the spectrum heart cathedral system

(written all at once, without warning, as it was happening ( stream-of-consciousness). left unfinished. god willing, will re-enter this timespace and finish the event in the future. nevertheless what is written here is real.)





Jewel Lightraye stepped onto the battlefield, sneakers crunching in the snow.
Everything was so pale. The ground was covered in a bleary cold whiteness, forbidding life from growing, the low wind blowing away all footprints in swathes of dusty, frigid air. It didn’t even look clean, not underneath that dark and dim of a sky, suffocating in a fog so low and thick it felt like being trapped under a carpet of insulation. Everything was painted the dimmest shade of bleached-out indigo. Everything felt dead.
She stopped, shivering hard all at once, as the temperature data finally bit into her, like needles through her summer clothes. Her body responded with the sudden urge to cry and curl up in a ball in that dingy ashen floor of a snowdrift. Her reply was to reach up and adjust her baseball cap more tightly onto her head, before taking a resolute step forwards.
The crunch surprised her now, even though she had heard it just as clearly the first time. After having taken in all that desolation, the sudden squeak of ice and rubber soles was shockingly alive, a sign of something moving, something with hope in it yet, striving forwards—

“Jewel! Is that you?”
She spun to her left at the sudden voice, in time to see three familiar and beloved individuals appearing out of the dark fog, running up the sloping hill to her.
Ryou was the first in line, his arms wrapped tightly about his signature blue-and-white striped shirt. At least he’s got long sleeves, Jewel thought amusedly.
“Yeah, it’s me,” she replied, feeling oddly nostalgic at that. “What’s up?”
“What’s up?” Ryou repeated, eyebrows raising slightly. “Where are we? What is this?”
Jewel peered over his shoulder as he spoke. Marik was there, but he had pulled on his old Rare Hunter hoodie, which was virtually the same color as the sky here. Despite having more clothes cover than the rest of the gang, he looked positively distressed, at least as much as he would let show like this. He was shivering more than Ryou.
She shrugged, focusing her eyes back on the snow-haired boy before her (the flakes weren’t even visible in his hair until they melted into drops; if it wasn’t so depressing here it might have been pretty).
“I have no idea,” she stated, “but that’s typical fare for us I guess.” Ryou smiled at that, but it was tinged with something like… regret? Sadness?
“It is.” His voice was starting to sound like the weather.
A small silence settled into the wake of those words, and Jewel, heart beginning to twinge with concern, pushed up on her toes to peer over Ryou’s other shoulder. Sure enough, there he was.
Standing with his back half-turned to her, a creature looking like the ocean tide personified stood in silence, wrapped up in himself just as much as the rest of them, his gem-green eyes rife with enough turbulent anguish to drown everyone around if it got loose. The very sight of that sent a lightning-sharp strike of pain straight through Jewel’s heart.
“What… were you all this sad before you came here? Or do you not know?” she asked Ryou, as she began to shiver for real this time.
“I’m not sure,” he replied. “It could be both.”
“We were all sad and this is making it worse,” Marik’s voice sparked like a dying fire from under his dark hood.
For a moment no one said anything, then all their attention turned silently to Chaos 0.
His wet eyes darkened. “There’s something dark and carnivorous here,” he began, his voice far more level than his friends expected in this situation. “It’s in the air. It’s in the snow.” He turned his deep-sea gaze to Jewel, so pointedly that for a moment she wasn’t sure where she was. “Where are we, Jewel?”
Now both the other boys turned to look at her.
“I…” she faltered. She had said she didn’t know, but now thinking it over, she supposed it was only half true. She had no idea what this place literally was, true, but if there’s one thing she knew for sure about Heartspace it’s that it was always, always, adherent to that term.
Whatever place they were in right now, it had existed inside them first.
“…Hopelessness,” she said all at once, and saw a flash of pain sear through Marik’s eyes. “Despair. The sense of being lost and not knowing where one is, let alone where to go.”
She paused. “…Loneliness? I-I mean,” she faltered, “we’ve got each other, but—”
“…Do we really?” Ryou responded, and everyone looked back at him.
“I know you all feel it,” he continued, his voice picking up a twinge of too-dark paranoia. “Who are we now? Where DO we go from—“
“That’s the REASON this place is like it is, Bakura!!” Chaos suddenly snapped, like a dam breaking. “You—you were never this existential, you were never this doubtful of your own existence! Markus, you were never this scared!!”
A sudden profound silence fell over them. Chaos had used Marik’s new name.
“…It’s a little hard not to be scared with that in the air,” the boy in question replied, withdrawing further into his hoodie. Whatever fire was in him before was now turned to slush.
Chaos looked up, starkly into the distance, as if planning something. Then he turned back to Jewel.
“This place is unstable, Jewel. I know you’re trying to hold it together but the very nature of this place is messing with everyone here. Including me,” he added, pressing a hand to the gem in his chest. Jewel
was struck by the sudden remembrance of it. “Whatever this place is, it IS from us, and we’re here because we’re here on the outside too, and we need to get through this.” He winced. “…Or we’ll freeze to death.”
Jewel set her face like flint at that. Nodding once, she turned to the right, raised her arm, and sent a tunnel of fire blasting through ahead of them.
The two boys watched, wide-eyed, as the fire seemed to stretch on terribly far, even as the fog swallowed it up.
“Shoot,” Jewel said, a hint of despair creeping into her voice.
“Don’t,” Chaos put a huge clawed hand on her shoulder. “Don’t give in. It’s hard enough for me to hold out for your sake; if you lose hope we’re all doomed.”
She looked up at him, heart aching with what he had just said, but she nodded again. “I’ll try,” she said.
He smiled, just as achingly. “You’d better.”
“…Jewel?”
She turned back around to see Ryou—or was it Rio now?—wringing his hands with a sudden lack of fright, and an equally surprising clatter of insect-claws against his arms.
“I’m sorry,” he said, somewhat confusedly. “I’m… let’s just go.” He took a few steps forwards to stand beside her, eyes shining blue, and still following where the fire had gone.
A giant spidery figure crept up to overshadow the boy.
“Rio,” it pronounced, and Jewel swore it had managed to say both his names at once, “Walk.”
He did. One step in and he quickly turned to look at Jewel, a pleading sort of helplessness in it, a total lack of understanding that required as much support as it could get.
In turn, Jewel turned her head around to give Markus (as he was now, so many years later) a look of fire, of confidence, a silent statement of “I believe in you and I want you with us.” Then, unable to help it, she grinned in her lopsided way and motioned for him to follow. A tiny smile crinkled his violet eyes in response, and with one last (and not unmissed) glance towards the shadows behind him, he hurried forwards to join the rest of them.

“So why is Lethe here.”
Rio looked scared at Jewel’s blunt question, and opening his mouth in surprise, failed to say anything at first.
“I—”
“He needs to carry his fears separately,” the monstrous being replied with unusual calmness, looking down at the boy. “They will devour him otherwise.”
Rio said nothing to that-- he only tightened his lips and kept his eyes locked straight ahead.
“Markus,” the daemon spoke, “you should do the same.”
He flinched hard at the near-accusation. “I-I can’t,” he stuttered in real fright, “I’m not ready to face her yet, not like this—“
“You may have to,” was the reply. “Especially in a place like this.”
Then, silence. Jewel looked back and saw that Markus was looking down, fighting back real tears. This was so unlike how he used to be when they first met—all proud enthusiastic daring—that it broke her heart. She hung back a step to fall in sync with him, and tentatively put a hand on his shoulder. He looked up at her, his deep bronze skin seeming washed-out in the pallor of the place.
“You don’t know what she’s like,” he whispered. “She frightens me, Jewel. She’s…” he broke off momentarily, struggling with words. “…She’s a reminder of what I’ve been trying to ignore all these years-- a blatant, un-ignorable reminder.” He took a sudden breath as his eyes hardened. “She’s an in-your-face statement that ‘you’re not as tough as you think you are! You’re just a scared little kid playing God to forget the fact that you’re terrified and helpless and you’ve never felt so alone in your life.’ And then I met you guys.” Almost apologetically, his voice softened again. “Then I… I slowly stopped wanting to rule the world. I slowly started to be happy with what I had. But I was so scared of losing it, losing you, all of you, in any way, that I… the fear just changed shape. And now it looks like her. She’s pride and glory on one side, and helpless despair on the other.”
“Rags and riches?” Jewel offered.
Markus chuckled. “Kind of. More like… power and the total lack of it. Success, and the total lack of it. Gold and dirt. Rags and riches,” he shrugged, and laughed a little more genuinely this time. “I guess you’re right.”
Jewel smiled too, but it was still sad at the edges.
“So your Vice is… what? Pride?” Chaos asked, his brow furrowed.
Markus shrugged again, quickly, as if trying to shake the thought from his shoulders. “Maybe.”
“What does she feel like?” Jewel asked.
Markus considered this, looking momentarily up and ahead at Rio, who as obviously listening but not daring to turn or stop with his own embodied Vice pushing him forwards.
“--Rio, what does Lethe feel like?” Markus suddenly asked, audibly pushing through hesitation to do so.
“What?” came the baffled reply, as the boy faltered to a stop to turn and face his friend. The creature in question did the same, its single eye appearing to smile, as neutrally as one could imagine.
“I…” Markus’s hesitation replied in the shadow of that thing. “…Y-your daemon, it… aren’t daemons supposed to be Vices? Worst fears? Your biggest shadows?”
”Yeah…” Rio began, noncommittal.
“Well…” Markus gulped. “W-what’s yours?”
Rio said nothing for several seconds. The question hadn’t appeared to fully register, and it was obvious he wasn’t planning (or able) to respond.
“’What do I feel like,’ you mean?” Lethe murmured, amused. “Tell them, Rio. Tell them how I’m your fear of what lurks in the dark when you turn off the light, or the utter lack thereof. Tell them how I’m the sound of nothing when you lock all the doors. Tell them how I’m the redness behind your eyes--”
“Okay, okay!!” the white-haired boy nearly sobbed. “Lethe is… my fear of my unknowing. He’s my fear that nothing out there really exists, or even worse, that the only thing that exists is nothing. I’m scared that… I’m scared of everything out there that can turn me into nothing. Of laziness, and “Sloth,” and of not wanting to do anything but waste my days away with addictions and distractions because I’m scared of facing the emptiness beyond. I’m scared because I know he’s right, but I don’t know how to… how to learn from him yet.”
“It takes time, River,” the daemon spoke with unusual softness. “But the waters will move.”
Chaos visibly pondered that.
“You’re forgetfulness and death,” Jewel suddenly said. “Lethe and Styx.”
“I am,” he replied. “I am emptiness. I am the Void he runs from.”
“But I thought Daemons held both good and bad sides of the coin?” Jewel continued unsurely.
This time, Lethe’s smiling eye was far darker.
“Do I not?” His voice was like distant thunder. “Tell me, Jewel. Who is Dendrite to you?”
Jewel was the silent one now, her mind outright blanking out at the question. “I don’t know,” she said simply.
And Lethe laughed, a low watery rumble of a thing that shook her bones. “You run from your own heart and interrogate others who do the same. Be not a hypocrite, Jewel.”
Shamed by the harsh but too-true accusation, she lowered her gaze.
But… Dendrite. The name of her elusive alleged Daemon. Jewel knew she existed, but… where? How? Then again, Jewel had never given much of a thought to her own “vices,” had never even considered that she might have any at all… her innocent ignorance of sorts had gotten the better of her. Now, it seemed that the simple reality that she HAD a Daemon manifested somewhere was unsettling enough.
“…What is death, but only a door?”
She looked up.
“What is forgetfulness, when tied to fear?” Lethe continued. “Consider it, Jewel. A Daemon is a curse and a blessing. It is our nature. We cannot be otherwise. Fear us as you will, but remember—” and he smiled again, like crinkled silver—“we cannot exist without you. We are of you. And if there is any good in you, then there is just as much good in us.”
“…And what if there’s a lot of bad in us?” Rio mumbled, his voice almost stomped flat.
Lethe turned to him now, and in one liquid motion, curled up to be almost face-to-face with the boy. “What is ‘bad’ to you, Rio?”
“’Bad’ means harmful to my soul, or someone else’s,” he replied, a bitter sharpness creeping into his tone.
“Am I ‘bad’ to you, Rio?”
A pause; he was struggling with the question. “…I’m… not sure. You feel bad, you feel like all the bad in me, but you’ve never done anything to hurt me…”
“Then take that as a lesson, child,” the creature responded with subtle gravity. “You do not have to act on it. You can die to it. And then you can forget being what you were when you fell victim to it in the past.”
“Why would I want to forget the wrong I’ve done??” Rio burst out.
“So you can move on,” Lethe said simply. “Forget, after you have died to it. Don’t go back. Don’t drag yourself back into the grave you must rise from.”
Rio was again silent. His face was hot with tears and confusion and he looked even more knotted-up than Markus had earlier.
“Does that answer your question now, Jewel?”
She jumped, surprised at the Daemon’s sudden question. “I—yeah. I’ll have to think about it. But I’ve got it.”
“Don’t think too much,” the spidery thing chuckled.

