Chapter #62Faces Forward by: Seuzz   No, you decide after you're back in your bedroom. Kali spoke of trust, and you should trust that she will tell you what you need to know when she deems you need to know it. You put out the lights and try to sleep.
* * * * *
"I want to supervise your meditation again tonight," Kali tells you after dinner. "I studied the sigil you made, and wish to direct you."
It is just you and Kali--Miko has gone to see a movie--as you assume the usual position in the floor and close your eyes. The moon appears even before you can let yourself "wander." "Do you see your ousiarch, child?" Kali asks. You nod. "Good. Now think of that sigil." You blink behind your closed lids, and concentrate. Nothing happens. "Relax," Kali coaxes you. "It's within you. Let it come."
You take a deep breath and let your mind settle back. The image of the moon wavers, as though it's a reflection in a pool that has been disturbed. The sigil forms and comes into focus, its ring perfectly encompassing the lunar disc, whose shadows and features resolve into the sigil's own elements. "Cup your hands before you, child," Kali says. "Hold the vision in your palms."
You oblige. Your hands seem to grow heavy, and something warm settles into them. "Very good, Will," Kali says. "Now think of Miko. I sent her away, so you will have to find her within you."
Unbidden, you suck in a sharp breath and have to fight not to open your eyes. You can feel Miko as a palpable presence, pressing in close to you. It feels like razor blades slicing down your face. She is all about you. And then her face appears within the sigil. It is the moon, and the sigil, and Miko's face, all bound together, like a cloud that can take on different appearances without changing.
"You are doing very well, Will," Kali says softly. "You can open your eyes."
Your lids are heavy as you lift them, and then they spring up. The vision is still before you, but it is floating in the palms of your cupped hands. Again, it wavers for a moment, but you find yourself able to focus it. "Do you see it?" you ask Kali.
"Of course, child. Anyone could see it. Well done." You glance up, to see her eyes glinting with pride. "This is your first great step. I remember when Frank first raised the mailed glove of Malacandra, exactly where you are now sitting. Hold, don't lose your concentration," she cautions as the image wavers again. "Good. Now, which of sigils do you see there?"
"The first one, of course. Now, wait, there's--" You stare. "Three of them are there, the first three. Overlaid."
"No, blended. Now the fourth one, child, the one that binds them all together."
You take a deep breath, but not from exertion. It is like power surging into you as the fourth sigil appears. They melt into each other. And then there is only Miko's face, firm and clear.
"Now, thrust it from you!" Kali cries. "Thrust it!"
A great tremble passes through you, a strain of yourself pressing yourself. Her face is like an immobile wall. But you push--
And then something twists--
And the vision seems to shoot off a great distance until it is but a single point at the edge of the universe. Then it winks out.
You fall back in a faint.
* * * * *
You wake to find the moon looming over you, burning intensely, and its touch is like the fire of frost. Your teeth chatter, and a flush of fever passes through you. And then a warm hand brushes over your eyes, and the sight vanishes.
You're staring at the ceiling. "And you're back with us." It's Kali's voice, sounding amused. You feel her hand in yours, and she raises you up. "Your hair is a mess, child."
You rake your fingers through it, and find it much thicker and shorter than-- You look down at your hand. It's your own, your original. You look around to find Kali smiling. "Shall I fetch a mirror," she asks.
But you run into the bathroom. Your face, the queerly reversed one, stares back with an open mouth. Part of you is overjoyed to see it back again; but part of you also winces over the bristly whiskers on your chin and upper lip.
"How did you do it?" you ask Kali when you're back in the living room.
"I? I did nothing. You did it yourself. Oh, I suppose I guided you in some small way." Her smile can't fully disguise the smug look of satisfaction in her eyes. "But it was a matter of bringing your own powers into focus. It's my job," she adds with a light shrug.
"Can you explain it to me?"
"I must, as part of your training. You'll have to practice it, in fact."
"Practice? How often am I going to have to change out of a fake face?"
"I've no idea. But you had better be good at it. Your life may depend upon it in the future. Come."
* * * * *
The explanation was quite long and technical, and she worked you hard while giving it, for to explain the technical points she had to force you to summon up images of those sigils again.
