Thank you so much Reviewers! You're so kind and patient to put up with all the crap what goes on in this story.
Now I'll admit, most of the time I'll just procrastinate before writing a chapter and sticking it up, but this one... I had a good, long, eh, series of altercations with this one before I deemed it ready for posting, so I hope you all enjoy!
Chapter Thirty...
Disclaimer: I own nothing.
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My Forty-Second Waking.
Greys says I have a fever. He doesn't want me exerting myself too much, even just in writing.
When I woke up, he had already found me, and wrapped me up in his blanket. Must have heard me screaming, going crazy up here.
No, I'm not crazy. I'm still here. All here. My stomach feels a little better, but... not much, really.
Did I faint again? I don't know.
But She is with me still.
There was an edge, like an ending, and I did find it. And when I came up it was as though I had entered into another world. The winds gusted once more, the horizon fled from before me, and I could see. It looked like I was standing on the jagged lip of a giant bowl. For leagues I laid eyes on an undulating fire, a high vaporous plain of upside-down hillocks and banks, mirrored below by a vast roiling softness, dim and asleep, the endless horizons between them casting out long arms and spears of living light around the edge of the disc. It was light, it was color. I know it was. I can remember color, like in the fires we had on the slope, or in the lanterns we had in the ship, so precious a thing.
And then, even as my eyes took it in, the light died. It was extinguished in a heartbeat, and the darkness swallowed me up. The mist blew over and clouded my sight. I thought it was Death, from Heaven to Hell in the blink of an eye. But I was still alive. I'm still alive now.
It felt hard, and strange, and cruel, as if my mind were only tricking me. Like the promise of drink to one dying of thirst, or a letter of pardon to one condemned to death. Salvation dangling before my eyes, and then blown away on the wind. It was unbearable, insufferable. Thinking my mind was lying to me. Like I couldn't trust myself.
And then the Thunder rolled. I could feel it in my bones and in my gut. It boomed as if to tell me I were a fool. Lost and alone, and I should have just died from the first. Despair welled up inside me like a monster. I tried to pour the brimming venom out through my pen, onto the page; some words found their way... But I felt as if I would never be able to expel it all, that no words in any tongue could suffice, that the torrent would ravage my insides until I would simply burst and die.
In an evil way I relished the idea, I wanted it. There was nowhere else to go, and I ached for the Lightning to come and blast me to ashes. No more shadows, no more pain.
Until then it had always been a stronger part of me that didn't want to give up, the instinctual part that never wants to die. But last night it was a hard thing to grapple with.
I wish never to visit those feelings again.
I scrawled on the page on my hands and knees until I almost wore a hole in the paper. I didn't want to go crazy. I didn't know what was real or what I could trust.
I know I can trust Mr. Greys. I can always trust him. Forever.
But I didn't know if even he were still real. I just knelt there, pen-to-paper, and considered. Everything was bundled up into one instant, one presence, and I could do with it whatever I wanted. Just me and the moment.
I felt like throwing up. I rocked on my knees and just... didn't know anything.
The thing that made my mind come back was a strong gust and a light over my skin, a soft pureness. I could see my hands, the contrast, the grit in my fingernails, the little hairs on the backs, a bleeding hangnail--I could see. And I looked at the words I had written, and the lettering was so big and clumsy. In the dark I'd had to make it large so I could see it more easily. But now everything was sharper, clearer, so perfect.
It was light. For a second I was afraid it was more tricks, more lies in my head. I cast out all reason then and decided that, if it was another waking dream, then it was a good one, and however fleeting it would prove to be, I would humor and enjoy it.
So I looked up, and saw Her.
And oh, my joy, my life, my heart.
It was the Moon, the Silver Moon. My Silver Moon.
I could have died for joy.
I'm not so sure I didn't and I almost wish I did.
No, I think I'm still here. Yes.
She was there. She was real.
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I have never known such... sweet comfort.
-
I'm trying to think what happened. I don't remember writing the last lines of my last entry. I find it... strange, and cryptic.
Maybe I did faint.
I remember hurting... And being cold. But not minding.
Because I was happy.
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The next thing I knew, I was lying on my back, wrapped up nice and warm, and Greys was sitting next to me with my blanket around his shoulders, looking at the stars. My journal was between us.
I wanted to make sure he was real, so I said, "Are you a ghost?" But he didn't answer me.
So I said one more time, "Mr. Greys?"
And he said, "I'm trying not to be. But if you disappear again, I can't make any promises."
Hearing his voice allayed my fears. But it stung me. As it should have--I'd been so foolish and I don't know why. I said the only thing I could think to say, "I'm sorry." It sounded small and useless, and I felt like I wanted to say more, but I wasn't sure if that would only make it sound worse.
He was quiet for about ten minutes. And then he said, "I'm sorry."
It felt safer to say more then. I started, "I didn't think--"
But he just said, "Try to get some rest. You're running a little fever."
And after that he didn't say anything.
I felt my forehead, but... ah, I can never tell.
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Why didn't I think? Why didn't I wake him? I don't know. It honestly did not seem important at the time. Maybe I really am going crazy and just don't know it. But I won't dwell on that here and now.
At any rate I fell asleep happy, and I am still happy now, for She is with me, my Silver Moon.
She's so beautiful.
She stands above me, right now, amid a spray of diamond stars, frosted, dusted in a halo of mist. Mist no longer lurking to blind, to ensnare and destroy. But to catch the light, to shine it out the brighter for all to see. It's a lovely glow.