They started walking again. No one was speaking. The fog and snow continued to whirl about
them, as dead and cold as ever, and Jewel noticed with no small amount of fright that she was starting to numb to it. Her mind, in an attempt to “protect her” from the inclement environment, was shutting down her ability to feel the cold, to see the shadows.
Almost impulsively, she flared up another burst of fire around her body, and flung it forwards into the half-night. Again, it seared through the fog and snow, but this time, the further it went, the darker the sky got around it, until it seemed to hit something solid and pitch-dark.
They all stopped at that.
“What are you trying to do, Jewel?” Lethe lazily inquired.
“Is that a wall?” Chaos questioned agitatedly. “Is this a dead end??”
Almost instantly Markus ran up to it, his hood falling away in the sudden burst of speed, champagne-gold locks catching a few feeble snowflakes. He closed the distance between them and the wall in a surprising matter of seconds—as intention tended to do in Heartspace—and without warning, began striking at it with the bladed end of his Rod.
“No!! This can’t be it!! You can’t just trap us here, you can’t just block us from getting any further!!” Furious and despairing, he struck the wall again with all his might. “Damn it!”
A solid chip of wall shattered off and flew to land on the ground behind him. The snow was fading here, the cold was dulling out, the sky above them losing what little color it had. Everything was now slowly vanishing away into that odd brassy-black stone, into an even more pervading sense of night… or no, something even darker than that; this darkness was in the absence of a sun or a moon, the sort of total black one only felt underground.
Markus was sobbing now, slumping against the wall, Chaos standing behind him in a desperate attempt to comfort. Rio appeared torn between numbness and compassion, and some awful sort of fear was holding him still, tears streaming down his face.
A voice came.

“Markus.”

He jumped notably, his whole body convulsing with fear. “No!!” He cried. “No, not you, not now, not here!!” Hysterical, Markus ran into Chaos’ arms and clung to the blue creature, almost choking from terror.
At this, Rio cast a heart-wrenching glance towards Jewel, and in that moment she understood just how lost he really was here, in the place that was just as white and dark and lonely as… wait.
Her eyes widened for a moment, but she cast that away just as quickly, refusing to dwell on that detail when it was obvious he needed support now. She moved over to him and wrapped her arms about his shoulders. He returned the gesture, tangibly relieved, but still shaking.
It struck her that he still felt as young as he did years ago, that he still felt safe to be around, like this. Despite his fear there was no ego to it; there was no sense of pride or performance or pity to it. No, he felt a need for love and he turned to someone he knew he could feel that with. There was nothing but childlike trust in that, something she treasured, something their quadruple-friendship here was built upon. Whatever bitter edges he had begun to show earlier had been completely rubbed down to velvet nubs now, so to speak. Everything was as soft and safe as it should be.
She wondered if Lethe’s appearance was responsible.
“Jewel,” Rio began, his voice thick with regret and apology.
“Yeah?”
“I… I’m so sorry, I didn’t know how to comfort him, I—” he broke off, audibly crushed by this.
Jewel looked at him compassionately. “Maybe don’t try so hard?” she began. “I mean… you and me, I think we worry too much. Chaos just kind of… went over there. He didn’t do anything, but that might’ve been intrusive? I dunno,” she hesitated. “He was there when Markus needed him. He was close enough.” Another tight pause. “And I was here for you. Maybe that’s all we can do?”
“Hm,” Rio considered. “You sure that’s enough?”
“Maybe we should ask.”
“Rio!! Jewel!!”
They both turned at Markus’s shout.
“On second thought, there’s our chance,” Jewel said, and the two ran over to their friend.

Rio began apologizing before he even stopped running. “Markus, I’m so sorry I didn’t come over here earlier—”
“You had that thing behind you, it’s okay,” the violet boy said-- and then appeared abashed for having expressed such a sentiment in earshot of said ‘thing.’ “I’m sorry,” he added ruefully.
“You know she’s here,” Lethe stated simply, and Markus’s face turned into a tangle of frustrated fear and sorrow all over again.
“Of course I know,” he spat. “I knew as soon as I saw her wall. She always…” he swallowed. “She always traps me in here.”
“Seems rather indicative of your subconscious,” his friend’s Daemon again calmly retorted.
Markus clenched his fists but remained silent. “What, that I’m trapped in here with her?” he replied at length.
“No, that you’re trapped because you refuse to face the minotaur. There is a way out of this labyrinth, child,” Lethe continued. “But she is guarding the exit.”
…



“…I’m scared of her,” he whispered once more, terribly vulnerable in the confession.
“We know,” Lethe observed, but his voice was oddly reassuring. “As is right, for we are indeed Daemons. Rio is terrified of me as well, if you have not forgotten.”
“But—but he—“ Markus gestured with a sort of frustrated despair at his friend. “But he’s letting you near him!! He’s TALKING to you!!” He stopped, his breath hitching, as his eyes caught a new light emanating from somewhere above—something gold. “How can he be scared if he’s just… letting you be there?”
Rio fidgeted a little at that. Lethe gave him a knowing look, and waited.
“…I bury it, Markus,” he said at length. “I… I’m scared of admitting that I’m scared? You’re a stronger man than me in that respect.”
“Oh, only that respect?” Markus retorted, a slight but brave smile in his shaking voice.
At that unexpected, familiar jab, Rio actually smiled back, a real smile, with a real chuckle lighting it up. “Y-yeah,” he added, just as bravely, and reached up with a slightly trembling hand to indicate his thick smoke-blue locks. “That and your hair game, I’ll give you that.”
And Markus laughed.

The gloom around them was suddenly warmer. The indigo shade had now shifted into something strangely luminous, even in the pervading shadows-- something bringing out a glint of sun-yellow even in the black walls.
Every one of them was smiling now, remembering what life had felt like back in the old days when they were kids; always joking with each other like this, never doubtful of each other no matter how dark it got. And now, once again, they were all momentarily wrapped up in nothing but that simple happiness, the lightness of being so suddenly triggered by a genuine bit of laughter, of good humor, of optimism even in the midst of strife… …And Lethe was still there.
He slowly curled into Rio’s shoulder again.
“So how does it feel to forget?”
Rio’s smile disappeared. Yet his face did not darken—instead, his eyes widened, his mouth now quiet with surprise.

Markus was still giggling at that old injoke, fingers playing with his gold-dust hair, but his eyes were wet, and his voice was quickly changing to match.
“…Markus?” Jewel asked, hesitantly. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” he insisted with an oddly bright calmness, but he was smiling up at her with those same sad eyes.. “I’m absolutely fine. And this is what I never want to lose, ever,” he emphasized, his expression now beginning to crack at the edges. “This. I don’t want to go back to being afraid or confused or alone or—I don’t want to lose this anymore—”
“Have you ever really lost it, Markus?” a voice cut through the air.
And he breathed in as sharply as a knife.
Something gold was stepping out of the shadows behind Rio, where there was no trace of fog or snow, only the edges of a maze deep beneath the ground.
It was a towering, sharp thing, with limbs like needles, clock hands, dagger-blades… it walked with unfaltering precision, with unsettling poise. Everything about it was polished and deadly.
It stopped, thirty feet away from Markus, and gazed down at him with a single, brilliant yellow eye.
Then its gaze softened.
“Markus.”
He clamped his hands to his ears and fell to his knees, sobbing.

Rio was now looking back and forth between boy and beast in utter shock,



“Why are you so afraid of me?” she asked, quietly.

 

It suddenly struck Jewel that she’d never seen any of their Daemons act so kindly before.

 

***daemons do love their partner-souls but they also TAKE NO SHIT. They will NOT mollycoddle ANYONE for ANY REASON. If markus is running from his fears, his daemon is going to catch him and make him face them, no questions asked. A daemon knows ones bleakest parts and it exists to help you RECOGNIZE AND TRANSMUTE THEM. They literally cannot help you if you wont accept their existence— as rejecting them is rejecting that part of YOUR SOUL!!! The shadow IS vital for growth! A daemon just makes it that much easier to grapple with, when that dark awareness is held in something with a face and a heart that loves you, even if it has a rather sharp way of showing it. If you can learn to love them in return, then congratulations, you can now love yourself the same way. And that love is MANDATORY to reach one’s best self. The toughest part is the first acceptance though… that initial cognizance of what a daemon IS, what it carries, and the fact that it is part of you. The shame, guilt, fear, anger, and denial can be potent. Hence the separation of selves—if you can’t accept that part of yourself literally at first, at least accept it in them as something taken from you. Again, the ultimate goal is to learn UNCONDITIONAL LOVE for yourself and EVERYONE ELSE, without losing honor and righteous devotion. It’s a process and at first it is indeed rocky. But step 1 is always to open your mind and heart. It all goes from there.***

 

“We are not evil, no more than you are. Take that as you will.”
But Markus’ face was shaken.
“Why is everyone here so afraid of being evil?” Chaos frustratedly spoke up from behind his friend. “

 

Later, in response to “what’s Infinitii’s vice, then?”
“It’s… the vice of not realizing that my vices are vices.”

 

 

 

 

okay I apologize if this is an utter mess but I need to write this down now, because I will not remember it in the morning.


11:30pm. hack attempts. cannon screaming in car. her shouting hurt terribly, mentally and physically. then went on porch to try and find quiet, but she was still screaming, threatening, insults. very loud. then laurie showed up, they were fighting? it's blurry. anyway I know for a fact that julie showed up, extremely distraught, began angrily asking why this was happening. who in the world was causing hack attempts again, and why?? again I'm sorry but I can't remember much of this, just visuals and vibe. cannon asked her why she was "dressing like a two-penny whore" (julie still wears minimal clothing) and julie just straightened up, gave her a stern look and said that she was dressing how she felt comfortable, and that only cannon was calling her a whore. she strongly added that no one deserved to be called such things based on their dress; it was completely unwarranted, and in truth only spoke as to the inner opinions and vision of the one using the term. anyway cannon backed off at this, I think faded out? because then next thing I recall is laurie and julie sitting down, discussing the situation, trying to pinpoint just who was responsible, who was just letting hack attempts happen without caring or fighting?
I mentioned the numb-gray voice that's been fronting for weeks, said it was "so tired" all the time it literally just did what it was told to do. like the AP but not robotic; this one was absolutely resigned and just wanted total nothingness. it wasn't fighting off hack attempts because it had no strength or motivation to do so; it just gave up and then hackers took over.
somewhere around here laurie said something a little too flippantly, julie jumped up and told her to stop acting like that. "I miss the old you." saying laurie was losing her edge, she was slipping. surprisingly laurie agreed, said that her new tendency to laugh everything off was a "different set of walls," and it was "making her color gray out." julie vehemently agreed, said laurie needed to be fierce again, unflinching, and not tolerating of the things she was now just mocking or brushing aside. she had to be a knight again, she had to get her brutality back because without it her function was failing. ultimately laurie did tap into this and her color notably clarified, it scared me a little to think that she had been falling somewhat. I'll admit I'd been terrified too and she'd been feeling too strange lately but I had been too doubtful of "whether or not this was better" to speak up. again, due to the numbness.

anyway on that note I think they asked me to look for the numb voice then, so they could deal with it somehow. all I know for sure is that I tried, and felt that gray voice move in almost immediately. laurie reached forwards and yanked it out, upstairs it manifested as an almost ghostly form-- no real body, just misty white in a humanoid shape.
I think julie was yelling at it, no idea. it was unstable and kept catching vibes of other 'bodiless' voices so laurie was trying to keep it solid but it was getting violent. then, at some point javier showed up! that was a surprise. he was very angry, actually pushed laurie back and grabbed that spectre by the throat, demanding what it was trying to prove, etc. shockingly it grinned and immediately turned into jezebel?? javier let go in surprise, there was tar on his hand. laurie tried to zap it off but javier said no, then summoned flames up and down his arms, burnt it away. but jezebel kept attacking, getting more on him than he could handle. laurie was holding her off the best she could, but then she shouted for infi's help.
ze showed up immediately in a very shocking manner; sort of a full-room "coalescing" vibe, wings wide and angry. grabbed all the tar off javier, split it into three throwing daggers and flung them at jezebel. pinned her to the wall! she grinned, that was of course only temporary, and pulled them out in order to be able to move again. however those few seconds were all infi needed-- ze instantly became this monstrous thing of crystal teeth and eyes, loomed over her. jezebel actually looked afraid, but she then laughed and turned into a semi-humanoid mess of tangled tar, tried to infect hir. but infi said (voice sounded VERY different) that she could not corrupt hir, and in an instant ze chomped down on the jezebel-tar thing. that caused the tar to break and then splash as neutralized black energy; the immediate conversion was clearly visible.
jezebel was still fighting, trying to infect hir still (if enough pure tar got into infi at once it would indeed be a problem), but then infi did something unusual. maybe via hir teeth, when ze bit again, all the black energy began to pop and crackle in this bright white explosions? picture several flashbulbs going off at once, with a sound like fireworks. this caused the black energy to be totally flipped to white energy on the spot. jezebel stopped fighting, left nothing but the tar, infi kept eating it. again every single bite caused the white light pops, even as ze swallowed it. once the tar was totally converted to white energy, infi changed hir form a bit again, huge mouth, snakelike. coughed up one huge crystal (hexagon? hit floor and barely even rolled; very heavy), then did a lot of almost convulsive form-warping to spit out another, slightly bigger one. infi then reverted back to normal I assume-- for some reason, as infi was coughing up the second crystal, I completely 'tuned out' of headspace. no idea why; I can't remember.

