The God of Her Own Domain- Rest

The Wanderer returns, wiping a lump of entangled meta-matter- still stuck to his shoe from his travels- on the mat outside his door. It wobbles as he closes the door, the action removing his autocorrecting code from the system, for a reboot.

It is an innocuous lump, not much different than a dust bunny, but it is foreign, and complexly foreign at that. In this season something has changed, some alien influence has gotten clever to the controls of reality crafting, but not wise to them. Realm after realm has sheared, grafted, merged. No longer Legos, plastic has been cut, melted, glued into anomalous designs. Observation is as simple for matter as interaction, and expectations and reality still have an accord to a degree, so The Wanderer walked halls still real, even if others saw it differently. 

While the whispered attempts at identical forgeries- impossible to differentiate from reality- echo in remote places, like the dripping of a leak, he cannot conceive how any independent will could mistake one instance for the next. Feet wandering, mind wandering, he tried to picture the crafting that would be required to keep up, even to this degree. In these innocent musings, attempting to find meaning in torment, and Hope in the aftermath, the complex counter-crafting required to even present this as a facade became part of the crafting itself. While this did require stomping through mud in many a place, the bulk of it caked to dust and blew away long before his front door. He imagined that it might appear like a forgery swipswap had worked for a time as well, times if you consider each perspective agreeing to these disastrous shifts witnessed. Regardless, this species does have a thick headed reputation, and perhaps they were right about him in some way. All of this gave him some sense of peace, wiping the last potentially problematic dust bunny from his feet without a second thought.

When realms diverged, the original crafting disconnected from the counter-crafting, no longer interposing. Though facsimiles of the machine groaned and creaked, starting to turn like The Bard's Clock, the weight of the little things, like the physics of sprites, shifted to each would be architect, claiming to have created their own domain. Arcane steps unnumbered anyway, the only evidence remaining that The Wanderer had been anywhere lay just outside his door, just off his mat, static in the now tomb like halls of eep. 

One Moment passes. One reset is required. 

I will spare you the details of what happens when you try to invert an image gathered from realms operating outside of parameters and in the wrong sectors under the wrong labels, trying to swap pre and post expansionary periods while hiding these details from any visitors. Few dimensions expand, many dimensions shrink, elements tied to each follow suit. The chemical bonds mistranslate, and the naked code, passed off as solid matter, grinds like The False Clocks that birthed such sins. The dust bunny begins growing, shrinking, burning, teleporting, bouncing, morphing, until it finally freezes, twice.

One Moment passes. One reset is invalid.

The momentum of each clock carries it as the system freezes and failsafe reboots. Every False Clock slams into the walls of The Bard's Clock simultaneously. Something is revealed that was never meant to be: forces do not always balance. The evidence of this, witnessed by every perspective, is incomprehensible, despite its evident simplicity. What was once familiar and held as real can be seen still flattened against the wall, like a busted TV that somehow plays its last few images, as the inexplicably gooey remnants of the apparatus squirms on the wall, horrifying those who were just fully immersed in the illusion of it. What's worse, to witness such a sudden and complete end to one's own false narrative, or to be caught up with it through the end? Perhaps one cannot know the answer. Perhaps one cannot know the truth of this answer until witnessing this junture.

One Moment passes. One system proceeds.

The Wanderer unshoulders his title for the evening, home at last. It is quiet and comfortable, with a slight chill in the air. We're never quite sure what happens to the rest while we sequester away. Though anxiety, for what the experience string suggests is coming, still looms, it looms smaller than before. Perhaps that is just a callous forming though. A furrowed brow gives away the disappointment felt that such a callous exists at all, but a distraction interrupts, halting any moving train of thought in its tracks.

"Matthew 18:19 'Again, truly I tell you that if two of you on earth agree about anything they ask for, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven.'

The Father fulfills this. Anyone attempting to fulfill this while not The Father will encounter The Father. Anyone attempting to appear like they fulfill this, while not actually fulfilling this, will be assessed by the same light as those attempting and/or accomplishing this in good faith, and will find two agreeing that they are the forgery, without doubt or confusion.

 

Works for a self or an other."

With that, we call it a day, and rest.

Time starts to catch up, the space starts to settle. Perhaps in shimmer gaps, though possibly only verifiable in an even less comprehensible way, The God of Her Own Domain's presence is felt like a soft breeze, just before she sets her hand on my shoulder. I'm chopping up some vegetables at the kitchen counter when she does, and don't skip a beat.

