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Hard to be calm when you were locked in the cosmos’ own sensory deprivation tank. Or a reverse latex fetish suit.
Time for an inventory check. No fingers or toes, because dragon form. Head firmly attached. Not bleeding. Not falling. Not flopping or spiraling or drowning. Not breathing, heart not beating. Wings flapping, but against nothing.
Comprehension of current situation: absent.
Thenothingcame into focus as my scales adjusted. Slowly (or it felt slow, maybe it happened fast) translated itself intofirmament.
My mind (was it really mybrain,though? Because this felt like an entire-existence-experience) stretched and flattened as it tried to rationalize the increasing perceptions.
Wait. That wasmestretching out!
My wing lattices glowed soft magenta, but the light ran down to the misty terminal edge of my wing membrane and dissipated, and my scales were misting black glitter clouds that reflected (as much as anything could) pink/purple in the nothing-light.
The firmament washed and pulled and wore on me like waves on a sandcastle.
I had shit to do, and being reduced to sub-atomic Helena particles was not on that list.
I’d be worn away and eroded in here, because this was nothingandeverything at the same time, and I wassomething.
Feet out of the water, because the cosmic fishies were nibbling my toes.
I AM HELENA OF EARTH.
And this was not Earth, so excuse me, coming through.
Think, Helena, what do you do? Because nothing is not an option here. Literally and figuratively.
I pulled everything I could pull inward, curled myself into a little ball, and wrapped my wings around me so I was the tiniest little Helena ball I could be.
The tethers reach across everything.
I conjured thoughts of my consorts. First, my bright, sun-laced, planet-heavy memories of drifting with Akoni on the open ocean, and how his presence was the same. An open, gently shifting ocean, vast and endless and everything. Riding him like a pool float on the waves, enjoying his warm scales and the sunlight.
Then I painted in Keon’s calm, unmoving presence, just offshore, always there, a safe place above the waterline.
And in the sky above, Auryn, distant and warm and ever-present. He’dalwaysbeen there, even when he hadn’t beenthere.
“I might not have always been there, but I always loved to hold you. I dreamed of holding you again. Every time I slept.”
“Maybe you were.”
There/there.
There.
I uncurled, willing my wings to drive me towardsthere.
The faint mist of my dissolving existence rose around me and my ribbons fragmented and frayed at the ends, just like my wings had no well-defined edge.
KEEP GOING FORWARD.
DO NOT SCREAM.
The shape of love became better defined, and the going became easier.
My ribbons wove through the cosmos, gathered, bunched,pulled, my wingspushed.
Gather, bunch, pull, push.
