Disclaimer: By now you know what belongs to whom. I decided on combining what was once two chapters into one. In a perfect world this would be done in three parts, because three's rock and are generally archetypal and all that fun stuff, but, well, we shall see what happens. The title for this chapter comes from G.K. Chesterton's definition of impressionism: "another name for that final skepticism which can find no floor to the universe." Go read The Man Who Was Thursday . It'll do you good.
"Are you afraid?" she asked him.
"I don't know."
She stared at him thoughtfully, then looked down at her clasped hands. He turned his face from the sky to look at her. They lay in the warm hollow of a green hill, the vibrant green of the grass and clover accentuating the brightness of her eyes.
"Are you?" he asked, quietly.
"...I don't think so."
He smiled faintly, almost ruefully. "You're so strange," he said, his voice very gentle, very distant, like a child's on the edge of dreaming. "You're so beautiful and so strange and sad and alive..."
They had given up their names by unspoken, unconscious agreement; they were an I and a you, nameless and unutterably singular, defined only by all the tiny, inarticulate features that make us truly unique: the freckle by her mouth, the color of his eyes, the way her collarbone moved as she breathed, the way his long, thin fingers would flicker over her face, as though he was trying to mark his place, as though he still could not believe his eyes.
"You are so terribly, vibrantly, violently, sadly alive," he said, tracing the line of her jaw. "Why?"
She smiled absently, closing her eyes, and said nothing for a time. He waited in patient quiet.
"All things are transient," she said, finally, distantly, so that he almost wondered if she was even talking to him or to the soft and quiet earth. "Even you. Even us.
"But what we entail – your set path, my... my aspect – those are immortal, as much as anything can be immortal." She glanced at him gravely. "And I don't like that. I don't like the idea of ideas, of concepts being more lasting, more integral to the working of the universe than people. Than you. Than us. No theory is worthy of the sacrifice of life, of the little things that live and dream and die."
Her brow was furrowed slightly in something like puzzlement or frustration. He touched her lightly, soothingly, as if trying to smooth the lines away.
"I know this," he said gently. "I know. Why are you telling me? Why are you worrying?"
She reached out and grabbed his arm suddenly, staring at him with that strange desperate intensity of hers. "Does the universe know?" she demanded, clutching his hand. "Does that dark Book of yours have any regard for you? Will whatever Fate it details be merciful to you? to us? Does it understand?"
He had no answer for her.
She relaxed then and smiled weakly at his stricken face. "I'm sorry," she said. "I'm sorry. I just ... worry, sometimes."
"It's all right," he said, but she had shaken him deeply, so he wasn't sure. The words tasted like lies.
She smiled again and stroked his forehead gently, then kissed him. "I need to go," she apologized. He didn't protest, just tried to smile back at her. She kissed him again with fierce passion that seemed to burn his worry away, then drew back reluctantly and left.
He lay there for a while in the curve of the hill, thinking, feeling the disquiet shift in him uneasily. Then he rolled to a sitting position and drew the Book to him. He had retrieved it soon after dropping it out of a strange mix of wariness and hope. It had promised security, of sorts.
The texture of the pages was indescribably changed now, as though his fingers had become used to the feel of the world and of Trivia and had been irrevocably altered. He touched them hesitantly at first, though not from his former respect. They had been changed by her words, just as he had. Now the Book seemed to hold something darker, impersonal, pitiless and ominous. Fate held no scruples, he knew. There was no justice, or kindness, or mercy, and he was no longer certain that he could trust something untouchable by the weaknesses of life or love.
But soon he was flipping through the pages impatiently, eyes flickering over the Words that unraveled the making of the universe and the creation of the age. He felt little more than irritation.
'"Hello...?"
He paused. In the Beginning was the Word, he remembered.
Here was another, no less earth-shaking or world-making.
He read through their conversation again, savoring each point and response, imagining her face as she spoke the words. He continued, barely noticing the spontaneous generation of two of his siblings, then slowed and stopped.
He put out a finger to touch the page, hesitantly, as though the Words might burn him.
"Don't."
Was that a name, like Dream, or Death?
Or Destiny?
"Don't," he said aloud, feeling the word in his mouth. It was a frail and lonely sound, a tiny hopeless bridge of desperation.
Desperation...
He shivered briefly, although he could not have said why. Maybe because it was too close to how she would mistake his name...
Was that it? Was it a mistake?
Or was she renaming him?
He didn't know what to make of that thought. He stared at the Book again, uncertain. Then he blinked down at the Words in confusion.
Their kiss had vanished from record. If it had ever been there. He reread the page, using the place his finger marked as a reference point, only to find that it no longer touched don't.
It was in the middle of a description of the Grey Ladies. There had been no second conversation. There had been no kiss, no rejection of the Book, no don't.
A tiny flame of panic began to burn in his mind, a tiny sliver of terror that lodged within his heart as he stared at the description of the Three, and he could almost feel the Words themselves staring back at him.
After a frozen instant of time he turned a page hastily, scanned it, flipped back and back again, under the frail and desperate hope that somehow he had skipped something. He even went back to the first time he met her, to the first hello, the single word that shifted to course of his life, to no avail.
It was no use.
Yes, he had thrown the Book away. True. But he had still been operating in the knowledge that a script existed, a detailed, specific plan of how the universe unfolded, of how things turned out. He had known that no matter how chaotic or treacherous the universe appeared, there was one truth that was beyond doubt or error.