"There is your face," she says, as you both stare at the apparition in your cupped hands. "You have Miko's too. But you must find her and bring her-- There!" The face in your cupped hands shifts--wrenches, almost--and now Miko's visage rests there. "They are both now part of your fabric. In fact, neither is more 'natural' to you. Neither is your 'true form', if you will. You can choose one, or the other, as you desire."
You're briefly swept by a vertiginous feeling of loss, but you brush it aside firmly as something you can dwell over later. At the moment, you are far too fascinated by what Kali is showing you.
"Those forms are bound within sigils, and the sigils themselves are the substantia of the imago. You see?" She spreads her fingers around the image, pointing without touching it. "As a picture on a monitor is made of pixels, this is made of the elementary sigils contained in the basic sigil. It manifests in you, and you can choose which one manifests, shifting between them. All I did was get you to see your appearance as Miko as a sigil, and get you to see that you could manipulate it."
"But you had me merge them."
"Yes, because you had acquired them in bits and pieces, as you assemble a mask. I could have shown you how to remove each singly--your image as Miko, or the fragments of her mind you had picked up. But it was best to unify them, so you could do it at once."
You mull this. Somehow the knowledge feels very natural, as natural as knowing how to walk. Which means you don't know how to do it, exactly, so much as you feel you should be able to do it without thinking. "That is a good analogy," Kali says when you say this. "Though, like walking, it is something that will awkward until your 'muscles' become used to it."
"But why did I change back to this form after I shifted out of Miko's? I mean, without trying? I thought you said neither form is my natural form anymore."
Her smile is tight, and her eyes drop briefly. "You didn't," she says. "Sulva brought you back. Did you see him before you woke?"
You remember the vision of the moon, and nod.
"Yes. He is your ousiarch, and as long as you bind yourself tightly to him, he can catch you if you go seriously askew with your powers. It can be a close-run thing, though, and you mustn't rely thoughtlessly on him. You should have had your own imago at the ready for the switch."
"So why didn't you have me prepare?"
Her eyes tighten. "I didn't realize it was necessary. I was working on a hypothesis, and the experiment nearly blew up in my face."
"Jeez-- I mean-- Fuck!"
"You spent a lot time with the boys," she murmurs.
"So what was I--?"
"I said you have no true form. In a sense, you do, but it's a blank. Will, I am sorry to tell you this, but you are still a golem. And you always will be. That's what the Libra did to you. It stripped your substantia of your imago and set it back upon you in this fashion." She smiles wryly. "It had a fifty-fifty chance of aligning it correctly, and guessed wrong, putting you left to right. I suppose that's what happened. It's only another hypothesis on my part."
* * * * *
She sends you to bed, for you are thoroughly wrung out.
You sleep, and you dream. You are burning under the moon. It is a great eye, cold and blind. You see your face reflected in it, but it is a blank.
But it isn't the moon. It is a great bowl, and its circle is its rim, and you are gazing straight down into it. No, you are inside the bowl, and you are gazing up out of it. You are in a great cauldron, burning over a fire, gazing up and out. The face that gazes down is not your own, though it is blank like your own. You stare at each other passively.
You scribble the dream out when you wake, and show it to Kali the next morning, for you wake early, still feeling like you're burning with a fever, and rise before she and Miko leave for work. "Is it important," you ask.
"Yes, but not immediately so," she says. "Likely it will be a recurring dream. Let it not prey upon you."
Miko comes into the kitchen, her purse at her shoulder. "Ready when you are, Kali." She only glances at you. "And you can stay out of my clothes now, even if you're into that kind of thing."
Oh, but why should you? you resentfully think when they're gone. You're sick of the apartment, and you can go out looking like her if you want, and come back and change without her knowing.  indicates the next chapter needs to be written. |
| Members who added to this interactive story also contributed to these: |
View Portfolio
Visit Notebook
Send Gift Points
Awards
Badges
Send Email
Community Newsfeed
General Discussion
Sponsored Items
Book of Trinkets
Static Items
Books
Groups
Interactive Stories
Audio
Campfire Creatives
Community Notes
Crossword Puzzles
Documents
Folders
Images
In & Outs
Madlibs
Photo Albums
Polls
Product Reviews
Quizzes
Survey Forms
Web Pages
Word Searches
More by this author