thene | (no subject)

d:eletion: LIMBO (DIFFERENT STRINGS)

There's a blind, numb, weightless moment that carries me to a place before thought. I don't breathe.

This is older than me. Slow moments stretched out against the waves, each structured thought worn to grains of sand. This is from before there were architects or landscapers, before there were extractors and targets; there are only dreamers here. This is from before there were humans with our individual subconsciouses. This is older.

Waves drag my body along sand. I breathe, traitor to some reptile-ancient instinct.

I crawl up to the beach on limbs so numb from ice-cold water that I'm uncertain of their shape and their number. I open eyes raw and salt-stung and see night - night where time barely passes, sunless forever wrapped inside a moment. There's two blurs of light, and one of them seems nearby. Tide thrums within my inner ears. I can almost stand upright. I'm moving on lumps of flesh, fingers - starting to feel like fingers feeling - brushing in the sand, parted. I always dream barefoot. Something in my hand dragging a spiral pattern. Can't let go.

Eyes dry and dilate. There's a thin moon on the down-coast horizon, and I walk - if this is walking - to a fire. No other light, only moon and fire. I can see the pallor of the sand and of the skin on my hands, and I can hear the sea.

At first, I can only see his outline and only because I know it would be there. He's sitting on a flat-topped rock beside the firepit, stoking the flames with a driftwood spar. I smell burned-flesh outdoors cookery, and the sea.

I fall to the sand next to him, a heap of sea-strewn aches. I sense things happening between my ragged breaths - his hands rolling me on to my side, the weight of a coat or a blanket being placed over my sodden clothes, something that sounds like my name - someone's name, a name, not even sure what mine is any more - things moving in the flames, a hiss and a little clatter.

I'm getting warmer - curling toes in the blanket, trying to ease the prickling return of blood. I don't get people who just land on the beach and start running - guess they're younger than me, and maybe taller. Or they have a more temperate Limbo; mine is some northern reach of old subconsciousness, and I feel lucky if I don't find it snowed under.

Mine. Ours.

Hands wrap round my shoulders, helping me into a half-sit against his earlier perching-stone. He sits down on the sand beside me, keeping my body between him and the fire. I can't feel pain here. Everything I've done - how I came here, why, the job, the hazy plan I have for getting us out of the job - is wrong, and I feel so safe here and so awash with contentment. I can't care if it's real or not. This, dream within dreaming, is the only place I ever feel whole.

How does time pass here without me? Without me, who hears the wind blow and the trees bend? I've never dared to ask, and the flickers of fire that light his face tell me nothing; he's as ageless as a pebble on the shore. He still wears what used to be his totem, in two broken pieces hanging from his neck. There's no sense to Limbo-time, no physiological reason why a dreamer would think faster here than in any other dream. He's far past physiology now.

But he's not asleep; either he's real, or he's not and I've nothing and I'm only dreaming he'd be here for me, and that's not a coin I want to toss.

It's still in my hand. I forgot it. I showed her how to lock away my memory of its surface. We buried it by the side of the river, in some wasteland-pit of memory. It's here in my hand, between the forest and the sea, in Limbo where all forgotten things drift; lost stars emitting dim light.

He passes me a chipped plate that I vaguely recognise from back a million Limbo years ago when we used to be roommates (and more than, and more than that). Crayfish. I eat gratefully, picking off the shells with shaking fingers. They taste like salt and charcoal smoke.

Neither of us have spoken; I've little to say, and I think he's given up on yelling at me every time he finds me here because whatever he tells me I keep on coming back here anyway. He was ever the backwoodsman to my metropole and I feel like he's becoming gradually feral - uncivilised as a snowstorm. He can't get many visitors; perhaps he speaks to wandering souls sometimes, or to the birds he dreams up.

"Thank you," I try - I mean it - he doesn't eat, so it's kind of him to remember that I habitually do.

"You shouldn't be here."

He always says that. "You always say that."

"You're too soon." I know. "I've been waiting for you. But it's not time yet."

