Uncanny Distance

POV: Ilgor

As seen in

The Great Tree: Soft and Subtle Wind

Opening my eyes, I was graced with innumerable stars winking softly in the night skies. Vast nebulas swirled through the maze of lights, meandering through them like a stream to Stoney's bed. Vivid crimsons and brilliant blues, neon emerald, and joyous royal purples danced in the cosmic weather. My gaze slowly shifted from the glorious sky to the wider world around me.

A soft breeze raced across the grassland in waves of oceanic remembrance. The blades and fronds rubbing against each other created a wonderous symphony for me. Crickets chirped off in the distance, and a few even more distant frogs croaked their love-struck songs. Flicking my tail up into my lap, and playing with the tuft at the end, I didn't even find it strange that I had a tail where one didn't exist before.

My ears flared out, held at attention. Kari would have told me to put those down, unsightly to see one of the Clan so excited. But, I couldn't help myself, another song drifted on sonorous air. Ancient, bridging time and space, one I felt I knew. One I had always known, would never forget. Her song, the one she sang us into being. Mother.

I had become a fairly decent lucid dreamer since my Ceremony, but I couldn't change anything here. Like it wasn't really my dream to change, a passenger on a path rutted deep into the dirt. I knew somehow I was on one of the floating islands high above The Citadel, just on the edge of the sea, over the place we knew was home.

Whose memory was this? Getting up, I wasn't bothered by the thin dress with the split down the back for my tail, a bit thin for my tastes. The lilac accented by tan skin like it was made for me, an extension of my being. I wasn't sore, despite all that time on the ground like that. Grazing my hands over the grass as I walked through the prairie toward the edge of the Isle.

It took a surprisingly long time to reach the edge, despite the small size. It was hardly larger than a small field, the floating feeling never having left, though I could feel it bob slowly up and down. The world below was spiderwebbed with light, vast lighting systems displayling the streets of immense cities. High into the sky towers grew, their sides lit with rune structures.

A kalidescope of color reaching the horizon, it was nothing like the world I knew. I could recognize the coast line, it was the same as the one I knew. Whose memory was this??

"It's mine, Ilgor." Turning fast enough that my ears whipped back, dress billowing out around me. That corpse woman stood before me, staring down at the world below. She wasn't what I remembered, looking healthy and very much alive. Her hair was a bright metallic cacophony of color, her eyes burning low, barely a glow. But... her face was the same, kind and understanding.

"What? What do you mean this is yours?" I asked not understanding her, the languge she used. It was clearly the same as mine, somehow more refined and archaic.

"Chosen to see the truth, you entered my mind on your own. I think I've chosen well, my Sweet Child."

I awoke in a cold sweat, the blanket around me drenched in it. Turning, she was lying next to me, where fire had been, now sunken. Her hair had been metallic and brilliant, it was the same shade of brown as mine. She looked far too skinny, still like a walking skeleton. She smiled sweetly at me, blinking once and vanishing.

I think I now knew whose memory it was. The world around me feeling somehow off like a lie one had believed all their life. The space between fact and fiction blurred to an odd degree. I need to know more, who is she? Someone out there has to know.