Cei’er. You’ve never heard or encountered this word before, but on that night, you closed your eyes, and it entered your mind like a drop of water hitting the bottom of a well, the darkness and silence only magnifying it’s impact.
Water. You’re laying in water. Cool and still, the only ripples coming from the movement of your breathing. Only a couple of inches, reaching your ears. Strangely, not entering them. The ground is soft and spongy. Not soil, or moss, or any material you can think of. It’s just soft. And there are trees. So many of them. As far as the eye can see. baobab? mangrove? redwood? None of these. Their bark and leaves a plethora of impossible colors. There is a thin fog, filled with the tiniest motes of light, swaying to and fro in a breeze that isn’t there.
And those are the least interesting things you’re seeing.
As you lay there, staring up through the thin mist towards the eternally overcast sky, You see... Her. Twisting endlessly through the clouds. like a serpent of infinite length. You watch alabaster coils her dance and weave miles above in the sky for what feels like hours. When suddenly, one of them, an enormous pillar of white, slows, and stops. It twists and adjusts, until what could be called an ‘end’ to it emerges from the clouds, heading downwards towards you. It’s so much more immense than you thought at first. Its splits into eight, jointed ‘fingers,’ each one touching ground miles and miles away, the center of this immeasurable limb’s ‘palm’ directly above you. At it’s center, an orb, deep, deep red in color, reflects you, and the environment around you. It pulses, and a drop falls from it. The crimson droplet gets closer, and closer, directly above you. Immense in scale, the drop is still seemingly insignificant in size compared the the orb from which it came. It’s color lightens, changing rapidly from red to the same pearly white as the gargantuan tendril that housed it’s orb. Somehow this thing falling seemingly right on top of you Doesn’t fill you with the need to move out of the way. And, sure enough, the white droplet slows in it’s descent, becoming clearer and clearer by the second. It’s...
An angel. Those are the only words your mind can grasp at to describe this being as it uncurls it’s body. It is an opaque white. Unnatural, almost ethereal in color. It’s shape is like your own, but featureless. genderless, and and beautiful beyond your wildest imaginings. You know this thing must be one of Her Agents. Before you can consider why you know this and who She is and why you know of this mysterious Her, the Agent descends upon you. It’s legs end in points, rather than feet. And it strides... no, glides, weightlessly atop the water towards your unmoving form. It towers above you, eight, maybe nine feet in height. Maybe more. Maybe less. Your vision gets a little fuzzy at it’s proximity. It kneels down, and reaches into the water, taking you in it’s arms. And as it lets go, you are held in place. Incredibly close. It gently, almost as if to caress a lover, cups your face in it’s hands. It examines you, Scrutinizing your every pore, cell, atom, everything, at once looking at you, through you, and into you.Â
And then it smiles. You feel your heart. Your mind. Your soul. All melting. You love It. You loathe It. You are filled with every conceivable emotion at once as this angel, this monster, violates your very existence with a simple facial expression. It comes closer, pressing it’s warm, inviting lips to your forehead. You cannot move. You want to embrace it, and to push it away. you want to shiver in pleasure and shudder in revulsion.
It locks eyes with you. and reaches it’s hands up. You are still held in place, and you watch it gently trace a line with one index finger onto the other. As if sliced with a knife, it’s ivory skin splits open where it’s other finger traced, thick, pearlescent fluid seeping from the wound. Something deep, dark, and primal inside you says this is very, very wrong. That this isn’t a creature, a being, that should ever simply be cut. This thing just doesn’t exist in the same place as cuts and bruises.
The Agent tilt’s its beautiful, incomparably gorgeous head, and slowly, Agonizingly slowly, extends it’s finger toward you. Toward your lips. A drop of it’s blood... of Her essence, comes so, so dangerously close to you. This is the end.Â
And then the smell hits you. The smell of a god’s blood. You can see everything. You are everything. The land around you, it’s alive. The trees, the water, the universally angle-deep water, the mist, the dancing light, the clouds, the limbs in the sky, it’s all the same. This isn’t the same world you’re from. This isn’t even really a planet. It’s eternal, and it’s a complete contradiction. You’re here. It’s real. But it’s also nowhere and nothing. You’re filled simultaneously the greatest peace and the the most chaotic unease you’ve ever known. You are dead. You are alive. You are a statue, stoic and petrified and at the same time throwing a screaming tantrum. You feel like molten glass, spaghetti thin, being extruded from a machine directly into perfectly fitting holes bored into solid ice. Everything is so clear
And then you look up. Your brief god-sight pierces the mist. You look into the red orb from whence the angel came. An eye. Infinitely faceted and all-seeing. Her gaze is upon you. and she is full of love, and abject curiosity. The briefest glimmer of a thought enters your mind. She Knows as much about you and what you are and where you’re from as what you know about Her and what She is and where She’s from. Almost Nothing. She wants, no Needs you. She wants your knowledge, and whats to share hers with you.
The eye contact is frankly, kind of awkward. You move your gaze to her tendrils, swaying in the sky. Miles above where the human eye could make out, you now see.... feathers?
No. Bodies. Millions and millions of bodies, each and every one as perfect as the angel currently in front of you. Swaying, like the downy plumage of some seabird in a gentle ocean breeze. Singing a joyous choir your ears can never, ever hear.
Will you be joining them?
You look back to the Agent. It’s coy smile doesn’t wane. It’s finger, holding Her,,, ichor? Effluvia? Calling it just blood almost feels too simple. It’s tantalizingly close now. A centimeter. Maybe less.
And then, the Agent does something it shouldn’t.
It’s perfect lips part, it’s breath like mint and salty sea air, and a little of what you imagine gold would smell like if it was a confection instead of a mineral.
And It speaks.
And it’s voice Hurts.
It says one word, as gently, and quietly, and lovingly as it can. And it rips into your mind. Just this one, simple word, in your own language, heard in the voice of a being so far beyond your comprehension, Entirely destroys you. You dont even have time to catch the shock and horror on the angel’s face as it realizes what it’s done before everything twists and blurs and is yanked away from you, It’s voice tearing though you like machinegun fire though a pinata made of rice paper and filled with nitro glycerin.
And you wake up, in an ice-cold sweat. You stare at the ceiling fan of your room, as your mind readjusts itself, and you realize, it was just a vivid dream.
You feel something round, and hard, and warm in your hand, and your heart beats harder than it ever has before. You panic. Pure, animal instinct takes over and you leap out of bed and stash it into your sock drawer, burying it deep and slamming the drawer closed as quickly as possible.
Days pass. you don’t open your drawer. You try to forget that there’s anything there. You see the angel’s face sometimes. In reflections. In clouds. In vague patterns. In static and in wood grain and in anything else that can look like anything when you squint a little. That doesn’t stop you from trying to forget.
But you can’t. You need to know. What was it? what IS it? Is this how She felt? That burning need. That Curiosity. That desire to just... Know...
And then one day. You steel yourself. You open the drawer. You move the socks out of the way and what you find is...Â
A bottle. Spherical. Containing a white, pearlescent liquid. The Liquid. And there is... A stopper. of sorts. It’s warm, and seems almost alive. Stark black and white, it adheres to the neckless bottle, it’s feeling resembling the soft living ground of the not-place in your dreams. On the glass of the bottle, You know something is there.
You Know something is there.
You cannot see it. you cannot feel it. It is neither carved nor printed.
You just. Know it’s there.
