I open my eyes and I am there. It’s a scene I have witnessed many times before, only in my dreams.

The Feathered Snake singing to ULMITA with the fate of reality hanging on the scale. It had felt like a fitting foundational myth at the time. A chronic loner’s inside joke that did a good enough job at seeming like something else to other people. That’s why I had added it to my book. And that’s what it should have stayed. A snippet in a book.

Beautiful red leaves, spinning as they slowly fall from a sinuous tree older than time. I am sitting in its shadow, on an ornate cushion made of the softest material. Overhead, the Golden Serpent is both wrapped and floating around the massive branches, so tangled I cannot tell where it begins and where it ends, its coils moving with mesmerizing grace.

I am in a no man’s land carpeted with leaves, but around me, at a respectful distance, sit the Ultimate Twelve, in full regalia. They are the first circle of the celestial legions, and theoretically the most powerful beings one could find in my world. The second circle consists of their direct subordinates, it is bigger and placed higher up so that they can have an unobstructed line of sight. So on and so forth, the circles continue past the horizon and past mortal logic.

I had imagined the center to be a stage. But now it feels more like an arena.

I can feel their gazes on me. From the second circle onward the curiosity is palpable, and I cannot blame them. Here I am, someone who seem to only ever exist in this suspended moment in time, sitting in the most significant place in and out of existence, past their own leaders, who they know have achieved - and will achieve - feats worthy of worship themselves.

Those in the first circle, however, were being true to themselves, with expressions ranging from indifference and amusement, to undisguised annoyance and lust. As the beings closest to true divinity, they are the least tied to linear logic and have their own understandings of the situation. Not at all accurate, but not completely wrong either. Then again, I wrote them to be that way, which means I’m to blame. To me, it made sense for each organ to believe itself the most important part of the body, and there’s always a way to argue in favor of any which one.

Though the last notes of the song still hang in the air, the serpent has long stopped singing. I am quite obviously delaying, just like I have deliberately avoided looking to my left since I came to.

I finally do so, giving up to curiosity, and immediately freeze.

Her head resting on one of her innumerable hands, lovingly studying me with eyes filled with diamond irises, here is ULMITA, lounging in her first form on a bed of crimson leaves.

Her body is of the purest jade. Around her neck, wrists, and ankles, are gemstones inserted in gold bands, filled with dancing lights and shadows.

Her hair, braided rivers reflecting the fires of thousands setting suns.

Her lips, darker than the void between stars.

Her teeth, sharper than the pain of cruelly losing a firstborn.

One of her hands held up the sky, one held up the finger with which she threatened to destroy the multiverse, and one was holding up the only celestial who had still yet to arrive, causing them to ceaselessly find themselves in situations that grew more and more outlandish.

I am actually seeing these impossible things. She is exactly- no, she is even more than how I had imagined her. She is perfect.

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That’s it, I have finally lost my fucking mind.

ULMITA wears her fourth smile, so I know she’s immensely enjoying herself. I was her creator, so she was part of me, just like how any writer had a bit of their characters in them. Only you never expect to ever face them and be confronted with the reality that while they also have some of you in them, there is also all that makes them more than mere distorted fragments of your psyche. And in my books, that concept had been an integral part of the cosmology.

ULMITA’s Heart was a self-insert character I had created on a whim. A mix of Tolkien’s Bombadil and Stephen King in The Dark Tower. Except I was not so shameless as to have him actually appear during the story, and had him only mentioned in passing by one of the hero’s companions who happens to be a celestial. I mostly used him as the character through which I interacted with “my” world while daydreaming.

I was the child with his head always in the clouds, and my worlds were the perfect sandboxes. I’d put myself in a multitude of different situations for the fun of it and roleplay through various scenarios, killing dragons and saving princesses. It was like my very own video game engine. One in which I could alter stats, difficulty, and drama, on a whim to maximize entertainment. It certainly was better than reality. In there I was in control.

Like most maladjusted kids I eventually grew up to be decent at telling stories, and I somehow even managed to get a career out of it. A family. A life.

It all currently feels out of reach.

Who am I, right now? The Heart of a goddess? Or Hart, the writer? Which logic should I operate on? Does asking that question brand me as a lost cause?

ULMITA’s smile grows even wider, the smile of one privy to a joke they find particularly amusing, and then she speaks, her voice the sound of butterfly wings.

"So?” She says. “What does my heart think ?”

"Beautiful," I reply honestly. “Better than I could have imagined. But I have have to ask. Why am I here?”

I speak freely. How can I let myself be intimidated by my own creation? I may have lost my sanity, but I still have my pride.

It doesn’t seem to bother her.

"I am feeling festive," she replies. “After all, this is one of my favorite days. So much interesting things happen. And regardless, should I need a reason to consult my heart?”

"No, but you know what I meant."

"Yes,” she laughs, and her voice is howling wind on the highest mountain peaks. “Yes, I do know what you mean. But I am the way I am, after all.”

"And the ways that you aren’t,” I add.

“... and those ways too,” she agrees, catching my meaning. “It is simply amusing to hear such a question from one who has been here since the beginning, and always will be.”

She places a finger on the center of her forehead, and all things pay attention, even the leaves stop falling out of deference. “Though I know you, you are ignorant of yourself. Thus, in spite of knowing the position of all atoms across the physical planes, and each thought making up the mental ones, I am a mystery to myself, still. So I wonder, do I accept the Serpent in my heart?” There is a beat of silence before she points at the feathered snake with three fingers, pinky and thumb forming a circle, and asks, “Do you accept the Fate-bearer?”

“I need to know if there’s a way back.”

She tilts her head ever so slightly.

“You are already there, Hart.”

Well, fuck. I’m the character. Somehow, I am experiencing one of my daydreams cut off from reality, fully from the other point of view.

On one hand, the knowledge relieves me of having to worry about my loved ones. Assuming I can believe a figment of my own imagination.

On the other, I have no idea what will happen to me past this scene.

But that isn’t necessarily a bad thing, I realize. One of the reasons I tried so hard to escape reality through fantasy was that I craved adventure it couldn’t offer, and now the ultimate adventure is at my fingertips. I may not fully be in control this time, but I am also not a child anymore.

“Very well,” I say. My mind is made up, so all that is left is to go through the rest of my lines, aware that just like her words, they carry meaning vastly different than what I originally intended. “It was a beautiful enough song, feathered snake. Enough for a reality to be spared.”

Up until then my eyes haven’t strayed once from the goddess, and when I look up I am met with my reflection in the the cold gaze of the snake. Its feathers are golden, but the scales underneath are obsidian. The way I wrote them to be.

“I accept you. Your song is now mine.”

Faster than anything I’ve seen move before, the snake plunge into my chest, transferring the mass of its body from the tree to myself. The fact that it takes more than a second is a testament to how gigantic the beast is, yet, I seem to have ample place to accommodate its seemingly never ending coils.

It simply feels like slotting back in a missing piece of myself.

“I have very much enjoyed your song, my heart...”

My attention returns to ULMITA and she’s standing, thoughtful eyes looking away toward something I cannot see. Her pet bird is flying through her fingers.

“... it is now your turn to lend me an attentive ear.” Her diamond eyes shift to me, the hundreds of shining irises moving independently from each other. “From a different shore of the flow of time.”

I notice how they are modeled after my late mother’s wedding ring. Now paying more attention, I can even notice the blood stains.