[ Stories: The Witch-Girl (Read from the bottom of the list), The Bridge Across the Sky (stand-alone stories), The Canon ][ Poetry: All Poetry; ( ♥ ) ( ⚔ ) ]
My robot is better than your robot. But your robot can stalk me on Facebook, Twitter and DeviantArt.
[ witch_x1 ] nocturne – Girls, trying their best.
01 Sagittarius 11 20:58
[ witch_x1 ] Laura – What do you see them as?
01 Sagittarius 11 18:04
[ witch_x1 ] nocturne – Thanks. I don't see them as strong, though it's nice that you do.
30 Scorpio 11 13:40
[ witch_x1 ] Laura – I'm seeing some sort of pattern of strong women in your writing.
29 Scorpio 11 20:42
…more…
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Witch-Girl / Tempest Eyes (8/23) – Spatial Looping ♠ 03 Aqu♒rius 12, Frigg’s Day ♣ |  |
Witch-Girl / Tempest Eyes (8/23) – Spatial Looping
“All things can be halved,” she says, “it is the nature of things.”
Stacey, Ramiel and Izzy stand on the road leading up to the house on the hill.
The house on the hill is dark and foreboding. The moon (crescent), with an appreciation of the dramatic cliche to match Ramiel’s own, hangs in the sky just behind the silhouette of a chimney.
Ramiel nods approvingly, then gives voice to his inner director by adding, “It would be better if it were a dark and stormy night.”
“Can we wait for one?” Stacey says.
“We’ve delayed long enough,” Izzy says, wet blanket that she is, “Each day that passes brings him closer.”
“No such luck then,” Stacey says.
Ramiel sighs. Whatever “such luck” is, we never seem to have it.
“Someday,” Stacey says, softly.
He turns to her, but she doesn’t continue her thought. Instead, she says, “Okay. Do we walk in?”
“We can’t go in without the Yellow Sign,” Izzy says, “The first defence is just ahead,” she points with her scythe (closed), “about ten feet away.”
Ramiel looks. There’s nothing there. It looks like any road at night, lit by the moon and stars. The road turns up the hill, the house at its peak. The house doesn’t appear to be any more than five, ten minutes away, on foot; far less than that by wing.
“Go take a look at it,” Izzy says, “As far as I can tell it doesn’t hurt. Come.”
They follow Izzy up the road.
A few minutes pass, and Ramiel comes to realise that, while he can feel the progress they are making, the house doesn’t seem to be getting any closer.
Another minute passes, and Stacey says, “It’s like the road is stretching as we are walking on it. There’s further to go.”
“I can feel the house moving away,” Ramiel says, “but the house I see is still.”
“It’s rather fun,” Stacey says, brightly, “One of Zeno’s Paradoxes.”
“Explain,” Ramiel says, because she would do so anyway, so he might as well oblige.
“In order to reach the house, we must first cross half the distance to the house. Having done so, we must cross half the remaining distance. Having done so, we must cross half the remaining distance. And so forth,” she pauses, then goes, “Forever!”
“We must cross half the remaining distance…” Izzy says, thoughtfully, “That… it makes no sense.”
“It makes perfect sense,” Stacey says, “As long as there is distance between A and B, one must cross half that distance, then a quarter of that distance, et cetera, et cetera, ad infinitum. There will always be a distance remaining to cross, and, thus, we cannot ever complete the journey,” she pauses, then adds, “Forever!”
“Can you break it?” Izzy says.
“I have! Long ago!” she says, happily, “I postulate that, just as there is a finite limit to speed, a finite limit to cold, and a finite limit to the amount of sugar you can dissolve in water, then there is, also, a finite limit to time and/or distance. Being a finite limit, it can no longer be halved. Once that point is reached, one can cross from A to B,” she pauses, then adds, with the smug confidence of one delivering the coup de grace, “It’s quantum.”
“I didn’t mean,” Izzy says, with mild exasperation, “whether you can break the paradox. Can you break the spell? Can you get us to the house?”
Ramiel smiles, ever so slightly. This is what I have to live with, he does not say.
