A Self-Study Within A Broken Mind

I came back to the untethered space a few weeks later, though Tarne pleaded before that I take care of the issue quickly. I could only hope that distance from the hate for Akier was refuge enough, albeit lonely. When I entered the library, it was not so. The structure was a palace with great stone columns supporting a heavy stone ceiling painted with flowers. The windows out onto the dark beyond were gone, and so were the lights. Instead, a miniature sun was suspended near the ceiling, casting an intense white glow all over the open space. I looked for the staircase down to the wooden box in a panic, and found it much to my relief. It looked the same, but out of place on the now stone floor. The inside was still wood, outfitted with a couch, and four chairs around a table next to the bookshelf. I sighed in relief. Something wild happened here. The stairs to upstairs remained in the same area, and I followed them up to find the second floor with bedrooms just as stoned as the main libra...

I came back to the library after a few days of stress about moving. I would have to move again soon enough, but the temporary respite was welcome. The first thing I saw inside was Tarne, sitting at the desk in the open space with a book in her hands. I scanned around before coming up to her, but Lila and Kara were not around. “Hey, Tea,” I said. She held up a finger for a moment of silence, then slipped a divider into the section of the book where she was, and closed it with a heavy slam. I wondered what she was reading, and questioned whether I put my stories back into the library, or if Lila did. She could probably recall them from memory after the library got shattered to pieces. I did still worry about those books and where they ended up. “Jack!” She said, and jumped across the desk with hands in a loop. The arms caught my neck like a ring tossed onto a hook. From there, her hands split apart for just a moment as she floated slowly down thanks to creationism into a hug. I smiled, a...

I came back on Monday, sitting at the same table I was at on Thursday. On Friday, I opted to start work early and do some extra stats work that I enjoyed to the tune of new music I loaded onto my phone. The multitude of old music felt great for nostalgia, but I found myself skipping some old songs to hear the more recent ones. I would have to go through the whole list and pluck the weeds out. The whole “wearing beast like a cloak” was vivid in my mind, and I found myself wondering what made me think I had made peace with desire. It was a hesitant thought, disappearing the more I attempted to recall it. I put it out of my mind for the time being. For some reason, I was not afraid that I would lose this space, and the freedoms it allowed. I was not overweight here, did not have to be tall, did not even have to be male. I could be any kind of being I could imagine. I could even be a dragon for a day. And so, I decided to be one. When I entered the library, I was still human. It was empty....

I came back reluctantly, at odds with myself. My mind wavered between a blissful ignorance of the world going to shit and the stark panic that tortured my sleep. Maybe it was something else that tortured my sleep. I wanted it to be Garavand, in the dark of the room shifting me awake in the middle of the night as a joke to keep me tired, but it was far more likely to be some mouse looking for food in the winter times. Otherwise, it was my stressed mind, wondering what I could do to make enough money to keep a roof over my head in the coming months. Here I was again, at the device for entertainment, for work, just writing of my own insanity Part 3. I wanted it to be the final part, but seeing as Lila would be with me for years of my life, I felt this final arbitration of me would not be wrapped up here. Not to mention that I was still a part of Tarne, Lila’s child. I had to figure out a way to exist apart from her, though I had a feeling that I would always somehow exist within the confi...

I had been trying really hard to have something else going on during my nights, to avoid coming back there again. I had no control over my body, no freedom of creationism I often escaped into. I was no longer a god of a tiny universe left behind following Rebecca’s escape. Whenever I came back now, I would be a passenger to the child named Tarne, a girl that I wanted to be deep down. Maybe that kept me coming back, the possibility to feel that I was born correctly. In reality, I bought female yoga underwear, and whenever I felt I deserved to, I would clean my body with perfumed soap and wear the pink softness. They were a prize I have not felt worthy of lately. I kept them sealed in an airtight plastic bag to keep brand new and fresh. I knew if they somehow got dirty, I could not possibly bring them to the laundry. They lived one life for a person hidden away within a fake world inside his head. I arrived as Tarne again to a sight I did not expect. Lila was entirely naked, legs spread ...

“Hey,” I said the next night into the library. Lila was sprawled out on top of a bookshelf, these no longer filled with lessons of my life. They looked empty without books, but it was now the digital age, and the stories remained on the laptop downstairs. “Oh, hey,” Lila sat up on the bookshelf, legs hanging off each side. “You’re back like you said. I didn’t expect you to be here the next day.” “I feel a strange need to apologize to you,” I said. “But don’t,” she replied, lifted her leg over to join the other and jumped off the height to land gracefully. “I did what I wanted to do.” “Even without beast rattling around inside me, I took advantage,” I said. “It’s fine,” she said. “And let me know if you’d even feel like trying it in the female form.” I tried to picture it, rubbing our backs together at random. Then I tried to picture how a human female and Lila could engage in sex, much to confusion. There would be a lot to figure out before it could be pleasurable. “I was wondering if ...

“Hey,” I said, appearing weeks later past the fumbling of the device update and a mishap of a keyboard messing up quotations. The first part took an hour, while the keyboard took just ten minutes. I had been avoiding coming back, but did not prepare an excuse for being away. Lila sat in the corner of the room, eyes closed. For a moment, I thought she was sleeping, but when I came up to her, she leapt into the air and pushed off my back as I turned in recoil to land gracefully on the table of the room. “You’re late,” she said. “I’ve been doing some mental exercises. Without new stories to entertain me, the sentence feels like a real downer.” “Isn’t it supposed to feel like that?” I asked. “And that’s the first time you used the word 'sentence' to describe it. Anything you want to fess up to?” I studied her child form as it aged to a woman. She bunched up her shirt to reveal the triangle opening positioned perfectly over her lower back where the branched spine opened up. Her type...

I came back two days later, three if you count that it was almost two in the morning. I was in a different mindset following a mass layoff due to the virus affecting all businesses. I did not want the night to end because the next few days would not be easy. The essential jobs were likely to be the only form of income, but a lot of people would be unemployed until the virus died down. At the very least, I did not want to worry Lila about the things happening in my reality. I would get by somehow. As I entered the room under the library, I found her sleeping there on the couch. Maybe since I provided my day-night cycle, she aligned to it. I did not want to wake her. Her face looked so calm and I wanted to keep it that way. Rather than leave for the night, I went upstairs to see if the alchemy-magical circle she made in the floor had any success over the days I had been away. It became apparent that it did not capture the person in question, as the drawn strands of wood curved into a lot...