Time doesn't make sense in Limbo and when you're dreaming, timing is everything - a measured dimension, a hard physical limit of any given level except for this one. Ocean-tide rises and falls, unbroken circle. He's one of the few who saw that and used it; his dreams are bound with uncertain reserves of time, moments folded into impossible figures, navigable if you know his rules and follow them. Five centuries could curve into nothing, everything.

"I've been trying," I know how little it means, "and it's been hard. I can bury what you were - what you're capable of - but I can't - forget - you."

A few measureless moments pass with only the waves speaking in their rhythmic whispers, and then he puts an arm around my shoulders. "Don't. You don't have to."

He doesn't want to be deleted. He wants to be obsoleted, abandonware, his ways of dreaming unused and unmissed. He's gone and wants no one to need him, especially not me, so he'll have me make him be a light on a faraway shore, a myth from a long-ago winter. And at the end of it all, I'll find him here. It's a long-term, incredibly hard project and it raises the question of whether inception is viral within collective as well as individual subconscious, but at least it's given me a better name for what I am and what I do; deception, deceiver.

I lean my head against his neck. I think I'm getting sea all over him and he doesn't care.

I first found my way to Limbo a few months after he died. I swallowed three-quarters of a bottle of sleeping pills, went down into a dream while I waited to die because I couldn't bear reality for a moment longer, threw my totem in the river, forgot I was dreaming but still remembered that I needed to kill myself before anyone guilted me out of it, and then jumped off the edge of a bridge. I remember feeling vague intellectual surprise that there really was an afterlife and it really was built of airport-novel-grade wishful thinking - washing up on the beach and finding the love of your life was there to hold you while you dripped all over him? Yeah - and then a sort of bubbling release of frustration and apprehension and hope when he explained that I wasn't dead. This was Limbo, and his hidden totemic world had collapsed into it, and I had fallen into the sea and been carried to his land because it was where I belonged.

He held my hand as we walked at the edges of his forest, and I felt weak with awe at the sight of the vast, inhospitable reaches of his subconsciousness - our subconsciousness, because I was there too, I was there, I was there - and he told me everything. About how I couldn't stay here until everyone let him go. About how long it might take for that to happen. He supported me through my periodic stabs of pain and explained that Canary had found me and called a goddamned ambulance and now I was in hospital having my stomach pumped, and I wouldn't stay asleep for long, but he'd grown a place here where time is no longer real. Where he could wait forever for people to stop thinking that people like him were necessary. And he told me not to try to kill myself again, because he was still alive enough in enough people's minds that he'd find a way to stop me.

The second time, I was following Canary. She wasn't here, and he helped me look for her - we went days over land and sea, and for her it was years - too many years - before we found her, carving exquisite geometric monuments out of stone with nothing but her mad-edged loneliness. I'm not sure whether she thought he was my projection or hers. She never mentioned it. We told her that there was more than this, more than dream-levels and nested dimensions, that there was a world out there full of people who cared about her as a person, the way she was, not about all the things he could do and she couldn't.

He sent us back to reality. It was through subsequent reflection on that adventure that I started to realise that essentially there were no rules and I could go visit him in Limbo whenever I felt like I could stand it. So I did. So he yelled at me. Eventually, he gave up.

One time, I asked him why he was so hell-bent on seeing his methods abandoned. He asked me if I really wanted to live in a world still stuck at square one, a world where his extravagance was necessary in order to change anything. His work was done, and the rest was on me, and all I have is what I've always had; words and love, and his promise to me that it's enough.

He's staring at me, the reflected firelight in his eyes making them seem falsely gentle. "You've not been taking care of yourself." Says a dead man, I almost snapped back, but didn't. It's not like he doesn't have a point - I don't sleep much and I live mostly off green tea, and if I'm not as hooked on pointless sex as I used to be it's not like I've replaced it with any healthier habits - but even as he knows and understands and doesn't judge me for it, he's become too alien to see it. He's stuck in this pause of time. I'm already older than he's ever been. What will he think I look like in another twenty years, or more?

I lick the fingers of my right hand clean. My left hand's still holding it. I can almost see, and the water's getting louder; endless cycles bearing temporary changes, carrying us towards dawn and high tide. He's given up yelling at me, but he can't offer me permanent acceptance here - he doesn't yet have any of it to give. "Listen," I say quickly. "I don't know what I'm going to do. About Migua. She shot her own sister and I don't even know if she did it on purpose or not. I'm half-expecting to end up with a witness summons over this, like she's trying to escape of the consequences of what she did - people that rich are powerful enough to get away with anything. That's what they use people like me for. They want to get away with murder, I'm the one they call."

