04 ~ May's night

In the abyss beyond hell and heaven, in the unfathomable darkness just before complete mil, there was still a little nothing.

It had no shape, no physical support and almost nothing else. Where even physical laws were ending in nothingness, she was still there.

Where the lowest planes of reality ended, just above the pit, or even one step inside.

The endless falls were all around her. Yet, she was not falling. An invisible string was keeping her above the end, keeping her from disappearing for good.

Or else, she was staining the place, marking it as a flaw that couldn’t be hidden or rid of.

She was there. Where nothing was supposed to be... She was conscious. When something like her was not meant to be.

She was alive. But reality did not acknowledge it in any imaginable way.

Nothing came to her. Neither the Muslim nor Hindu gods she knew a few things about; nor any possible demon. Not the slightest opportunistic daiûa nor any older legendary deity came to speak with her...

Even if she was in a place nothing was meant to be, nothing exterior came to explain why she was, or why she kept existing despite being there where nothing should.

Either she was in a place where even god could not be, or there was simply no other will than her own, that was responsible for what she was.

She was all alone.

Still, going upward seemed impossible.

As no entity whatsoever came to assume responsibility for her being; nothing would help her to reach what she longed for.

Worse yet, no physical or religions law would ever help her doing so...

They were all against her being, against her ambition of living. She knew that.

Life was not meant to be born out of nothingness... Everything she knew of the reality was going in that direction; directly against her that was.

The reality itself, in all its might, was refusing her to be, forever.

Everything from knowledge proved that it was impossible for her dream to become true. Worse it even proved it was impossible for her dream itself to be thought off.

She could only be disproved...

Would she fall and disappear, her being would remain unknown, a mere fugitive and illogical phantasm of no one.

She could not prove her little existence where she was. She had no mean to contradict anything.

But she was... She had the word, she had wisdom, she had memories, and she had a will. She felt rather close to a human will somehow, but regardless had this desire, willing to challenge everything.

She would not even give up an angstrom to the abyss.

She was left as a part of nothingness by everything in existence outside, but she would keep existing and daring, and try to go further, no matter what. Her urge to live on was as strong as for anyone.

She wanted to live...

~

She had been loved over a hundred years, and almost reached reality before.

Well, maybe not almost at all she admitted to herself. But in that previous endeavour, she had made some progress and won an incredible amount of things.

A conscious mind was her most impressive trophy brought back from that adventure close to reality.

She brought back with her some knowledge of the world, some memories, a lot of emotions, a language to speak; and even a crush on someone...

She couldn’t tell where she was keeping so much knowledge in that place, but it was still with her. It was even most of what she was, building her more than a definition. She was this collection of memories, but with a roughly articulated mind, an awareness able to use them. Her abstract thought had awoken in this nowhere.

Maybe she was just some kind of parasite who stole all these information, and when she was thinking she was thinking, she was actually playing with the random arrangement of these stolen or copied memories, toying with them around.

Her process of thinking was maybe just random connections occurring between these invisible fragments spinning around in the void, probably before their melting and unavoidable disappearance.

Esther could not help but wonder a lot about what she truly was... Had she stolen and fed from memories taken from people over the years? Or was it something else? Unlike materials, information could be duplicated in their abstraction, so was she maybe more like an independent thought?

It was something else... Before being Esther, before being Gülnihal, when she was crafted as a simple doll made of cloth, over a century ago, she was already something out of the ordinary. She thought she might already have had that little spark or seedbed on which to grow over the ensuing decades.

She simple started to make or collect memories at that time.

But before that... Esther felt she was probably already there... In that darkness. That was probably where she was before... Before she thought she was human for a few days. A lifetime of dream for her, an entire lifetime of hope passing in a few days...

As on unconscious doll, she had been loved. A still promise, or dream, built her. The second promise, more recent, made her feel love differently. That experience had been so intense; it had felt like being struck by lightning.

And now life wanted to emerge.

Being loved as a doll had been unidirectional. But being loved as a blue rose, a more romantic equivalent to a wedding ring, it had felt utterly different.

As a link, or symbol of a link, she had felt something far deeper. She understood it as being in a middle of a strong relationship, whilst as a simple doll she would be the aim of a more simple and unrequited love.

A doll was a dead end for love. A Blue rose was more lively. And becoming one for Georges M. Herson in the end of the nineteenth century, she gained for more emotion since. She became then able to hear and mimicry the love of the other one to her owner somehow.

