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rainbowfic2023-08-03 09:11 pm
thisbluespirit) wrote in rainbowfic2023-08-03 09:11 pm
Nacre #17; White Opal #16; Twilight #2 [Starfall]
Name: Escape Switch
Story: Starfall
Colors: Nacre #17 (Between the couch covers); White Opal #16 (Living inside one’s mind); Twilight #2 (Ecstasy)
Supplies and Styles: Canvas + Paint by Numbers frombookblather (finally free) + Photography + Panorama
Word Count: 718
Rating: PG
Warnings: Mentions of injury, peril.
Notes: 1316 Portcallan; Osmer Nivyrn. (Another snippet from Osmer’s being betrayed and injured too badly to continue as a Pathwalker. It’s 1316, because Osmer lost over 18 months as a result of what he does here (returning to Starfall in early 1318), which apparently I never actually made clear in the other pieces where this was referenced.)
Summary: The Paths have no physical location in this world. Therefore the only thing limiting a person’s access to them is the walls of their own mind.
The Paths have no physical location in this world. There are only places where it is easier to access them, perhaps because there the world itself is thinner, or perhaps because there lies some substance akin to that of the Paths. The Paths are the Otherworld of legend, and time and space no longer have meaning there.
Osmer stumbled down the alley, going too fast for the steepness of the incline. He slipped on the wet stones and slid the last distance to where a passageway led off into the dark. A way out, or only a means to a dead end – a wall, a locked gate? Osmer closed his eyes and tried to think. He was never going to outrun them or outfight them. Using his mind against them, though – that he ought to be able to do.
One can emerge from the Paths anywhere. Any time, any place. It is usually nearer rather than further from the circle around the Wastelands that we label the Boundary Paths, but that is at least in part only due to our own expectations, and it is what lies in our minds that is the key to navigating the Paths.
It is to our minds that true dreams come – fragments of time, to be puzzled over and given meaning. It is the limitations of our minds that keep us comparatively safe walking the Paths: we cannot imagine other worlds, so we return to this world and no other. We are of this earth. It is in our bones, our blood, our thoughts and dreams, and even if, in wild moods, we may fall out of the Paths in more distant times and places than we would wish, inevitably it is still to the world that shaped us.
These people who wanted to kill Osmer would also kill to have the knowledge he possessed. They’d have loved even more to steal his affinity to the Paths for themselves, but since they couldn’t have either, they would settle for murder.
Osmer edged deeper into the darkness of the passageway and leant against the wall, trying to keep upright, while his limbs throbbed and wounds burned. Was it sweat or blood that ran down his face? He forced himself to think, to remember the theories he had written back at Starfall. Theories that maybe he need not die for; theories he could perhaps even live by.
If the Paths have no true location in this world; if we may emerge anywhere we choose with strength of will, courage and affinity enough, then it follows that one can also enter the Paths from any place one wishes. There are recorded instances of it being done. The only barrier is that even for Pathwalkers our minds cannot truly accept the concept: we are bounded in time and place and we bind the Paths in our thoughts in turn. A door should always be in the same place; it should have a set key that is the only one that turns the lock.
It is, I suggest, the duty of a Pathwalker to work to transcend that limitation and open our minds. We must at last believe there is no physical door and that the only key lies in ourselves.
Osmer told himself it wasn’t just a theory. It had been done. It was difficult to attain the right mental state without also endangering oneself – a strong idea of where and when one wanted to emerge was the first and most absolute necessity to navigating the Paths. To hold that and accept the true nature of the Paths was a tricky conundrum to solve.
He heard the footsteps clattering down the street behind him. If he didn’t make this leap, his pursuers would finish their work and he’d die here in the dark, hundreds of lengths from home. If he could reach the Paths, no matter where he wound up, he’d have at least a chance of life – and maybe even hope of return to Starfall before the end.
Osmer, staggering on the point of collapse, thought only of the Paths, of the blue-white other-spaces that were nowhere and everywhere – and therefore every bit as much in Portcallan as Starfall.
