After my daughter left, I remained seated in the shrine for some time. Exactly how long, I had no idea. I simply sat there, my mind going in circles, questioning every word I had said, wondering about the things I could have explained differently, asking myself if there had been a better way to give Carnelia the news. There were so many possibilities, so many nuances that could have been communicated in other ways or given a greater focus, and each of those possibilities spiralled into an entirely different conversation and overall message. But whether any of those possibilities would result in an objectively better result, I had no idea. I didn’t even know what such an ‘objectively better’ result might look like, as it all depended on Carnelia’s condition once she returned.
And she would return; there couldn’t be any other option. No other option was acceptable, even if I was well aware that those options existed. I did my best to ignore them, to the point of actively deceiving myself, which was a fascinating experience in and of itself. A part of my mind was working hard to push idle thoughts and ponderings from other parts of my mind, or even those that bubbled up from my subconscious away, all to keep me from actively considering them. It was fascinating but also disturbing. The disturbing nature of this mental state was made even more apparent when I started to become interested in the process, as my interest caused more thoughts to bubble up from my subconscious mind, pushing the censorious part of me into overdrive. The more I thought about the things I didn’t want to think about, the more my mind had to work to keep me from thinking about these things. It was, quite frankly, starting to give me a headache, so it might be best to focus on other things, which might be another part of the defensive mechanism enacted by my mind, using pain to dissuade me from pursuing this line of thought.
So, instead of chasing the increasingly morbid possibilities that might leave Carnelia unable or unwilling to return, I focused on the certainty that she would return, and we could try to handle the issue.
Given that I had no idea if breaking the bond was possible without breaking Carnelia, I focused on the idea I had earlier. To transfer the bond from me, the mortal being, to one of the divine aspects I was apparently forming. After all, Jade Morgana was the Mother, while at the same time being the Pale Lady. All three were me, but only Jade Morgana had a physical body, at least as far as I was aware. That would, logically, mean that the Mother and the Pale Lady were non-physical, unbound to any location on Terra. Or on Mundus, for that matter. They could be present wherever people knew about them, at least that was my understanding of divinity, so if I could transfer the bond from the physical being Jade Morgana to either of these divine beings, they would always be with her, leaving her independent of my physical being.
There’d obviously be other challenges; it wouldn’t be an easy, immediate fix. Part of the binding was based on the ingestion of my blood, and the use of my blood to nourish Carnelia, an exchange my divine aspects couldn’t perform, as, obviously, they didn’t have any blood. It was part of the whole deal as non-corporeal entities, but given that these were divine aspects, I was hoping to find a way around it.
Another problem was that I had no idea how to interact with my own divine aspects, let alone take control of them. Or influence them in any way, and I was fairly certain there had to be some sort of interaction, control or influence to transfer the binding.
Shaking my head, I closed my eyes and turned my entire attention inwards. Not to my physical state and my body, nor to the mental landscape I used to conceptualise my mind, I tried to look deeper. The soft sound of my breathing faded from my attention as I started to ignore more and more of my senses, then the faint impressions of light shining through my closed eyelids disappeared as my visual sense faded away, followed by the lingering taste of my last meal, the sensation of cloth on my skin and every other piece of information intruding in on my body from the outside. My entire body had faded from my attention, but that was only the first step; it wasn’t enough.
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The next, even more difficult, step was to let my racing thoughts fade away, to let my mind come to rest and stop thinking. One by one, I acknowledged the different thoughts swirling around within my mind. Once a thought was acknowledged, I did my best to put that thought to rest, so I could cease worrying for once. For some thoughts, that was easier, like the ongoing mental process that continuously pulled Astral Power from the Astral River, constantly replenishing my reserves. For once, that process came to a halt, leaving only the bit of Astral Power that was flowing naturally into me, which was acceptable.
Other thoughts were a lot harder to lay to rest. The worry about Sigmir’s resurrection, always present, even if mainly in a quiet, underlying manner, was a lot harder to lay down; it was so multifaceted and interwoven with other thoughts, driving home just how deep this obsession truly ran. It had, in many ways, driven me forward for almost two years, with the majority of my efforts dedicated to making it a reality.
With every thought I put to rest, I felt myself relax further, parts of my mind fading into a comfortable darkness. In a way, the darkness was yet another mental construct, but it did not contain anything; it was nothing but the void, as I could conceptualise it. For a moment, I idly wondered if somebody else might visualise the process I was undergoing, but that thought, too, faded away soon, allowing the encroaching darkness to deepen even further.
Eventually, I reached a state in which I just was. There was no thought, no sensory input; in many ways, I was reduced to a primordial state of being. Without thought or senses, there was no way to tell how long I remained in that state, or whether it faded away in an instant, as something within me began to conceptualise it into something I could comprehend.
The first thing I noticed within the void was, curiously, some gossamer-thin, pale-blue lines. I had seen the colour before, but in the state I was in, without thought or memory, I was utterly unable to place it.
Then, after the threads that seemed to provide a strangely rigid framework within the void, I noticed colours within the void. Some came flowing from behind me, spreading out around the framework, some entangled with the lines, in other places, the colours seemed to flood my senses. Some of these colours were more predominant than others; in other places, the absence of colour seemed to be strangely meaningful, as if the absence, the void, was a colour all of its own.
Eventually, I felt something in the distance, part of me but separate at the same time, close but distant, connected but separated from me by a tangle of those lines, some thinner, others thicker, like the vines of a plant that formed a dense hedge. I could get a faint impression of the other side, but details were separated from me by the hedge, concealed and obfuscated, as if a pale-blue barrier was keeping the distant parts of me away from those closer to me. In one direction, if the word direction had meaning in the state I was in, the void seemed to be deeper, but welcoming at the same time. In another direction, the void seemed to be filled with a strange, silvery-blue colour I could also feel around me, but there it was much more prevalent.
Suddenly, the void around me started to change. The colours I had seen started to blur and mix, turning muddy and indistinct; the pale-blue framework was breaking apart, and the comfortable darkness was shattering like glass.
Trying to hold onto that state, I could feel it slip through my mental fingers, draining away like water from a leaky sieve. Then, I realised that the darkness wasn’t fading due to some external factor, at least not external to me. The other parts of my being, my body and mind, were screaming at me, their state troubled enough to break through the barriers and mental occlusions I had put up while putting myself into this strange, primordial state of non-being.
My senses were in overdrive, signals of pain and discomfort screaming through my being, my mind was in utter disarray, a headache pounding in my skull as if my brain was trying to escape from my head like some alien entity abandoning a sinking ship. Everything was pain, and nothing made sense, to the point that I welcomed the oblivion that came with unconsciousness.