She bathed in so much love over her century, whilst mostly the last twenty years; that she could be filled for a lifetime if she was human. At least, she knew a lot about it now; and it was quite pleasant.

She had learn to love her owner, and as a blue rose, both ends of the link she symbolised.

Although she had mostly forgotten about Rosemary, probably because she was not her owner anymore, she still had strong feelings for her. Esther had some of the same blurry feelings for her previous owners, but Rose had been something else also altogether.

The couple of lovers sharing her as a doll before Rose held her really dearly herself, it had been her parents. Esther gained a lot from Georges and Arlweyn she could tell. She had stood for a while between their mutual feelings of deep love for each other.

Rose and Blue were different... Something was more confusing about them, and especially for Blue Mary Herson.

Esther thought she lived as her, mixing her memories of everyone and everything she could remember altogether. She had an impression and lingering identity disorder for the time she dreamt along with her. For a while they had been together as one, unable to clearly say where one ended and the other started, because nothing about their sense of self had been clearly returning prior.

Now that she was calm and herself, alone, again, she couldn’t help but wonder if the real Blue wasn’t having troubles with her own memories in reality too. They had looked at each other like reflections over the two sides of the same mirror.

Only Esther had then been the one falling as being the imaginary one.

Because Esther was merely learning and copying feelings and knowledge of her owners, she thought she probably incautiously absorbed a confused memory, and made it her own for that time as well...

It was possible that in reflecting Blue closer, she had become as confused as she might have been in reality. That was the lingering sensation and intuition for Esther now that she was free from the mirroring duty.

However now that she had been cut off, she would not be able to learn more about her last owner, Blue Mary Herson, because she had no mean to interact with her anymore. The doll had been lost, the emotional connection had been severed, and the presence she had brightly been for a while had left, returning to reality...

Esther returned to what she could call her reality. But she knew her body was now destroyed beyond repair... She had that sensation of losing her home, of cloth, in a time of smokes and fire.

That point was not really comforting, but as she was not really existing within that amount of material, maybe it was not really inuring her ineluctable doom, having lost it.

She was almost the same as before after all. Although she could not tell anymore whether she was still receiving some love coming from Blue, or if she was only under the impression of it through her repeating memories of such sensations.

Now that she could think and imagine, she could not tell the difference between the feelings somehow perceived from reality and her own imagination. Without bodily sensations to speak off yet, she couldn’t tell the difference.

She could not tell if she truly had a remaining link with something coming from reality therefore.

She tried to ease her mind, to think slower and control her feelings. If she could keep them calm and still, she might be able to tell soon enough if something was coming from above instead of within.

Esther had not many other choices anyway for that time. She started to meditate so, keeping her only real perceptive sense awake. Her ability to feel what was felt toward or through her in reality. Her five senses were but one illusion, rooting from this one, which was some kind of natural empathy.

Not thinking, when you just learned how to do so freely, it was difficult.

Esther had troubles focusing for a time.

She could understand better why as Mary-Esther, she had been so frightened of emptiness.

If a part of her character had come from Mary, that phobia truly rose from her... It rose from her anchored memories of this endless void below every level of reality, where even the concept of hell became futility.

She did not want to come back here. She was terrified of this sensation of abyssal death.

All her living intuition could scream at her, were to swim upward and away from there, toward the warmth and lights of reality.

As she mulled these thoughts over, Esther was still thinking, unable to appease her mind, even for a minute. She couldn’t calm down that existential fear bound to her roots.

It was hard. It was terrorising...

It was already hard to accept being a frail naught drowning in emptiness. Ceasing to think would be like stopping to swing her limbs and swimming... It was simply too scary to fight this instinct.

~

She could not tell whether a day or a thousand years had passed while she was thinking. She had no point of reference to estimate how much time had passed.

Esther only prayed it was less than the lifetime of Blue; because as far as she knew, her very existence still depended on her.

She couldn’t manage to properly meditate, as she hardly could change her state of mind. Her instincts were prevailing so far. Now her concerns had switched focus toward her possible lifeline.

Maybe Blue Mary was already long gone... In any case, as she could not time anything nor have the slightest idea of how quick the time in reality was passing, the only thing she could do was try not to let it worry her too much. There was a deeper worry behind but she couldn’t address it yet.

Until she could perceive a little more, she had to bet on having enough time ahead to work something out and make some progress.

It would begin by trying to figure out whether she still had such a link.

A thread linking her to Blue who had given her light, the precursor pieces of awareness, and so much hope...

She tried to feel it.