the next thing I can remember is infi kneeling in front of me, asking if I was okay. I was sitting on the ground and feeling incredibly dazed. javier and laurie were behind hir, julie standing a little behind them. I can't remember if I said anything.

anyway, long story short, infinitii decided to try to "tear" the foggy gray voice 'into' me, instead of out-- so it would take my place in the upstairs body (that can happen for cores, only them though). that way it would stay stable and maybe they could talk to it. I know for sure that nathaniel was called in to 'hold me down,' to be an extra stabilizing force. so he knelt to my right and held my shoulders.
well anyway the first attempt or three didn't work entirely. infi reached into my chest field and pulled out this stringy-gray (like actual tangled string) energy mass, looked somewhat confused at this. no matter what it wasn't clearing out though. I still felt awful inside. anyway I was already massively dissociated so infi pulled me half-out of the body (reached way back in and yanked). I immediately lost body senses-- I was now floating in some vague position 'within' the body field, but I was technically not in the body anymore. however no one else was fully in it, and I was stuck somehow. not a clean break in any case.
then after a moment of consideration, infi apologized, flared hir wings and shoved me out, with a double-handed push to the chest. it had massive force. flung me back into 'levelless' white space (straight out of that headspace level!). I hit a wall with my back and then fell forwards to floor, on my knees. crystal shards fell scattered around me? like broken glass. anyway the impact helped too, as I felt disconnected but clear now, except for my head, which still had that tarry fog feeling.
realized there was this wand-shaped crystal going straight through my skull, from the center of my forehead back to the base of my cerebellum? slight angle. this scared me, but I tried to calm down, wanted it out. remembered that inner imagery is very important, figured this was symbolizing some sort of plagued 'frozen' effect on my third eye or something. but it was definitely showing me a big problem.
I think I called leon. either way, he showed up, to my left. I couldn't quite talk, so I indicated the problem. he moved in front of me, then carefully pulled the crystal out. some residue got on his hands from it? looked like silver skidmarks. I think the crystal crumbled. he burned it off with a flare of indigo energy points, the white residue fell off softly like snowflakes. I thought that was fitting.
then leon placed one hand on both 'holes' in my head, said that needed to be 'flushed out.' he considered calling someone but neither of us knew who, so after a moment of hesitant anxiety he decided he'd do it; after all he was the best man for the job. so through his hands, he began filling the hole in my head with indigo light.
as he did, I saw the energy filling my vision downstairs, this gorgeous hue, but all sparkly dots slowly filling my head and my eyes. there was a moment of fear and awe; "this is real. this is actually happening." I pushed the fear aside, focused on the feeling of healing. very peaceful, grateful.
leon said we needed to 'cover up' the holes? essentially said it couldn't be left wide open like that or dangerous things could get in; it'd be 'too open.' I had a sudden mental image of a bandage on my forehead like naota from flcl, didn’t question it, felt relevant.
leon then asked, couldn't I keep power jewels on all the time? I said yeah, probably (I think eros had the set in the past). leon said I should, if I could. that would help immensely.

I could feel they wanted me back upstairs but couldn't get back myself. leon said he'd warp me back, so he did. laurie immediately asked how he got there, leon briefly mentioned the mind's-eye thing. then he saw nat to my right and smiled so genuinely, greeted him. and I got this huge flash that 'that was important.'

on that note, I was still super-dazed so memory is bad. but I clearly remember that leon ended up back in front of me, and I wasn't in the body?? he was talking to the numb gray voice!!! (which was responding to the name 'fogbank?' at least temporarily)
it was actually very upset about this topic? it kept trying to leave, to unplug the entire inner vision from headspace and 'numb out,' but although its influence was surprisingly powerful, infi wouldn't let it leave; kept pulling it back in. we asked it why it was so exhausted, why was it so loathe to perceive the inner world, why was that so tiring for it? leon added something to that question, asked if that feeling was tied to the 'floating voices?' it said yes, that was especially exhausting, but then it explained why. apparently this gray voice was terrified that, if it did open up its third eye in truth (leon said it was closed in fear), that it would be "obligated" to become a channel and nothing more. it would then be required to become nothing but a conduit for floating voices, for angels or aliens or whoever, to do nothing but become their mouthpiece. it felt that, if it became aware of such beings outside of itself, then it HAD to sacrifice any and all feelings of individuality, of having a body, of being a person. it needed to become "totally selfless." it saw no other option, and it was so tired, it just numbed out rather than face that "inescapable fate" that it said would happen IF it tuned back into intuitive knowing and things.
laurie spoke up here, said that's exactly how the child fronters thought. they existed ONLY for the leagueworlds; they lived to write and draw, and that was it. only the dawn of headspace forced a 'sense of self' to truly develop, and that occurrence has long been seen as a sort of "original sin" by many downstairs voices in the system. anyway leon added that there was nothing wrong with individuality, but even in his saying that I could feel a massive denial from the mind. it didn't believe him and was afraid to; it still strongly believed that "only total selflessness was good." at that, either laurie or javier said that's why headspace is being ignored; we're all facets of self, we're all individualized parts of soul, and according to that old moral code we shouldn't exist, because that very individualization was "wrong."
right around then leon moved his hands on the body's head again, filling it with indigo light. he looked upset and sad, but began telling the gray voice that this was what real intuition felt like; it wasn't barking orders, it wasn't constant stress, it wasn't fear. he then said "it's this," and actually kissed my forehead where it had been impaled. instantly there was this slow bloom of compassion from somewhere down in the chest, deep indigo color.
leon continued talking to it. he said that if you hold fear, you see fear. if you hold love, you see love. therefore the fogbank voice, as long as it was quietly terrified of what it might see, would never be able to see us in that mindset. but by the same token, it didn't ever have to be afraid of us. we would never treat it like the floating voices would. ultimately at the end of whatever he was saying he paused and then deliberately kissed its forehead again. right then, whoever was speaking through the body changed. like the fogbank voice couldn't hold that feeling so strongly. this new voice felt like pieces of someone forming, or trying to anchor. but it spoke to leon for a bit, repeating back that same train of thought, so leon's eyes lit up as he realized that whoever was in the body now understood.
however, the most notable bit about it was, right before it left (it was fading fast), it was holding this feeling of water internally? like an actual space, inside the chest cavity, this indigo-blue deep water in a very mosque-like room. both leon and nat caught attention, infi too due to the architecture. leon was excitedly talking about it, saying "that is what I meant" as far as energy vibes go, asked where that water was? infi said it was definitely not the chthonic water; that was very different (I think javier said something about it). and yet both those waters were "held" in that space in the body: within the ribs.
so that on top of leon's compassion made us suddenly realize the most important thing: the mind and the heart NEED to be linked. especially in order for intuition to work right at ALL.
I also remember, after that realization, leon ended up embracing nat in tears, really sincerely. I overheard him say "I love you" and I realized that was the first time I'd heard him say it in front of other people. nevertheless nat responded to him in kind. the whole thing was deeply moving personally.

power jewels were again mentioned somewhere around here. I couldn't get any to manifest though; instead there was this really bright flash like a lightbulb blowing out and it hurt, I apologized. felt like my forehead was charred. leon said he was sorry, didn't mean to make me feel like I had to force anything. I said I was just surprised I couldn't get the old ones to work anymore.

something happened here; I 'shorted out' mentally due to overstrain and the SPECTRUM started talking on the mind-heart topic instead?? everyone shut up quick, that’s like having god suddenly send you a telegram. I am so sorry but I forget its exact words, because since my body has to be technically empty for that to happen, the plague crept in fast. it was talking about the fogbank voice at the time; said it was allegedly a Gray slot holder? but which slot we didn't know. anyway I clearly remember the Plague asking if the fogbank voice was the true gray core, as a neutralizer. it then asked if Sherlock was "neutral or not" but that felt accusatory and proud. anyway we felt the switch, upon which infi ran over, and fiercely got it out of my body (easy as it was the only thing in there)-- ze threw it across the room I think. all I really remember is seeing this huge evil-feeling crystal mass over to the right, laurie quickly asked infi if he could purify it, ze said "I could but it’s not easy; that's jay's job." well I was still stuck in interim space but I was not going to slack off. so I focused as hard as I could and willed myself into the crystals. laurie saw this, shouted "jay what the hell are you doing" and got out her axe. but i wasnt scared (too floaty to be so) and i quickly sent out a burst of light to fill the crystals, and held it like a glow. that clarity defused the plague, it was gone; I was now inside the crystals. they collapsed all at once like flour or snow, I was some sort of amorphous shape in the middle, rather dazed. everyone ran over, infi first, ze took my face in hir hands and pressed our foreheads together, I felt ze was overwhelmed with relief. ze then asked me if I was okay, but that action basically white-washed my mind with content bliss, so I couldn't respond. laurie was worried at my silence, but infi smiled and assured her that I was fine-- basically, since i wasn't responding in words to that action, that was a good sign. if i hadn't been so affected by hir sincerity then there would be a problem.
I was very tired, slipping a bit. infi embraced me then, head to my chest and wings around me. everyone resumed the conversation while I just soaked up the positive vibes finally and held the consciousness stable.
on that note, as we spoke we realized that the fogbank voice actually has a VERY important role if used right-- it keeps the mind from being too overwhelmed?


archivists showed up; opened ceiling gate and jumped down (left it open for light).
I cannot remember when or why, just that they were a massive help for the current topic.
I do know they were talking about the water from before-- water in and of itself was important. I remember thinking of cz, knew there had to be some sort of link. garrison said, rather brightly, "chaos zero has had a profound impact on the aqua slot," despite him now being in the White spectrum (due to outspacers finally moving entirely).
someone asked if aqua was still tied to "devotion and fortitude," garrison said that was still being checked. isadora said that definitely fit him; he was utterly devoted to his work and the service of others. garrison agreed like she had just stated the weather; a nod and a 'well of course,' as if not being so devoted was unthinkable. I think isadora said, maybe aqua is tied to 'selflessness' of the right sort? garrison wondered momentarily, then animatedly drew up the aqua slot hexagon in the air, began comparing that to its other holders.
minty, our sleeper, works as a messenger and comforter. her whole job is helping other people. einsatz is mute but a musician, who lets himself 'be devoured by' the music (as isadora said) so he can share that same absolute wonder of it with others. emmett and tobiko are both e.d. voices who make sure the body doesn't get sick, and deal with maintenance to alleviate any sickness that may occur. both also deal(t) with the purgation issue, which although a failsafe measure, is still problematic and depressing-- and which takes a lot of guts and selflessness to hold as a job.
so yeah that might work for aqua. anyway the core is still unknown.

i remember that as garrison was finding stuff out, kalisha was writing it all down on a big clipboard pad, as she did it went into the data archives? that was awesome to see.

isadora has this ability to "pull things out of thin air," both with ideas and also in the way people kept pulling stuff and people out of me earlier. apparently she has a powerful knack for it.
I know she DID pull something/someone out of me at one point, but for the life of me I cannot remember what.

someone called sherlock in. he was "below" our space, he seemed reticent to come up at first but did. opened a gate like a door and walked through it. the other archivists actually bowed a little in respect when he showed up.
(I keep getting this weird feeling that sherlock heard the plague accusation earlier but that doesn't fit temporally; I'm probably getting something confused. I apologize for any inaccuracy as a result; I'll fix this later if my memory cooperates.)


in light of the individuality thing, sherlock did point out that's what causes "name mixups" among partners in headspace usually. like I'll accidentally call nat 'leon,' etc. sherlock said it's because when people's energy gets that close, that it blurs a little? and so on some level of consciousness they're recognized as 'one being' in a sense. kind of like a smaller manifestation of how we are as a system.


