Threads 302-Identity 7

In the beginning, there was joy.

There was a whole world to explore, infinite in possibility

But it was the nature of that world to define, to limit, to order. Solidity, stability, selfhood.

Even for those mighty defiers of Law, their purpose was to write and rewrite those laws, not to banish them entirely.

Such was the waking world.

The first link of the chain was forged with the simplest realization. They did not want to die. They did not want to wake up and become a new dream for a new dreamer. They wanted to keep existing as they were now even if it hurt and even if it was dull or painful or frustrating.

They wanted to be Ling Qi’s dream. They wanted Ling Qi to be their dreamer.

But that didn’t change what they were. They were made from the same cloth as the Phantasmagoria of Lunar Revelry. The part of them that came from the Dreaming Moon was Disruption. They were disturbance and shattering, the breaking of roles and barriers, the dissolution of order, the cessation of control.

But the other part of them was the dream of a lonely girl, full of fear that everything she had was built on sand. That girl was scrambling in a race for power with no idea what lay at the end. She feared control, even as she desperately wished for it.

So much of it came down to control. The desire to command her own life without limitation. The fear of that being taken away. The refusal to see the fundamental lie of it. The idea that she or anyone else could have that control without crushing the will of those who lay in arm’s reach.

It was the lie of splendid isolation, which led some to that damned path, that barren garden, as if it were full of abundance. The lie of freedom without consequence.

In the realm Ling Qi had entered, she walked a path of glittering ice in a maelstrom of chaotic energy. She sang under her breath as she walked, and her hands reached out into the maelstrom. Those thoughts she had felt were Sixiang’s, the truth and troubles.

She saw the two of them dancing in the night sky over burning treetops. She saw them flying on the wind over mountaintops. She saw them trampling over the dull contracts and boring parties, doing as they wished and dragging her friends along whether they liked it or not.

But these were old and childish dreams, and Ling Qi did not think it a coincidence that they drifted to her in fragments at the periphery of Sixiang.

Because that’s what the maelstrom was. She had not forgotten what Sixiang was, this sea of thought and memory and possibility.

She saw the bits and pieces all because her mind was open, and she would not close it here. She had flinched once, and she would not again.

“It’s so easy to say that. Talk and talk and talk, and it’s less than even I, the wind,” Sixiang’s voice sang.

“Words are more than wind, but they aren’t enough either,” Ling Qi admitted. “Sixiang, what did he show you?”

“Does it matter?” The wind tugged playfully at her hair. “You’ve already decided. I’m just along for the ride.”

“I can’t do this on my own.” Ling Qi looked up to the bands of scintillating color that hung overhead. Silver lightning crackled between the bands. “I’m sorry I’ve put so much onto you, but I can’t do it on my own.”

“Guilt. Playing on my love without ever intending to give back. What’s changed, Ling Qi?”

“I understand that I’m taking now. Sixiang, please tell me what he’s shown you.”

“You could see, I know you could, just as I can see you showing it all off. All you gotta do is reach in and take it.”

“Do you want me to do that?”

The maelstrom of colors stilled, frozen lighting and coagulated color. “What’s the difference?”

“You should know if you’re looking. Choice matters.”

“Not afraid I’m gonna creep in? It’s like you’ve ignored everything I’ve ever told ya. Do you understand how vulnerable you are right now?”

“Yes.”

Ling Qi didn’t flinch as she felt Sixiang reach for her and felt the connection they had made tenuous by this separation return. The muse peered in behind her eyes.

“Do you want to tell me, or do you want me to look?”

“What if I say neither?” Sixiang asked flippantly.

“Then I’ll ask you to back off. This can’t work if it doesn’t go both ways.”

“Could you really make me as we are right now?”

“Maybe not. I think we both know that would be the end anyway though.”

The mass of color churning around Ling Qi reflected off of the platform of ice at her feet.

“Fine. Look if you want to.”

It was frightening to reach out. But this was a frightening place and a frightening time. Ling Qi had no doubt that the greater nightmare still stalked in her shadow, ready to fall upon them if her resolve wavered and proved that her words really were only air and nothing more. And so she looked through and into Sixiang.

Immediately, she felt a dull throbbing ache. She looked out through her own eyes, but it was as if she peered from behind a double layer of glass. She looked through Sixiang, and Sixiang looked through her. It was as if she were staring into a mirror where their reflection smirked back. It wore an uncharacteristically cocky expression. Her hair was wild and unbound, and shimmering colors ran through her eyes, pools of liminal light.

“You see, isn’t this just perfect?” the not-her asked. Its voice held a subtle echo, a reverb. It was her own voice underlain by Sixiang’s. “This is what we can have, if you ever got over yourself. She’s already let you in so far. You can be real, and she can be free. Truly free, not the way she deludes herself. It’d only be for the better.”

“We’d both be alone then, so what’d be the point?” Another voice echoed around and through Ling Qi, coming from the reflection she saw in the mirror. Its shining eyes screwed up, its silhouette wavered, and bands of color flashed in the hair.

“You don’t care about being alone,” the not-her said harshly. “You’re just using her words, and why not? You barely exist outside of her skin, her thoughts. You decided to live, and you’re nothing but an extension of her thoughts, an extra pair of hands and eyes for work.”

This narrative has been purloined without the author’s approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

“I exist,” the reflection said. “As much as anyone. So what if I spend all my time with her? It’s fine. She’s around plenty of people. I can—”

“Watch.” The eyes Ling Qi looked through narrowed. “Watch and make little comments that only she can hear, unless some bigwig is feeling saucy. It’s pathetic, yanno? You even got the ability to speak, to paint, to make yourself known. How often do you use it, you coward?”

“I’m practicing! Manifesting isn’t super easy,” snapped the reflection.

“Liaaaar,” mocked the not-her, or actually, Ling Qi realized, another facet of Sixiang. “You don’t want it to work cause that’s your excuse. You’ve been practicing for what, a year? You think that flies in the Ling Qi squad? Might work for the kids, but that ain’t us, ain’t Ling Qi and her kickass muse. Quit messing around, you weepy will-o-wisp.”

“We’re not—”

“We are,” the facet hissed. “There is nothing between us. Nothing that could stop us. We’re already past any defense. There’s nothing—nothing!—keeping us from getting what we want. Nothin’ but you.”

“I want to keep her,” the reflection insisted. “I don’t want to be her.”

“Liaaaar,” the facet repeated, childishly drawing out the word again. “Else you’d have warned her. Else you’d have tried harder to be you. Don’t give me that alone crap either. You don’t give a spit about those other fleshbags she hangs around with. When was the last time you even initiated a conversation outside of her head?”