12/20 - Not Adel
12 / 20 / 08 - Emma
Fur. White, downy, fluffy fur, writhing and crawling in little indistinguishable balls of animated form across sight and sound and touch. Eyes and teeth and tiny, tiny claws. Power mingles with power mingles with desire mingles with fear mingles with need mingles with purpose, and a journey starts with a single step. Emma coughs and lifts her hand before her face and stares through it at the Cheshire cat dangling from a crystal lattice. Underneath the swishing tail looms a dark hole, and as she watches, the tail gently flicks out to sweep her in. The last thing she sees is the smile before sliding down the rabbit hole, and into a barren wasteland still blasted from the battle, still stained red and black and umber. Still seething and scarred.
She steps out, and the heat seers her bare feet. << Adel? >>
Adel's not here right now. If you'd like to leave a message, please begin speaking at the tone. BEEP.
The wasteland remains a wasteland, without hint of anything vibrant and alive. There's no warmth, no Adel. Even the smell is wrong. Rather than the clean ozone and saline, it smells of burnt metal and flesh. But while he is not /here/, there are hints, just vague, tantalizing hints, that seem to trail off elsewhere, where other minds feed in to the astral plane.
Emma holds still for a long moment, surveying the damage done here, carefully extending her mind behind layers and layers of defensive shielding to creep across the landscape, searching for something out of the ordinary like a pan handler standing in a mountain stream. The hints glitter like pyrite, beckoning her.
The first hint gleams brightly at Emma approaches, full of false warmth. It lies tucked beneath a drift of formless nothing, nearly buried.
Emma squats next to it and scoops her hand underneath the thread, picking it up to cradle it in her hand. She blows on it with a mental whisper, << Adel? >>
Sunlight sparkles off snow packed along the fortifications of a sloppy snow fort. Emma's laughter sounds back at her, bright and girlish and tied in direct cause/effect to the sensation of snow trickling down Adel's spine from a well-aimed snowball. But it is not Adel.
A smile dances fleetingly on Emma's lips as the memory washes over her, bittersweet and soft. She sets the glitter down carefully and scoops a handful of dirt over it to protect it from the elements. Then she stands and walks further along the path until she stumbles across another glint of gold.
The shining thread seems tossed carelessly to the side, tucked in a quieter pool, while the flow of humanity's minds washes past and over it. The edges have been worn down, gradually erasing the memory to nothing. Emotions linger, bright in Emma's mind like flavors on the tongue: a bright, lemony cheer, just a trifle acidic from obnoxiousness, with a creamy, smooth arrogance beneath, and the dense mouth-feel of triumph.
Emma leans over to stroke a finger over the golden ripple, stirring up those emotions with haunting clarity and setting them rolling across her tongue. She savors them, seeking more in their flavors--some spark of something aware and alive. << Adel? >>
Though vibrant in hue and taste, all else has faded from the memory. There are but shadow suggestions of the circumstances of Adel's obnoxious triumph in the faded outlines of figures. There is no life, and no awareness. It is not Adel. Elsewhere, something responds to the search for awareness, for Adel, shining briefly brighter across the plane, like a beacon.
Emma stands, attention caught, and with a thought is there at the point origin. The hill ringing the bowl of his destruction is quiet and dark, rushing away from her in all directions. Emma's forehead wrinkles as she looks all around her, something quiet and heavy settling on her shoulders.
At closer study, the spark of life proves an illusion. The vibrancy is borrowed from the mind in which the memory originated, a woman's mind, marked with a sunflower's easy cheer. Adel is perhaps a simpler thing reflected in this woman's mind than the man that Emma knew, his facets hidden beneath a blander facade.
Emma kicks the ground where this spark sits, and a petulant irritation drives her away from it, but only for a few steps. She stops and returns, dropping to her knees to smooth even this window into his life, however lifeless it is. << Adel... >> She hangs her head between her arms, her hair falling forward to obscure her face.
Dozens upon dozens of other minds provide as brief, as limited a glimpse into the whole of Adel's life: friends, classmates, coworkers, one-night stands (and boy, there sure seem to be a lot of those). But not one memory contains the whole, not even a reflection of the whole. They are simpler tastes and cartoon constructions of the the man that Emma knew. They are not Adel.
As Emma finds each, patiently combing the valley to uncover each speck and glint, she marks the location, weaving a gossamer-thin web of mental threads to hold them together until the valley itself looks like a spiderweb--one colored in splashes of sand and fire and night, an oasis of identity in the darkness of grief staining this part of the astral plane.
The false Adel, imagined in whole from each piece, still lacks certain fundamentals, certain truths, known only to Emma, perhaps to his brother. The strongest spark of memory is touched with the same scent of burnt metal and flesh than marked the battleground, where Bahir's mind leaks on the astral plane, even behind the tightest of shields. There is a great deal /of/ Adel there -- but it is not Adel.
Each piece, if joined, would provide the illusion of a false Adel, but would ring hollow, even so, lacking certain fundamentals, certain truths; many are known only to Emma, some are shared with his brother. The strongest thread of memory is touched with the same scent of burnt metal and flesh than marked the battleground, where Bahir's mind leaks on the astral plane. That is no thread, truly, but rather a thickly braided rope, chopped off, with ragged ends. There is a great deal /of/ Adel there -- but it is not Adel. Whatever the truth of Emma's visitation, there are no clues here. Just memory.
Where's my Adel? That is not my cow-- I mean, Adel!