"And?" he says. I wave my hand, frustrated, and poke the corkscrew point-down into the sand. "I didn't hear a question."

Yeah, so I'm babbling. "I was thinking aloud."

"You've got your answer. She is trying to escape the consequences - the weight on her conscience, if nothing else."

"And we've charged down here to help her, and even if I can, I'm not sure if I ought to. Fuck, I hate framing stories. They're always so depressing."

"I'd blame their parents for letting the situation escalate to such a degree -"

"That's a Watsonian answer to a Doylean question if I ever heard one. It doesn't explain anything that matters to us."

"And what matters?"

"Us." I say firmly. "Even if we shouldn't, we still do. How am I getting out of here?"

"I'll take good care of that." I like this assurance, I think. (At least it doesn't sound like he's going to pull a gun on me this time.) "They're looking for you. It won't be long before they find you."

"So I don't have long to make up my mind before I get back inside hers. And I won't have time to talk to Ascott about it." If his face changes at the sound of her name, I don't see it. It's too dark and I'm not looking anyway. I stare at the fire, watching flames lick at the soot-stained stones. He produces his own charcoal here, and then burns it when visitors come by; as far as I know he has no regular callers except me.

He reaches over me and takes my hand in his, wrapping my knuckles against the corkscrew. "You told me she had this."

"She did - I forgot it." He pressed my fingers into the ridges - can't ignore it he's making me learn it again by touch I feel the stone through my back want to cling to it belong on it, Limbo, learn that Limbo is real.

There's a mortal terror here, every time - the knowledge that you're walking a thin web over a vast semantic void. Fall, and you'll tumble through all the ideas you never knew you had until there's nothing left for you to think. It's why we have totems and why I wanted to have none. The thin stream of lucidity that still says to me that I'm in Limbo could break at any time.

I crave this fear - I can't die, I can't have what I want, but the vertigo-feeling of knowing how close I could be to total mental obliteration is so soothing, and here I am holding my corkscrew tight with his arm over me and his hand over mine and I hear him say, "Suppose this is what the whole Migua story means? You've been coasting without a totem like a damned idiot, and why - ?" Because I don't want to know that the world without him is real and the world where I can be with him is not. I feel my face twist, I don't know whether I'm angry with him or with me or if I'm still grieving for him or both - "What happened to Migua could have happened to you, you know that? It could have been Ariel who ended up dead, or Arven -" No - but he keeps talking, softer. "It could have been you."

It would have been me. Invoking the real names of the bird-women is petty emotional blackmail; it would have been me, rending the frail flesh that holds me to life and not caring because I didn't want to believe that it was real. We would have lost everything. There's no life after death in the waking world; no great forests, no catharsis, no loving reunions beside the sea.

We're still locked in that layer of enforced knowing; his hand, my hand, the corkscrew, and he pushes it down, presses my knuckles into the sand, and turns it, as if his hands are speaking to me in furious precision. "Do you remember now?"

...I do.

The sand is packed and cold, and I can feel the moistness an inch below the surface, feel my totem dig into the tendril of sea, feel the sea touch the forest. I remember this.

It's like a horrible joke that would destroy one of my entire careers if it got out, but, I do. There's not a thought in the mind that can be so buried that it can't be found somewhere in Limbo. I know every single crevice, I know the weight and the feel of the spiral, and I remember that this is my totem and it can tell me if I'm in a dream, or if I'm somewhere real.

Somewhere real.

It's telling me that the forest is real. I know the person who's holding this totem is real, and this totem is in my hand is in his hand, and if he, the forest, is only an idea - an ecosystem of living speaking touching loving ideas - it's rooted in Limbo and its branches stretch all the way to reality.

We're really together here and the totem can't tell me anything more than that.