I think we started discussing colors again then.
anyway, ultimately I remember javier telling nat and leon what red energy's 'role' felt like; he said it was tied to the raw joy of life? it was the feeling of existing, of residing in a physical form, of being a living being. it was like the feeling of blood in the veins, of creating art with your bare hands. like a fire inside. he was excited and wrapped up in describing it, although struggling to find fitting words. but really he was radiating the essence so we got it.
he then asked spine to describe what brown energy was like, because that was a totally different sort of grounding. spine paused, then said it was like the earth, like stone under the earth. it was silent and solitary, but it was strong, and it knew and cared for all the 'red' life that it supported. she said it was the bones in the body, like her; it was a foundation, not holding the passion of red but instead holding a sort of calm power. again the vibe was crystal-clear from her. also the whole time she spoke (deliberately, with slightly broken language) lynne was giving her this look of total proud affection and admiration. spine looked at her once and since I was a 'floating awareness' then I saw it, and it was so clear.

someone asked lynne what orange was like? "was it tied to femininity as a whole"? the conversation got kind of convoluted, lynne said she was originally reddish but it was more cerise, and then julie asked "is that what the cerise slot is like?" lynne said she didn't know, I think javier asked what the difference was between pink and cerise. julie said we weren't sure, but she began describing what pink felt like-- it was soft and light, like cotton candy and flower petals, totally soothing but affectionate. very light! while cerise had a sort of denseness to it.
mulberry and jeremiah showed up then, had felt the resonance (that's typical). jeremiah smiled and walked over to sit by javier, just seeing him look so simply happy really lit me up.
mulberry talking about her role, kind professionalism. some confusion here as there's no cerise core yet and mulberry has had role trouble. I remember sherlock was helping her out on that topic though (they are buddies after all).
someone said cerise felt like 'femininity plus masculinity,' like a balance?
jeremiah spoke up to support that; said his job was that of a protector to the children, to take away all pain from them. it was a 'masculine' role; he had to be strong, tough, unflinching, unafraid. and yet he also had to be 'feminine' for the children-- compassionate, empathetic, soft, nurturing. his job required a balance of both in harmony. this fit mulberry, too.
so that's the main difference between cerise and pink; both hold femininity but cerise has a "punch" to it

lynne finally got to talk about orange in light of that. again reiterated her role wasn't just femininity. her role was literally becoming the sort of person our core could never be: a woman who loved what she was, who loved her life and could live it in total joyous strength. that feeling was very 'orange' really

jo said yellow was more exuberant, fiercely independent in a personal sense. orange was more 'mellow' and dealt with interactions; it was more community oriented essentially. 'personable' vs 'personal'
waldorf spoke up for a while then. said blue was tied to communication, but she had started off as a sort of 'literary muse'-- a being who held bits and pieces of every source that inspired jewel's work style. but that was communication too; people put their ideas out there into the world, fearlessly, not being afraid of their own voice. and others listened, and shared in it. waldorf was saying that's kind of like blue was like? both the speaking and the listening; like this sharp inner awareness within a sense of calm?
she used the phrase "truth in technology" at one point, I caught an allusion to her techno-trees from yesterday before she went on.
she also mentioned the scratched-disc necklace, not only was that an outside borrow (xilats), but in a way it did fit her role? she got a bit angry/upset, I remember her saying "hindsight is 20/20" and she was one of the oldest headvoices in the system. so she knew what people kept trying to "rewind" to, and it wouldn't work. too much had happened, too much had grown, and it was beautiful. you can't try to reset everything to live in a false projected "everything is perfect" ideal. waldorf said that wasn't the truth, and it was effectively a desire to "erase the story that was written" or something. a blackout of communication, a total lack of listening to truth. really blue is quite complex! there's no real "roots" to the color, shockingly, not yet at least. it's rich but vague. garrison agreed; said the only other confirmed blue is "nienna," who also deals with communication.
(the gent was not mentioned, which garrison realized with shock later; this may be because he's still arguably a fragment, totally faceless. nevertheless unintentional skips must always be taken seriously.)


concerns about color slippage.
MAJOR warnings to laurie, from sherlock notably. julie backed him up on this again. laurie didn't disagree at all, promised to do better, sincerely.
lynne saying laurie was "whitening" too much, but she herself was getting "too dark?" there was too much negativity getting thrown into the feminine idea, and it was catching her badly.
julie got very upset about this again, I remember her wringing her hands in her hair and trying not to cry from anger.


I cannot remember how all this ended.
my brother came out onto the porch while lynne was speaking at one point, so suddenly there was light and noise, and I had to move inside. when I did I realized it was 12:30 and, now that I was up and moving, that the body was massively tired. so I jumped back inside for a few minutes, we all agreed that I had better go write this all down before it started to fade (total consciousness level switch!) and here I am.

now honestly it is 2 hours after that and I cannot think. so this is what we've got. hope it works!
much love to all my system mates I love you guys so much

 

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

@ 03:46 am

oh. almost forgot to post this earlier.

today i went outside and i never wanted to go back inside.
the sunlight was so warm, the leaves are starting to fall, the air is wonderful. it's heaven.
i forgot how good pine sap smells. it got all over my hands.
i went and stood by the lilac tree, put my hands on a branch, felt so much life in it. i was really humbled by that. everything outside is so tangibly alive. i miss it terribly, getting buried in it all.
of course i said hello to my favorite cherry tree, i love it so. i hugged it and realized that its bark smells really lovely too. not something you can put into words at all.
stood on the lawn for a while and watched the sun go down. i keep wanting to drink sunlight. like i am literally only ever hungry for light or sound anymore. the other day i actually tried to drink the sunset like gaudior drinks moonlight. it surprised me when i couldnt do so actually. kind of heartbreakingly frustrating when things dont line up like that.
but i will need to start going outside for at least a solid hour every day again. i need to. i have to, it's too nice


the only problem dear is be careful, you forget everything else.
you get so lost in the trees that you forget to live. you want to stand on that lawn forever and never go back to being a person.
definitely go outside, sure. definitely immerse yourself in that love. but be careful.
that massive dissociation caused some massive hack attempts this evening, which you wouldn't know about. but please be careful.


...
jay here. it's 3:25am and i am listening to this and i need to write this down.
last night. i went to sleep around this same time and cz was there, as always. he was mostly asleep though due to the time.
but... i forget what i said. i remember feeling sad because emotions are still tricky. i wondered why he was always there, i asked him don't you have anywhere else to be?
his eyes were barely open, one arm around my shoulder. he said no. i asked why.
...he said i was his home. literally, "because you're my home."
i laughed at first. what do you mean, i'm your home, what about the emerald shrine? what about the places where you were long before you met me? you belong there more, surely. why aren't they your home, even now?
and he just said, "because home is where the heart is."
...
he wasn't even looking at me. he was barely even awake. and yet isn't that when we're the most honest?
my eyes drifted down to that ruby and i failed to hold back a sob, only to have it come out as "i love you." it ached.
and he just smiled. "i love you too." eyes still closed. but i could see him clear as day.
i miss that.
i miss all of this, and i hate this lie of a void in my heart, this hollow emptiness brazenly standing in front of everything and pretending that there's nothing behind it.
but the air has the scent of the ocean, of the rain, of the river, always, always. and even if it makes no fucking sense you can't lie to me. it's there. and it has never not been there.

the night before, his eyes were green in the dark again. undeniable. i still don't know how to explain that.
genesis was there i think. infi was with us on friday. laurie is always nearby.

you know laurie keeps teasing me about the kissing thing and i know it's because she's got walls up
she knows the real reason. it's because i can't do something that intimate with someone unless there is sincere trust there.
laurie has seen me at my worst. she's seen me bleed. she's seen me die.
and she's seen my brightest days, too. all the love and light and hope.
well guess what, i want to have that level of personal understanding and compassion with everyone in the system.
i want that sort of bond of trust between me and everyone else.
some people are really close to laurie's level already. we've seen enough of each other, enough rawness, enough genuine life, to have enough genuine, pure love between us by now. the sort of love that erases fear, that makes you completely comfortable and reverent around the other person.
i don't know why laurie is slipping. it breaks my heart. is she still scared of being used? was this a failed failsafe?
i don't know but i will talk to her. everyone. i want and need to. daily priority, all of them. they're my life. they're my life.
i want to kiss everyone in the system because i adore them and damn it i don't want any walls up between anyone at this point. i don't want to feel this stupid downstairs hesitation and self-doubt around them. there is no need to be afraid. none.
this is what leon was talking about. guess what he's the first headvoice i kissed besides laurie, no surprise.
but i can't joke about this either. i wish there was better, more delicate language. stuff untainted by tar.
maybe we just need to scrub it out. or realize that the tar was just put there. it's not part of it.
well infi's watching me now, i better go upstairs. ze says i should get some sleep but also that i should stop talking about this for now before i overthink it. good idea.

anyway i am so sorry boss for going to sleep at 4am, things were just all over the place today, you know weekends.
we'll do better tomorrow. we always do. i love that about us.

i love everything about this, who am i kidding
good and bad
it's all part of the kaleidoscope
this paradox of stained-glass color and shadow
of light and dark and beautiful broken pieces
and i am madly in love with it.


have a good morning.

♥

 

 

 

 

 

 

okay so last night was just one big WTF session let me try to remember it

- started completely unexpectedly at 1AM last night, Infi suddenly started "talking to me" from an unknown location; more of feelings than words. he could barely talk, in a ton of pain, panicky and urgent. kept telling me to find and save him as quickly as possible, "you're the only one who can." the last thing he said to me was literally "please don't waste any time there's not much TIME LEFT"
- i immediately left my laptop and went into my room to meditate, no questions asked. geez i have no idea how long it took after that
- lava cavern? i think. hard to see anything. dark, lots of intimidating speleothems. small though, very vertical, like a tunnel down middle, rungs of rock around the side? circular. not so much a "cave" as it was a straight-down oubliette almost.
- i know i landed near water or something? black, deep. ONLY water in that entire area. little platform in center. i was very very out of it, not much memory here. falling deep, knew that was the "only way to get to the rest of the cavern" but worried i would drown?
- suddenly bugs??? tons of 'em, BIG though, like the size of people. helped me out of the water, carried me on the back of this big beetle guy. then showed the way out from the shore? tunnel, horizontal, only about 20 feet long.
- also it JUST hit me now; INFI WAS A BUG before he "came to life" and manifested!! so that could be quite notable
- found him, bugs took me through that tunnel to another connected "vertical pit," this one with one wall like a cliff face, concave. infi was curled up at the bottom of it, obviously in severe pain. i remember feeling this huge surge of empathy, stumbled over to him, hoping that he was okay. he opened his eye and saw me, feebly reached out with both hands to me. that broke my heart. took them, knelt beside him for a moment, he was surprised i was able to find him, but grateful that i did. very hard for him to talk, mostly telepathic. he was trying not to cry out in pain, i didn't know what to do.
- i think this is when i picked him up, held him close in my arms, crying now. emotions cannot be hidden around him y'know
- not sure of event sequence. his stomach was cracked, bleeding everywhere, he looked very disheveled.
- i know i tried to heal him at some point, i think he told me not to, not while we were there?? "they'd find us" or something
- so much stone and red glow everywhere. pretty hellish, and claustrophobic of course. i want to say "fire" but there was none? maybe magma the further down you got, but otherwise just this ominous red tint. dark though.
-
- ryman and markus near top of room?? both in metainomen outfits. markus was badly hurt, i think he was bound too. but he was so happy to see me, i know i burst into tears: i had dreamt about him the night before, he was badly amputated due to some awful attack, he didn't recognize me, i still did everything i possibly could to help him. he was so sad but he finally smiled when he saw how much i cared. so now, seeing him here, it hurt. i was laughing incredulously but couldn't stop crying. he said it was okay, ryman had been helping him heal too, he wasn't permanently injured.
- how'd we get out of there?? i remember seeing both boys floating in their metainomen outfits, kind of glowy, really gorgeous. oh wait, i think ryman DID open a gate, i know we went straight down into a tunnel of the same size/height. and he stopped us in "midair" at one point to grab a book off the wall of a library-like section we passed?? i don't know if we were moving through dimension pockest or what. but he said he "needed it"
- the next thing i remember, was us in this really cool arabic-esque room, gold in color, high or no ceiling?? not sure. all i know for sure is that ryman used the book here for a summoning spell? with markus obviously. it was a foreign language, i didn't understand it. but ryman said it was a spell to "summon gods," said he knew how to tweak it a little, was going to use it to summon chaos 0.
- he first appeared perfect-like? got me worried for a moment, but stabilized in his normal form. seemed dazed, almost collapsed, markus caught him. cz noticed this, took him a moment for it to register, then immediately made some comment about it, markus just laughed at him good-naturedly.
- this part is very very VERY blurry sorry
- somewhere around here I KNOW Laurie showed up. said she had "found us," she'd been lurking for days anyway, was keeping an eye out.
- we went up to central, lynne and josephina were there, asked what was going on, how was everyone, where were we?? they had been hiding out too; nat and leon were in his cathedral trying to hold things together there or something? not sure.
- also MY BOSS SHOWED UP i forget how or when exactly, but that was very important, he was all gung-ho about making sure this ended well and had great ideas because he's a sandman of course
- he said we had to go to the BLOOD LOTUS CATHEDRAL, dude we literally have not been there in ages. everyone was like "how," i remembered the only foolproof way was to go through me?? so everyone got in a circle, i focused us all in,
- collapsing somewhat?? i remember the roof was open in a way it shouldnt have been. i think i flew up outside of it to look around, we were WAY up high, airplane height. beneath us i think i could see central city, the sea, the forests around it. but there was a TON of fog, in waves and clouds and wisps. sandman said that was unformed headspace as usual
- oh yes and in the middle of the floor there was this gaping hole?? AGAIN, I think that's where infi was too, the cavern pit. it should NOT have been there. freaked me out a little, the heck was that, why was it there?
- boss stood at the edge of it, started focusing dreamdust energy in his hands. told laurie get over there, to his left, then told her to focus her energy in her hands too. laurie focused this violet space-lightning sort of energy, it was gorgeous. but then he told chaos to stand to his right, do the same (glowy oceanic energy obviously). one of my clearest recollections: the three of them standing there, literally holding hands, with all this incredible shining energy all around them. it was really something else. then i dont remember how but boss used that energy to heal the floor?? i think we were warped to some other place temporarily?? either way the entire floor ended up starry glossy black, solid flat though. sealed up the pit. said i could also shape it how i wanted afterwards, since it was black energy.
- btw i had infi in my arms 99.9% of this entire time so you know.
-
- THE GLASSES WHEN WAS THAT??? i remember i was by a small rectangular pool of water or something? needed to use the glasses, allowed me to "see" an overlay dimension or something?? OR go INTO it, that might have been it. geez i dont remember thats not cool, that was IMPORTANT. ive got this feeling it was when i was with ryman and markus at first, but i cannot remember exactly, i have this nagging suspicion that my boss was there?
-
- near the end of this i know infi and i went somewhere, this pocket dimension, how?? from the blc though i think. basilica-like, center altar with pillars, but with circular steps going down around it quite a ways. water all around it, plans twirling down from ceiling, lots of sunlight. beautiful really. infi was almost entirely healed her, i know that. he was lying down, i asked him what in the world was going on with the pregnancy thing? was he really? he said he wasnt really sure, didnt know where it came from or what it was, but he didnt want it to die. remember i did heal the cracks there so now it was almost opaque again, somewhat luminous. i couldnt see inside anymore, but there was a vague hint that yes he still had another life inside him.
- again, not sure how it came to this but i clearly recall infi kissed me somewhere around here, because almost immediately after something in the outerworld shocked me to almost disconnecting from headspace? infi got desperate, begged me not to leave, not now please, hold on. it was tricky but i did. he was crying that was unusual
- OH DUDE WAIT i forgot he actually started a CONNECTION thats what it was!! i was kind of scared, would that hurt the embryo thing, it wouldnt do anything to me would it? he said no, he just needed me to experience this for a moment. asked me to go soul form. to my surprise i was able to do that willingly, that's a first. but then infi went straight-up jewellink and IMMEDIATELY that wave of heart-wrenching emotion hit me again. yes i started sobbing in reality, not for long though, that kind of empathetic bleedover is so exhausting it has to switch off quickly or it WILL burn me out unconscious. but upstairs the emotion stayed, i remember being aware of what it felt like to "be him" right then, I CANNOT put that into words forgive me. but it was beautiful, tragic somehow, we had to break it off because i was slipping badly from how overwheming it was. that's what caused me to disconnect sorry.
- i think i was out for a while? two minutes maybe, geez, long time in meditations!!
- when i came back i was in central, lying down. cz and infi were kneeling beside me, concernedly making sure i was okay. ryman and markus were across room, kneeling down and comparing books on something? maybe same book from earlier. laurie was standing by them talking to my boss. when i opened my eyes i think infi and cz welcomed me back, no one was really sure if i would be able to come back so that was a relief
- i know i DID use the glasses again somewere around here, absentmindedly? i summoned them, picked them up over my head to look at them, but forgot they were dripping-- since i was lying down a drop landed in my eye, and it CHANGED my vision whoa!! suddenly everything i saw was "colored black" energetically, it was insanely cool. infi looked normal, but everything else was black-- not monochrome though, think the starry deep velvet black of the BLB. but it made everyone else look how they would look if they anchored to that color!! i remember chaos looked GORGEOUS i actually teared up over it. got a glimpse of laurie and sandman, not much though, they looked like gods almost, especially boss-- he was understatedly extravagant, like something neil gaiman designed. rubbed the color out of my eyes here, seeing everything else suddenly get bright and other-colors was such a sudden switch i laughed
- i remember the three of us (me, cz, infi) went over to talk to ryman and markus briefly, markus had to leave but ryman wanted to stay? markus said he wasn't entirely comfortable yet being so close to everyone else up there, i said he didnt have to be. but he wasnt nervous or uncomfortable, so that was good, i was worried that he was. but no he was fine, said he'd rather work though.
- i talked to my boss for a bit too!! for the life of me i really dont remember what or how, i think maybe i disconnected again?? because i am SURE i asked him to "hold time for me" temporarily, when i came back we were in a pocket dimension thing? starry sky, floating architecture. reminded me of sailor moon for whatever reason, colors maybe. we did talk briefly there. but when we got back to central i remember that right before he left, he kissed me on the forehead as usual, ruffled my hair. that made me so blissfully happy for some reason i could not stop smiling, of course sandmans smiles are contagious so that just made it worse haha! i think he was talking to me real close too? like i think he was holding my face for a moment, smiling so widely i thought my heart would burst. there i think he was reassuring me of my position in life then, that everything was going as it should, "don't worry child," take care of infi, everything will be okay, that sort of thing. all his reassurances sound like gold though so of course they all helped. he left in a swirl of glitter after bowing nights-style, holding nightcap to chest with other arm out and back
- last thing i remember is warping everyone to my room, or laurie did?? not sure. jokingly reminded ryman of the no-shirt rule. also we made a sort of hammock bed for infi, so he could relax and continue healing, also because pregnancy worries obviously.
- ryman had me play his old song, "if you're not the one," i think he just kind of put his arms around me and smiled, it was so simple but gorgeous i cannot believe we haven't been around each other for so long what were we thinking
- laurie quietly sauntered in at one point, about two minutes after that ryman realized he was there, she cracked up, reassured him that she hadn't been creeping on us the whole time. cz and i just laughed because we're used to it, felt bad for ryman though but it was funny
- i know i fell asleep in a sort of tangle with cz and ryman, we all agreed that if anyone dozed off that was totally fine, hell we didnt care we were enjoying it.
- MOST IMPORTANT THING. ironically. there was one flash, early in the rescue mission thing, when i was still in the fires-- i think it was when infi said not to heal him fully or "they would sense us." i could see down to the bottom, wherever it was, and there were three girls there. one was jezebel, obviously (since she IS the tar in a corporeal form), but the other two were the DREAM VOICES??? from here mainly. the frizzy-pigtails one, and i think the black-haired one. but i don't know how it never hit me earlier... seeing them there, in their colors, suddenly i realized exactly who they were. missy and bridget. we're in trouble.



