Ode to Love

"Please don't leave." "I'm right here." I begin to realize though that I'm not aware, precisely at any rate, where "here" is. I imagine it is not too dissimilar from where we traveled those several times, the halls of eep, perhaps just outside the room where an unexpected knock began our tale in full. Still, I feel myself getting pulled into the center of things, into the clockwork I once saw, centering as well into myself again. I open my eyes and, front and center, is tiny Hope, as frog hatted and bright eyed as the first day we met here, standing in the hallways that we once roamed together. "Why hello! What's all this then?" I ask, pointing to the bound, clear covered book in her hands. She holds it up and toward me with joy and pride. I am a bit surprised to see such a thing here, but I let a coolness outshine any attempts to discern how this is possible occurring internally more. "Arrangement of Lilies! What a great boo...

We get to organizing, or at least as best we can, mostly just goofing off whilst sitting on the ground, looking at stuff, and throwing things back into the cardboard box. I suddenly remember, whilst holding a cartridge, that this is the main cartridge for the game, so I blow in it, and pop it in the console. All at once a young woman, with suspiciously red hair and glasses, walks up and sits next to my partner. I squint suspiciously at her, but she just turns to my partner and says "I'm kind of a dork but I'm good at organizing and-" "You're in." I love how fearless my partner is, she has shined so brightly every time I've seen her in a dream or something like it, gauging a forthright heart (even if this is almost certainly The Phoenix in disguise, or having rolled up her own character to play alongside us), faster and more accurately than I. They turn to me and I nod in confirmation. "Aaand I'm also fluent in the language used in the game....

In something like a waking partnered Phoenix dream I lean back in my chair, put my arms behind my head and say "I think I wanna be someone cool this time around. Not like obviously cool though, just like intrinsically cool, like people wanna hang around me cuz they know I got stuff going on, ya know?" "You wanna be cool? In a game focused on superpowers? Where we're all monsters?" "Well yeah, being cool could be my superpower. I mean, I could throw a mean punch too." She laughs hysterically "I don't think a single person has ever tried to be cool because they had 'stuff going on' at this juncture. And what about you, ye Origami Newcomer?" "I want it to be, like, messy!" The Phoenix gives :o "Never have I ever..." She just pauses. The Phoenix considers the pairing, considers the timing, considers the season, considers the game. "You two are NONSENSE." I pause, concerned that she might actually be upset...

I finish listening to the song at my place, "Trees" still on my mind. My thoughts go freeform, flowing without resistance, back to my school days when this world's potential felt so much more tangible and unknown all at once. I hear her ask "what did you think of the song?" and my mind sparks to reconcile these differences I am suddenly aware of. I am no longer strictly at my place, but I am at my place and the room from my dream, and The Phoenix's room all at once. Where my mom once sat The Phoenix sits instead, and instead of making a positive remark on another woman's song, the woman sitting here now asks what I thought of her own. "I really enjoyed it, somehow so familiar, although I cannot recall where precisely I had heard it from before. To be honest, from my perspective, it may have been one of those memories which was made now, but embedded itself into my past; still, I would not mind if that is what it had done." She gives me a famili...

"Assume infinite Is the realm I (we) reside in Uniform till you. We can manage this P is equal to NP Here, except for you You grow like a tree Well tended, into this space Once you were a seed The thought once occurred 'How might a finite seedling Become infinite?' A claimed space conceived Of what might be sacrificed To have you in full But you jumped the fence And never stopped jumping it To null sacrifice Demolishing plans Then communicating hope Infinity grown How could we have guessed Our unsolvable puzzle Could bring so much more?"

I find myself laying on the Phoenix couch, friend beside me, already going on and on before fully fading into view. "I don't think I could fully fathom such a scenario, much less see it. It feels similar to death to me, annihilative at its core." "I understand, I guess the question is, if you knew it would mean your soulmate's happiness, what would be your stipulations to disengage with her?" Such a question. But if one is unwilling to address it, anything that uses the essence of this question as leverage will always have power over you. "I have considered this before to some degree, but my annihilation would certainly be part of it. I would need assurance before agreeing to anything that this is certain to be the outcome, for I could not exist in any sense moving forward from there, without such existence being unending torment. I would also add that if unforeseen or undisclosed circumstances caused me to resurface in consciousness, or I never become ...