She tried to find it.

But her little fog of emotions did not stabilize around these thoughts and kept flowing or rummaging around her only sense, like mere hallucinations...

She had to find a trace of reality through these unsteady waters of self.

She had to find something...

Even a small piece!

Anything but nothing...

Esther kept trying with all her weight...

She was desperately trying to reach something new, something different. She pictured a dangling rope that didn’t exist to climb on.

No, it was something else she needed to achieve first she eventually understood. She had to manage and structure more what she was.

She had to take control of these feelings and thought processes first...

She had a good will, but her whole self lacked a kind of discipline to obey her thought purposes. Her figurative brain was not obeying her... Wandering around and playing in thoughts as if they were puddles of water. She had enough metacognition to read her own thoughts and use language to analyse them, but not yet enough aptitude to act otherwise but upon their instincts and intuitions. She needed to create that.

Esther thought it over more and more, and slowly, she would try to discipline that impetuous and fluid brain of hers... To structure it into something obeying her higher form of will.

It was sad she thought.

She was all alone in that nothingness, and her first trial, it was against herself...

Esther would overcome it.

She would improve, and evolve... If her long hearted dream was still in the realm of the impossible, quite far far away; that work was a first logical step she could visualise.

Above the endless falls, clinging to a string or a wall, she was starting to prepare herself to climb up.

Mastering her mind, in order to feel if there was still a link to reality; it was giving it a kind of shape. An obedient shape that would do the early works she needed...

In the future, this shape would be climbing the place, bringing her closer to reality.

She would gradually become her true self, facing every obstacle along her insane dream of reaching reality.

First was first; but she was not still...

She would never give up her hope...

~

R - Gülnihal... How old is that thing anyway?

Esther suddenly heard that voice in a sudden electric recollection.

Was it a memory? It probably was. But whom did it belong to, she wasn’t entirely sure.

No... That question put a finger on something more curious... How old was she? How long since she began to exist in some way? What year was it in reality when she began to just be there? More than where did she came from, when?

She could only be sure about one thing: It was more than a century... That century had been holy and game changing, but there had been another past chapter prior...

Esther got her mood darken by that thought, but she could exist with that shade of uncertainty anyway. It wasn’t the first nor the last of unknown aspects of herself.

That specific aspect, it didn’t matter much to her right then.

For in her darkness, in her hellish and unending pain, in her suffering, she was now prevailing...

Something had moved!

She would grin if she could. No, she would smirk awfully, a visage drenched in sweat and tears, her eyes bloody from exhaustion. And yet her will, unshaken by the nil itself, was making her win...

She was winning a battle of might, of mind, against the very fabric of reality itself.

Something shattered. Something moved. A noise, a light, a cold wind, a warmth. Anything. Something moved... She won. She could feel it. She could feel something that was not hers. She could feel her link going straight up toward reality... That was enough to rejoice loudly.

She could feel something coming from Blue Mary...

Could she see her as well somehow? Was she holding her remains? What could have happened to her?

All she could perceive was the faintest of links like a thin thread left on Blue’s way behind.

Esther thought about it, wondering. Unfortunately, she had absolutely no way to learn any answer at this time. Therefore she would focus on going forward... Although her level of hope and confidence suddenly grew wider.

She had a kind of shape for her mind. She could now make a difference between her own feelings, and the ones she received from outside. She was building herself up. It began to take some abstract shape.

And with the feelings she now noticed she still continued to receive, she understood that Blue was doing the same. She was healing her wounds and structuring her conscious mind... And more importantly she was alive... She lived!

That simple thought was wonderful news. It was the best of news she could have dreamt for, for what Blue meant to her. That Blue was getting better up there in reality, it produced a wide and lasting impulse of happiness within Esther. She was strongly happy and relieved.

She would have cried if she could.

All these memories were not just a dream.

That moment of joy gave her an unexpected new power to progress.

Move something, move anything!

Her will was exploding, overflowing with newfound confidence. The primordial fear she could have carried in the back of her mind was now changed in a source of strength.

Blue was alive.

So Esther thought back to herself, that so would she...

She was going to change her fate.

If destiny was existing, it was only for the livings. She would build her own.

She already was. Not yet with hands, but already with her mind. Her path had already begun.

And soon, she would find something more.

Soon she would make another small step in that infinite way toward reality.

The fear of emptiness that was among the fundamental basis of her very existence suddenly shrank a little.

She was changing. She was starting to move...

Esther would escape her current fate.

~