He opened his mind and the door and left this murderous Portcallan night behind.
Story: Starfall
Colors: Nacre #17 (Between the couch covers); White Opal #16 (Living inside one’s mind); Twilight #2 (Ecstasy)
Supplies and Styles: Canvas + Paint by Numbers from
bookblather (finally free) + Photography + PanoramaWord Count: 718
Rating: PG
Warnings: Mentions of injury, peril.
Notes: 1316 Portcallan; Osmer Nivyrn. (Another snippet from Osmer’s being betrayed and injured too badly to continue as a Pathwalker. It’s 1316, because Osmer lost over 18 months as a result of what he does here (returning to Starfall in early 1318), which apparently I never actually made clear in the other pieces where this was referenced.)
Summary: The Paths have no physical location in this world. Therefore the only thing limiting a person’s access to them is the walls of their own mind.
The Paths have no physical location in this world. There are only places where it is easier to access them, perhaps because there the world itself is thinner, or perhaps because there lies some substance akin to that of the Paths. The Paths are the Otherworld of legend, and time and space no longer have meaning there.
Osmer stumbled down the alley, going too fast for the steepness of the incline. He slipped on the wet stones and slid the last distance to where a passageway led off into the dark. A way out, or only a means to a dead end – a wall, a locked gate? Osmer closed his eyes and tried to think. He was never going to outrun them or outfight them. Using his mind against them, though – that he ought to be able to do.
One can emerge from the Paths anywhere. Any time, any place. It is usually nearer rather than further from the circle around the Wastelands that we label the Boundary Paths, but that is at least in part only due to our own expectations, and it is what lies in our minds that is the key to navigating the Paths.
It is to our minds that true dreams come – fragments of time, to be puzzled over and given meaning. It is the limitations of our minds that keep us comparatively safe walking the Paths: we cannot imagine other worlds, so we return to this world and no other. We are of this earth. It is in our bones, our blood, our thoughts and dreams, and even if, in wild moods, we may fall out of the Paths in more distant times and places than we would wish, inevitably it is still to the world that shaped us.
These people who wanted to kill Osmer would also kill to have the knowledge he possessed. They’d have loved even more to steal his affinity to the Paths for themselves, but since they couldn’t have either, they would settle for murder.
Osmer edged deeper into the darkness of the passageway and leant against the wall, trying to keep upright, while his limbs throbbed and wounds burned. Was it sweat or blood that ran down his face? He forced himself to think, to remember the theories he had written back at Starfall. Theories that maybe he need not die for; theories he could perhaps even live by.
If the Paths have no true location in this world; if we may emerge anywhere we choose with strength of will, courage and affinity enough, then it follows that one can also enter the Paths from any place one wishes. There are recorded instances of it being done. The only barrier is that even for Pathwalkers our minds cannot truly accept the concept: we are bounded in time and place and we bind the Paths in our thoughts in turn. A door should always be in the same place; it should have a set key that is the only one that turns the lock.
It is, I suggest, the duty of a Pathwalker to work to transcend that limitation and open our minds. We must at last believe there is no physical door and that the only key lies in ourselves.
Osmer told himself it wasn’t just a theory. It had been done. It was difficult to attain the right mental state without also endangering oneself – a strong idea of where and when one wanted to emerge was the first and most absolute necessity to navigating the Paths. To hold that and accept the true nature of the Paths was a tricky conundrum to solve.
He heard the footsteps clattering down the street behind him. If he didn’t make this leap, his pursuers would finish their work and he’d die here in the dark, hundreds of lengths from home. If he could reach the Paths, no matter where he wound up, he’d have at least a chance of life – and maybe even hope of return to Starfall before the end.
Osmer, staggering on the point of collapse, thought only of the Paths, of the blue-white other-spaces that were nowhere and everywhere – and therefore every bit as much in Portcallan as Starfall.
He opened his mind and the door and left this murderous Portcallan night behind.