[ 014 - Thoughtstream ]
The walls are seemingly cut from shadows, jagged and black and lightless. They rise from floor to ceiling uninterrupted by cavernous mouths, and allow precious little wind to seep in from the hole far, far, far above your head.
It's not home, this dark little shell that has been carved out of Gaia's crust, but it is as close to one as you've ever known. It's where you sucked in your first breath of fresh, mountain air. It's where your ears had first absorbed the sound of crying from your brother Loz, where you had first witnessed the zealous fire that danced in Kadaj's eyes, felt his ardent love and reverence for Mother.
It is where you first found purpose.
There is snow at your feet now, newly fallen and fresh, not a spot marred by footprints, familial or otherwise. Your breath does not form a whispy cloud before your eyes despite the sub-zero temperature. It can mean only two things.
First, you are alone.
Second, you're not really there at all.
At the latter realization you notice a twining green length of energy reach up through the snow before you. It's slow, arching back, and then toward you, and another tendril follows it, springing up gradually from the side. Followed by another...and still another...until the vivid and crystalline glow inundates you, overtakes you completely.
Lifestream.
It's cold, and it stings your flesh, except that you don't have flesh...or thought you didn't. But there, extended before you, through slitted eyes that are narrowed in concentration, frustration, and pain, you can see a hand. Your hand. Reaching out, trying to grasp something, perhaps to keep from being pulled into eternal uselessness.
You reach, and reach, and reach until you're certain if you push any further your arm will tear itself free of your body and float away, but that's when you feel it. Between your fingers, silken and soft, twisting around them and flowing in long, wavy lengths.
It comes closer to you, and soon you can feel flesh press against your leather-clad palm. It's firm, but smooth, without imperfections. Closer, and you cradel it against your chest, arms folding about it. Its eyes look up into your own, bright and glassy, as though the life could never leave them...but they do not blink. They are still.
And from the severed neck at the base of the head you are holding you feel warmth pour down your front, over your lap...
...it stains the ground.
The ground. No longer white with snow, no longer the blinding green of the Lifestream, but that of the Mist shrouded Ruins in Anatole...where you had first met her.
Luciela.
Mother.
Beneath you your legs give out and you crumple to the gray earth at your feet. Your fingers curl and clench in Luciela's long auburn hair, caress her pale cheeks in an attempt to coax life back into them, but she does not stir. She is not staring at you, not staring through you...simply staring.
"Mother? Mother?" You shake her, and then you begin shaking yourself, shoulders trembling uncontrollably, sobs racking your body. Of course, she does not respond...
"MOTHER!!!!"
...then you awaken, and you remember nothing.
[ ooc: Well, he's back...but I'm still on hiatus with him until May. More of a semi-hiatus, however, as I do intend to hit a couple things, but not much...mostly just to establish that he doesn't remember any of you! Because his death penalty was forgetting Anatole for 3 days, and recovering memories slowly over the next 4 thereafter! Any questions, hit me up on Plurk or AIM or via PM. ♥ ]