That 'You can do that?' look might have had been a mere look of puzzlement for Julia, but for the both of us it had been a cruelty to realize for each others sakes. She had spent twelve centuries thinking she knew me, and I had spent the same amount of time with her and only knew her name and condition among other intrinsically physical things about her.
Her health and all it implied; attributes and abilities, potentials and skills, moods and manners, and intoxicatingly all sorts of information about her body and its processes. I don't need to spell out as a male, there were certain ones that I was by nature more aware of, but besides those that were sexually arousing were more psychologically stimulating factors.
The comfort of the sound and feel of her breathe, some distant physical subconscious memories of her sleeping were not so distant, while most of them were memories of when it was warmer and drier. In the latter memories she was further, the feeling had been more far away, so the feel and intensity of those were lesser.
Conscious and subconscious memory, I had none of the first but an immense amoung of the second, and I couldn't relive them all at one time. They'd come only from experiences that my body equated to relative experiences, only the physical types, which meant there was very little else but not exactly no psychological impacts.
I could remember I was comforted by her being close, more so by far than the mules though they were another comfort besides, and though I didn't remember anything that happened specifically there were broader if dark thoughts I could remember feeling. Longing, desire, lust for Julia.
Dark memories were not like light ones at all though, the parts of memory that were dark couldn't actually hurt us at all and weren't involved in anything negative, true dark parts of memory were neutral instead of positive or negative. Our darkness was only our impression, the way our spirits were like light might confuse them as positive things but they weren't always.
The flesh was neutral, it's potential was neutral, only spirits could make it positive or negative. It's nature was as neutral, there was just inborn instincts inside it that made some things more natural and some things less, but our conscioussness was required to do anything that didn't keep you alive.
Eat, breathe, drink, avoid pain and death, stand and move, sleep when tired, cool when hot, warm when cold, wet when dry, wake when energized if only the subconscious instead of the conscious mind. I could feel many of these things, reaching back somehow impossibly, yet unalarmingly. It was refreshing.
Somehow my sense of senses could brush back over all this. My sleeping conscious had wanted Julia for a long, long, long time. My fully woken subconscious mind was there pushing up towards my heart, with my fully woken conscious mind pushing down into it, that was when a much more clear idea of the human bodies forces at work let me realize more of myself.
The epiphany struck me to my knees, like going under the force of a truck traveling at light-speed I could only feel like my spirit fell back, except no part of my spirit left me long and the experience of that 'twitch' was enough to make my actual body want to hit its knees.
We'd spooned through clothes and blankets seeking the warmth of each others flesh a little too close for my taste as a married man, I knew the feel of her all over according to the weather and seasons, like the feel of her body was some thermometer I gauged such by. And in a way, we both did, she had some similar part of her. Where we had put our hands, we were not exactly shy about.
Explicitly; she'd warmed her hands below using me for heat when her hands were especially cold, and I'd done the same above with mine the many times after she'd warmed hers cuddling up to me first when we'd sheltered from cold, but the mindfucks were just endless.
I knew I was glad she'd turn her back and let me warm mine, which clashed with having only put my hands on one other woman and knowing I should only touch Kate that way.
My conscious mind was not exactly delighted to think that my subconscious mind, which I was sure didn't connect directly with any sense but touch with the exception of sounds to a lesser extent, and my conscious mind shared a connection it hadn't been so aware of.
My subconscious gave no shits, it was above reproach and acted only upon inherent needs, since it hadn't crossed any line my consciousness could find no fault though instincts and intuitions didn't have to scream at me that there was a problem here. I'd have screamed a bit of any of so many shocks, but was too speechless, and overwhelmed by just how much better Julia felt than Kate ever had.
It wasn't trying to be an asshole, Julia felt more satisfying to be near than Kate ever had to be against, except I'd never loved Julia or had sex with her, and I'd never had sex with anyone in my life but Kate. And the mindfucks kept coming.
Subconscious also had problems with my conscious, it didn't just know that Julia was my mate, because she had been for so long it annihilated the concept of Kate as such. I couldn't make myself think of anything, and I'm sure that others have had the experience of thoughts colliding and seeming to freeze their mind.
Two opposite knowns can't coexist. Truly opposing forces destroy one or another if not both, a thing can be explained many ways. Like they say there are many ways to skin a cat, but that's not the only true thing you can depend on as a singular and certain known, no matter how many facets or spectrums it occupies. You can give things definition, make them clear.