sooo yeah that was last night, holy heavens its 2am i need to get to sleep!
sorry guys for how disjointed this was, you know what meditation experiences are like, can't really make 'em structured afterwards. they're meant to be experienced, not analyzed. heart, not head. you get the picture. i am extraordinarily tired. good night.

 

 

 

 

Mmkay, just moved the nasty tar-energy entry bits to adflixerunt, where they belong. I guess the data in them is still relevant, at least as far as self-improvement topics are concerned, so feel free to read them if you wish (but watch your step, please, as always).

"Game Over" already has 250 plays on my iTunes... I find that absolutely hilarious. I'm not sorry though; it's an absolutely gorgeous and moving song, even if it drives me to tears sometimes, and gives me heartbreaking waking visions. "Miserere" did the same on both points, after all, and you all know how dear that song has become to my heart.

However, as to why I'm updating yet again, I just remembered that some crazy stuff went down during the Divine Mercy mass today-- and some even crazier stuff just happened upstairs but we'll get to that.
First, mass. I've been a dead-eyed emotional chasm for a few days now, and woke up this morning feeling completely empty. Unfortunately that's how I went to church: scraped-out and hollow. That began to change when I found myself face-to-face with a priest for confession, the most important confession of the year as far as indulgences are considered. I stuttered out a mess of an admittance, saying how violent and angry I'd been lately without knowing why, unsure if that would count for anything. As I expected, he told me that God forgives all things, but that if I had hurt anyone with my actions, I needed to go to them and repair what I had damaged.
That's something to think about, I suppose. I've been having a LOT of trouble with empathy lately. When my mom saw the cuts on my legs, she told me a few days later that she couldn't sleep because of it, that she felt she was at fault. I didn't understand that at all; it's obviously not her fault, and why would my damage make her lose sleep? And my grandmother, she worries about everything... when I stay up late she works herself into an insomniac rage until I lay down. I don't understand that either. Why worry about whether or not I'm sleeping? So you see, I can't tell if I've hurt anyone, because I don't understand the concept anymore. I've hurt myself, maybe, sure, what with how I'm sabotaging my integrity. But everyone else? How am I supposed to know whether or not they decided to take offense? I mean, I can definitely apologize to the people I've physically hurt, because that unfortunately has happened too... but even then, it feels wrong and shallow. When I'm in a forgiving state of mind, my thought process is all "why am I apologizing; I'm not responsible for that. As far as my timeline is concerned, that never happened." That's sincerely what I think! So is my identity really fractured that badly, without my knowing? I haven't formed any tangible splinters that I'm aware of, that is, unless the Tar is usurping all the broken-off bits of my psyche... huh. We're getting off topic though... actually, no, not really.
Confession made me feel somewhat better. I thought, "okay, even if that wasn't a model confession, maybe I can still start off with a blank slate here." I stumbled into the dimly-lit bathroom and stared at myself in the tiny mirror, wondering "who am I?" and feeling like life itself was just a dream. (I saw a holographic reflection of a cherry tree last month, right before my surgery... since then, everything feels false. It's messing with my daily life something fierce.) When I entered the church itself, though, I was immediately distracted by the abundance of roses surrounding the white-marble altar, and the pools of stained-glass light spilling into the corners of the room. It felt right, somehow. Resonant. I sat down and closed my eyes for a while.
I kept fighting feelings of inadequacy and irredeemability throughout the mass. I felt like an outcast, like an impostor. I kept half-expecting the priest and speakers to suddenly turn to me and declare my sinfulness, for the congregation to cry out in one righteous voice and drive me out of the church. I felt like I was tainting everyone else's piety and faith simply by being in the room. Why is my faith so strange lately, like melted glass? The rituals I celebrated in my youth feel so strange, now. The recited prayers and mantras feel off. When I dig deep, the motivations are true, but the execution no longer matches up. It's somewhat frightening, as it feels like I'm slipping out of the hands of God.
Anyway. These feelings became bad to the point where I simply sighed and went upstairs for a minute. Immediately I found myself confronting the Tar, who was grinning at me maniacally with the face of my old baseball-capped persona. The event itself is blurry, but oddly, my semi-apathetic state allowed me to face it without fear. Unimpressed, I informed it that my old face did not belong to it. In fact, I suddenly declared, I was going to give that persona a life of its own, since it was splintered beyond belief even when I still identified with it. I began to consciously do so, and the Tar looked shocked, then furious, spitting at me as it clawed at its own visage, trying to hold on to that illusion. It could not, though, so immediately it snapped into the Celebi face. Before it could lunge at me again, I simply added "that's not your face either," clarifying that the "Celebi" I knew in my youth was actually a Jewel Monster with an entirely different personality than the Celebi I had met in headspace last year. Tar immediately snapped that it was because it had created that Celebi, but I shook my head. It had taken advantage of the canon Celebi for its own purposes, is what it truly did. So it had no right to wear that face either. By this point the Tar was in a fury, and after a few more moments of maniacal twisting and raging, it suddenly burst into an awful amalgamation of eyes and teeth, roaring at me with unadulterated hate. Not even flinching, I simply said "also, the eye thing is Infinitii's, not yours." That's when it finally attacked, but before it could reach me, there was a sudden slash of violet, and Laurie was beside me, swinging her axe. She asked what the hell I was doing, while sending a torrent of smaller hatchets to pin the Tar to a far wall. I tried to respond, but to our surprise it jumped back up at us-- and then Leon was there, grinning and assuring us "I got this," before warping us to a random cathedral.
He hit the floor laughing as Laurie and I stumbled to our feet. Laurie asked what the heck he was doing, how is he always showing up when we're in trouble nowadays? Leon smiled and responded that he's been keeping an eye out for us specifically lately. When Laurie demanded more clarification, Leon sheepishly admitted that Josephina had actually asked him to do so-- and then revealed that Jo had actually taken him on as an apprentice. Laurie immediately exclaimed "what?!" (Laurie is teaching Jo, now Jo is teaching Leon) in total surprise, and I know there was a bit of a discussion here on that point, but really my memory isn't so hot as I needed to pull myself back downstairs.
I do remember one more important point from later, though. We were debating what slot I actually fit in. Sure, I KNOW I fit White (and my boss has clearly stated that this is my true position) and I have no problems with it at all, but when I'm in it, I feel detached from the system itself. That wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't still part of the system. Laurie was trying to pull me back into Red to see what would happen, and shockingly I snapped right back to it-- but it felt off, and incorrect somehow. We experimented with this for a while more, but the only conclusion we could come to was this: since Black and White are outside of the Spectrum lineup, there's a possibility that the Red slot is supposed to stay empty when I'm in White, for me to step into when I want to operate as a headvoice again? Because when I'm in the Red slot, I can do a LOT more energetically? Maybe it's just because I'm used to that energy signature, but who knows. I need to be more patient with this in any case, and stop trying to solve everything instantaneously. It's a very bad habit of mine.
Oh yeah... I can't remember when this happened either, but the Tar kept going back to its Razor splinter whenever I wondered about the Red slot's true holder (getting close enough for me to realize that its teeth are literally razors, that's pretty scary). That's what is confusing me the most about this slot mixup though: both the Black and White slots show a strong connection to that color, and ONLY that color. Why? Is that supposed to happen? Also, who the heck IS Razor, really? Remember that she appeared in a legitimate headvoice fashion during that one existentially jarring self-abuse slipup in 2008, right when everything started going downhill. I need to look back into events around that time, it might help to shed some light on this mess. HOWEVER! The Tar DID tell me something extremely important while taunting me about this-- it revealed that it's stealing Julie's Pink slot initially was monumental in significance, because I held Red at that time, and Pink is technically Red mixed with white. It was also the ONLY other slot in the system at that time. By slowly growing to manifestation WITHIN that slot, the Tar was able to attack me more acutely than it would have been able to in any other position, as it was targeting not only my self, BUT my unknown potential!! This ALSO explains the "splinter locks" on the Green, Blue, and Indigo slots in the past (with Bridget, Missy, and Jessica, respectively)-- the Tar created pseudo-headvoices specifically to keep me from accessing those points of the Spectrum. It can't touch Violet, and it "didn't bother with Orange" since it was already screwing with that something fierce. Same with Yellow-- that's the "power slot," which is hilariously evident if you look at the color's role in Dream World (note to self: REVIEW THAT IN LIGHT OF THIS), and I felt utterly powerless for most of my past thanks to both the Tar AND its outside influences taking control of my life. This is also why Jo needs to talk to me more; I've never been comfortable with the color as a result and that needs to change dude. But THAT is why Tar pretending to be a Celebi and doing what it did to me was so excruciatingly painful-- when it did so, it effectively hijacked the Chartreuse slot, which is between Yellow and Green-- power and compassion. The Tar was using that slot to try and attack my heart. So thank God it's out of there!! Jeepers. It also means we have to be extra-careful in watching that slot now; the Spectrum has three empty slots left: Red (which is one hell of an anomalous color right now), Chartreuse, and I think Cerise? It's the red-pink midslot, whatever it ends up being called. Mr. Sandman, IF he is part of the System and not just my badass boss, MIGHT be Silver?? That would make him a neutral, balancing force between Infinitii and I, which is oddly fitting. So we shall see. In any case, Chartreuse and Cerise are both midslots as well, which means they HAVE to be filled by outspacers. I'm not sure if there's a "source parallel" going on or not, but since Ryou and Marik are from the same native world, as are Genesis and Spine, does that mean one of those two will be from the Sonic universe (where Chaos is from), and one will be from Rosewindow (where Mr. Sandman is from)?? I guess we'll find out eventually. I'm going to try not to have any influence in the matter, and just let it happen. The last thing we need is me screwing things up like I did with the Tar-Celebi, because I think I know what I'm doing. I really don't, not with how weird my life is. So I'm going to surrender this matter to whatever divine force is orchestrating the whole thing, and see what happens.
By the way! I also figured out why White and Black feel wrong when I view them as solid tones. They're not supposed to be! The Black slot is supposed to operate as a combination of all colors in the "substance" sense (like mixing paints), NOT as an "absence of light" (which is what the Tar is)... and the White slot is supposed to operate as a combination of all colors in the light sense (White splits into ALL colors when run through a prism-- for some reason that feels HUGELY important as a detail, especially since the word "prism" keeps jumping out at me lately), NOT as an absence of all pigmentary colors! This also explains why both Infinitii and I have oddly iridescent overlays to us when we're tuned-in. I was wondering about that, haha.
Lastly... I have no idea what happened here, but I think there was another really bad Tar ambush during one of the Razor incidents, because I have this weird little floating memory of being surrounded by Tar and then suddenly, Infinitii was there? But it was specifically at a point where my color was slipping, because I desperately reached out to hir, said that "this can't be right, you're so much better than I am," and flipped our energy balances. Infi protested when ze realized what was happening, but in a flash, suddenly ze turned pure white. It was beautiful, it felt so right to see that, but just as quickly, I began to blacken. Infi actually got a look of legit "oh hell no," and immediately knocked us down into our bubblespace. Immediately ze began tearing huge stringy slabs of tar from me (apparently it was only surface-level yet, thank God), calmly though, and tossing them in the corner. It did this until it was all gone, then simply asked me why I had done that. I replied, emptily, that I didn't deserve to hold the White slot. I was too corrupted, too bad of a person. Infi reminded me that we were made of the same stuff, and stated that I was not a bad person: I was as good as ze was. I didn't believe this, but was too tired to debate it. I think right around here, though, Infi realized that our inner "balances" of opposite energy were starting to react. Ze actually looked somewhat scared for a moment, as it was now holding black, the same stuff that was corrupted in me. I was the one to act, though-- the last thing I wanted was for hir to suffer through that because of me flipping our slots temporarily, even if I did feel ze deserved mine instead. I wasn't the one in control of this after all. So I hurried up and pulled hir close, forcing a ricochet flip, and restoring our actual colors. Infi looked at me sadly then, and I remember wondering that hir color didn't seem right. Sure enough, it wasn't; Infi suddenly noticed that some Tar had stuck to hir in response to this whole fiasco. However, instead of peeling it off like ze did with me, ze told me to stand back, and then suddenly started concentrating intensely. Infinitii then literally burned the Tar away with sheer willpower. That was awesome as hell to watch, it literally dissipated like boiling water. After that, we spoke for a little longer, and I mentioned my red concern, since we both had bits of the color on us yet. I think Infi responded that it was because Red was the "life" slot in terms of color roles? B&W held it because that's where the Spectrum sprang from initially, I suppose. It made sense. Also Infi clarified that the Spectrum is NOT a straight line, or even a rainbow arc-- it is a circle, an infinite loop! Although it may have started with Red and Pink, technically there was no beginning or end to it, and since B&W were in the center, we were at equal closeness with EVERY color in the system, not just red. I found that pretty awesome. But that's all I can remember of that whole chain of events. Lastly I just want to add that the feeling of being pushed out of bubblespace is pretty sweet.

