His shadow returned. As the orblight drifted back to the centre of the room, the dark shape rolled across the glass and swallowed his reflection once more. With him gone, the broken areole became visible again. The strands of mucous clung inside the bottle like swollen fish eggs.
He was wrong.
They were not equals, the wanting part and the terrified part.
Yu had thought so, until now. But he had been wrong.
Until now, he had believed that the split within him was a clean and fixed fracture,
a chasm dividing one self into two halves. While those two halves screamed at each other
from opposite ends, the guard mask had been Yu’s attempt to build a bridge between them,
something to bring them together and thus realign their perspectives.
The mask was meant to impose a single line of sight that would cancel out their extremes,
a connection that might, over time, merge them back into one functional individual.
For that, it had been all rigid function and forced steadiness.
It had also been an illusion.
The orblight returned from the right, slowly creeping across the glass until its glow replaced the sight of the areole with the faint reflection of Yu’s eye.
In truth, it was like this.
Yu bent down in front of the bottle to block the light. He came so close that the tip of his beak touched the glass with a small, brittle plink.
He was like this.
The wanting was something that shifted within him.
It was the areole.
All around, bottled within his body, was the terrified self,
the exaggeration of all that was panic and paranoia.
Within that terror, not beside it nor beneath it, but inside it,
floated the wanting self, indifferent to any such feelings.
It was sealed in its own membrane, impervious to the outer spirit
and without ever touching the body that held it. Left undisturbed,
it felt none of the body’s pain and none of the mind’s fear.
It felt nothing but the absence of the 
.
That absence was its own essence.
His shadow returned. As the orblight drifted back to the centre of the room, the dark shape rolled across the glass and swallowed his reflection once more. With him gone, the broken areole became visible again. The strands of mucous clung inside the bottle like swollen fish eggs.
He was wrong.
They were not equals, the wanting part and the terrified part.
Yu had thought so, until now. But he had been wrong.
Until now, he had believed that the split within him
was a clean and fixed fracture, a chasm dividing one self into two halves.
While those two halves screamed at each other from opposite ends,
the guard mask had been Yu’s attempt to build a bridge between them,
something to bring them together and thus realign their perspectives.
The mask was meant to impose a single line of sight
that would cancel out their extremes, a connection that might,
over time, merge them back into one functional individual.
For that, it had been all rigid function and forced steadiness.
It had also been an illusion.
The orblight returned from the right, slowly creeping across the glass until its glow replaced the sight of the areole with the faint reflection of Yu’s eye.
In truth, it was like this.
Yu bent down in front of the bottle to block the light. He came so close that the tip of his beak touched the glass with a small, brittle plink.
He was like this.
The wanting was something that shifted within him.
It was the areole.
All around, bottled within his body, was the terrified self,
the exaggeration of all that was panic and paranoia.
Within that terror, not beside it nor beneath it, but inside it,
floated the wanting self, indifferent to any such feelings.
It was sealed in its own membrane, impervious to the outer spirit
and without ever touching the body that held it. Left undisturbed,
it felt none of the body’s pain and none of the mind’s fear.
It felt nothing but the absence of the .
That absence was its own essence.
His shadow returned. As the orblight drifted back to the centre of the room, the dark shape rolled across the glass and swallowed his reflection once more. With him gone, the broken areole became visible again. The strands of mucous clung inside the bottle like swollen fish eggs.
He was wrong.
They were not equals, the wanting part and the terrified part.
Yu had thought so, until now. But he had been wrong.
Until now, he had believed that the split within him was a clean and fixed fracture,
a chasm dividing one self into two halves.
While those two halves screamed at each other from opposite ends,
the guard mask had been Yu’s attempt to build a bridge between them,
something to bring them together and thus realign their perspectives.
The mask was meant to impose a single line of sight
that would cancel out their extremes, a connection that might, over time, merge them back into one functional individual.
For that, it had been all rigid function and forced steadiness.
It had also been
an illusion.
The orblight returned from the right, slowly creeping across the glass until its glow replaced the sight of the areole with the faint reflection of Yu’s eye.
In truth,
it was like this.
Yu bent down in front of the bottle to block the light. He came so close that the tip of his beak touched the glass with a small, brittle plink.
He was like this.
The wanting was something that shifted within him.
It was the areole.
All around,
bottled within his body,
was the terrified self,
the exaggeration of all that was panic and paranoia.
Within that terror,
not beside it nor beneath it,
but inside it, floated the wanting self, indifferent to any such feelings.
It was sealed in its own membrane, impervious to the outer spirit and without ever touching the body that held it. Left undisturbed,
it felt none
of the body’s pain
and none
of the mind’s fear.
It felt nothing
but the absence
of the .
That absence
was its own essence.
Pages:
Pages:
Pages: