[WP06] Last Night

[Amorpheous]

5. At first it seems as though nothing has changed. And then you realize: the phantom wind is a real wind, stirring your fur. It blows harder and harder until you are pushed inexorably back towards the stone, and then into it. If you are not a Legendary, there is no pain this time, but there is definite and sudden blackness, and a lingering moment of consciousness before you sleep, heavily. If you are a Legendary, you are swallowed up in the memory of a foal in the sac or the egg or the womb, until you forget who you are.

When she gained awareness from the darkness, she was slumped over next to the tower. She had barely moved except that she was no longer touching the smooth-faced stone that had stolen her consciousness. She did not rise for a long time, content to stay on the pebbled ground. Her thoughts drifted aimlessly as she took inventory of her body until finally, she rose. She began to circle the tower, but eventually she came to stand in the same spot she had been standing in earlier. She stared at the tower thoughtfully, at the symbols and she thought she had, perhaps, gained something in the darkness. Something was different though she wasn't quite sure what it was yet.

she stood there
in stillness
a moment of time
frozen

a taste of knowing
elusive

The awareness came in steps, gradual and slow, but eventually it registered that the wind that had once only been howling in her ears was now ruffling her hair, bring sounds and smells and feelings, flat and strange, but there to her lone form. It was gentle now and the change, Last Night knew, must mean something. The wind gets stronger, but she paid it no mind. The wind was wind and though she tried to read messages and voices in it, there was nothing in it that she could understand, could comprehend, so she tested her memory of the symbols until each one was carefully emblazoned in her mind.

Strong and stronger it blew until she was forced to step forward and against the flat-faced stone. She was expecting pain and instead she felt-

nothing

just
blackness

Her mind held onto that moment, wondering what was happening to her and finding infinite freedoms in this dark, formless space until it all disappeared.

She woke as if the world was righting itself again. She could feel a phantom wind even though she didn't remember why she should.

it was
only
a dream

But she knew better than that. She knew that dreams could blend with reality and that often they spoke of things that she could not yet comprehend while waking. Shaking her self and rising, she grasped at her memories of her dream but found that it was blank, not in a distressing way, but as if it was being hidden from her for only the time being. All she could remember was a glow that stood out sharply in the darkness when she closed her eyes. The memories remained elusive and she didn't know what the glow meant. She stretched her legs out and shook herself again.

The phantom wind was gone. She blinked and let her gaze go far away. The memories were there, but unknowable. She accepted that so that she could move on. The memories would return when it was time for her to know them. Some things were unknowable and some things were meant to be known. The unknowable could become knowable and the known could become unknown. That was the way of knowledge and knowing.

All truths were ephemeral and fleeting, changing with the wind and with the way things were perceived. There was no more than that.