Outcasts of Gideon

Familiar Paradigms

Dawn opened her eyes. That's how she understood it, anyway. She wasn't sure if it was what she'd done. It felt like she had eyes to see. It felt like she had a body. She couldn't be sure if any of that was true. What if she could never be sure? Like the empty, she might be imagining all of this.

She decided right then not to wonder. She had to have eyes. She had to have substance. She existed. This wasn't all a dream. She may not have been herself. She may not have been anything or anyone she understood. Since that was too much to ponder, she had to ground herself within familiar paradigms.

Her eyes had opened to a world that didn't make sense. No, she wasn't settled on that. It might have made sense. An image flashed in her mind. It was the sun shining through an early morning window. Her eyes were cloudy and unwilling to open. If she could wait out the grogginess, maybe it would all fall into place. But for now it seemed beyond comprehension. Familiar paradigms, she thought.

She had the impression there were shapes and objects all around her. At the same time, she saw through them, saw within them, saw among them. They seemed almost fluid, almost real, almost imagined. She could reach out a hand and touch them. She believed she had a hand to reach out. Yet when she considered it, even her hand seemed unreal, insubstantial. If she reached out, it might not touch anything at all. Was there even something to touch?

Get your bearings, she thought to herself. This wasn't the empty. She'd established that much. Surely up was up and down was down. Beneath her she saw stones littering the ground, if she could call it ground, if she could call them stones. It was an otherwise barren landscape, devoid of colors yet erupting with them. Too far to touch and too near to avoid. It was absent sounds and smells as well, yet something was overwhelming her senses.

Above her swept the sky, stars darting about. Stars don't move, she thought. If they weren't stars, what were they? Points of light flitting about the darkness. They had to be stars. There were too many to be objects falling from space. They didn't evaporate. Their paths were not predictable.

Nearby movement drew her attention. In the distance she saw a structure. Like all other things, it was both solid and transparent, formed and formless. Within it were beings. They appeared to be moving about. She could see through them as well. How was that possible? They were inside the structure that she wasn't actually seeing. The structure was real, or was it? The beings were within it, or were they? She felt as though they weren't merely within it, but outside of it and comprised of it.

A form moved beside her. Not beside her but beyond her. Its movement was barely perceptible. Like everything else, it seemed both distant and immediate. She shrank from it despite sensing that it was far away. It seemed to reach out a hand – if she could call it that. She must call it that. Familiar paradigms, she reminded herself.

The movement of its limbs were just as indefinable as everything else around her. "You have joined us" it said in a voice as cold and absent as it was booming and resonant. "Welcome. I am Ptan."

"I." The word hung in the space around her as though suspended in gelatin. She was sure it was her who uttered it, but she had no idea how that could be. It was a word that escaped her being, but there were no means for it to travel. It was spoken in a language she understood, yet it wasn't her language. Was it even language at all?

"And she knows natua." She heard these words as well, heard them without hearing them from a voice much further off. "Welcome narrow one. I am M'tthe."

"I" was all she could muster. She spoke it again, still not knowing how she'd done so. It seemed only her words lingered. The words of these others had a different consistency, evaporating in the ether. Was that just her impression? Were these other voices somehow different?