If I'd thought to sit numbly in the night trying to think things through and not panic, then the sunrise succinctly and spitefully took what little bit of stability I was trying to establish with the ruinous fragments of my mind, sundering the makeshift foundation that were my efforts.
Like one might expect to see if they were coming up from the depths of an ocean, the sky changed color from black, to darkest muave, then navy, a cerulean, quickly becoming cyan and then stopping at a seafoam. The pale-pastel green sky ended any similarity to coming up from ocean deeps.
The white-blue sun, that was one final push at my sanity. By all means it only began to reveal so much else that I was drowning in feelings of being overwhelmed. I fled as if the road I had been pointed towards the prior night might lead me back home, impossibly.
I ran under the orange-leaved trees as I failed to ignore how they were flared out and dancing, swaying the way leaves do in spring and summer. They were fall-colored, but they lacked the drying, flaking, or crispiness of leaves even nearing that season.
Grass and trees, violet grasses growing shorter in the trees shade and taller out in the open, but as for flora or fauna other than them there was neither sight or sound. Not seeing or hearing any kind of such sounds was more worrying-than-comforting, because how the hell did you survive without plants or animals to eat?
Looking at all the violet veins appearing flourescent as the suns light passed between the orange colored leaves of the trees and my eye, I was starting to worry this might be some type of world where people were photosynthetic like the plants.
Every fearful thought only initiated more sense of panic and pressure to try and escape from stresses. Then I considered the one place I might be able to do just that, and as suddenly as I had started to flee, as if from my feelings of fear themselves I stopped.
'Think. If a sunrise, and vegetation are scaring you, the more complicated unknowns will be doing more than terrifying you. Slow your heart, stretch your breath back out. You're breathing shallow, and it is only trapping you in the panic longer.'
It didn't take me long meditating as I sat on my heels, ready to bolt or fight, whichever would have felt appropriate. There weren't words to describe feeling like you might need to devolve to survive. Not one fungi, fruit, flower or bug, nor sign of any. Just trees and grasses.
I wasn't going to eat people. Most major religions and nearly every culture the earth produced had more or less understood the simple principal of Karma. But what is karma, if not also the golden-rule, whereby you do unto others as you would have them do unto you?
What were the scales of balance, if not a gauge that what you laid down on one side, you got in equal measure of value for what you wanted and all the positive and negative benefits and detriments it came with?
What was Yin-Yang but the same conceptualization symbolized as these others, that some had clearly realized the significance of how interconnected were all those things seeming like opposites? That there was an almost living, related, magnetic attraction and repulsion between such forces?
Yin and Yang were that deeper symbol nothing was pure. Even sunlight scattered, the darkest interstellar space would see distant light and have matter if more rare than pheonix feathers. It seemed if not for these 'opposites' contentions, or lack of purity, the universe would have no movement.
So I moved. It lasted a long time, that motivation of rejecting what I was experiencing. Water from a creek you could see and smell were clean, a creek running over a bed of smooth stones coated at the bottom by thin layers of a tan algae, and the first day of peace filled me.
That night though I was already repressing all the thoughts of there being no food, no survival for me here, only the potential for a path I could not walk. Winds, and light fogs, but there were no noises that even an insect made. Tree limbs and leaves, wind, then even the fog seemed to speak but nothing for food.
By sunrise the second day I had gathered algae, hoping by clearing up some of it and looking beneath I might find sign of anything in the soils or under rocks. Rather than the algae being removed clearing a place easier to spot contrast in an area of the creek, the darker rocks made it harder than the algae.
Not even a water larvae. No eggs, no bugs, just algae that smelled like silt and clay where there were neither obvious in the water. Almost as soon as it was brought out it stank like uncovered mud, that mix of wet-decay and countless microorganisms breaking down all manner of organic matters.
I didn't get to dwell on not being able to eat it though. Not long after I had gotten out of the creek and noticed none if this was going to accomplish anything or solve my problem of having naught to consume for myself, I found it was myself that was being consumed!
Worst was discovering after that when I got my hands or feet wet where that algae had touched, it seemed to spread deeper and broader into my skin. By the third day I had been following the road pointed towards me all of the time I was not stopping to drink.
If I had clothes made of a fabric given to me here it suggested there were plants it would have been grown from. If there were crops for clothes, I wanted to reason, there had to be some for food. Yet, here it may be a fallacy, to think so.
