PARALLAX
Chapter XVI
THE GODS OF GHOST RIVER
“Thought you were only just a shadow,
But you were all light.”
- Drab Majesty, Cold Souls
I have no recollection leaving the fissure… nor comprehension of dimension as I plunge through the great, cold expanse. Just dull sharpness and the sensation of air exiting my lungs, as my back cracks against the slickrock… That frigid bite ignites the nerves in my skin, the disquieting warmth in the pit of my chest gathers, as my eyes adjust to that galactic arm of stars slicing through the deep midnight-blue of the uncaring sky.
There is no Riley… he is nobody, no more than a ghost strung together into a tapestry of organic molecules. Yet, there’s ache, the perception of temperature, the rhythm of blood pushing through my arteries, changes in pressure as the rush of desert wind registers upon my ears. Is this enough to make me… Riley? A collection of chemical electrical signals somehow discerning an incessant stream of stimuli… the bar seems low… insignificant compared to the writhing chaos… the true nature of things. I lay paralyzed by the vastness of it all, no sense of time, no motivation to find purchase on the mechanics of my own body. Apart… yes, no longer tied to the continuous beat that the human world pulses to. Or could this be fleeting?
My mind, upon the return from Yoo’O, has a strange fullness to it… something inexplicable, awareness of events and circumstances beyond what, me a person, should comprehend. Urgency builds within my gut, the certainty of a presence lingering beyond my line of sight, that strange dark comfort. I cannot bring myself to look at her, recognizing that one glance will release me from my soothing state of incapacity.
“Navan’yu?”
No slight vibrations from the earth, just her canonic stillness. Gathering knowledge from the unknowable… she’s without doubt, there… motionless, waiting… for me. Languishing for a few seconds more, I pull myself from the hard ground to face the great black apparition. That same pillar of bitterness, so familiar to me all those months before, yet there’s more. Not a Great Spirit, something infinite, the cosmos is she, and she is the cosmos, all light, enveloped by all-encompassing shadow. That fierce expression, those orbs trapping the moment the universe was born, The Eye of Creation, a fraction of a second when incomprehensible silver illumination tore through the fathomless nothing, now intact in that haunting mercury gaze.
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Yet, there’s something disjoint, Navan’yu, the conscious manifestation of the total cosmos, somehow found herself bound to this lonely little world spinning around an average, bland, medium-sized star… there’s no rationale to it. A piece of the account missing… a vacancy… yes, a void as gaping as any super-massive black hole, noticeable only by its sheer absence…
“The thing you are… there was once another…” my voice falters as I comprehend the sheer scale of the Mistwalker’s being, “Two… a dyad.”
The Great Singularity
“It’s damaged…. all things… the universe… crumbling… without the other part,” I press my fingers into my temples, “You... an element of the whole… need me… to right it… somehow…”
Patience
Invariable
Lines Intersect
Impendence
The towering dark beast takes to the twinkling night, leathery wings pounding rhythmically, a drumbeat to the dead wilderness. Now, in my mind, less akin to wings and more sweeping particles bending, unbound by the rules of physics that my sad existence is governed by. An immense strain fills the fibrous tissues of my shoulders… a symptom of a weight no man should bear…
•••
Baby Cakes sits abandoned upon the overlook, the purple glow on the horizon signals the coming arrival of the morning sun. Pulling myself up the rock face, I find an empty sickness lingering in my stomach, a manifestation of a feeling not dissimilar to anguish. Balling up against the rusting muscle car, I shake, paralyzed by my aching soul. Guidance lost, my body relinquishes itself to autopilot: stepping into the vehicle, switching on the engine, driving down the empty road, depressing the brake pedal at a quiet stop sign, cruising through Main Street, turning left into the Nautilus, and coming to a stand still in the all too mundane parking lot.
An unsympathetic universe decaying into entropy, and somehow I’m elected to remedy it… I wouldn’t pick me… Sinking into my seat, I’m despondent, unable to move or think. The numbness spreading to my extremities, until a chance glimpse out the passenger-side window into the gas station lot returns me to the now. Red Feather’s four-cylinder bike, wine hued, polished and waxed, sits alone… too early for her usual routine, as a proven creature of the night. Curiosity gets the better of me, I leave Baby Cakes and make my way to the door… To my surprise, it’s unlocked…
Peew-do!
The door chime rings sinister in my ears as I look to the counter. Aria Red Feather rests against the glass top, head buried in her hands, taking shallow breaths followed by unsettling rasping sobs.
“Hey, hey, what’s going on?” I approach the register, stretching out my hand to comfort her.
She lifts her head, manicured eyeliner smeared into a wet ashy paste, “He’s dead… Al’s gone…”