A.N.: This took me too damned long...! I had staging problems; I wrote the end of this bit first then had no idea how to get to it without making everyone act like glove-puppets, then I had the strangest idea the other week... Anyway, here is your new Surreal Fix. I hope it makes more sense to you than to me. The Random Sanskrit will be explained later, I swear!

Hugest squiffiest thanks be given to everyone who signed this...I'm very sorry I starved you of it for so long; I hit a low again. Good news is, I have much of the next part down already. And today, you all must sign, all of you, because it was my eighteeth birthday yesterday! O.O


#6: Edges

The water slips through my toes, carrying the energies off into the place below. It's not cold...it's not warm either, or even damp; it's only water, water at its most pure...so complete and so tied to this place that it's not even water at all. "You know," I say slowly, "I think I'd be afraid if you weren't here with me now."

The mountain rises around us...too big for us to see it, I think we're inside it now. What's below... There's a place here where the ocean is right underneath the mountain, and the ocean is a void, but there's so much water that it's going to fill up - it's confusing for me, I wasn't meant to be here. "Was I?" I ask aloud. He doesn't reply. "I'm not part of this...this place, am I? You brought me here..." He shakes his head, telling me what I always knew somehow. I am meant to be here. We've gone all the way to the very edge together, and it's not just because of who he is...he needed me, too, I know it now.

There's something about the blackness that tells me 'sunlight!' - it's as if we're waiting for the dawn together, but it's already happened. I look around, try to find some sort of context - someplace to put my two paws and say that this is Mene and this is where he's been and -

I reach into my pack for a notebook, but there isn't one. No notebook. Not even a pack. I paid everything for this - threw it all over because I knew we could do it... I suddenly realise how brave it was, coming all this way just because we thought it was important. Especially for him - he never even had a chance to give up, did he?

"Thankyou," I whisper, turning round slowly. "Oh thankyou!" For the first time in my life, I look upon his face -

- the shapeless blue nebula of dawn and star-smoke.

*

This is a dream. It still is, even now I'm wide awake and lying on the rack again. None of this is real...nothing could ever make this real. The firelight is long since dead, and the sun is a dull-glass memory, but I can see it all in black-and-white now. See all the tiny stitches that make up the great illusion. And now I can see, I can't control it any more... A hand pushes my blankets aside; two sturdy pink legs strike the floor in unison, but they're no more mine than my notebook is.

I push open the enormous door as if it were made of silk, as if it wasn't there, and the hallways spread out before me. It all seems so obvious - there is only one right way, only one way I can go - forward. Up, left, clockwise, they're only for my feet to follow. It's all just another name for Forward.

It's only the portal that changes anything - I stand there and let it carry me away, put me onto another road, another layer - and this one's so straightforward. Right...archway, what a strange thing, to have a door but no door at all...hm, the statues make sense now, too. The Wheel's so obvious when you look at it with these eyes. Even this door, the one I thought would be the end of me, is simple - it's only a door, after all. It'll never be a match for me...

Some things are dangerous however you see them. Everything around him is monochrome and hollow - even the fire - but Kuja is blazing with colour, wild clothes almost shedding their own light. He turns, sending tiny sparkles out in a spiral, and smiles as if he were expecting me.

"I was, little kitten." His voice is real too - not just sounds with meanings to them, but something more, something endless and evil that no-one from Gaia should have. I only heard it once before I met him. "You came to take something...troublesome."

"Troublesome?" I ask...not even sure what it is, but I'll know, I'll know.

"For your poet-friend. I think I will like watching him take it from you." Oh, the - "But first, Mene, I will allow you to speak that question which is burning so fiercely in your tiny moogle brain."

"Is this a dream?" I blurt out.

He laughs. He's got a strange laugh, all high-pitched and girly, but so dark and malevolent at the same time. "Is it a dream? Of course it is a dream. Everything you know of is a dream. But now, I would say, you have never been more awake in all your short life."