Night four until day seven; progress in my direction had become a crawl. Moisture in the air by then had already been spreading the algae infection, by the time I noticed it however I found myself thirsting less, yet hungering more by comparison.
Eating grass, the phylum between outer and inner bark of trees, constantly munching both things to preservere but then, suddenly drinking less water had been some sure sign of death. I had considered trying to carefully burn or remove the infected skin, but my hands and feet were surface covered.
The look was only like you might have red clay dried on your hands. Day eleven I went into the water. Failing to survive was one thing, extenuating your suffering in impossible endeavors was just foolish. Unlike before, flesh felt to slough off, slow and all over though like ice melting.
Crawling down a hill at that point was about all I could do, and getting too weak to get back near water or find any again and dying of thirst wasn't how I was going to go. Hot and thirsty, slowly slowing to a stop was too much. Cool, refreshed, and quick. One final dip, no need to drown because the infections process was painless.
My mind was on the (matter) all around by material body, all the earthly elements and energies around which lacked the proper forms and functions to be useful. No nutrition, but all the elements and minerals that made them up everywhere around.
What (energy) was left in me was too little. All around the trees lived without ever moving, always consuming the most elementary and yet thriving well enough on that to grow, reproduce, share energy with their sick and all hold each other up.
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It was all so (animated). Liveliness that I would not be able to capture, warmth that would not return any longer and only leave me from now on in comparison to trees. I wished for to find other humans around who might make me feel like a tree in a forrest.
Instead I was there bobbing on the current of a creek too shallow to (float) completely in or down, the water more or less resettling me constantly over the smooth rock bed, that with the waters rocking and keeping me from pressing down on weren't uncomfortable. It was comforting.
Rather than be like anything over animated anymore I wanted to be like (water). Able to move, but with less bounds. I wanted to be held down. To be forced by the sun to rise. I wanted to rest lazily and collected altogether with myself and those like me, ever in the same state as those close to me.
I surrendered to that surrendering feeling, in the spirit of Oneness. Much like water would if it froze, as if though my reflection becoming an (ice) crystal, I thought about every possible connection and for all I knew that was everyone I'd ever made as a starting point already back down to simple. The more mundane took longer.
At some point the motions of even my mind (stilled). Pressure didn't evaporate long though because I was instantly coming out of the water and feeling more heavy than ever when I did it. All the sensation of a smart 'pap' to the forehead and between the eyes.
I found myself pushing up off of the sidewalk, brain and body all over throbbing intensely with pain. Even as the veil had lifted back to my own world and I tried to stand in it, as I had started falling, I was sure at least I was closer now to life or death and didn't care which.
The nearby spray-bottle I'd collapsed upon trying to stand started leaking, and the smells of the chemicals became a sort of anchor, a sense I could inarguably hold onto and know that my bodies senses were functioning.
That much was enough to hold hope, and with some hope, I was able to slowly get up and take stock of myself. Depleted about every way, I had never felt weaker, but I got myself up with care and made my way slowly towards the entryway.
Rag and bottle in tow, both quickly dumped in the lobbies recycling, I didn't have to tell the clerk I wasn't feeling well. They were only interested in if I had been robbed or assaulted, and since I wasn't they relaxed. Still I was there for a few minutes.
I had to get a parking pass for the lot I was parked in, in order not to be towed. Then there was the ordeal of signing a waige-waiver, but that basically was worse for the small store owners who had to find replacements. 'Legalities.' I sighed, signed, then headed towards home.
I would've went to a hospital first, but, I wanted to see Kate. I wanted to have the dress for her birthday but that had to wait. Many others in the lower-middle to middle class range worked like me, utilitarians, affectionately a 'Jack-of-all-trades'.
Practicality had long been replacing us. Smart-phones, do-it-yourself-videos, 3-D printers, so much else. People could just do for theirselves most of what they wanted or needed. Was this breakdown, mentally, just my minds way of processing my inability to cope with the reality?
If I'd been repressing some things there was nothing in my life which should have amounted to all this. What kinds of pressures set off bombs in people like this? I thought while walking home, and I thought. I remembered the medicines potential side-effects with stress.
Text appeared before my eyes as if thinking about it was enough to cause hallucinations. These 'hallucinations' in my minds eye were moderately translucent, but imposed my vision too drastically to more than keep shuffling home half-blinded and half-maddened.
'Biosynthesizing. Mental-status harmonious and conducive of physical-status' attenuation. Concentrication of concentrations of powers and energies will now undergo the transformative process of Transference.