My conscious knowledge said Kate was my wife, my subconscious knowledge said it was Julia, and each was not an opposite thing but two different forces that didn't actually contend at all. The contention was in trying to understand what to make of these revelations. I needed a balance, there wasn't one.
When my conscious mind became aware of what my subconscious thought, it was pretty much just hung up on joining the other side of myself, more eager it was to feel Julia up properly now than find Kate at all later.
Traitorous bastard, the conscious, our whole damn brains acts reptilian when you need them the most sometimes.
My subconscious did not relent at all, but remembered Kate fondly, and it wondered how she was now that my conscious mentioned her. Was she okay? Had she been eating well? She'd survived if I had.
Arrogant bastard, the subconscious, cool as a cucumber and reflexive as a robot.
'No wonder people always considered you as what was causing all their problems, you smug fuck you, you may not be bad but you're definitely not seeming good right now. You're the darkness, but the only skeletons in your closet are my unresolved conscious issues, you're trying to solve my problems so knowingly really sucks subconscious.
'And you, conscious? Shame on you. You dog, you, jumping out for a bone the moment that something smarter than you throws a meaty one. Even talking about you makes me more stupid, by sin of thinking about you I become egotistic, even the reference I think of thinking about you is filthy.
'Me and the heart, we're out of this four way relationship if you two can't make nice, Kate is my wife and my pre-mutiny conscious mind was right. Julia is someone I've survived a long time with and will have to par- part ways with- for- for my wife, Jul- Ka-." I couldn't stop my body from pulling Julia close protectively, even as my mind clung to Kate, my vision darkened and I felt a sensation like being tired without any of the feeling of exhaustion.
To be more clear my mind darkened, but my body brightened, and it literally created a bit of percievable yellow hued light outside itself as it seemed to take over against my mind. My body was in even greater control, and that was when I reasoned out that the subconscious in itself was akin to the physical portion of the mind.
Of course it was, not just feeling mostly and sound some, but it had record of every sense besides those two as well and remembered them. It remembered nothing incorrectly, nothing it knew was wrong, trying to stand against that was an act of futility for consciousness.
I'd been doing it all wrong. Trying to raise consciousness and lower my subconsciousness was futility, you did the opposite, you needed to bring them together at the heart. All three had to come together. Even understanding these things natures, I'd erred, but at least nothing too bad happened. I only pulled her close, protectively.
I was in control again about the time I turned to look at her, Julia had been quiet the last few minutes herself, and wherever we were leading the mules through this downtrodden place all I'd gotten about this world was we were walking somewhere in a city called the city. I didn't know much about it, but if there was just the one nearby, then it stood to every type of reason it would be bad.
It already had been so far, I learned I'd eaten people, I'd learned all sorts of things that should have set actual fire to my brain like I'd had my hands all over a woman I wasn't married to and my subconscious was the good guy who wasn't coming off so great. Things really seemed up and down for me, and I mean some real high and low moments, there wasn't betweens.
None of it was unpleasant exactly, only the distress of my perspective made the process of me fully reintegrating with myself seem like any sort of experience at all. It was then I'd looked at Julia in this state, worried she would have been offended somehow, only instead she had looked around and sighed when she turned behind us.
"Good ears, Grub." When I turned to see what she meant, I was even more pissed at my subconscious, that guy had completely ignored me and only reacted to stimulus my conscious had not even be aware of. "I reckon so." I mused, or appeared to, but inside I was steaming mad at the balls and audacity of my dark side. Was it even the dark side? No, it was the good guy, my conscious was the bad guy.
If I was my heart in the middle, and my consciousness was sensory functions above, subconsciousness below was like a store for knowledge, sensations, motivations, the types of things you would associate with memory but were not parts of it at all. Memory was part of consciousness, it could only be, in order to be conscious of memory they were closer to it. Awareness.
Subconsciousness was not awareness at all, it was knowing, all the knowledge you knew so deep you never had to think about it. That's why it was there in your sleep, with you, your subconscious never slept and it knew. It told you more than the conscious mind could even when you weren't aware of it, but oh, when you were aware with it.
When you became aware with your subconscious, and when you became knowledge with conscious, I can only explain it as the loveliest trap from which there is no escape. Confusion that was understood, insanity that was sane, darkness that was light, and evil that was good.