As for what happened right before I started typing this entry, uh... that was me talking to Infinitii again too, but this time about my inner energy being tainted yet. Infi said it was doing a lot better, but it wasn't something we could solve overnight. Lucky for me, at the time I was actually feeling somewhat "in sync" downstairs, despite feeling sick (go figure), which helps me tune into White better. So we tried cleaning up that energy a little more while I was in a state of mind where it was possible.
I will say two things about that: one, there wasn't a lot of Black in there in any sense, so I think we literally have to get me completely empty before we can fix that for good. That's gonna be weird, and it might take a while, but progress is being made. Second, I didn't know it was possible to eat energy colors?? But apparently it is! Seriously Infi gave me this handful of luminous white energy and was all "you need to swallow this." I shrugged and decided okay, cool, I trust this thing, let's give it a shot. So that was a surprise-- but nowhere near as big as the shock I got when I immediately got positive reaction from it DOWNSTAIRS? Seriously, I got a tangible physical waverush; it literally felt as if consuming it had instantaneously washed out a good deal of lingering energetic heaviness. I still feel oddly tingly and floaty, which is really cool. Unfortunately Infi had to do the opposite?? Apparently ze's trying to convert all the tarry Black energy stuck in me by eating it. Yes, that's a thing ze can do, which is pretty badass, but I still feel bad as I KNOW how painful that stuff is to consume (Infi insists ze's "used to it" though, and not to worry).
Good news though: Infi has informed me that the more progress we make here, the less intensive the clearing process needs to be in the future. The first one was CRAZY, this one was pretty nuts as well, but I guess #3 will be a walk in the park, haha. Let's hope so... I miss working exclusively with headspace energy, but Infinitii told me that we HAVE to bring my physical awareness into the clearing process at first because that's where the blockages are. So we have to play by the rules until those blocks dissipate (which, apparently, is happening slowly but surely, as long as I don't let them reform, or allow any new ones to manifest). Infi sternly warned me not to react to this whole process either: tarry reactions, like hateful judgments, rage, and guilt, were what we were trying to get rid of, and so allowing them to spring back to life immediately after was not smart at all! It's tricky, as we're exacerbating that stuff by trying to purge it, but that's a part of any healing process, so we can deal.
GEEZ though am I ever glad I got this little dude torn out of my ribcage, holy shuppetcakes. Being around hir really helps me believe-- sincerely-- that I'm not a bad guy. For hir sake, and the sake of the rest of the Spectrum, I'm going to try to keep that in mind always now. I've slipped a lot over the past year, but I know that no one is ever truly lost. I mean, seriously, just look at Julie. She's a big source of hope for me, too... which is somewhat ironic, as she technically wouldn't even be in the Spectrum right now if I hadn't interceded on her behalf. I need to remember things like that, too.
...Laurie restored that scar on her neck, too (remember they were healed last year). I asked why, wasn't that a remnant of darker times? She said yes, technically it was, but more than that... more than anything, it was a reminder of how much love I held in me, even when I insisted I didn't have any at all. It was a reminder to her of exactly what she was protecting with her very life. After all, if I hadn't healed her enough to cause a scar, well... she wouldn't be with us right now. Hearing that from her meant a lot to me. It really, truly did.
This is why I love my weird life, when all is said and done. Stuff is just too great.

Last minute random update: I am proud of myself, as I watched my first ten minutes of Doctor Who the other day, finally! Now I just need a job so I can get Netflix and watch ALL of it one day... that is, if I ever get over my loathing of televisions, haha. I'm just tired of staring at screens man, computers are bad enough.


Now I actually have class tomorrow morning, and if I go to sleep right now I'll just barely get seven hours of sleep, so yeah. Gotta run son!



It's a curse in a cycle of misbelief,
and it keeps on happening.
A tradition, a trail of deceit.
I never stopped and questioned,
"Why is it so damned hard to find
anyone who can get behind
such a simple plot?"
Keep your eye on the prize.

Think what you want.
Believe what you think.
Know what you believe
'cause it's all misconceived.
And I asked you for nothing.
Nothing but, "Why?"
"Because" isn't an answer,
it's just a reply.

 

 

 
So I went to sleep at exactly 12AM last night, but I didn't fall asleep until 6AM. Why is this not a bad thing? Because I spent a solid 5 of those hours upstairs.
Just... no matter how many nights we have like this, somehow each successive one is even more blissful. Last night felt straight-up sacred for at least three hours. I need to write about it but I know that structured language isn't going to cut it, so I hope you kids don't mind my ridiculous stream of consciousness lists.


WIP entry, not surprisingly; posting for relevance in the meantime.