'Philosophers-Stone Actuated. Your bodies organs, glands and cells comprehensive abilities to regenerate all physical, mental, ethereal, biological and alchemical stresses and strains and resist them has increased. You will soon undergo the transformative process of Materialization.
'Chakral-Consortium Actuated. Each chakra has independent natures. Your chakras newly formed supplementing nature will act as a universal power-and-energy medium across and betwixt your chakral Esper. Magical and Etherical energy will also be more efficient when used.
'Root-Chakra: Earth-Magic and Void-Ether Actuated.
'Sacral-Chakra: Ice-Magic and Dark-Ether Actuated.
'Naval-Chakra: Water-Magic and Shadow-Ether Actuated.
'Heart-Chakra: Air-Magic and Alchemy Actuated.
'Throat-Chakra: Fire-Magic and Illusion-Ether Actuated.
'Third-Eye-Chakra: Lightning-Magic and Light-Ether Actuated.
'Crown-Chakra: Matter-Magic and Divine-Ether Actuated.
'Transference and Materialization: Sealed. Your Philosophers-Stone is currently incapable of countering at least one of the necessary stresses and strains on one or more states of its vessel, and will re-commence Astatural-Actuations when possible.
'Philosophers Stone: Sealed.'
I know she saw something in me that made her wary right off. Considering I didn't call her and she saw me walking home, hours late, with me having left my phone in the car and her unable to reach me through it she should've flipped.
I didn't even try to explain everything right off. I gave her the precursory 'stress-induced-medication-reaction' and the 'blackout with weird dreams', and 'final hallucination walking home' first. Then I showered, because though I might not have shit myself, I had gotten window-cleaner all over me.
Sleep relieved me of any feelings like the episode was ever even more than it was. The next day, I elaborated everything to Kate, and after talking about it in depth I was whole again. All of an oceans worth of weight was gone.
Instead of taking more time off that day, instead I'd called those close to me and those I hadn't talked to in years. Five days later it was friday, and by then we were laughing and joking about the experience I had that was all too distant.
The irrational fears I'd told her about, worrying I would contaminate her with some alien energy or my insane experience might have yielded real change on my psyche, those conversations were the parts she thought were the silliest and cutest.
Trying to rationalize all of the crazy to her though, how vivid it had all been, and how afraid I was became unnecessary. Firstly, because she could see I meant I'd really felt like I was dying, or else fighting to live, she didn't mock me. People had all sorts of crazy experiences due to trauma.
We'd stopped exploring into it any deeper around that time. It was the night we both found better work somewhere cheaper, quieter, and as nice. The same rurally located college had an opening for her as a full-time psychiatrist.
Her position was good as gold there when accepted, both because they wanted long-term employees and were guaranteeing her promotional position along with it when she finished school, her thesis, and graduated with her masters in psychology.
Meanwhile I was being offered a full-time position as a handler, although their trainer was also looking to see if he could find others who were good enough with animals and people to take on, then certify them himself by training those he picked from.
Walking and exercising peoples dogs and horses, grooming, feeding, cleaning behind and caring for them. Spotting when they felt off, treating what you should, telling a veterinarian about symptoms if something was over your head.
Not many had a lot of experience with both, too few who did had their own animals or clients, but most of all there was just too few people willing to work with any dog and horse that was going to be brought through. Some still would have, the money was too good.
The last stipulation was, I had to be willing to help the man in his animal control duties. Snakes, spiders, vermin, bats, birds, and whatever other wild animals happened to get him called in on theirselves. This was where most of the last had drawn their line.
A year after it happened Kate and I were together when we saw the recordings. Except I had already seen something like the 'Ethereal-Reality-Game' that had appeared as a 'Free-to- play' in every modern VR device with Independent-Immersion-Interface and Public-Pod-Ping-Point hardware.
Valkyria. A world with a pale white-blue sun, with trees that had orange-leaves, violet-grasses, and a seafoam sky. Kate and I had both had our looks then, but, my eyes couldn't have been more wide opened or my pupils more dilated unless I'd been looking at myself back there the first time.
That was the last time I'd see her for weeks but on the plus side she'd looked nice enough in the long-skirted, open-necked, salmon-pink dress then almost a year hers to hold me over on sanity awhile. I was counting my lucky stars; they all seemed to point to Kate.
Until insanities other than my own took the stage, they always had.