This/Lost ones song
She was in a tree. This became abundantly clear because of all the leaves and twigs poking her in the face, and the fact that she was sprawled across a large tree limb, bark digging into her chest and thighs. It was decidedly uncomfortable.
She tried to rearrange herself and promptly fell out.
The grass, at least, was softer. Now the tree was above, leaves and branches glistening in the early dawn, taunting her with their general up-there-ness. She glared at them.
She stopped. It was almost midday. She needed to quit doing this. Time passed so easily. She needed to move. So long as she moved too, it wouldn't matter that time was moving also.
Right. Logic. She got up and shook herself off.
Moving.
"Did you just fall out of this tree?" Someone asked behind her.
"Of course not," she said, turning. "Whyever would you think such a silly thing?" It was a child of some kind. Human? The distinctions were weird. She didn't understand why people would care. She didn't understand why she was arguing with the child, either.
"I dunno, why would I? You tell me!" it said.
"Er."
The child looked at her askance. "You really aren't much fun, now are you?"
"Fun?"
"Yes, fun!" It stopped. "You do know what fun is, right?"
"Not really," she said. "I mean, theoretically, certainly. I've seen enough of it fourth-hand to know it as it is, but... that doesn't mean I really know it. It's just sort of there. Like flowers. And cats. And black holes."
It looked at her uncertainly.
"Geese?" She said hopefully.
The child turned and fled, for whatever reason.
Okay, she thought to herself, that works. She headed in the same general direction, then broke into a run.
Had there been any poetry in her soul, she might have noticed the idyllic beauty of the land, with its rolling hills shimmering like a dappled sea of red, blue and purple flowers. Instead, as she bounded through the grass and shrubs, she ran collision avoidance in her head. Rock ahead. Current trajectory indicates best bet is to jump over it. Bushes now. Need to go around. Avoid that tree. More rocks. Go over again. Except that rock had been a bear. Okay.
She caught sight of the child a few times before losing it completely, but it didn't matter now. She knew where it was going: it passed this way often, and the path was well-written in the air. The space itself remembered.
Then, swinging around one last tree (a collision there would have proven impractical to the structural integrity of her skull), she stopped a few paces past. Here lay a road, sculpted out of the land and paved for permanency. It was important, somehow.
She looked up at the clop of hooves approaching. An armoured man on horsback. He tipped his helmet at her as he passed, and said, "Evening, ma'am."
She stared at him, and then at his back. Then she stared at the horse for a bit. Then horse and rider rounded a turn and were gone.
This was Arah.
Vast, towering, a sea of golden light, a city of golden shadow. A city of doorways without keys, and wanderers without homes, a place where things came together across the realms and generally got lost as a result.
Danger was the only currency.
"This is wrong," Rahah said.
Aekrin looked around, but saw nothing apparently amiss. "Wrong how?"
"Who are you?"
"What?"
"Who are you?" she said. "Are you Aekrin Dri? Are you Fred? Or are you someone else?"
"Fred?"
She shook her head. "I don't know. Don't look at me like I know."
In the forest, in the glistening spires, the jagged edges, the empty hollows, in the darkness and the quivering cold, there was no hope. The trees were not trees. The air was not air. The ground was not ground, but simply rock and dust and no moss, no grass, only the dry bones of the earth.
The world was dead.
It was a world. It was not theirs. Theirs had gone long ago, and the sickness had simply spread, and spread, and spread. The doors had adapted. If they no longer went anywhere, they went somewhere else. The gods of the 'verse had adapted much the same, adjusting their views to see nothing at all.
And so there would be no hope left, simply the inevitable death that awaited all who lived too long.
It was her. Herself. Etched into marble taller than life, a beacon of something amidst something else. Bloody bizarre.
"Of course," she whispered. "Trust Eapherod to survive. Even dead she still survived."
He gave her one of his looks. "You say that like it's happened before."
"Hasn't it?" She sighed. "No, I suppose it hasn't. It's different every time."
"Dark Sister," Rahah said.
I know you, it whispered. The form flickered and danced, trailing ribbons of shadow behind it and gleaming with its own empty light.
"Of course. As I know you."
But how? How can you be here? Who are you?
"Would that I could say. But here I am. Here you are. Can you tell me how things are?"
What's to tell? Only silence. Only loss. The worlds fade, and move on.
"They're dying."
Yes. They have been dying as long as they have lived, though it was not always so. Before the beginning, there was a future.
"What happened? What was the beginning?"
How can you not know? You were there! It shrieked.
"Coraline?"
No. Before. She came here on the bones of its creation, but the thing itself was the size of the state of Nebraska. It looked like a little girl. It spoke like death. Its name was Rhi.
"We know the name."
Yes. It opens holes as it passes, in and out, and from there everything falls apart. Past and future.
"But the Rhi of Sarathi de..."
Moved on! When her worlds fell, she moved on! As Dreamers do.
"Some worlds live. Some worlds fall."
Yes.
"This is why we do what we do."
And for what? So our worlds too may fall at the first slip?
"Sure, that might happen. But it might not."
We have no King. Our King has fallen.
"No. He is here. He does not know, but he is here.
He is useless. He does not know.
"It doesn't matter. He will. You survive, Dark Sister, for the same reason we always have. What has happened?"
The form shifted in front of her, and suddenly it was everywhere, and there was only blackness. And the voice, now filling every corner of her consciousness. Come, then. We will show you who we are.
"The thoughts of cats," the man whispered. "The place in the world where the cats should be. Saucers of milk vanishing. Curtains ripping. Meowing. But no cats."
"Cats?" Aekrin asked. "But..."
"Aekrin," Rahah interrupted. "Have you seen any? Since we've come here, have you seen a single cat anywhere?"
"Why would I have? We've not exactly been... well, doing anything where we'd be likely to see them."
"I haven't. And I look."
"For cats?"
"Always. They're... let's just say they're important to me."
"Cats."
"Yes."
