Thinking back, Paul couldn't say when it all started, when the unknown began fluttering at the edge of his prescience, teasing him like a flash of bare skin. Perhaps he first felt it when he underwent the agony. It would be fitting, he supposed, that a taste of true suffering would leave him hungry for more. Following this thought to its logical end, he considered that it was the Reverend Mother who'd done this to him, her and that other box of torment so many years ago.
Paul laughed in spite of it all, the sharp corners of the configuration digging into his palms. Perhaps that is all that life is, he mused, a series of mystery boxes, each and every one of them filled with pain.
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Coming to feyd-meowtha on AO3 this Halloween....
