The last mindfuck was the worst, and the best, but it put me in a dilemma I wasn't ready for at heart. Everything else started clearing up, dark memories came to a sort of light that had no senses yet was closer to immediately knowing things by sound and feel that were difficult to explain. There was little to fill the opposing reaction.
The reaction, my subconscious had done its part feeding what it knew to my conscious and dark came to light, lights turn to go dark meant my conscious was in turn pulled into feeding it back equally, except the thing most on my conscious mind was Kate and on subconscious Julia. For the briefest of moments, the two superimposed as if one to my eye and imagination both.
There was no going back from that.
All at once it was just Julia, Kate was only a blank memory of my subconscious, consciousness of her and the implication of a wife did not belong to her at all anymore. Julia alone somehow absorbed every bit of those meanings that had been Kates, and even as I watched it happen I wanted to deny it anyway, but as soon as it started I'd already known I couldn't.
I was ashamed, deeply ashamed before I ever started moving my body, because my mind had been made up for me with no involvement of choice left at that point, and it felt like being carried along in a current away from myself where I'd be vulnerable to being swept away forever.
Two things had happened, the first was quick and shallow though the realities for us involved made the way it seemed to happen anything but. "Are we a couple?" I'd asked, felt her slow after a moment, and then I had turned away just after seeing her eyes start to change. The moment I saw shock start in her eyes I really felt like I was a goner.
Things didn't seem to go quite so dark when I knocked out the guy stalking us, I'd only realized as soon as I saw him that though I'd looked back my conscious mind hadn't become aware of him, he'd been in my sight and unseen somehow due to the fluctuations occuring inside of me.
My vision only seemed to darken when I started to run away after that, thinking about how only my conscious was shallow and how small I must seem asking her that, wondering on the opposite side instead how deep her feelings were for me after twelve centuries together when I'd suddenly sprung that on her.
I was absolutely torn when I couldn't run out of her sight. Torn because it was all I wanted to do surely, but also because I didn't even know why I couldn't for a moment, she had no particular look and wasn't bothered or wanting in any way and yet my mind wanted to see her as hurt and wanting where all reason and sense showed she wasn't.
I couldn't run out of her sight, and I couldn't face out of sight of her so far from her, at least not until I could hear the sound of her steps where I waited with my eyes closed. For a minute all was silent until the stalker started dragging himself, picking his tail up and lighting out only a moment later.
Then her arms went around my waist. "I never knew you were mine Grub. It isn't a nice time to say it to you I know. I won't lie with an apology, I'm glad, but it hurts too. I made many moves on you early on, you taught me how to be whole, and ever since I have been I haven't tried and you never did. Now I know why, I'm almost sorry, but I can't really be.
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
"We'll never deserve each other but that's okay, you and I can serve each other better since we know it, and neither of us deserve things anyway." "Why don't we deserve things, or each other?" "Serving is giving, Grub, deserving is taking. If we're offering each other ourselves freely, it isn't the same thing, serving serves both parties but deserving serves one."
"You're saying the selfish deserve each other, and the selfless serve each other?" I asked for clarity.
"They're parallels but no. Maybe they're actually like intersecting parallels. Those two are surely related, but selfish people can't really deserve even their own self. How would you take someone else when you couldn't even take yourself properly? People like that wouldn't ever be interested in union, at least, not if they were aware of their nature. You don't see what you are blind to.
"Serving is all things good between all things and a harmony, deserving is chaos and consuming of all things that are serving. It's no different than service and disservice, when you think about it, you never want to deserve anything. People should aspire to deserve nothing and serve everything, I really hope you feel the same way."
"I do. I do, but that feels wrong in a way, the thought patterns nice yet at the end of the day they're words. I know what you mean, still though, at times you just have to deserve even by that logic. Think, if you're hungry you deserve food and take it, but the food you deserve by eating what was alive until you killed it by the same logic."
"Food serves us and we serve it, because we need it to live we care for it, you have to care for crops and animals to have them care for you back. That's service Grub, sowing and reaping both."
"I get it. I'm just looking for the part that explains how it serves Kate, I'm not sure it does, and I can't just let myself accept a change to myself no matter how profound it is without a measure of succintion. When that epiphany hits me I can trust what it's telling me."
