In Upper Uxmal, where promenade leads to groves of market stalls, spice rich scents waft through ragged canopy over local product of craft and cook. Grilled meats, smoked subsea fish, and dried fruits rouse the appetite. Fresh ground rakwheat pastries of sweet and savory variety, sprinkled with raw salt flakes to delight young and old alike. Sky-bright beaded tapestry hung over deep red earthen stoneware draw the eye, and buskers of mixed ability compete for the ear of passerby. The atmosphere is excited to near unbearable extremes by jostling bodies in the cramped sun-drenched alleys weaved through dwellings carved directly into cliff and mesa. Within the chaos of the market, a middle-aged woman plies her craft from humble storefront. Gleaming handicraft brooches, diadems, and Ayatan simulacrum sparkle in the light of the rising Martian sun.
Her shop boasts some celebrity within the market, and she herself is oft touted amongst her peers as a craftswoman of well repute. Gem setter, gold spinner, and light weaver. The craftswoman is envy and inspiration to all who share her field, and in even number are those vying for her guidance and wares.
But what others do not know, is that every night, it takes the entirety of her will to not simply set her shop aflame. To not shatter tool and trade in self-destructive frenzy and run headfirst into the night, never to return.
For as marvelous as her creations are, they are mere imitations of the visions she seeks to produce. The gulf between dream and reality so vast, she can not help but fall deeper into the despair within the gap, and the guilt she finds there leads inward, away from the world.
Even from a young age, she has always been driven to higher ideals.
When she had but barely learned to wield speech, she successfully finished her first clumsily set oilpearl necklace, and her parents praised her natural talents.
When she was a child, she won the regard of a local dignitary in a contest between other young aspiring craftsmen, and her parents placed the icon of her victory upon their familial altar.
When she was a teen, her handwoven silk dress dotted with grains of luminescent stone was selected as the design for the district's Yuvan tribute to wear for their ascension, and her parents wept over how blessed they were to have a daughter of such skill.
When coming of age, her miniature Ayatan was ranked fourth out of nearly 2000 applicants in the local sector, and she switched her palms with fan-reed until she bled.
When she at last crossed the threshold of adulthood, she failed to meet the deadline for a commission accepted by her parents on her behalf, and fled with a trade caravan into the night.
'Why?' she asks herself.
'Why can I see in such stark detail that which I want to create in my mind's eye, but these clumsy fingers, these imprecise hands, so incapable of bringing the visions in front of me?'
The finest synthetic gems, n-pointed facets carved to micron precision by solar forge assembly lathe to ideally capture and refract light matching the gem's setting. Perfectly latticed goldvine drawn fiber by fiber across metal loom and strung as silk-soft cord through symmetrical gallium rings, embalmed in liquid diamond and hardened to ideal rigidity based on where the joint rests upon the wearer. Filigree silver illumination engraved to the finest detail upon every bare surface, with lifelike images of old-earth and dreams of far-flung suns present at scale only viewable with appraiser's loupe. Wafer-thin breaks between disparate parts, where even micro-engraving dare not venture, etched with chemically induced grooves arranged in Orokin high-script, writing poetry in reverence of love and life, to never be read.
It is the craftswoman's ideal that the visible finality of a thing is not enough. To have even one aspect of the whole be imperfect, to be lacking beauty and craft? Unacceptable. It was her duty to create a form of total, absolute perfection. Her pride would not allow her to sell something with a possibility unrealized still festering within.
But no matter how intricate and ornate her creations were, she would always find that stain of imperfection just beneath the surface.
A chemical brush stroke, off by a tenth of a degree. Gold loom fabric, with two crosswoven strands where she had failed to maintain ideal speed and balance. Suspended light-coil, a mere lumen below the max output of its semblant parts. Utterly unnoticeable to most, but agonizing to she who knew it was there.
As the years wore on, the depths of her self-deprecation seemed endless. Lower and lower she would sink, and more toxic would her thoughts become. Her days became torpor, and her nights, terrifying.
For in those depths she had dredged something horrible. A nightmare that perpetuated the cycle she was trapped in and threatened its realization with each rising of the sun.
Every night, the same dream.
She would find herself on a grand stage, surrounded by countless faceless onlookers. She could not see them individually, blinded as she was by the sourceless light upon the stage, but knew there was no familiarity among them. All the same, she knew their regard of her mattered more than anything else in the world, and in the next moments she could lose it all.
For she was the finalist in a competition of cosmic import. She and her opponent, the last remaining contestants of a challenge that had lasted thousands of years. Her final piece was a figurine, though of whom she can never remember. The figurine, the apex of her work, intricately affected down to atomic detail. Electrons painted in shifting prismatic hues, whirling through floral scented gulfs around glistening cerulean neutrons. Each atom dictated to vibrate in patterns that subconsciously inspire thoughts of spiral nebulae, and the spaces between could be recounted on quantum Voidgraph to transcribe the notes of the favorite song of the beholder.
