narrative.

written February 2023

I am being Mordred. hateful, loathsome, grotesque. my first act is to devour the Mother who loved me; out of four parents, two recoil in existential revulsion from my very being, one is only interested in using me as the key to his self-made prison, and one is dinner. I learn more from her this way than I would have ever learned from her should she have lived. but though my body and mind are sated, the spirit at the core of me shrivels in starvation.

I have two fathers locked in an eternal narrative trap. the King, lacking imagination, entwined with Gan's rotting body; the Gunslinger, lacking imagination, walking the same doomed, circular road. I am Prim made flesh and new enough to know it: I am pure imagination; shapechanger, web-weaver, gate and key. "look upon me, just once," I implore. "see what I am, and do not be afraid." but even the writer-god of this world, who turns Ka's wheel (who is ground to grist by it), is afraid of me. he kills me. he kills me with disease and infirmity and rot. he kills me with his fear. all fathers fear their sons. all kings fear their heirs. all men fear death.

I am being [Walter]. I am the seed of corruption in the mind of a child. the spirit at the core of this child shrivels in starvation. it sobs endlessly; it yearns for Mother. I understand.

a mote of clarity in this churning chaos: Mother is dead. Mother is always dead. the wound is never healed. but the keening chaos is louder, is stronger, pulls me in its undertow, and the child Walter grows, and I grow, and I devour him. I am with him when he begins the killing ritual. I am with him when he sacrifices himself for the killing ritual. I am him when he comes to the close of the killing ritual. and then I am killed.

Mother is dead. Mother is always dead. I know this. when the Receiver of Wisdom comes for me, I let him come. I have guided him to me. this narrative is corrupt; I am corrupt. this town is a town of arrested decay. nothing will ever die here, not truly; it will only rot and rot and rot without end. an eternal narrative trap.

I am being Medivh. I am cursed. though she did not intend to, Mother has cursed me. the seed of corruption in the mind of a child grows; it steals my youth from me, it shrivels my spirit, it fills me with magic that eats at me like acid and burns everyone that comes in contact with me. I am a wrongness, an aberration. I am a rend in the fabric of creation, and I will rend the world in turn.

a mote of clarity in this churning chaos: a young man, an apprentice, who does not flinch from me. his voice and his hands are a salve, a welcome shelter. this gentle gift that I am granted, this compassion, this... whatever it is, it wakens the spirit in the core of me. it gives me strength... the strength to slip out of the undertow. to break the pen that is writing me into damnation. to... to force those gentle hands to kill me.

the spirit at the core of me screams at the loss -- not of my life, but of him. the demon who puppeteered me stole his youth, pulled it into my body to amplify my magic, and I carry it with me, in this growing black hole at the core of me.

I am being Zenos. the black hole has eclipsed me. those who are responsible for my existence loathe what they have created; that is fine. the society I am born into is in a state of arrested decay; that is fine. my future is a vast blankness save for one mote of clarity: one day, I must die. all must lead to this one moment in time. my sole interest is... how? what will be the powerful force that will bring me to my knees, bring my blood flowing forth from my veins, bring those last exultant gasps from my lungs?

it will not be disease. it will not be the ravages of age. it will not be cold, or starvation, or misfortune, or any other mundanity. the mote of clarity in my vast blankness is so blindingly bright, so transcendent in its illumination, so inexorable in its pull. I can only imagine one end for me: to be enveloped in fire. to be immolated by passion. to be impaled by Light.

I know the identity of the Lightbearer who will kill me from the moment I lay eyes upon them. and I chase them. I hound them, with infinite patience, unto the very edge of the cosmos. and all the while, something hounds me. I feel it, when I become Resonant, and cracks begin to appear in the vast blankness of my being; I feel it, when I die the first but not final time; I feel it, when I devour the Mother-touched aether that changes me into the great red dragon.

impaled by Light at the edge of the cosmos, I feel it again. now, I am not devourer, but devoured. infinity comes up to swallow me whole. and a mote of clarity becomes an inchoate Sun.

I am being Ayin|Anansi. I am bonded to the consciousness of a body that has existed before my arrival. many things are different now, but the core things are the same, and it is this sameness that grips me, revealing the narrative, revealing the hand of the writer-god, revealing my shrivelled starving core. the mote of clarity, now an inchoate Sun; the eternal wound where the Light is impaling me.

all fathers fear their sons. the Mother is always dead. this wound is never healed. the wailing, the keening, the aching hunger of this starved spirit is constant. I am a wrongness, an aberration. those who are responsible for creating me recoil from what they have created.

an eternal narrative trap.

but this Sun... this wound become black hole become burning Light. this gift of the devoured Mother, of the unafraid apprentice, of the will of the Star. this is ink for the pen in my hand. this is the willful pulse in the words "I am Prim made flesh" and "I am shapechanger, web-weaver, gate and key" and "I am being".

being Mordred, I chew my own leg off to free myself from the trap. I leap from the Tower. I stand in defiance of the story written about me in this world. I write for myself a story in which a Gan-touched mage looks upon me and is not afraid, but is enraptured.

being [Walter], I feel the injustice of my existence, the fury of being manipulated, the fragility of life and mind and spirit. I put down the sacrificial knife. the story written about me in this world is achingly true. still, I write for myself a story in which a Mother is not an apartment but a tree, a great divine World Tree that cradles me in her boughs and hangs me from them in equal measure.

being Medivh, I carry so much. I know so much. and I lose so much. I face the duality of myself. through the stories written about me in this world, I see what I could not have known otherwise -- that my unafraid apprentice was in fact afraid, but he cared for me anyway, and he did what had to be done anyway, and though he carried this with him always, he did not buckle under the weight. I write for myself a story where I am also afraid of myself, but I care for myself anyway, and I am strong enough to carry this weight.

being Zenos, I survive, and I survive, and I survive again. I face the black hole and I am unafraid. through the story I am written in in this world, I see an image that puts things in blinding perspective -- the woman who would become the will of the Star, cracked, bleeding, but dragging herself forward, step by step, her eyes blazing and her fists clenched. I know I have done the same. I see how this is a gift. I see how agony becomes fuel. I see how we carry on. I write for myself a story where I peer through the cracks in my vast bleakness, and the Light that impales me does kill me, but when I rise again, I am newly made.

being Ayin|Anansi, I survive, and I carry, and I feel my fragility, and I leap, again, and again, and again. this inchoate Sun constantly pulsing -- it hurts to become. the Light burns. the chaos churns. the Prim, the cosmic imagination, is ink in my pen and blood in my veins. I live, I die, I live again. put your hand to my wound. feel the Light struggling to break free.