02-03-2018, 03:45 AM
(This post was last modified: 02-08-2018, 12:27 PM by King Ghidorah.)
Pleasantly distracted by the small zoological and botanical dramas that were unfolding all around him, the subtle machinery of Kelly's mind drifted along a familiar course of simple, efficient meditations. The shapes of things known and things suspected came together into a sequential procession of familiar strategies and elusive questions. However, while it felt good to review, the psychic found himself frustratingly lacking in progress. Typically, this sort of introspection would produce new insight, but this time he found himself at an impasse.
Kelly frowned, resting the back of his head against the tree and staring upward, accusing but unfocused. Above him, leaves rustled in a sudden breeze, revealing patchwork snapshots of clear blue sky.
It was the memories that were doing it; his omniscient knowledge of the goings-on of this verdant clearing's simple creatures was reminding him of something, and whatever it was was roiling him emotionally as it scrabbled at its brittle telepathic cage.
It's even worse than having it all lost behind that damn mental fog. These failing locks make every subconscious association with a blocked memory noticeable - and I swear its gotten worse.
Warnings or no, I'm probably going to have to start exploring my past or pretty soon I won't be able to focus at all.
"Fucknuggets," he sighed, and rested his stubbled chin on his chest, closing his eyes. The fact that he needed to shave intruded briefly on his mind.
I've got so many questions - about my nature; About the things I know, the skills I've got; About my convictions, and my tepid emotional non-response to Tearen Wover's ontological revelations. I don't know where to start...
... so I may as well start at the beginning.
The traveler thought back as far as he could, and within the landscape of his thoughts non-euclidean crystal panes shifted and spun.
Recollection was a choice, but the lock was brittle. Like popping a soap bubble, a door opened in Kelly's mind.
Hazy recollections of a sepia-toned childhood.
A loud, sturdy father who worked hard with pencils and graphs, and thrived on wordplay, and never, ever yelled.
A mother who kept house like the captain of a battleship, cooking and cleaning and managing her boys as though she were on a mission from God, fierce and gentle.
A sibling - an ally and a mystery, brilliant and brash and in awe of his Big Brother.
Nameless friends, more like spectators, equally precocious, nervous at his strangeness.
Mythic winters with howling snows, buried by blizzards in the twin shadows of looming nuclear annihilation and the continental divide; Endless, indistinguishable summers riding bicycles through the transformative second act of the American age.
Schooldays spent with a paperback hidden under the desk.
Details were lost to the haze of merely-human memory - strong emotions clung to a smeared and faded picture of a decade-and-change spent in idle innocence, with only brief moments in stark relief...
...Until an adolescent felt the chill of early fall sapping the heat from his skinny back, devoured by the greedy pavement on which he lay, cold and damp, even through his windbreaker. The sky was overcast, iron gray and threatening rain. The mountains loomed on the near-horizon, as they always had, half-strangled by probing forests, white-capped with early snowss; nearby, the school-building sprawled like a fallen skateboarder, a single flat-roofed story of thoroughly embarrassed bricks stretched across half a city-block, hiding in the shadows of pine-trees and other, taller buildings. Every detail stood out vividly, preserved in cinematic quality, eidetic hyperthymesia taken to an elegant and terrible conclusion.
He was thirteen years old. It was 1995. Echoes of an out-of-body experience jangled across his brain, replaying a nonsensical conversation with the avatar of something ancient and mad.
Power and Time, it had told him; A place at the table. The rest is up to you.
Recess was over, and nobody had noticed he'd collapsed; those raging assholes had left him outside.
Kelly frowned, resting the back of his head against the tree and staring upward, accusing but unfocused. Above him, leaves rustled in a sudden breeze, revealing patchwork snapshots of clear blue sky.
It was the memories that were doing it; his omniscient knowledge of the goings-on of this verdant clearing's simple creatures was reminding him of something, and whatever it was was roiling him emotionally as it scrabbled at its brittle telepathic cage.
It's even worse than having it all lost behind that damn mental fog. These failing locks make every subconscious association with a blocked memory noticeable - and I swear its gotten worse.
Warnings or no, I'm probably going to have to start exploring my past or pretty soon I won't be able to focus at all.
"Fucknuggets," he sighed, and rested his stubbled chin on his chest, closing his eyes. The fact that he needed to shave intruded briefly on his mind.
I've got so many questions - about my nature; About the things I know, the skills I've got; About my convictions, and my tepid emotional non-response to Tearen Wover's ontological revelations. I don't know where to start...
... so I may as well start at the beginning.
The traveler thought back as far as he could, and within the landscape of his thoughts non-euclidean crystal panes shifted and spun.
Recollection was a choice, but the lock was brittle. Like popping a soap bubble, a door opened in Kelly's mind.
* * *
Hazy recollections of a sepia-toned childhood.
A loud, sturdy father who worked hard with pencils and graphs, and thrived on wordplay, and never, ever yelled.
A mother who kept house like the captain of a battleship, cooking and cleaning and managing her boys as though she were on a mission from God, fierce and gentle.
A sibling - an ally and a mystery, brilliant and brash and in awe of his Big Brother.
Nameless friends, more like spectators, equally precocious, nervous at his strangeness.
Mythic winters with howling snows, buried by blizzards in the twin shadows of looming nuclear annihilation and the continental divide; Endless, indistinguishable summers riding bicycles through the transformative second act of the American age.
Schooldays spent with a paperback hidden under the desk.
Details were lost to the haze of merely-human memory - strong emotions clung to a smeared and faded picture of a decade-and-change spent in idle innocence, with only brief moments in stark relief...
...Until an adolescent felt the chill of early fall sapping the heat from his skinny back, devoured by the greedy pavement on which he lay, cold and damp, even through his windbreaker. The sky was overcast, iron gray and threatening rain. The mountains loomed on the near-horizon, as they always had, half-strangled by probing forests, white-capped with early snowss; nearby, the school-building sprawled like a fallen skateboarder, a single flat-roofed story of thoroughly embarrassed bricks stretched across half a city-block, hiding in the shadows of pine-trees and other, taller buildings. Every detail stood out vividly, preserved in cinematic quality, eidetic hyperthymesia taken to an elegant and terrible conclusion.
He was thirteen years old. It was 1995. Echoes of an out-of-body experience jangled across his brain, replaying a nonsensical conversation with the avatar of something ancient and mad.
Power and Time, it had told him; A place at the table. The rest is up to you.
Recess was over, and nobody had noticed he'd collapsed; those raging assholes had left him outside.