Editing Coin's Journal (section)

==The last breadcrumbs==
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There was a story I remember but I don't remember ever being told it. There was a plague and the parents could not feed the children. Selfishly, they walk the children into the woods and abandon them but the children were clever and left a trail of breadcrumbs behind so they could find their way home. And if memory serves me, they do, but only after setting fire to a beast of the woods. 

I enter the roots of this tree in search of purpose which I thought lost on that fateful day. I have learned what it is to be empty. When that hopelessness and futility washes over you, for some reason you can no longer be the person you believed you once were. You detect slow and subtle shifts going on all around you. More importantly, shifts in you. Worse, you’ll realize its always been shifting, like a shimmer of sorts. A vast shimmer only dark like a room. But you won’t understand why or how. Worn down old wizards and kings learn to live with the void. Youth always tries to fill it.

So let these notes either serve as my breadcrumbs back or a map for those who follow in my footsteps.


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Have I slept? Have I eaten or drank? I entered a room at the end of a hallway that stretched what seemed an impossible distance. It reminded me of the orphanage in a way I couldn't put my finger on. Two of my greatest allies are intermittently taken from me. Light - some objects reflect it, others deflect it, but these corridors seem to collect it. I am unsure if my eyes have adjusted to the conditions of Yggdrassil or if it has adjusted to me. The halls are not lit and yet I can see. Some of the rooms as well, but not all. I dare not venture into the blackness. And Magic - it works oddly here. I expected this considering the convergence of the leylines. The forces within give and take but mostly take.

I closed my eyes within that familiar room and opened them with a considerably longer beard and fewer food rations than I had entered with despite having no memory or even desire to use them. My plan was to use that room as my starting point and branch out across any of the untraversed corridors I mapped but when I went to find them, the map I had crudely drawn was inaccurate. When I attempted to return to the room to gather myself, only a wall stood where it was. I placed my hand on the wall trying desperately to find a switch or lever to reveal a hidden passage but all I could feel were subtle movements in the wall that I could swear felt like breathing.

I am alone here. Yet I can't escape the feeling that I am being watched. And today, I thought I heard footsteps.


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I previously hypothesized that light and magic are altered, refracted through the prism that is Yggdrassil and now I know it is so much more than that. We look at this mountain towering over the plane in which we live and yet I am unsure that Yggdrassil exists. At least not how we have come to understand existing. Yes, we know of other planes and spirits but this goes far beyond that. I am unsure Yggdrassil exists within time. I have found writing and carving on walls from times long ago but also from times in the future and times of calendars that do not exist. Yes, these could be the final throes of an explorer lost within hallways and rooms which do not adhere to space but they could also be exactly what they say they are. 

I heard the footsteps again. I think they were above me. One of the hallways a few... ways back had a spiral staircase that I could not see to the bottom of. Considering my destination, down seems like a fitting way to go.

Did you find my first note? I mentioned a story about children creating a path out of breadcrumbs. As I said, I don't remember hearing the story but I've always known it. What’s funny is in all of my travels from Terra's most expansive libraries to folk town campfires I have searched and searched but I can not find any evidence that this story has ever existed in our world.


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I have walked down and down and down and down and down. Spiraling this staircase, tracing these walls with my fingers. It feels like days but what does that even mean anymore? I am indescribably tired. Sleep is stalking me. I suppose it is inevitable. I find myself lost staring into the darkness as I encircle it time and time again. Once I stopped and slid right to the edge. My legs were hanging over. And I could feel it too. I don't know how. There was no wind, no sound, no change of temperature. It was just this terrible emptiness reaching up for me.

I hope for a corridor or a door to appear but it never does. Something else has taken their place. Something I am unable to see. Waiting. I'm afraid. It is hungry. It is immortal. And worse, it knows nothing of whim.


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Darkness is impossible to remember. 

I lived a dream. I walked upon seconds though I was not moving my feet, not consciously. I was being pulled through a corridor, though I did not remember finding one upon those infinite stairs. I saw the places I have lived. I saw faces of people I have known and one I even loved. I saw a table with six friends. A seventh stranger sat beside them. I knew not one yet I recognized all of their voices. I saw the dawn of time. I saw places beyond the stars and planes on top of planes, interconnected, interwoven. I heard footsteps. I saw a man writing a letter though he took off down a passage before I could call out to him. I picked up his note and it was this note.

And then I was back at the stairs. Still spiraling down down down


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Darkness is impossible to remember. You might try, as I did, to find a sky so full of stars it will blind you. Only no sky can blind you now. Even with all that iridescent magic surrounding, your eye will no longer linger on the light, it will no longer trace constellations. You will care only about the darkness and you will watch it for hours, days, maybe even years, trying in vain to believe you're some kind of indispensable universe-appointed soldier. As if just by looking you could actually keep it all at bay. It will get so bad you'll be afraid to look away. You'll be afraid to sleep. Darkness is an addiction. No one is ever satisfied. Darkness never satisfies. Especially if it takes something away which it almost always invariably does. Darkness is not the absence of light. Darkness is rot.


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To the Order

It is a good night for ghosts. The Queen in the eighth moon is full and waiting to take souls to far shores as it crosses the sky. I dreamt a dream that I was with you tonight. I awoke and my lips were numb from saying your name. I dreamt that we were dreaming a dream together, you and I. We were trapped in a house as big as memory. Countless doors.

You were there. I could hear you speaking but I only caught glimpses of you in the glass. Eventually I gave in and found myself staring at myself, reflected. Looking at myself looking back at me. Both of us trying to decipher the face that was in front of us. My eyes seeing me in mine and countless. I could not reach into that forever as I was already within it.

I wonder, when you look in the mirror, who stares you down at night?

But it is late and my mind is running away with itself. 

Sleep well, wherever you are.

It's a good night for ghosts. And between us, we have a pocketful.


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What happens to a house when it is left alone? It becomes worn, and aged. When its paint peels, its foundation begins to sink. It goes for too long unlived in. What does it think of? What does it dream? How does it look on those creatures who built it, brought it into existence only to abandon it when its usefulness no longer satisfies them? They grow lonesome. It stares for long hours into the darkness of its own empty halls and sees shadows. And they jump as they think, here, here is someone again I’m not alone. And each time it is wrong, and the hurt starts over. It may haunt itself, inventing ghosts to walk its floors, making friends with its shadow puppets, laughing and whispering to itself at the end of some quiet darkened lane. It may grow angry. Its basement may fill with churning acid like an empty stomach, and its gorge may rise as it asks itself through clenched teeth, “what did I do wrong?” It may grow bitter. It may grow hungry. So hungry and so bitter that its scruples dissolve and its doors unlock themselves. While a house may hunger it cannot starve. And so in fever and anger and loneliness, it may simply lie in wait. Doors open, shades drawn, hallways empty. Hungry.
 

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<s>Page 2</s>
 
Page 3: One important distinction that must be drawn is between the words dissection and vivisection, a distinction that would appear to be lost on you. Your purpose was to listen, and yet at every turn you have pried, you have prodded, and you have interfered. I think I’ve been paying attention. Did it not occur to you that as an organism existing within a greater organism, your intrusion would be felt? And still you harassed. And now, like the wayward spider who witlessly stumbles across the sleeper’s tongue, you will be swallowed. Because the truth is this: when a house is both hungry and awake, every room becomes a mouth.