My pen-hand itches all the more. The Moon is here. And it makes me so... enthralled that I cannot stand it! It's the same boiling and swelling inside me. But made up of joy, not of despair. Joy so exquisite... For I can see the Sky... Part of it glows far behind us, like a god in embryo.
Would I could save this happiness in a bottle, to drink from it whenever I have the need. I want everything. I want to remember it forever. Because it's mine. I found it here.
That... That is why I record. What am I thinking? This book is my bottle.
Then, I fill it; the glow is growing. I pray it's the sun.
The glow in the sky before the sun comes up? It's just so... there's just something so... so mysterious about it. So beautiful. A beauty I'd never seen until I didn't have it anymore. Now I can see little twinges of pink in some very soft clouds. It's like they're barely there.
It just gets brighter and brighter. A moment ago the sky was still black, and there was only a bit of orange just on the horizon. Now the whole canvas is a dark lavender, skirted by living fire...
I swear, those clouds would be invisible but for the sunrise. They're more like sprays of mist, really. Now they make great sweeping ripples of rose against misty-blue. And still the orange burns brighter, flame on the horizon.
Now the sky is purple. The light begins to shine on the dirt, the Rock, warming up... A warm twilight and I can see the ground in the ruddy glow.
I sit here transfixed. It is all I can do. Watching the very stone coming to life in the half-light. I can see light and shadow against each other, I can see colors. Like it's real for the first time. Not just the shadow we walk on and climb on and sleep on.
Above, the blue nearest the orange becomes stronger, almost green, light and pastel, the pink drifts still washing over the misty-blue sky, all over like a ragged, beautiful curtain.
Everything is pink. The light sky, the dark ground, the air cold and the shadows warm in their hues. Freezing and burning.
That green... I have never noticed the green in the sunrise before. Just between the orange and the blue. No, the yellow and the blue, it's more yellow now.
The curtains coiling across the sky turn to frosty orange and whites waiting to be born. The only pink left now is in the stone, in the dirt, and somehow in a lingering aura just above the ground. Just a little. But it's fading fast. So fleeting.
Things are more yellow and gray now. Yellow above, gray below. Gray and a little green. The rose is almost completely vanished. The green is only a ghost of what it used to be in the sky near the orange. The pink is all but gone. Orange fades to gray that will live to be white before it dies in color again with the sunset.
This light. It's... sort of painful to look at for very long. My head is mostly under the blanket.
Lighter and lighter. Only whites with the memory of fire and color. More orange near the horizon, but only just barely so. Everything has been nearly forgotten into the white. And the blue. The blue is still there. Light, pale blue.
The ground has forgotten its color too. Only gray-beige-brown. But so much lighter than anything below, anything behind us. Will it grow lighter and lighter still? Will the sun touch it? Bring out its real, physical color?
These twilight moments are so strange, the colors shift and change too quickly. The all-consuming, hovering reds and pinks, the veils of warmth--they were here a moment ago, but now they've passed away.
A light yellow still glows... the sun... will I see the sun? Will it become too strong to look at? How soon? Would I feel the difference if I watched it? Yes, it's only the sun's light, not the sun itself. It must be. If the sun comes up through the lower clouds it will definitely become too bright.
Skies above, I look up and I see it, the light, light from the sun shining on a higher point of Rock, gracing the brown with red and fire. The sun is reaching it, touching it! It can't be four fathoms higher than where we are. It's so close!
It wasn't there a moment ago. Odd how fast and how slow it moves.
It burns my eyes, but I want it!
Oh the Sun...
Yellow-blue-white in the sky, fire on the world, on those parts touched by the sun, and a fading twilight. The sunlight crawls down the tumbles of stone to the lower grounds, towards us. Fire on the Rock. Oh come closer...
It makes a mist of yellow over the world, the fire shining off the face of the stone.
Ice in the sky, fire in the light.
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And I hear more Thunder. Distant. It's so... strange. It's the same sound. I've heard it so much. But it sounds...
It sounds different. As if I'd heard it through different ears all along, and now I hear it clearly for the first time. Feels like... Like it's not here to condemn me, to speak my doom.
It never was.
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The Sun burns off the tops of the clouds and I can see, oh my heart, I can see. Skies and airs, and these peaks, these strange... things of Rock. They're so big.
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The Thunder. Feels more like it's... something... like it was... approvingly, praisingly. A final commending from the gods as I breathe the higher air and am touched by the Sun, the Sun! Here upon my pinnacle. As if to proclaim that the darkness never touch me again.
Oh it makes my eyes hurt. I have to hide under the blanket. Greys too, under mine.
I saw his face and it was shining. Maybe it was tears. Maybe it was sweat. Maybe it was just the light, overwhelming my eyes. It burns and stings...
Oh this light, this light...
I said I would not despair.
I would not despair, I would not despair. I cannot despair. I can never despair. Not here, not again.
Because writing it down gives it power.
And I feel... such liberation. Like I've torn free of a thousand ugly fates. And I'm above the clouds. I'm where I belong. The bottom of the sky, but the top of the world. Only the friendly hand of time can touch me now.
As it touches all. All in good time.
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It makes me shudder to write it, but the log-lust demands, and clearly in my head now the thought hovers that it is safe to die.
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...Dying isn't safe.
Odd.
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But contradicting embers wake up in me. Things that have been asleep. Things I felt back in our ship.
Like a breath and a strength.
Can we... I'm hesitant. No I can't be afraid: Can we get out? Can we get away?
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A plague upon my mantra. Elena, I want to see you.