Book One – Chapter 2

was a dimension where the agreements governing and  held no dominion. Yves persisted there without flesh, but not without form; without material substance, yet never as something merely ethereal. He retained awareness without any familiar anatomy. Perception remained to him without eyes, nerves or any reasonably physical traits in which sensations ought to reside.

In that, he was both corporeal and insubstantial, though neither word truly survived the experience. At his most stoic, Yves felt like an enigma of consciousness and structure, something suspended between tangible form and ethereal abstraction. It was an existence where he was never fully real nor entirely unreal either, which was precisely the sort of distinction only philosophers and dying men could be expected to appreciate. Frankly, he did not want to be either.

Despite the vulnerability of it, despite the terror of surrendering himself to a realm he had only begun to understand, there was always an undercurrent of anticipation that surged through Yves whenever he prepared to shift. It was not courage, and not curiosity per se. Yves preferred not to simplify such things. No, there was no virtue here, and nothing particularly admirable. It was more that he felt … the pull of the unknown.

It was the pull of the unknown, yes,
but not the cheap mystery of a locked door,
nor the enticing prospect of some forgotten treasure.