. The tether draws tight. The blade sharpens itself.
See me. Slashed through the haze, something becomes nothing, yet becomes something once more. Feel me. Listlessness, ecstasy. New emotions that the blade relearns. The whistle of the wind, sharp and shrill, the eclectic shredding of something soft and warm. The presence grows.
It continues its journey, no longer drenched in solitude. Somehow? Somehow. It is not alone. Others follow in their expansive conquest of null space.
It feels the joy of creation, tasting the morning dew with a tongue that has only just developed the concept. Crisp air fills the bags of flesh within its chest, it's new, it's real. A beckoning interest grows. It enjoys this.
Through the storm at the end of the world, the tether continues to draw it inwards. Towards this glorious end. Uncertainty fills its vessel, soaking into the cracks of itself like cement. Keep yourself, it decrees against such feelings. Through it all, the question begins to permeate and the blade draws its newfound attention toward it.
Was this real? Echoed the presences around it. The blade, the gazer, the wayfarer, the creation, the frozen. It could read its presences.
Oh, how it feels so wonderfully atrocious! While it cannot bring itself to rejoice, such positive denotations ring out through every particulate that it can muster. This incredible discomfort, a complete misunderstanding of the concept of understanding. A new age of the understatement was born, before being washed away as soon as it arrived.
Feel me. And oh, it felt! Oh, how such terror catalyzed itself, serenity against the grain.
The steps seemed to shorten the further along it walked. Transversive in nature, the blade continued to feel. Such negativity overwhelmed it, the undeniable pull that declared the blade to be nothing more than a mass of flaws. Perceiving the concept of impurity, all presences quaked as if such was their natural state. And yet, the tether was not finished with its role.
Moving still, a mental habeas corpus was forced between. The bars cut deep against the vessel, pulled forward and pushed back. The blade couldn't understand what was wrong with the iron that impeded it so.
Cry, oh wretched wanderer! Cry! The blade let loose a guttural yell that only it could understand. Moving still. Dust choked its mouth, tongue reduced to ashes. Its vocal cords had rusted away, drawing flakes rushing up in a gust of hot air that scalded the entirety of its vessel. Burning from the inside out, the blade continued to scream and thrash. Moving still. Or perhaps, moving while still? What would it take? What left to take?
See me.
Light blossomed, and the bars gave way. Slightly. They creaked, yet were perceivable. It marvelled at how the luminescence both blinded it while blessing it with sight. It was familiar, this light. This sight.
We've all seen it before. We've all felt it before. The storm gathered and brewed as the bars cracked, yet held. The light wasn't enough, the blade understood. It never is enough, can't ever be enough. Puzzle pieces rose to the surface like bubbles, a blatant clue. Connect the dots, find the throughline.
Coherence continued its completion. Reactivating itself, the blade began to perceive itself more clearly. Define those bars, yes, define them! Each individual rod pronounced itself against the burning shine, slicing vanta shafts impressed against its vision. No longer.
Clawing with fingers it now understood it had, the blade ripped and tore at its restraints. Its chest was shoved into the fixtures, crushing the vessel uncomfortably. Joints removed themselves and were replaced, continuing the fight. More cracks began to form as the blade continued with the fusillade of its arms.
There was a crash! Beyond the bars was everything. Steps shortened and increased in haste. The quality of the movement intensified as the blade shoved its feet down with as much force as it could muster. The other presences around it began to solidify, the concepts they carried becoming stronger and stronger, emulsifying into the man o' war forms they could consider "themselves."
The blade didn't understand, but perhaps it wouldn't need to.
The gazer found its peace, rather, it made it with its own two hands. The creation sailed to a place where it could understand more, far beyond what made it originally. The wayfarer's journey was hardly complete, arduous, yet meaningful. The frozen may never know what it could be, but its fancy could likewise never be suppressed.
They could not give gifts of words or items, but what they did provide was welcome enough. Solace.
The blade needn't walk this path alone. There will always be others.
The blade found itself at a forking path. Three scenes lay stretched out in an endless expanse.
A field of endless flowers, sun-drenched and serene.
Desecrated hills at dusk, a monument to all that it has done and will ever do.
Aloft in its own beauty, a gentle storm of pink petals and verdant grass.
The blade found itself smiling. Even at the end, there was always something to be. Frankly, it couldn't recall anything before the journey. The voyage through nothing had claimed much. The beacon loomed overtop, judging silently. It begged it for a decision, yet the blade was content.
"Itself" couldn't be quantified, yet it could still "be." Let it be.
For that, it was happy.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Hey all, Healthcare here. I know I haven't written anything in a while, but yeah. Still here. I was struck by a flight of fancy in between continued writing of my other fics (still in progress), and editing for some of my friend's projects.
But today's Shirou Day, so I figured I'd let my surrealist side go and write a piece for him. I have my interpretation, do you have yours?
Pretentiousness aside, thanks for reading. Catch y'all later.
Healthcare.
