Willow and Wisteria

The Marvelous Phantasm, Arshevieth Myvdiviev

Chapter IV

              Shveowtoswav made sure to check himself for signs of life before writing himself off for dead this time. One such sign was the immensely sharp pains threatening to make his skull collapse in on itself, as if someone were driving a stake through his eye. One other such proof of life was the searing in his entire right side that alternated between numbness and pinpoint stabbings, like it got caught in an iron maiden. The universe did exist beyond a doubt this time, albeit the infinite expanse contracted into this instant of disorientation. He knew that he was in some hospital for his prior crisis – the origins still unknown because the diagnosis was ‘not a heart attack,’ and he was too busy having haiku brain damage and this latest crisis for his doctors to get to the point – so he knew in the back of his mind that he would wake up to the rushing and murmuring of various medical fursonnel. And perhaps that annoying beep of the monitors that seemingly slipped into the background without anyone’s notice.

              But he heard nothing of the sort. He heard silence.

              For a mercy, the pain and the blindness it induced were beginning to taper off.

              Feeling slowly seeped back into his leg and body, and his convulsions jerked him around less and less. It was somewhat difficult to breathe, as if the air ran stagnant, if it weren’t explained away by his corpus heaving itself into a state of oblivion.

              Eventually, he was able to climb back up into a sitting position. A chill nipped at his fur, and he groped for his blanket. Only for his paw to find nothing but roughness and dampness. Rubbing his eyes, he hesitated to open them. He was dreading his eyes being gouged yet again by hospital fluorescent lights. But it was probably better to force his own movements to wrest the rest of his body’s control back to himself, he figured.

              Instead, he felt confusion cut through the dregs of the muddled blur on the perimeter of his awareness. He willed his eyes blink opened and closed. Several times over. And in either way, he saw the same pitch black void.

              This surely had to be some sort of dream in an intermediary stage between unconsciousness and the half-awake stupor the brain lapses into when its control goes awry. That was the only reason that percolated from the depths of his instincts. And it made sense, for all his mind was able to process now.

              And if this was indeed a dream, he probably would be paralyzed for a bit longer. If his limbs would not move when he willed it, Shveowtoswav would simply need to practice patience.

              And if that logic followed, this stale air and humid-to-the-touch roughness were sensorial hallucinations from the folds of his brain churning themselves into knots in order to create new folds.

              Which, if his gut instincts had anything to say about that, would mean that he was undergoing yet another spontaneous evolution. A homo novus in flux, as it were.

              Shveowtoswav reminded himself to later remind himself to praise the lengths his studies and intellect have come in order to distill such a beautiful and simple explanation from the miasma of the primordiality of his subconscious.

              Perhaps, after all, such clarity could be only achieved when the infinite potentiality of the mind freed itself from the chains of mortal flesh. Mortal flesh be damned if it didn’t know how to conduct itself as a slab of meat without the mind steering it. It is by this very flash of a glimpse into higher consciousness that the universe observes itself, within these imperceptible subatomic particles rattling inside these unfortunate forms they made the mistake of imprisoning themselves from earlier spontaneous evolutions.

              To that end, he willed eyes opened and closed again. So that he could awaken and spread gospel of the long sought answer philosophy and science had finally arrived to.

              So that he may regain autonomy in order to don the mantle of the arbiter of wisdom.

              So that he may begin the inquiry of shedding his insignificant mortality.

              To set on his journey into the whale’s mouth.

              To beget the ascension from the dream the world dreams in.

              Delusions aside, Shveowtoswav was growing impatient from this intermediary dream lingering on as long as it did. He was ready to recover and schlep back to the shop. Zofia must’ve been worried.

              He wanted to at least roll off his tail stub and sit up properly.

              A glint in the distance seemingly phased into existence.

              And when the dream did not usher him there, he climbed onto his feet and buckled under the weight of vertigo. He crawled over to that light, sitting there, reorienting and getting his bearings together. It was a small patch of bioluminescent moss and mushrooms, a different variety from those growing in his store. These glowed a clearer, brighter white rather than the paler greens and reds. But perhaps the intensity is just due to the contrast of environmental absence of illumination. And when his eyes had acclimated and the light wasn’t as blinding, he saw various crystals nestled in the shallow mound. Quartz, lapis lazuli, and other beautifully unidentifiable geodes similar to those lying in his discount basket of crystals back at the shop lending their own brightness and blues.

              A hypnotizing array, really.

              Slowly leaning onto his knees, he took his time to roll his neck and loosen his joints and muscles. And seeing that he was back in relative command of his movements, he slowly surveyed the area. Even though he was adjusted to the sparse light, he couldn’t see much else. It was just as much of a void now as it was when he was still in the throes of confusion.