"Listen to what you're telling yourself. You're just in denial, you can see the way you look at me, you're just not seeing the way I look at you. If what we have changes things with her, then you aren't serving one another anymore anyway."
"How so? If I cheat on her more than I have, already, I deserve all three of us." "Only if you let what you have with her become a lie, or if she let it be so, then would all of us be deserved. We'd each find justice anyway, the best we could in that scenario. Don't overthink it Grub. I've waited this long, when you find her maybe she'll have the same view."
"HOH, I very much doubt it. Love is selfless and self serving for both in a relationship, true, but it doesn't really serve the person you love to have them wondering if they're good enough when they don't seem to be all that you need. That's wanting, not needing."
She thought about that a moment. "I can look and tell you need me but only want her. If you didn't love her and you weren't looking for the way to need her, I'd say you only wanted her and were rejecting we need each other." "Let me think about this awhile, I've woken up to quite a bit, you mind?
"My brain is literally backed up over here." She nodded patiently, but her sigh suggested otherwise. "Where are the mules going?" I asked her abruptly, hearing hooves leave the cement- paved over cobbled road. "Home. There's a pond they stop by on the way, that way through the Parkwoods, the rivers too filthy and the creeks on the other side of home."
We weren't far, I decided it then and in less than ten minutes we were there. Julia had revealed to me that there would be guards on shift where the 'Outer-City-Zone' started - right before our property did. We'd been walking through the 'Extra-City-Limits', what was the other side of the tracks.
You'd have assumed that it would be humans running this show, except that was only right in spirit, most all of the people you saw going in were mixes of humanoids so thoroughly stirred there was no comparison for me to try and use to differentiate them by. Those on the outside were mostly humans.
They were leaving the city more often than leaving it, and with it that early, it looked less like works were over and more like evenings approach had more headed out. "They can't stay in if they don't have a room for at least the night or a home. Most trade and leave around three to be gone by five when the police start asking for documents."
I heard this well, but I saw something else that made my eyes bulge, and I could not hold back the questions.
"Those are.. is there a train that runs along those tracks?" I asked stupified and awed, excited enough to smile wide after the words made their way out past all the emotions bubbling up.
"Yup, there's five, but the Outer-City has only the one and its main function is for working. Every day it collects resources primarily, runs a passenger car or two every circuit on its route, but it shares the same track with the Inner-City and they have three engines. The second track is the City-Capital engines line.
"That one runs all day for civilian, and all night for military functions. It's fast and secure for travel, if you are not leaving the fort, outpost, settlement or colony you arrive at. Folk who can afford the train are the ones that will be robbed in and out of those places though, you don't have that problem as much if you come mounted, though if you come afoot it is worse usually."
"Documents or Titles." The guard stated ahead of us to someone a bit slow on the draw, speaking aloud for the first time. Whatever paper and silver coins spilled from the older womans hand as the guard unhooded her, the other with him quickly picked up while reading the writings. "Bribe, no reason, just a request for passage."
The second said it as if it clarified the matter, and the first clubbed the woman, but he couldn't or wouldn't knock her out with a single blow using that telescoping baton. The whistles of the first two blows before the last had started sharp before turning into distant thuds, escalating from a whack to a wumph though he'd only delivered a bit more force the second, but the loudest sound came from the baton.
Not her heads beaten crown, but that last sound of metal pinging as it resisted the forces subjected on and by it through user, the womans slight cry at the first was quiet and she barely seemed to realize what had happened. The second her grunt wanted to seem quieter but it was deeper, the base in it carried it even further and a large part of it was simply the blow echoing through her own vocal cords.
While she'd started to duck and cover her scalp then for the third blow, it had already been coming faster with the guards increasing momentum and power, so that last whop merely made her fall straight back. The back of her head hit first, after that, she seemed to begin seizing.
Only, I couldn't see a woman seizing personally for long, I saw a woman whose subconscious was trying to make her run yet whose conscious was lost. Her heart wasn't really between, merely physically, but since her heart wasn't in that moment she lost control of both secondary sentiences.
The deeper three chakra connected to the subconscious might be of more spiritual mind, but they were for the good of the body, while the other three higher chakra were conscious and more physical they were for the good of the spirit. The heart was a perfect neutral between all, the center of centers, about which this all reflected to make truth known out and in everyone.
