Book One – Chapter 2

  Over the past three years, Yves had learned to endure it.

      The shift.

       He had learned to survive the transformation,
     and then to control it.
First, he had learned to recognise himself, in the most literal sense of the word; to locate the idea of his self inside the distortion, and to hold to it firmly enough to keep this self from fraying into the greater light around him. He had learned to recognise himself not through form, but through persistence. It had taken months. After that, he had learned to move all that was him, and to perceive how all that was not him changed in response. And eventually, precariously, he had acquired something resembling control.
But now, as Yves knelt before the mirror at the rim of , that hard-won feeling of control faltered. His hands felt cold despite the heat rising from the scorched splinters beneath him. His breathing grew shallow, then shorter still.

        It was not the place.
                     It was not the wailing storm,
               nor the fire convulsing below the rim.

             It was not even ,
               though all of these would have been
                      perfectly respectable reasons
                     
                                                              for terror.