              Pressing his pawpalms against his thighs and knees, Shveowtoswav steadied himself and stood. There was a stumble in the process, but a wall of sorts caught him mid-fall. Now that he was able to properly feel it under his paws lucidly, it was the same sort of moist, rocky roughness from before. The mental math told him that he was inside a cave.

              Great. He still held onto the hope that this really was a dream. He was in no condition to traipse around inside a cave. God knows if there even was an opening out that hadn’t collapsed.

              Easing back down, he snatched one of the brighter mushrooms, paw not leaving the earthen wall. The only honest detail he could see with his eyes was that lit patch. His steps were careful, tracing along the wall, noting the slopes and curves. The luminosity from that bouquet never left him, whatever direction he was following. His gut realized it before he did, and pulled his whiskers taut – he passed enough of those cavern wall slopes that he was well on his way to making a full circle.

              And when he first caught peripheral glance of that fungal-geode formation, the rest of his mind caught up. As quickly as his footpaws wanted to close the distance, he slowed to a crawl, sweeping the guiding paw across the crag in wide berths, desperate.

              But it yielded nothing when his feet stepped upon the mushrooms again.

              Shveowtoswav froze. Breaths frozen in his lungs. Movement frozen in his paws. Will frozen in his spirit.

              If there were enough light for someone to observe him, they would have seen him suddenly seize yet again. And they would have known that this seizure was unlike before. Before, they were repeated convulsions – a classic case of epilepsy. But this time, this seizure, the observer would know, was a spontaneous paralysis. Somehow, they would have known this was a spontaneous rigor mortis because, for all intents and purposes, Shveowtoswav’s soul had already resigned him to rot. His soul resigned him to rot before his mind could. It was the last kindness he could bestow himself.

              But there was nobody to watch him die.

              But there was likewise nobody to remind him that one cannot simply die in a dream, and there was nobody to tell him that he wasn’t dreaming. So instead he heard some sort of music intangibly suffusing the void, and woke up.

              As paralyzed and breathless as he was, it took him some time to convince himself that he indeed was not dying once again. Especially with that muddled, grainy, distant song he could not hear. It was nauseating, hearing something that sounded like nothing, the only way to know of the song’s existence was by the means of the soundwaves passing deafly past the eardrums and directly seeping into his innards.

              At some point, the lynx remembered that this strange dream would not puppeteer him in the usual dreamlike manner. Opening his eyes, he willed his head to turn. And it did. Tuft scraped against stony debris and moist earth, and he fixed upon that patch of bioluminescent fungi and minerals. Its light bored through his eyes and clawed within his skull, but he was still too busy convincing himself that he was not dead to care.

              Little white flowers had bloomed between the crystals and mushrooms, he noticed once his eyes finally adjusted. And, seemingly, the mound trailed longer as his eyes traced and his head bent to follow. It was curious enough to make him sit up.

              And indeed a path broke out from the patch. It spread open and away from him, an honest, walkable path leading where he had felt stony wall before. Clambering over his knees, he hesitated a step forward, paws out. Feeling no stony wall this time, he shuffled another step forward. And another. And again.

              Shveowtoswav broke out into a run right then. Scrapes against his feet pawpads be damned, a small price to pay to get out of here. It stretched out infinitely like a tightrope across the abyss.

              He ran until his knees gave out, and he slumped over, trying to extinguish the burning in his lungs. The pounding in his head bounded so hard, the throbbing motion made his head twitch in rhythm. There was no point in running this royal road back to the living if he were to die upon it.

              Screwing his eyes shut, he knelt there, catching his breath. And once his blood stopped starving for oxygen, the pounding subsided from his ears.

              And he could hear that song louder. A voice’s lyrics muffled.

              Somehow, by dreamlike logic in this place that might not be a dream, he realized he had the knowledge that it wasn’t his ears listening to a distant song. It was coming from within. It wasn’t subsonic soundwaves reaching from afar, it was a memory that was distant. And yet, by that same dreamlike logic, he knew the memory in question was not a memory he himself had experienced.

              Be it from the exhaustion, the fear and adrenaline, or the subsonic psychic music, nausea threatened to pull him even further down. Through the ground. Through his knees. Breath somewhat steadied, he opened his eyes and looked forward.

              The bright white trail crumbled into ashes.

              There was a preternatural sheen to them, still some light.

              But he knew little white flowers would never awaken him.

              Because that song within told him so just as something massive and heavy cracked against the back of his head.