No longer. Now certainty, dry and dull and comfortable certainty had shifted to fear and the feeling that he was falling. Where was she? Where in this Book, this dark Book that disregarded any human mercy, could the presence of her be hidden?
(There was another thought in the storm of his mind, one he could not bear to admit to himself. It was one of relief. He could not know her name now. The temptation to look it up would not trouble him.)
The last certainty had betrayed him. Now he was stranded in a world that he could not trust and incased in painful, impervious solitude.
"Help," he whispered, his voice creaking from him. He felt horribly alone. "Help."
*
(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens;only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands
*
Three voices: Pity could almost be felt for him.But it isn't.
Of course not.
Which realm is he creeping into? Delusion? Or disillusion?Self-deluding. Self-eluding.
Take no chances with him. His path is tangled.
The Book is absolute.
But he is not. He may deviate.
He already has.
We will remedy that.
What do we do now? The Book may be absolute, but it unravels as we speak.
The third:
We grant him disillusion.
*
What could he do now?He was walking, stumbling, shaking, his breath labored, tired beyond reckoning: a soul-tired, mind-tired, spirit-tired weariness that made his mind a roaring canvas of white noise, made his tread confused, irregular, every step doubtful of the very earth existing to support his weight.
He had thrown the Book away from him with all the strength he could muster, a violent burst of energy that left him as suddenly as it had come. Now he was simply putting as much distance between himself and those terrible, unflinching words as possible. Holding it now would be like holding his own corpse.
He could not bear to think of a world bereft of her.
He could not bear to exist in a world where the Book could be wrong.
What was his name now? What was he?
"Dilemma," she said, her voice in his ear.
"Yes," he said absently, then corrected, "Destiny." He paused and looked around wildly. "Where are you?"
Her voice continued as though she had not heard him, and he wondered now if it was even her voice. Female, certainly, but flat, distant, dispassionate.
"Drama," she/it said. "Direction. Double. Defect."
It was a list, apparently. "Where are you?" he repeated, his voice cracking. The litany continued without pause, one Word marching after the other.
"Dimension. Denial. Detour. Digression."
"What do you mean? What are you saying?" The wind blew against him, curt and cold. The world had gone gray, somehow.
"Duration. Desolation. Displacement. Decline." The voice was sharp and precise, stabbing with cool rationality that terrified him.
"STOP!"
"Descent. Deception. Devotion. Dementia."
He dropped to his knees, whatever frail stubbornness or power that had held him for this long giving out. He huddled on the ground, hunched against the cold air and the impersonal inventory of words, too weak to protest.
"Desolation. Defense. Disorder. Dismay.
"Departure. Domain. Dominance. Distraction.
"Disguise. Disgrace. Duality. Decay.
"Detestation. Disuse. Dogma. Divinity.
"Discord. Distance. Dysphoria. Diablerie.
"Dharma. Denouement. Disadvantage. Disaster."
The words continued on, and on, until he could no longer register them.
"Destiny."
"Don't. Please. Don't start again," he managed, the words brittle and broken.
And she was there, truly there, crouched beside him, finding his cold hand and clutching it tightly.
"Shh," she said. "Shh."
He stared up at her blindly. Then his eyes focused.
"You...?"
"I know," she said, embracing him, letting her hands stroke his back. "I know."
"What...what happened? What were you saying? What does all this mean?"
She was very still for a time, her eyes thoughtful.
"We are separating from our roles," she said at last.
The lines of bewilderment and fear deepened in his forehead.
"When my voice was being used, it was... naming you. Naming all that you were, and are, and will be. In you are all those... attributes. Characteristics. Archetypes."
"The Book," he said faintly. "The Book... it's... failing. It's untrue. It's... I don't know. I don't know anything anymore."
"See?" she persisted gently. "Destiny is part of the Book. That role of Destiny that you are used to playing. And now there is you. There is a you that is separate from that role." She could see he still didn't understand.
"Listen. Some time from now, your brother. Dream. He will take on another name. It is used interchangeably with his function at times, but the name he took does not go on after he dies."
"He dies?!"
She smiled at him sadly. "All things die. Even the Endless. The functions continue, but the real people that are trapped within them die. But that's not the point. He finds a way to separate himself, his individuality, his own uniqueness, from his role as one of the Endless. He becomes truly of himself."
"But he dies."
"All that is individual, all that is real, is transient. To be oneself is to be alive. And all that lives dies."
He was shaking now in fatigue and confusion. She held him tightly, rocking him, calming him like a small child.
"Rest," she said. "Rest."
He stared at her warily.
Doubt, he thought, and shivered at the irony. Who was he naming? Him? Her?
Or was it just a Word?
He slept without Dreaming.
*
Three voices:
Soon.
Yes.
His fear is building.
As is his love.
What about her?
Who can say? Who can say what of what she says is her function and what is her dysfunction?
No matter.
Yes.
Soon.
*
Ending note: Well, not much to say. Sorry if this is confusing. Tell me your thoughts, rants, suggestions, and how badly I'm ruining all things Gaiman for you. Put succinctly: review. And if you have a bone to pick or shove down my throat so I choke on it, um, well, I'd prefer you to be constructive rather than destructive, but it is of course entirely your call. A friend of mine actually wrote a short story about that. Someone shoving a bone down a throat, anyways. Not down mine. Um. Anyway...