"I remember." I tell him. "I remember this, I love you, and I know what I'm going to do. I know what Migua never told us." It's almost daylight now and he's looking at me steadily. God, it's so obvious now. "She has a totem. Her hand-mirror, I think. God knows what she sees in it. She could have checked she wasn't dreaming before shooting her sister - and maybe she did. She got rid of the real Agathy, and now she wants to wipe up her mental residue too -" The outline keeps coming, faster than the details can keep up. "She's fixated on Agathy's boyfriend. Maybe she couldn't stand seeing Agathy happy with anyone, I don't know - but I'll bet that she thinks Francis does know. Her forgetting the whole thing will make it impossible to ever reopen the issue -"

He nods slowly. "Or to prosecute. You think the brother's in on it?"

"No - she doesn't trust him enough. Probably directed him by subtle suggestions. I'm pretty sure she thinks I'm either him or her projection of him, for one thing."

"What makes you think that?"

"She threw me down a waterfall." I watch his face as he considers the implications of this. "She wouldn't have done that to the real me. Ada, she just wants out from under her feet. But she'd need me to do the job - which is getting rid of her projection of Agathy."

"Ah. Going to inform her of her mistake?"

"No," I reply, almost smug. "But I'm not going to stay a cute teenage boy, either -"

There's an almighty sound that seems to shake the earth from the sea, and I look up at a cloud of spray and scattering birds. He drops my hand, scans the blue and yellow horizon. The sea's come close to us, so close. The moonlight's fading.

"What was that?" I ask.

"Ascott found you," he says. Already? I am preemptively (belatedly?) impressed by the amount of action-heroics that must have involved on her part, especially if Migua was at all invested in her not succeeding. He's smiling faintly in that way that always makes me want to strangle him.

"That's your girl," I murmur. But if she'd found me, there wasn't much time.

"No such thing." His smile doesn't waver. From behind him, I can hear the opening notes of the forest's awakening song floating above the noise of the sea.

I haven't much time and I'm wasting the time I have. It's like the nearby waves are resonating with me, grinding shells of words into sand. I can't tell him what it's like knowing that she never knew him or needed to and still feeling like she somehow shares the understanding I have with this shade. "Think what you like," I try, "but some days I'm so glad of it that it's almost worth living in the real world just to see what she'll do next. Ow," I add, as the sand and the sea shudder against each other again. I look down the coastline, and I see the moon almost sunk and a false-dawn glow illuminating the edges of the forest, and I can't see an end to it, nor imagine how one could draw a hard line and say that they'd found the end of the forest, any more than one could say they'd found the centre. It's not a structure, not a cultivated maze. There's sea washing over my bare feet and I say "How long do we have? Are you going to kick me?"

"Always. Yes." His hand comes up to my face, and I feel rough grains of sand dig into my skin as he kisses me.

Whatever I was wearing, it's still mostly attached but I'm minus a few buttons and my clothing is saturated by sea.

There's an upside to dreamsex. It doesn't matter if you completely wreck your clothes and your hair, and you can bareback with impunity. He'll set me adrift without so much as a toothmark. I put an arm around his neck and pull him down to kiss me again, aching that nothing he'll do to me here will last except on the inside, my hands touching warm skin and water and hating the immanent moment when they'll be left empty again, and they'll go home and write or they'll weed the garden or they'll dig nails into palms or they'll touch other people but they'll not have this.

And Limbo equally empty - the imprint of my hips and his knees in the sand, the smell of sex, will be gone in a real-world second. There's a hiss as the rising tide puts the fire out. I'm thrusting into the touch of his hand, ocean cold but his and that makes it matter, and a wave breaks over us and he pushes me down. I might yell, I might panic, but his lips are covering mine completely and I can't even try to breathe.

When he enters me it's the way it happens in dreams, as you'd enter any closed thing and lay an idea there - and he lies over me and moves with the breakers, pleasure and water and pleasure lifting me alternately and making me gasp as I move under him, with him, carried like driftwood - between, perhaps, the devil and the deep blue sea - and I know this is the end of this place coming close now, the kick coming, sex and drowning, dreams that take my breath away. His hands are holding me tight and my ears ring with sea and my head's heavy with gloomy starlit dizziness - feels so near to what I want - like a tiny piece of that totality I need, a - a little - death -

where are we going? what? why?