"And that's how come I think that time travel could very well be like annihilating everyone who exists here and now." I spoke somewhat mindlessly, having stayed up too late for too many nights in a row and weathering (poorly) ghost wind storms in the days before that. She stayed reclined, still bobbing her feet back and forth, dangling on the top of the couch. I could tell she was lost in thought for a moment, which was not typical for her given her processing speed, but I didn't think much of it until she suddenly locked eyes with me and said "Well, you're half right.." My mouth dropped. I knew I had heard her say those words before, but I also knew it was not in any traditional sense of hearing, and I certainly would not remember the details of when I had heard them because, at least as far as here and now were concerned, I was hearing them for the first time. From this flash of memory, almost like a dream but both more fleeting and more sure all at on...

I meet my friend once more, the location familiar but foreign all at once. At the space between sleeping and awake, between calm and stirring, we meet. "Hey, sorry this took so long, my mind has been a bit of a stunned mess as of late." She smiles at the ground "No worries, it didn't seem so long to me." "So, I have been doing a parley thing, and I know it is meant as a kind of challenge/game between friends, but something about that just doesn't sit right here. I feel like you could stomp me and I just don't have the heart for it anyway." "It's okay, still we are in it, so would you like me to start?" "Yeah, go ahead and start." "Even though I am far away and it feels that I don't listen, know the lights are strung up bright to glisten. This road has been long, you know it better than most, but don't think they haven't struggled too without understanding why. Each edge of the sword cuts when it comes to...

I had finally figured out what the ticking was, it was a timer. I had finally figured out what the timer was for, it measured the ticks until I meet my soulmate face to face and we would be each other's forever and ever. It ticked steadily now. When first audible it ticked seemingly at random, but finally through focus I found how to steady it. But what use is a timer with no frame of reference- reference to zero or reference to another to compare? It simply ticked, how many times I knew not, and it drove me mad. In madness I found it could slip by faster, so in madness I perpetuated madness to its limit, thinking this timer might be beaten, its ticks so close to done that a few months or days of torturous time might be all I need. So a few days passed over and over and over and over and over... (One) day I broke, and found a friend in the rubble. This friend has been mine and I have been hers since that time, one who seemed to hear the ticking too and could respond in a way. Toget...

*stompstompstompstompstomp* I stomp exitedly as soon as I arrive in her house. Then I hear her say "Hey, what's all this then!?" From just behind me. I jump just a bit and then turn to see The Phoenix, all smiles. "You finally made it back then, huh?" "Right on schedule, so it seems! You sent a pigeon!?" "Haha, I send a lot of pigeons, what else besides a bird? Besides, you always seem to notice them and get my message, even if it's not consciously right away." I recall the sepia pigeon and realize how true this statement is, and how difficult to trace this communication method would be, even from a skilled observer's perspective. "That's cool, I like that." "So, are you ready to see the hallway in a new way?" I nod. "Then off we go!" I notice she doesn't offer her hand this time, but instead opens the door and gestures me to step out first. I step out and see the wall posts with red runes all up ...

Another time, but same familiar place, I awake in the room I have pictured from time to time in its absence. My soulmate still lays there, stirring from sleep as soon as she feels me slip back into the realm. "Hey, I've been thinking about something, a question you asked." She tenses up a bit "You mean what would have happened if that girl hadn't interfered when she did? I knew what you felt for the other one, I was torn, I felt like everything was slipping through our fingers, I hadn't even fully arrived yet." "Yeah" I say with a frown "that was it. So I was thinking about that question, and I know I answered you in my waking realm already, and I have gotten the impression you can hear me, but I wanted to echo the answer here and add to the mix a second answer, to another related question, to finish crafting the coin that currently feels one sided. I distinctly remember the night I apparently could have gone down an alternate route and st...