He pivots on one foot and strides across the room, leaving a trail in his wake like a comet. He walks as far as the pot plant (strange how much sense that makes now), pivots again, and then walks back to the fireplace in slow, dangerous paces. "You creatures write the histories, do you not?" Turn, pace, trail. I nod, even though he isn't looking. What does it matter, anyway? "So ironic...I thought they were mad, to take the guise of such a lowly creature, but now I've watched your stupid planet long enough I think I can see why."

Why what? He stops suddenly, and glares at me. "Why they chose to be moogles, of course. It's so pathetically easy to magnify the power, if you pretend to be a moogle." He continues on his march again, oblivious to my confusion. This is...too strange. I can hear him, see him, like I never have before and no matter how many nonsense rhymes he spouts I can still feel the sense in them!

"And tell me, Mene, how long do you think there has been a Desert Palace here in these sands?"

Well, at least he's asked me something I know the answer to. "About a thousand years. The Donnans built it as a stronghold and capital after the City of Donna was destroyed by the Summoners in the -"

"Kitten," he says smugly, still walking, "you are very, very wrong." Pace, pace, pivot. "The Donnans built something called Mastor Castle. Once the Summoners had finally rooted out their civilisation for good, they renamed it 'the Keep of Rydia', to honour one of their heroes of legend. And when the dwarves came down their cunning siege tunnels and killed every last caller in his sleep, it was Underhame for no less than three hundred years, while they deepened the earthworks and made it more beautiful than any other race knew how. Then they left too, oh, it matters not why. What matters, dear child -" He turns again, for the fourth time this speech. It's hypnotic... "- is that this 'Desert Palace' you so confidently came to has been The Desert Palace for less than two years. Two out of one thousand...the power is unimaginable..."

"Wh-what? I stammer.

He halts by the bookcase. "You read much, little one."

"Yesss..." The consonant lingers for a second, very, very confused.

"Do you read...Namingway?" He says the word delicately, as if to avoid making a mistake.

"Not much, no. I'm not religious -"

He laughs loudly and thrusts a graceful hand into the shelves. A flash of colour - The book thunks into my arms almost before I've seen it. "Fool." It's - it's as alive, as colourful, as he is, but the leather is as black as night. "Show that to your friend, then, and see what he has to tell you about it."

I turn the book around slowly, feeling the old, old leather under my paws. This is so an original... The cover is the same black, and bordered in little pressed-in sigils, too small for me to decipher in this strange light...and the title...

"And goodnight, Mene. You will return to me once you finally understand," he declares, as the gilded letters, untouched by time, sear their way into my mind.

THE BOOK OF NAMES
by NAMASANGITI

I try to find the meaning, stare helplessly at the book in my hands, as the night of perception fades around me and the world I know reaches out a hand to claim me back.

*

Smoke...what is this? There shouldn't be smoke in this place - it's all corners and floors and black-white space axes - I raise my head from the pillow on the rack and glare round at the torture chamber. It's gone. All of it. All the colours are back and you can't see through the walls any more. I feel cheated, frankly - I knew it was a dream, but it could've been realer than that.

My right foot, sticking out from under my blanket, brushes against paper. Oh, smoke! Artemecion must've been. How the hell did he manage to keep quiet? Hm, I swear I can smell deodourant, though... I reach down to grab the letter-slip, still buried under my bedding.

From Stiltzkin to Mene

Hello there! I have completed my Journey,
and now I'm going to go home to Alexandria.

I have found in my journeys that it is a good
idea to remember how huge Gaia is and how
much you can learn by getting to know it
properly. Try to remember this if you ever get
lost.

I fold the slip in half, and squeeze it between my fingers. Stiltzkin...he always could save me from madness somehow. Every time I've been that close to the edge, he's pulled me back from it - a word or two in a letter, or a flying visit to remind me that there's a wide world outside my post, and he's a part of it. I can picture him now...ankle-deep in damp grass, most likely. When was the last time I thought about damp grass? You know, I haven't even seen grass much since I left Iifa two years ago...

I cast off my bedding, all ready to go find Mogryo and see about that book of his -

Oh. fuck. Yeah, Mene...you didn't bring a pillow, remember...? ...which planet is this...?


Don't follow the last bit? Just be painfully clichedly obvious, alright? :)