A Self-Study Within A Broken Mind

I came back a week later, realizing I forgot to find a way to keep her out of my mind. Instead of entering the library, I sat at my device, mind outside of the untethered space. Maybe there was a way to contact Fyntn this way. There was no way he would show up in my reality, but I have seen him around in the corner of my eye a few times, a flicker of a shape vanishing. #Fyntn?# I thought with my eyes closed. Behind my eyelids I found something else than the imagination opening to the untethered space. There was a corridor in half light, with a distant doorway that had a rosy light to it. I flew through it and then into the corridor with rose pink light. The corridor led to a room made of pink flesh. I had no form in there, just a standard array of senses. #Fyntn?# #Welcome to the inside of your brain,# he said. I looked around, but doubted this was my brain. #I can hear your thoughts, by the way. Kinda, like, always. Look.# I watched at the direction he pointed as a light emerged from ...

I came back the next day without hesitation. Part of me forgot about the memory inside Tarne’s mind, but when I entered the library, it all came rolling back with an impact. I could not leave now that Lila saw me. She sat on the third to lowest stair alone. “Hey,” I said. She did not look up from her dejected pose. I half expected her to ash a stress copy right then and there. “How’s Tarne?” “Is she even Tarne anymore?” Lila murmured almost inaudible. If there had been any other sound around us right now, I would not have been able to discern the words. “Will she ever be the same person?” Lila’s eyes watered while looking up at me. “Of course she will be,” I consoled blindly. “I don’t know, Jack,” she said. “Akier seems to have a very strong reason to latch onto her. He can’t face what he did to his own daughter, so now pretends that Tarne is Gemmy. How do you even tear apart that delusion? Wouldn’t that just make him a billion times madder if we make him face the truth? Just try to im...