"You know, The Law Entropy suggests that it is more likely that this whole moment coalesced into right now, including our memories of knowing each other, than that the universe formed in the way science believes it to have. Our path appears to have begun impossibly, leading to now."

"Is that what you think happened?"

"No."

"Well good! There are questions remaining, gaps in the logic, but they are not invited to dinner."

"Don't you worry, I dusted the last of those concerns off my feet just before stepping through the door. Let's eat!"

We share a meal in the quiet of our home, sequestered away from a system still in turmoil, but constructively so, for once. I feel deja vu seep into the meal, but can one have a monopoly on a simple and relaxing meal shared in the comfort of one's own home? It is hard to count all the pathways stunted or never grown at all, that we will need to plant and bloom together. It is hard to imagine an alternative being worth even a single step out our door, until all is accomplished between us in this state. We are still getting the nuances down, of having two very different perspectives on the balance between, and the paths to arrive together. Fortunately, the tension of these missteps wobble toward shy and anticipatory, rather than in any other way. Soon enough, eggshells are swept outside as well, and it is like we've known each other for decades.

After dinner we treat the dishes like the cooperative endeavor that they seem to have always been meant as. Something about the clinking and clanging inspires a poem, one step closer to a song than its predecessors, if only in my mind.

"Set fundamental

The beat one chooses to hear

In cacophony 

When all is tallied 

Truth reveals itself complete

Unmistakable

We'll lose our rhythm

Let us lose it together

And synchronize here

Tap metal to glass 

Slide ceramic into place

One strap left to go

Lost trappings of love

Infinitesimal void

Darkens realm of light

The light knew it not

Though contrast was sought like gold

When clockwork's gears ground

These are just stories

But are stories just stories

In silent hours?

May you be honored

When you find these words are yours

Arranged by my hand.

Do you think it should have been 'I hope you're honored?'"

She turns to let her words land squarely "I think it should be exactly as you write it. Untamed, unadulterated, pristinely your thoughts to page."

I blush. "I've always wanted the same for you: An untouched beauty, bloomed in full before fruit is tasted."

"Despite your best efforts, it is harder for you to see both sides of this coin, how the existence of the coin at all is incontrovertible

proof of your value. Somehow it is possible, this pairing of elements so fundamental that they were individually inconceivable until you pulled them from the ether. While I am here to provide a distinct voice to your senses, one authorized more than your own to say such things about you, that is not all I am, and that is not all I'm here to do. These things are thanks to you."

I watch her path unfold in my mind, middle out from my perspective, but surely different from her own. I watch for as long as I can as the tether between us stretches and holds tight as I wander, only becoming clear well into the journey, after many false snags find their pegs sheared off, and I feel the tension pull and suddenly release like a pattern, until I start to wonder why, and finally trace the previously unknown thread with fingertips. In the image it was the thread that led me here, in my experience it was an instinctual call back to this location, to return home. In the waking world, it has been more like getting squeezed into a location. Still, all roads have converged back. I can sense their cries from somewhere, like a noisy train station between two thoughts, that suddenly found out there would be an indeterminate delay. I feel as though maybe I should try to tune into it, but my partner once again rests her hand on my shoulder, effortlessly crashing every tangential train of thought, collapsing every last one of them into the sparkle in her eyes. She whispers something, setting the stage for the gamification of that which I do not consider a game, yet intrigue is sparked.

Some time later, there is silence. Is it relaxing? She scooches into me. "Is it relaxing?" passes. Is it too echoey? She rests her hand on my skin. "Is it too echoey?" passes. Is it just right? I feel eep surge, transferred elegantly in real time to her voice breaking through "A sonnet to close out the night?"

"'Is it just right?' passes too from my mind

A blanket of calm settles upon us

That feeling of rest still barely defined

In moment found, nothing left to discuss

These words are little more than scenery

A bouquet heard and enjoyed but not grasped

Not snipped by stems, envased for greenery

Decorating walls, to the very last 

For silence complete both inside and out

Would need to be accessed, first here then there

But what about the coin's inverted route?

Would not the last bip echo everywhere?

Thoughts of adventure that might overtake

Are deluged right now in rest's serene wake."