Awakening

[DoS Archive]

From: cullynapbedwyr@aol.com (Cullyn ap Bedwyr)
Date: 08 Feb 2002 14:42:47 EST

::
Awakening in a strange place, his mind so ablaze with unspeakable mysteries as to preclude any hope of speech or even thought, the man gropes toward a feeble hold on sanity. At the instant of his waking he is aware of all, his mind stretching over miles and dimensions and worlds and touching all things and all peoples. With each tortured breath into lungs unused for an unknowable space of time the visions fade and the far flung sphere of his mind
contracts a little more.

For a time which is immeasurable to the man but which would appear to any passersby to last a few hour the man lies in a muddled heap upon the floor, alternating between tears of joy at the surpassing loveliness and wisdom of his knowledge and sobs of rending grief at his loss of understanding.

In time, his vision veiled to a mortal light and his mind curled upon itself in a tattered fabric of half remembered truths and misty memories, the man crawls, first to his knees and then to his feet. As he moves he feels the stretching of muscles and tendons unused in what seems an eon, while within his now fragile body organs labor with pallid determination. His mind still numb from the cauterizing experience of a godlike wisdom evaporating into
the shallow pool of mortal thoughts he looks around seeking to associate some bit of memory or scrap of lore with the place in which he now resides. A series of structures adorned with ropes and set in colorful sand meets his eyes, though no comprehension lights his mortal orbs. Tattered banners and gaudy trinkets festoon the walls like a celebration of some unspeakable carnival, but the man makes no sense of the sigils and seals set thereon.

As time passes he searches his thoughts as best he can, seeking to understand where he can go or what he must do, and why he has come to this place. Memories flash behind his dark grey eyes, incomprehensible but producing great floods of emotion within his breast.

A woman with fiery hair and a lithe step whirls past, a bearded man fiercely plunges an odd blade into another man's chest, a pillar of smoke billows across a ruined plain. The memories accelerate as if pushed to some unknown conclusion by an unseen hand. A small and fragile woman with dark hair and pale skin smiles and rubs her swelling belly, a cloaked man thunders a spell, cold snow and a flaming pyre and above all, and through all, a child's
face, unknown but familiar, shining brightly through a cool mist.

At last the man begins to recover shreds of memory patched together with shattered dreams and wrapped in strings of every imaginable emotion. He recognizes dimly that this place is not unknown to him, that somehow he has contended here for some prize or gift, unknown though it may be. He staggers to the stairs and climbs laboriously up them
until he is able to reach the door and vanish into the night which smothers the world outside in a dreamless pallor.

As he wanders the streets, not even recognizing that he is unclothed and cold, he passes building after building, seeing the fires burning merrily within and hearing the shouts and murmurs of countless lives as they pass him by. At last, his mortal body burdened by cold and hunger and weariness, his mind still blasted with sensation and his memories and thoughts pockmarked by gaping holes, he pauses near a stout iron gate set in a stone wall.
heedless of the gaze of the imposing warriors who guard this edifice, he slumps with his back against the nearby wall and closes his eyes. His untried senses tingle with a familiar feeling but his tormented mind is incapable of making sense of these feelings, and so he simply sits, as the guards eye him with menace and the cool wind blows across his weathered face.
::