he makes a quiet noise under his breath, eyes rolling for a moment. ‘ i was just … ‘ and the words die on his tongue, muscle in his jaw working as he efforts to swallow them. he had been worried, for a moment, that it had been the same. he heard ex altiora was burned. there had been … a fear, low and uncertain, in him, then, worried it might have escaped with the burning of the book. but he will not give the spiral the satisfaction of another ounce of fear, from him. ( if nothing else, it is not something he can feel, here. it is drowned out, by the song of the infinite, rocking him gently in its hold. stating that this, too, is insignificant, when it comes to the scope of things. )
for a moment, the curious part of him wonders. wonders what he might have been, if he had given into the spiral, given into all those dreams of hallways that could not be, had stepped into one too many of those impossible doors left for him. ( he supposes that was the lichtenberg figure’s mistake. it got … greedy, in its torment of him. it could have taken him at any point - when he was frozen in the throes of sleep paralysis and it stood over him, when he was fifteen and creeping out into the garden with his heart in his throat, through a gate that wasn’t meant to be there. ) imagines the fractals on his skin consuming him, and grimaces at the thought of it.
‘ perhaps i was choosing not to hear, ‘ he states, the wind billowing through the sheer white shirt he wears. ‘ even if i had, i doubt i would ever have gone to it. ‘ he shakes his head, almost … wryly. ‘ not when everything i have ever done was to escape it. ‘
( a worse choice. really, it isn’t wrong. mike’s legs are covered still with the scars of what had been infected insect bites, a painful mess of stings and pus that had him almost begging them to amputate. )
the distortion flings its limbs out to pinwheel through the air, and he can’t help it, laughing despite himself as he leans back, breathing in the air that flows too quickly around them, feeling free, even with the headache of a creature next to him. he’s aware of its eyes tracing him, and wonders if it can see through to where his bones were twisted and wrong, all marked for the spiral, wonders if it can see the places where even today, it feels as though it continues past his skin. ( he doesn’t trace the lines anymore. he will not fall into that trap again. )
he shrugs at that. ‘ i haven’t made my mind up, ‘ he states honestly. ‘ i could just leave you here, but … well, it’s impossible to open a door from the vast, or for there to be one, here, so i am almost certain you could. could just drop you, but i’m not sure it’d be satisfying enough. ‘ he eyes its smile with a raised eyebrow. ‘ maybe i’ll just let you go. ‘ ( he doesn’t enjoy talking to it, after all. he wonders if it can fear at all. if feeding off of a thing of the spiral would feel like that burning electricity, that dizzy nausea. )
michael crew grimaces and the creature which was once, and yet never has been, michael shelley throws its head back and cackles with a shrieking delight. as protected as he is here in the vast, surrounded by sky and air and sky again, the memory of the lichtenberg figure still lingers. it is not especially funny, even to michael, but still it laughs just for the enjoyment of the thing. because mike crew’s thoughts turning to the fractals, envisioning what they could have done to him, what he could have been, lingers in the open space like the aroma of a far-off meal. michael cannot feed on this but delights in its presence all the same. its laughter twists and curls and it hopes that the sound reaches down into the impossible patterns marked on mike crew’s flesh, down to his bones to bubble in his marrow. it hopes he feels the pin-prick in each and every one of the places where he has been marked.
“you certainly went out of your way to avoid it, although i have to wonder how much of it was worth the price you paid. how did it feel, reaching into yourself with viscera? twisting skin and bone and scar tissue, only to discover more and more fractals the further in you reached? it sounds quite dreadful to me, all that pliant, human flesh. but at least there was something beautiful and senseless beneath, hm?”
few people have survived even half as much as mike crew has, and for this the distortion can admire him. in its own way. viscera, the crawling rot, it is not what it is -- to have encountered and evaded each in turn before finally answering the call of the falling titan, the promise of a descent which never ends, a world in which he need never hit the ground, is an admirable legacy of survival. stupid, desperate, human survival.
he had more chances than michael shelley ever did, at any rate, under the distant, useless tutelage of it knows you. a shame that michael shelley is too dead to appreciate, to fully know, the joy of being unknowable now. a shame that the distortion is too much michael shelley to delight in its own elusive not-being.
“you could,” it answers, not specifying to which option it refers. “i could fall through a door as easily as through the air. and i am not sure your master would appreciate my presence for very long. it might find me intrusive.”