Those lower chakra and her heart tried to move her even knocked out, except hers had no connection to the upper chakra. Whatever had gotten her knocked out was the rest of the equation, some purposes in her conscious that had tried and failed to outsmart her subconscious, these were why she was in her position now.
A confused idea that desired to bypass the reality she lived in.
"Probably a mother trying to see her kids." Julia said sadly. "With silvers in her clutch, I'd wager she's a follower of Erin." A woman who looked older than us put out there menacingly, Julia did agree, before both nodded looking at each other when the first guard took a symbol off twine around her neck and showed it. An ankh.
My vision darkened again, conscious lowering to make itself compatible with the guards, but it was not the one in control and nor was the other. I sheathed it like a blade, but the truth was it was more like a light, a light best hidden from those without any. In this place, that was a no-no.
"Documents or Titles, sir." I heard assertively put, before Julia added to it. "Grub, your coats inner-left pocket, show him the symbol of our home." I reached to do as she bid, but never got it out, there was an older mans voice who called down. "Leave 'im be fellas', he supplies westgate. And he's an Old-God, the Unnamed-One himself. Who can protect you from that?"
"Please then Unnamed-one sir, will you show us your Title? Our orders were explicit and we can not disobey them." The younger second guard asked and lowered his head and eyes a moment, before looking up to see it already displayed. The older guard stationed up higher in the shade and wind, toting a double-barrel in place of a club just shrugged before shaking his head.
"Fools." He said louder, then kicked back again, facing roughly the thirty people or so closest to the wide open door and broad width gate. Heavy ropes draped down from top sides of the tower he watched from just outside the street in, except the side closer to the street had heavier chains draped down and finer chains hanging down on the inside. That side of the towers exterior had thicker plating and a higher inner wall too.
But wind could come in, the sun wasn't nearly directly on him, and he could point the double-barrel through those chains as well as rely on them to slow down or stop anything thrown or fired towards him. Plentiful more chains ran horizontally lower on that curtain, with couple places to point a barrel out, but up high there were a few wide areas like half-moons.
The older man nodded as he saw me studying him after the tower, I nodded back just before walking through with Julia, she'd also shown some documents and had been consoling the guards. Especially the one who'd stopped talking after the older guard, the first who'd struck down a woman recently, seemed mostly natural to me.
How had the mules got into the city, you ask? There was a way in through the walls by our house, a place where a quartet of old guards sat in double stacked towers similar to the first, but they were different than the young teenage guard wearing the brown leathers with a yellow sun patched on the shoulders.
A small dirt road wide enough for a beast or two to pull wagons and carts along, and pass in or out, this aside where the wall ran. There was another wall surrounding the property, stones and mortar made, and it was a contrast to the mostly ramshackle buildings blooming out around it until the Inner-City wall. All natural, fields for crops and livestock, ponds, trees and orchards, silos and mills, barns and sheds, dozens of cabins and a few shacks of improvised material.
I'd assumed they were cabins and shacks, but the 'cabins' were drying sheds really for all manner of produce, then the 'shacks' were for plants who needed less direct sunlight. Upon an inspection of my personal material space, I couldn't believe all that had been added to it, but that there was nothing special done with any of the raw resources was not surprising.
'Grub' had been busy collecting, but there was so much of everything it was sickening to try and quantify, and he hadn't only collected all the resources a farm alone would provide. The house we went to was not large, not even for one person, but inside it was a delightful spectacle.
"Let's talk now." Julia huffed, no doubt trying to entertain a list of all I should be most made aware of, that gave me time to take in the house. Later I'd think of it as five trailers stacked atop each other, comparing dimensionally, three were underground and two were above it. Rolling-rope drop-down ladders with bamboo sheathed steps, sealable hatches with thick frames and shuttered doors with pins that would drop down automatically when pulled shut.
The solitary floor above wasn't as thick as the lower, but it was made entirely of metal and had plentiful shutters, as well the roof access led up to a sort of porch on the side you came up that was screened and roofed. Herbs grew everywhere there, edged around a table and two couches, the outside part was like a patio where there was only a carpet and lounge chairs.
There was pretty much only a heavy box in the center of the second floor, it had shells in it neatly arranged, and the associated rifles and shotgun were tucked in the corner closest to the ladder up. Two handguns were also lying atop the box, their magazines and plenty of loose shells and filled clips were spread across the underside of every shutter where there was recessions for such.