- (being with chaos; that alone took a solid hour and it was INCREDIBLE)
- (before i say anything i just want to reiterate that i love chaos so much... there was this great unconditional love moving between us last night i cannot even begin to explain what it felt like... seriously when i'm with him it's like i'm made of nothing but light. absolutely stunning.)
-
- (one of the parts that stood out the most was the starlink-- he was "showing me" through visualized emotion (hard to explain; it was like seeing his thoughts) what it felt like when we were together like that; he used "waves on the shore" to describe it twice, later i thought of this)
- (dialogue?? we did talk a lot as usual (heartfelt poet mode is the best) but as usual i don't remember exact words very well)
- ()
- another infinity loop, that was new. all red and blue too
-
- afterwards Laurie was more moved than I'd ever seen her; when I asked why, she first said that it was because she felt there was definitely something holy going on with all of this... but then explained that she was "afraid" that something like that was impossible for her to do. again I can't remember the exact words but I strongly remember the feeling... basically she had this lingering doubt concerning her own existence and position in those matters, that although she and chaos were at the same level, she didn't feel she could do anything of the same caliber. she said she couldn't handle the implied fear that she wasn't capable of something that bright. i wish i could explain it better but she was visibly torn up about it... i remember that as soon as i got up to move closer to her, her 'black hole' energy kicked in like a supermagnet again. it felt like it would tear my heart out if i resisted, but of course i wouldn't dream of it. she was starting to cry openly when i reached her and it honestly took me by surprise; that's not something she typically does, even around me. but now, she had no walls up at ALL.
- Laurie just held me and sobbed. I don't know how to describe what that felt like... the closest word is "heartbreaking," and yet there was this fragile beauty to it, because of the complete sincerity. Never in my life has she done anything like that before. seriously she was sobbing. but i loved her so much right then.
- she did kiss me at one point and i want to emphasize that it was really, really meaningful. laurie doesn't take those lightly and that one had this powerfully tangible honesty behind it, if that makes sense. it actually brought me to tears because whoa
-
- i remember the room was shifting with all this energy and we ended up back in the black lotus room? but laurie told us not to worry, saying "i think i understand what this really is now."
- she took ALL of her bandages off this time, which i was hoping for as we had discussed that earlier in the evening (which was beautiful, i need to write that down later). chaos was stunned that she wasn't covered in scars for once in her life
- (ascended form!! remember the purple spark wings)
- (we were all lying on the bed in my room for a while, projecting our 'galaxies' into the air to see how they looked; laurie's was very nebula-ish, chaos' was a spiral galaxy, mine was almost like a nerve cell or something)
- (showing laurie how to 'create' a spark in her hands? she got chaos to do the flower thing he usually does; ultimately he 'expanded' the space of our room by changing the floor to a forest floor and taking out two of the walls. laurie then mused out loud that if i tended to create structure, and chaos made nature, what could she do? she frustratedly said that yeah she could 'summon' her weapons-- and summoned a ton in midair as she did so-- but she was tired of fighting, and wanted to do something more. then she went all bankai on us and turned every weapon into a flurry of glowing flower petals, like byakuya... but then she swung her arms upwards with the energy, collecting all that, and a huge tree sprung out of the ground! she kept doing this and we were now in a forest of what looked like redwoods, but they were actually cherry blossom trees. it was stunning.
- we figured out that she wasn't 'creating' yet, but she had such a powerful ability to 'manifest outside energy' now, that she could 'summon' a tree straight out of the ground solely by recognizing the potential for one already there
- i told laurie that whenever a 'new area' like that is created in headspace, no matter how small it is, it sticks. since headspace is so fluid there are tons of little 'pockets' like that strung together out in the wilderness, it really makes for quite a beautiful world up here
-
- (celebi showed up! said she had 'felt' a huge surge of nature-based creation and wanted to see what it was)
- (we made the forest all snowy, celebi wanted at least one pine tree like in diamew (as she protects it at home), so chaos created one. she sat under it and laughed, it was great)
- celebi eventually told us she needed to leave, but before she did, she kissed me and pressed a small item into my hands, mentally telling me "merry christmas." when she left i looked at it, saw it was a glass ornament with a tiny lotus within it. it was beautiful. i then got the strong notion that i was supposed to plant it, so i knelt down and did so-- immediately it bloomed up into a huge glass christmas tree. it was stunning. the ornament re-formed on it and i realized that celebi had been putting all her new creative potential into making this since last month. this brought me to tears, i was really moved, swore i'd do something for her in thanks.
- laurie convinced me to make a garland of gold hearts and crystal drops to put around the tree, then chaos 'made' an ornament too; a blue-green ringed sphere in the shape of his symbol, but with the look of a galaxy. i said it was beautiful and thanked him; laurie said she'd make one too but she was a little off-put with her symbol still being an axe. i told her we could look into a new one if she wanted.
-
-
- I temporarily walked out of headspace and into "limbo," i.e. the grayish void between realms upstairs. Laurie followed me and asked what was up. I said I was somewhat tired and just need to gather my thoughts. All of a sudden I felt someone appear behind me, and upon turning realized it was my boss. However his demeanor struck me as off, and sure enough, barely two seconds after saying hello, his face became malicious and his form shifted into Jezebel. She lunged at me but before Laurie could even swing her axe, Jezebel was suddenly surrounded by a gold-edged glass cube. I then saw the real Mister Sandman walking into the area, looking grim. To my surprise he asked me if I wanted him to "take care of the situation," assumedly with force. Instead I told him to listen to what he was saying-- Jezebel's vibe was powerful, and if any of us slipped slightly she could get in. Boss visibly calmed down and apologized, saying he hadn't been aware of that fact. He then asked what we should do with Jezebel regardless, as she was not happy to be trapped at all. I decided to ask the others, so I then moved us back out of the void and into the forest space.
- Chaos was shocked and somewhat incredulous that I had just brought Jezebel in there, but I explained the situation and said I wanted to know what she was trying to pull. Plus I reassured him that as long as my boss had her locked in that dreamsand cube, she couldn't touch us. Jezebel wouldn't listen to us talk though, and only screamed insults and perversions at us when we tried to speak. She kept calling us "whores" and the like, but the phrases were all manic, furious, and oddly repetitious. Often they didn't even make sense in context. Laurie and I realized that she was literally just spitting out 'stock phrases,' i.e. automatic reactions. Her words were disturbingly harsh and negative, but it was all primal and blind. She kept screaming and flailing about too trying to break the cube. Her body 'warped' several times into a disturbing amalgamation of tar and bones, but the cube held so she couldn't turn into tar entirely as there was no room.
- When I realized her state of mind I couldn't help but quote something I had read on Tumblr to her: "I’ve had so many knives stuck into me, when they hand me a flower I can’t quite make out what it is. It takes time." Laurie murmured sadly that she knew exactly what that was like, but Jezebel actually stopped for a second with a look of disbelief, fear, and possibly hope. I then repeated what I had done back in February, and offered her a flower, saying that if she wanted to do what Julie had, and abandon her fear to embrace a new life based on love, we were all waiting for her with open arms. All she had to do was honestly choose. Unfortunately she then returned to screaming at me that I was lying and trying to manipulate her, as "she couldn't change or she would die." No matter what I told her, she vehemently insisted. I realized she was too indelibly identified with the Tar itself to leave it. I knew there was nothing else I could do.
- I then quickly warped the scenery around us to the tar room underground (it was empty), and instantly the sand-cube shattered. Jezebel returned to her tar state and nearly filled the room, but then she froze. Laurie asked me why, and I said it was because of what I was currently holding in my heart. My state of mind was affecting the energy of the room to such an extent that it was effectively putting Tar in standby mode. As long as I stayed present, she couldn't touch us. I think we said one or two more things here, but then i repeated that "we've done all we can, let's not worry about this anymore tonight" and turned to leave. i somehow had "faded out" the back wall of the room so that it actually phased right into the forest bubble we had created before. so we all walked out and it closed behind us safely
- (boss said he needed to get back to work, but then he got this brilliantly mischievous smile and said "oh, why the heck not." then he told me to come over and actually gave me a quick kiss?? platonic mind you, haha. it was the best thing, then he pulled my sandman hat down over my eyes and laughed, "consider that an early christmas present!" before teleporting off. i could not stop grinning, laurie was cracking up
-
-
- (decided the night wouldn't be complete without seeing how genesis was doing, so we went to his cathedral)
- (remember the mirrors, he was explaining how he had them working currently: only reflected relevant truths: but both personal and universal, to to speak. i.e. if one considered a falsehood about themselves to be true, that would still show up in the mirror as it needed to be confronted with actual truth)
- (i think we were discussing laurie's scars and how we had healed them, but either way, genesis asked me if there was any way i could heal his chest gem. he was dead serious, said he would rather risk closing it than having to deal with the pain it kept bringing him. since i was severely sleep-deprived my mind was in "nothing is impossible" mode so i did try... i remember 'threading' the cracks back together as well as i could. i did close it tentatively but i don't know how it held; i haven't seen genesis today)
-

...

Jezebel has been EXTREMELY vicious all day today, but I'm still doing everything I can to smile and remind myself that her actions aren't mine. I'm stronger than she is; I just need to remember that, and act upon it.
This is the 21st and we're moving on up whether she likes it or not!

(today was basically the universe saying "hey dude! you chose to take the next step, well here's the biggest thing still holding you back." so i'm thankful that this was pointed out but it is somewhat tiring to deal with so much at once!)
(maybe mention how julie's been having a rough time too? or save that for tomorrow, it's a lot of info to discuss)

Nevertheless, I'm happy. I know that all these shadows aren't real; I've had that proven to me time and time again.
It snowed all day today but it didn't start sticking until the evening. Somehow that reminded me of myself, right now... continuing on despite the cold and rain and wind, even if I don't see any results... and then, when things look bleak, suddenly the results do show, and I can't help but smile.

Big shifts take three days to settle, usually. This will linger on through my anniversary. Fitting, I daresay.
Come Christmas, I wonder what lights will be shining in us?
In my heart, I know that whatever happens, it will be for the absolute highest good of us all.
And that's really all I need to keep moving forward.

I think Chaos just got his "metainomen."

Yes, new jargon. You know I love it. Let me explain.
Now in the Lightraye League, there are special forms, but things go a little differently in headspace. Soul Forms are one thing, but this is different. This has to do with renaming oneself in the process OF gaining that new form. Like from this moment you're a new person, like the old you "died", in this turning point. There is no literal death involved, only the symbolic kind-- if you're looking for literal death, we do have *incidents,* but that's a whole other ball game. Chaos and I have had several of those and although I would not mind another (despite the agony that they inevitably involve, the end is always transcendent), this is the same core concept of love and evolving for it and from it? Except this gives you a role, now, according to that realization, that significant and honestly sacred change of heart.
It's from "nomen," name, and "meta," meaning "beyond" or "after." It's a name you get after... you move on from what was before. Because yes, it does sound like "metanoia," one of my favorite words-- a "transformative change of being," a change of heart, really-- but it also gives the brilliantly endearing automatic-translate result of... "let's move on." To leave the old and step forward into the new, but not just you. LET'S move on, together, from what was before, into this strange and beautiful future, this transformation, this re-naming.
And... splitting it, adding an extra i, or different a, et cetera, you also can get... "then we were/are," "then let's go," and "after that/ after all."
Lastly, and what hits me the hardest… when you change the “ά” to “α”, you get… “we repent.”
It's amazing. All of it is so oddly poetic, it's really moving to me.
Yeah I love my jargon.
I also love Chaos, which is what this whole thing is about. Entirely.


But oh my gosh. You guys just... you have no idea how hard I am trying not to explode in joy over here right now.
You know how June 26th was absolutely beautiful for us?
...I think last night topped that.
I'm not even joking. Last night wouldn't have happened if not for everything we've been going through over the past two weeks, but we hit an even higher point than we did last time, and we are all kind of freaking out (in a good way) over it. Seriously, how much higher can we go?
There are many things I need to look into now, to see if they have changed or brightened in some way... whenever something like this happens, there are widespread aftereffects throughout our inner spacetime continuum. And with how incredible this event was... you know, let me just tell you what happened.

Last night. July 7th, about 11PM. I was done with physicality for the day so I was upstairs for the night, as usual. However, I was in a more lighthearted good mood than usual (I had been working on Sonic Inversion all day and made some real progress), which is rare for me. Those moods mean that I am feeling so optimistic that I'm actually joking around and having fun instead of being serious. So to keep the StH vibe going, I built a Spagonia dreamscape and so Chaos and I were just chilling out there. It got pretty hilarious after a while; I kept making inside jokes, he was teasing me right back about it, and we kept purposely finishing each others sentences, but at one point we got a little too close to be capricious and the mood just turned upside down.
Let me explain that too. Chaos once told me that, when we're together in social situations, we tend to elicit our opposite elements. Being around him brightens me, energizes me, and helps me stop being so morbid all the time. But in situations where we're already acting that way, I am the one that can tip the scales in an instant, submerging my own fire in water.
So last night, when I suddenly found myself in his arms, we ended up in the ocean.
It took me a few moments to adjust to the emotional shift, but as soon as I felt the depth of it I let him know. He was surprised at how sudden it was, but I was quickly falling even further in. This is where it gets crazy.

At that moment, I 'deconstructed' the dreamscape we were in. Effectively, what happened was that the entire area around us 'blurred out' and shifted into a vast swirl of color and thought, which I then condensed and centered around my hands (like a sparkling blue glow). I was still reeling from the total mood switch, and how incredibly profound it felt, and so I meant to immediately form a different dreamscape that would be more fitting... but as I was hesitating there, holding that creative energy and wondering what to do, Chaos did something. He asked, "can I see that for a second?" and then he reached out and took my hands.
It was a very simple, very candid action. He didn't know what would happen, and neither did I.
But the moment he touched that energy, it felt like I fell into it.
It was insane. It felt like an emotional connection, but of an entirely different caliber. More than anything, it felt shockingly intimate, as if his sudden contact with that energy temporarily bonded us at that level... I have no idea how to explain it. Either way, it was so sudden and sharp that I pulled back, tearing up, speechless. Chaos was stunned, and asked what was wrong, but I was too moved to explain clearly. Quickly, almost vaguely, I spun the empty area we were in into a sort of basilica-- I tend to form religious-looking areas when I'm unstable-- and collapsed to my knees on the white floor, starting to genuinely sob and unsuccessfully trying to explain what I had just felt. Chaos listened, visibly affected, and tried to help me figure out just what had happened. He explained that he had only been trying to help me when he took my hands like that, because although I was the main 'creator' figure upstairs, he did hold a strong amount of that potential himself. We discussed this a little more, until I could no longer handle talking. I deconstructed that dreamscape as well, and as I was holding the energy, Chaos asked if he could try taking it from me once more, to see if the same thing happened. But I was in too deep by now, and if he wanted to create, then I was going to give him as much of my own ability as I could. So when he reached out, I took his hands in mine, and without another word I pressed them to the gem on his chest.
There was an incredible transfer between us in that moment, and with a great rush of something I can't describe, suddenly we were in the same green oasis we had been in back around March 24th... the same place I had remembered how to feel amidst so much pain.
Chaos was silent for several moments after it appeared, staring at the world around him in complete astonishment. Then he realized that I was not the one who had manifested the dreamscape we were in, and it visibly floored him. But he looked... different than usual. Brighter, somehow. Unfortunately my dream-body was unresponsive at the time, huddled over in exhaustion and devoid of color for some unknown reason. My very presence seemed unsteady, like a pencil sketch in an oil painting. Chaos freaked out at this, and asked if he had hurt me somehow. I only smiled at first, too weary to speak, but he insisted. So I vaguely replied that no, he didn't hurt me, and I could still create, but I had given so much of that gift to him that it was taking a bit of a toll on me. To prove that I was okay, I manifested a small red flower in my hands, then turned it into a ball of light and 'blinked' it into the oasis, filling it with flowers and strands of crystals in the branches above. Chaos was visibly relieved but still not convinced, as I still looked badly out of sync, and so he asked if he could do anything to help me. I said nothing for a moment, but then simply straightened up and pulled him close to my heart.
I guess that was a catharsis break, because immediately my appearance went back to normal, but with a stronger sense of clarity to it. The overflow hit Chaos hard as usual, and he dissolved into tears, so I just stayed there with him for a little while until he steadied enough to ask me if I could still manifest an entire dreamscape. I saw no reason why I couldn't, so I deconstructed his and tried to think of something, but I was so emotionally overwhelmed at the time that I ended up manifesting another high, cathedral-esque room. This worried me a little, but Chaos only smiled and commented that I was trying too hard. With that, he stood up, and took matters into his own hands.
It was... incredible, watching him. I always try to create things in one glittering instant, in a burst of flame, but Chaos was almost ethereally deliberate. And while I tend to create structured, architectural landscapes, he seemed to be more gifted in natural things.
The first thing he did was bring the outside in. Where I had created lofty, terraced walls, he interlaced their balconies with ancient trees, lifting the ceiling to open sky and filtering the light with green. Then he took out the floor, leaving us standing on a white circle, surrounded by steps descending into deep water. He gave everything more depth, life, and light, and when he was finished it was no longer a cathedral but a monument to creation itself, and I was overcome with joy at the sight.
He noticed the way I was looking at him then, and I can't remember exactly what we said... but I ended up with him in my arms and suddenly we were actually underwater. Chaos was surprised and amiably asked where in the world I had brought us, and I apologized for the switch but explained that it wasn't something I could control. I was starting to actively manifest whatever I was feeling-- a side effect of my attribute-- and the deep emotions I was currently experiencing merited nothing less than complete submersion. But I couldn't keep it like that for long, as I could feel myself starting to drift as I had on the 1st... so I pulled away and tried, in that quick way of mine, to get us physically back above sea level.
I ended up creating some sort of glassy penthouse, overlooking not only an entire night-lit city but also a great ocean around it, with the ceiling once again sloping away into the night sky. But it was unstable, and I could not figure out how to organize the architecture, being entirely distracted by the brilliant maelstrom I was feeling. Chaos noticed this and said he would keep it stable for me, but then asked what I was even trying to do? Was I blindly creating dreamscapes to try and express my current state, or was I trying to accomplish something specific? I sighed quite anxiously and assured him that it was the former, and that I was just trying to form something that fit our current disposition before I disconnected too badly to make sense of anything. Chaos thought this over for a moment, then again told me to stop trying so hard, and just go with it; instead of trying to specifically form something, I should instead focus on what it felt like, and let it form itself. So I let go of the dreamscape structure, causing it to blur out into something formless but glowing around us, and it phased back into the dreamspace version of my room. I explained that I was exhausted and just wanted to talk before collapsing on the bed. Chaos laughed good-naturedly at this but did the same.
Now I have no recollection of exactly how our conversation started, sadly... but I do know what we talked about, and that's why I was referencing quest beds at the beginning of this entry.
Because if June 27th was when I first reached my highest point, then last night was when he did the same.