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While the figurine itself was only a fraction to scale at roughly a foot in height, it was obscured by a massive curtain trailing up into the infinite black beyond the island cast in the spotlight. Across the stage, similar veil obscured both her competitor and the piece they too had come to present.
In agonizing silence, she waited for the master of ceremonies to finish his speech before revealing the winner. Tears preemptively welled in her eyes, preparing for the joy or tragedy that would soon follow.
For what seemed like hours, the announcer preached to the audience the merits of the contestants, though any specifics of his speech were lost on the craftswoman. The blood rushing through her head dropped all sound to deafened tones.
At last, through blurred vision, she saw the man wheel flamboyantly from the crowd to face her and her competitor. His smile dominated his face, eyes obscured by the ostentatious headpiece he wore. Though hidden, she could still feel his gaze upon her, like a beast observing prey. With a grand sweeping motion, he gestured for the curtains to rise, and at last sound returned to the craftswoman's world.
"Ladies and gentlemen of all ages! Your revelation!"
The curtains were drawn upwards into the impossible dark, unveiling the two finalist's pieces. On the craftswoman's pedestal, her figurine.
And on her opponent's…
The same figurine.
In horror the craftswoman looked up and met her own gaze. Except the woman she faced was perfect. The idealized form of what she aspired to be, from the physical to the immaterial. At a glance it was obvious, though no one detail could be pointed to as indicator. Something about
the way she carried herself. The way she radiated confidence. The way she smiled back at her lesser self.
And matching its creator, her figurine was similarly perfect. An imperceptible improvement compared to the craftswoman's. Something buried deep within the quantum net, but utterly consequential. It glowed with the radiance of something truly divine, and required no judge to discern its superiority.
The crowd erupted into applause. From the deafening roar of the audience, she could tell it numbered thousands, millions, perhaps even more.
Louder and louder the audience screamed, and the stage began to shake. She covered her ears as the sound overwhelmed her. Her lesser figurine toppled, crumbling unceremoniously into dust as soon as it fell upon the marble stage. Her ears began to bleed, and though she could no longer hear the audience, she could feel them all the same. The stage itself, too, succumbed to the cacophony, and through widening fissures in the floor she caught brief glimpses of something unspeakable staring back.
Though at first cheers of joy and support for the victor, the audience began to shift to screams with a wild, primal malice, directed solely at her.
"A shame." Though deaf, she could hear the announcer's voice in her head. Not speaking, still smiling, with lips pulled so taut the roots of his gums were visible.
"We would hate to see all that talent gone to waste."
And as she lay curled on the floor, weeping at her ultimate failure, ruptured ears trickling blood through quivering fingers, she at last saw the audience rush forward from the dark. Eyes hungry and full of hate.
But just before they descend upon her, she wakes.
This nightmare of imperfection haunts her. Plagued by the visions, she stares into the darkness of her bedchambers late into the night to avoid its inevitability. In the bitter morning light, stumbling red-eyed into her workshop, she can only regard her masterpieces with utter contempt. Grudgingly, she parts with them for a fraction of the labor price, barely stopping herself from outright shattering the works against the cold stone floor.
Forbidding herself from truly thriving with her craft, she continues to sell works of stunning beauty to patrons for barely enough coin to continue her work. Often she goes without food, instead spending her funds on further materials.
And you too must realize, that surely this lifestyle is untenable? Surely she must eventually find a way to move forward, or worse, succumb to her own brutal self destruction?
But alas, it is not to be. She toils there to this day. Ever creating, never content.
But do not weep for her, for in the end she is of little importance. The entirety of her existence shall eventually become as dust, like the masterpiece from her dreams. More valuable than anything she will ever design in waking is the intangible she creates. The thin threads weaved between bodies when meeting and parting once more. The same threads that linger in the actions born of thought carried out by all beings. These threads entwine, becoming as pathways between the histories of all things. Growing into towers, doorways.
Walls.
Once, a scholar of little renown would pass through her doors, having visited from a nearby excursion organized by his collegiate. He would purchase a pair of rubedo earrings for a woman he was courting at the time. The craftswoman would forget his visit as soon as he left the shop, and the scholar too would think only of the interaction tangentially a scant few times throughout his life when reminiscing of the visit to Uxmal.
But in this brief moment the two became entangled, like gold weave upon metal loom.
In another time and place, the scholar would dream vividly of the craftswoman. He would see her hunched over worktable, teeth grit and tear stained cheeks flushed crimson as she labored over yet another unmatched work of art. He would see her raise the final product in trembling hand, and watch her face contort, painted in a myriad of unreadable emotions.
For minutes, she remained completely still.
And then, she set the piece upon nearby table and began the process once more.
When the scholar woke from this mundane dream, he would experience the briefest moments of unfathomable sorrow. But in that transition from sleep to waking, this emotion would fade, and so too would the dream itself be immediately forgotten.
Almost as if it had never occurred at all.
Never at all [https://i.imgur.com/Ru6buIp.png]