Medical supplies were in these as well, but at the center of each outside wall there were large recessions with diverse of these supplies, besides that only a couple vests, helmets, and masks rested by the ground floors ladder up by association. This was a shooting floor, you could find an effective position to fire anywhere in sight outside the house near or far.
Bedrolls on the first floor told the tale of where we'd sleep, it would depend on which floor was comfortable, and the ground floors thick white marble exterior suggested it was the cooler during the day when it was hot, but also in the winter warmer since the stone and metal would hold heat. The second floor would be cooler at night, and it had plentiful windows to let air move in and out.
That metal would let heat in during the day up top, but it would also let it our faster at night, metals thermal conductive worked both ways. "That room has saved our hides more than once. I can't tell you how many times we screened those shutters in and had to shoot them out. This place is like a compact castle. Look downstairs."
She'd come with me while I finished, the first room mostly was half living room and half kitchen, although it had two fold-down cots on each of the southern sides. Why there were four there I didn't know, or want to ask.
Dry-goods and supplies that water would do poorly, which included plentiful weapons not the most of which were guns, but more supplies, equipments and tools. Clothes, ammunition, a stock of food in cans and jars, these occupied a healthy portion, but metal and textile goods seemed to take most of this space.
It was all neatly stored, there was plentiful room to grab anything and easily walk out and up with it, but the plentiful space in the centers of these rooms clashed with the volume of objects in them. There was little furniture, not that wasn't shelves, racks, recesses, in cupboards, there was even a pantry that descended down and out from that first floor below ground level.
Through space left between stone bricks mortared into the floor, a few feet wide but only a foot deep, a cold water spring ran through. Butter, milk, juices and wines, there were dozens of small and large jars gently pushed by the water but resting in variously positioned racks sat over the water. Some were wider, deeper, others were both opposites, still there was a place for other sized jars or bottles to nest.
An air-tight metal container bobbed close by the grate water flowed out, through the wall down a drain, and Julia pointed at it. "Dinner. Yours mind, I can't eat that stuff." She said with a twitch of disgust in her voice and at her nose.
The third floor down was like the freezer, where the pantry was like a refridgerator, and blocks of ice had sat against salt rock blocks at the outside. The ice more or less had formed a wall together from the blocks over time, looking to sag and drip from the thermal processes and exchanges in the room as heat sept in. Frozen meat and fish, butchered and salted.
Solid stone surrounded it, as it had been carved into, and you had to crawl into the freezer through a fairly low and narrow tunnel. Both sides of it had a metal hatch, one you closed quickly behind you both ways, lever handled doors outside but rotary handled on the inside of the tunnel. Replacing this ice every year was surely fun.
The second floor below ground was all foods and drinks, some dry food, but mostly just barrels, crates, jars. Barrels of oil, salt, sugar, vinegar, a few barrels had beers and wines or brandies inside. Others had flours and grains, cereals. The crates were mostly filled with jars and bottles themselves, some had dry produce inside instead, roots and nuts, or dried fruits drenched in honey and covered in salt beds filled still others.
The large jars had fine oils, flavored vinegars, wines, sauces and pickles. Many of those large jars filled the outer edge of the room, long stores, and lards, pemmicans, butters and honey filled these. They were real gold, the fat of the land, high fat foods that lasted a long time and would preserve you like nothing else. One single heavily used barrel nearest the ladder down was marked grease.
Not my handwriting, too well formed and carefully printed for that. Julia, or more scary than a woman you know but shouldn't know that's labelled things in a home you didn't know you were sharing with her twelve centuries, even more scarily my subconscious side might have never felt any negative emotions and had it's own unique handwriting by extension. Julia indeed informed me it was my markings and scribings and writings.
Most were.
Pretty much everywhere we had clothes there was a left side for mine and the right was hers, besides that we each had a cupboard where our personal effects were. Dining utensils, coats and cloaks, knickknacks and the things that were personal to us. Hers was brimming, full, diverse with things that were sentimental.
In mine there was a few things me and my subconscious mind readily agreed were personal and sentimental.
By that point I waited to study them and heard Julia out, she'd waited for me to acquaint myself, I didn't need to familiarize with it long to perfectly recall all I'd seen as it was. All of me could sense I'd been here and been part of this place more than words could shake a stick at.
I was consciously home, too, then. Subconsciously I'd never left.