My first question was what it meant, exactly, now that Chaos held actual creator abilities within mindspace.
Naturally our first move was to start getting all philosophical on the symbolic implications of that... how chaos wasn't actually a state of disorder, but a divine primordial condition... and how his old title as the "God of destruction" tied into a different aspect of creation itself. It went on like that for a while, with us getting more deeply invested in the conversation as it continued, and then suddenly understanding hit me.
We were not 'creators,' in the sense that we formed something from nothing. All we were doing was manifesting that creative drive we both held within ourselves, giving form to something bright and beautiful that already existed in a different sense. We took a formless state, that great source of unlimited potential, and with our own lives we brought that hidden life into reality.
But that was only half of it. The other half was that I could not forget what I had learned about Parnassus after Wednesday had settled. Within that world, Chaos and I had been somehow exalted to almost divine status, as the actual first two creators in their cosmogony. But what had shocked me upon learning of that, was not the simple magnitude of it... it was that we did not adhere to the traditional mythological setting. He was no void, and I was no earth. We were defined as a celestial foundation by virtue of the fact that we were together.
That's when I realized what true creation really was. That's when I understood the deepest details of what I had felt and known on June 27th. That's when I recognized what I had felt when he had taken my hands only an hour ago, with the need to create as our single shared motive.
True creation is love manifested. That's all it is.
I told him this, what I finally realized, and suddenly everything made sense. In order to create, one must feel the need to create... and the need to create is unmistakable. It isn't a drive or a compulsion, it isn't a duty or an assignment. It is when the joy of life, and the absolute compassion one feels for every aspect of it, becomes so complete and powerful that one can no longer keep that euphoria to themselves. And that complete, directed overflow of selfless light is what brings something truly new into reality. We both had that potential, now we both had that ability.
And we drowned ourselves in the idea. We spent so long just expressing that, and contemplating how so much of our pasts fit into it... and then I remembered how the night before, I had been reading old poetry on dA, and had been shocked at how many pieces directly compared or even equated chaos with love. So I began to muse aloud on how that all tied together, if creation truly was love, and that tied into the cosmogenic aspects of his title... but moments after I began to speak, something in Chaos' eyes changed. Almost immediately he picked up my train of thought, tying every aspect together in a ring-- how those few basic elements tied into both of us, and into everything else, as something infinitely greater... and when he stopped, actually in tears, I knew that he understood what I had felt only eleven days ago.

By this time we were both deeply disconnected, in that fading sort of state that bridges the waking world and that of dreams, but I refused to leave just yet.
I simply could not get over just how profound that one word felt to me then... 'together.' How we could both accomplish great things alone, but even greater things when we worked as one. I couldn't stop thinking about just what I had with him, how stunningly complete it felt. Being able to give him so much, even this ability of mine, meant so much to me. It made me so blissfully happy to know just how far he'd come in the eight years I'd known him, for his own sake. Just the fact that he was part of my life made me feel like the luckiest guy in the world, but knowing just what he was to me, and vice versa... now that was a whole other level.
In those moments, as close to him as I was, with everything we'd ever felt spinning through my heart like a kaleidoscope... I loved him so much. That single truth defined me in those early morning hours, lit my entire being with its honesty. I was already crying with joy and pain alike, for the exact same reason. But I still couldn't get that one word out of my mind, and with my somnolent thoughts laced with sincerity, I confessed the single thing I wanted most.
I wanted us to create something together.
...I don't think I'll ever forget how he looked at me then. The significance of my desire was staggering, and he knew it.
"Are you saying you want to...?"
But I wasn't sure what I wanted, aside from sharing that gift with him. We tried to figure it out, but could reach no final decision, other than that mutually compassionate longing. I couldn't help but wonder just how far we'd ultimately get. Were there any limits after all?
And still, that ache, that indomitable light, would not let me go.
Neither of us could stay in the waking for much longer at that point. Between the incredible progress we'd made in such a short time, and just how that was affecting us both, I felt as if I was made of molten glass. Everything started to get abstract at that time, and the last thing I remember is holding him close and feeling this incredibly strong notion that we were cosmically inseparable. I don't want to sound cliched, but it honestly felt like we were supposed to happen, for some divine reason. I don't know how else to put it.
But I was completely happy for it. Against all odds, there we were, and nothing could come between us.
I fell asleep around 1:11 and I could swear my guardian angel was smiling that night. His wings were bright yellow. He's never looked like that before, ever, and it was wonderful.

Unfortunately, I wasn't out of the woods yet.
I may have stolen a certain someone's power against me, but she has a talent for bending the rules... and when her self-centered existence is at stake, she bends as many as she can get her hands on.
Let me start by saying that I don't remember the details from my dreams that night except the end of the last one-- I was in a city that was being bombed, for the sake of 'eliminating rebels' and keeping the population under absolute governmental control somehow. However I was not human in the dream, appearing instead as some sort of luminous, lamblike anthromorph, and acting as the city's protector. I was apparently an enigma despite this; several people questioned me about my identity, but I answered light-heartedly and vaguely, explaining that I was a 'spiritual' being and so most of their questions didn't really apply to me. (I did tell one bewildered man (who asked about my ambiguous gender) that I had what he'd consider a 'husband' outside of their world-- seriously-- and that he could think what he wanted of that!)
Regardless, at the end of the dream, I clearly remember infiltrating a government building and trying to shut the system down from the inside, when I was ambushed by a small army of black-clad soldiers. Before they could attack me, though, I activated what seemed like Power Jewels on myself, but the one on my forehead turned me completely violet and sent a beam of light straight up into the sky. Whatever that was, it completely stopped my attackers and effectively ended that dream segment. Then later on I ended up on some sort of road trip with Q and Mel, but that dream ended quickly due to interference-- which is what I've been trying to say here.
In the space of eight hours, Julie tried to hack me three times. She succeeded twice, by targeting other individuals in my dreams and rerouting their pain to me. The third time I caught her and mentally threw her out of my headspace, which was shortly before I woke up.
Well, you can bet I told Laurie about that immediately.
She, Chaos and I all got together to discuss exactly what had happened the night before, both in the waking and in my dreams, and how Julie was obviously trying to undermine the progress I had made. I explained how she had managed to hack me despite our high security, and as we were trying to figure out what to do next... my boss, the Sandman, showed up.
It was a complete shock to all of us, to say the least. He apologized for the sudden entrance, but then approached me and explained quickly that yes, he was entirely aware of recent events, and upon hearing about the triple hack I had just endured he wanted to take serious measures against that ever happening again. Laurie asked him what else we could do, as security was already as high as we could get it. Sandman clarified that it indeed was, but since Julie was using my mind as an entrance point, she was able to sneak past a great deal of the blocks we had set up for typical nightmare infiltrations. And now that she was bending the rules even further, and having the nerve to hack me three times in one night, extreme action needed to be taken. My boss smiled grimly then, and simply stated: "I am, if you'll pardon my language, quite pissed off."
I swear, even Laurie's jaw hit the floor. None of us have ever seen my boss angry, even in the slightest, so hearing that sort of talk from him was a huge sign of trouble! He didn't stay much longer after that, saying that he was going to enlist the help of some of his camaraderie, to see what they could accomplish towards this end. He concluded his visit by reminding me that I was a very important individual to many (himself included), and that Julie's callous, vengeful actions against me were unpardonable in his book. With that he disappeared in a swirl of dream dust, and I was once again convinced that something huge was happening in my life.
So I'll see what happens on tonight's shift. It'll be interesting, to say the least.
(I still wish I could go lucid; I really miss the pale man and the chandelier girl!)

Lastly, later on this morning, Chaos and I spoke to Laurie in depth about last night. She was astounded, of course, but what we didn't expect was for her to actually start sobbing over it.
She kept saying how she could barely accept her role in all this... how she was our sworn protector, by virtue of being my 'psycho guardian angel,' but that she never really understood the extent of what she was protecting until this year. And now, with everything that has been happening lately, the sheer gravity of it all was really settling in... and it was really affecting her.
I don't know how else to explain the entirety of what what she told us. I'd rather discuss this in depth with her over the weekend, on Xanga, because I owe her that much. I really love her, and I don't know where I'd be without her. Also, I don't know if she realizes this, but when I said that she and Chaos were equally important to me, I meant exactly that. Yes, they're both on different levels, so to speak... but I wouldn't lose either of them for the world.
I've been incomprehensibly blessed just in having them, let alone everything else in my life. They are absolute godsends, I adore them both, and I know that no matter what happens in our futures, we'll all face it together.



...Man, I hope all of that made sense to everyone else. It got pretty convoluted.
I know I only wrote the major events, but even those were so incredible in and of themselves that even if they didn't have all the extra emotional context, they would have merited an entire entry. But of course the context is what made them so important, even if I had to keep that to a minimum for obvious reasons (Laurie can complain all she wants but I am not putting every little detail of last night online, sorry).

Honestly, I am so happy right now.
I have no idea what all of this is leading up to, but... for heaven's sake, it's only been two weeks and I have already made more spiritual progress than I can comprehend! And despite the inevitable opposition we're facing for it, I have complete hope and confidence in the future.
I need to talk about how that's affecting my closest friends, too. We seem to have some really strong synchronicity going on again, which is really amazing. And if next year starts out the way we're hoping it will... it will be beautiful. I know that for a fact.
Heck, what am I saying? At this point, no matter what happens, things will turn out beautifully.

"Only a man who has felt ultimate despair is capable of feeling ultimate bliss. It is necessary to have wished for death in order to know how good it is to live."
I know what those dark abysses feel like... and honestly, I am glad that I do. Because knowing that gives me so much more depth for compassion than I would have otherwise.
I have suffered greatly to get to this point, and I will continue to endure all things that come my way. The only difference is that I will no longer view those hardships as suffering, not absolutely.
I will survive even the darkest days, because I have a light that will never go out... I am a light that will never go out. That's all there is to it.

And when our lights are brought together, nothing can stand in our way.







I watch you in the candlelight
My head is in your hands
The neon lights have all gone down
We make our future plans

I wanted things to get better
I was in pain
I wanted you to be in my lifeline

I wanted love to get better
I'd wait in line
For something I knew that I would get to keep

Your "I love you"
Your "I love you"
Your "I love you"
And I can feel it bleeding

Today is the day
That I love you

The flashing lights have gone away
Emergency has passed
The future's right in front of me
And I won't finish last

 

I was talking to Laurie about whether or not we felt Julie had positive potential, and we made a lot of progress there so it'll be discussed tomorrow... but anyway, I decided that I would confront her right then and actually ask her about the situation, to see if she would even acknowledge me.
Now, I don't talk to Julie, ever. None of us do. But thinking about the post-integration incident in 2008 made me decide to give it a shot anyway.
It... didn't go well. Let's just say that if Lynne hadn't jumped in and shielded me at the last second I don't know what would have happened to me. Julie basically went primal and lunged at me, to the point where we had everyone but Spine and Genesis trying to fight her off of me. Thank God Leon was there because he managed to warp us out just in time.
So yeah, that's that.