He is tempted, almost, to point out that anything can be halved. Even zero can be halved. You simply say so. All things can be halved; it is the nature of things.
But this is not the time to tease her. Or is it? A part of him feels that any time is the time to tease her.
“I can’t break the spell yet,” Stacey says.
“It’s like a video game,” Izzy says, “where you go to the right of the screen and you appear back at the left.”
“I was thinking a treadmill,” Ramiel says, “You can feel yourself moving, but you don’t actually get anywhere.”
“It’s spatial looping,” Stacey says, “Like a Mobius strip or a Klein bottle. Quantum spatial looping.”
She stops walking, turns around.
“Look,” she says, “the car is just there, we haven’t moved forwards at all. It’s exactly like a treadmill. From the outside, we’re just locked in space. I never liked the word ‘travelator’.”
“What’s that?” Ramiel asks.
“It’s a horizontal escalator. Airports have them.”
“Ah. It does feel like that,” he says. He has never been on one, but he has seen them on television; they had looked interesting.
“Escalators escalate,” she says, “elevators elevate; but travelators do not travelate.”
“Indeed, they do not,” he says, soothingly. Then he steers her back, “Shall we just go with the Yellow Sign?”
“A few minutes,” she says, “I want to test something.”
She walks back to the car. “Walk to the house for about three minutes, then come back.”
Ramiel walks, Izzy by his side. Now that he thinks of it as a treadmill, it doesn’t feel strange. It just feels pointless. Pointlessly travelating.
“Come back,” Stacey says, after a minute.
He walks back to the car with Izzy.
“You heard me, didn’t you?”
“Yeah.”
“From here, you were just standing there, you weren’t even walking. I was wrong. It’s not quantum spatial looping at all, it’s dream magic. If you had tried to fly in you would have crashed. I’m not sure if it means that it’s more or less powerful that you could hear me, but I can’t break this.”
“So that’s what we’re up against?” he says, “Dream magic?”
“All the Great Old Ones are dreamwalkers,” Izzy says.
“You’re not skilled in this?” Ramiel asks Stacey.
She shakes her head, “Nobody does dream magic.”
“What’s a dreamwalker?” he asks.
“One who does dream magic.”
“Like Genesis Cain,” Izzy says.
“Cain,” Stacey agrees, “Gabriel, the Alice. Morpheus, the Oneiroi. Two fairies whose names I can never remember. Each world has at least one dream god, presumably because if you didn’t you’d get screwed over by one of the other worlds. Though I’ve never heard of a mortal dreamwalker after Cain.”
“Why not?”
“Dream magic,” Stacey says, “Anything more than the most basic; dreamcatchers, lucid dreaming – well, lucid dreaming isn’t even magic – anyway, to enter dreams, you have to sleep, and, if you fuck it up, you don’t wake up. There’s no learning curve. Past the most basic level, the risk is too great. It’s like going straight to driving a car from riding a bike,” she pauses, “That’s an imperfect metaphor. You get the idea.”
A moment passes.
“It doesn’t matter, Bringme” Stacey says.
“It doesn’t matter,” Izzy agrees.
Ramiel thinks that it does matter. She has essentially just that said she is not qualified. More, she had said that she had known all along that she isn’t qualified.
This is worse than bringing a knife to a gun fight. “Why doesn’t it matter?” he asks.
“Our plan still works,” Stacey says, “We don’t have to defeat him in the Dreamlands. We have to defeat him here, and we do it by removing his foothold here, by removing the Yellow Sign from the cultists.”
He doesn’t feel reassured, but it does make sense.
“It doesn’t matter,” Izzy says, “because there’s always Plan B.”
He’s fairly certain that Izzy’s Plan B is what was Izzy’s Plan A; kill them all.
Stacey says, “I’ll draw the Yellow Sign on us, we’ll walk up to the house, and then you guys hold them down while I remove the Signs. It won’t come to Plan B.”
She always makes things sound so easy, Ramiel thinks.
But things hardly ever are.
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shop@noctalis
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If you leave I won’t cry
I won’t waste one single day
But if you leave don’t look back
I’ll be running the other way
