Fractals and Dreams

“I can’t,” he hissed, gasping in a harsh breath of reality. “It’s not— it isn’t under my control, it’s not my choice. It could’ve been worse. If I do it again it could be worse.” He struggled to swallow, his throat feeling dry and hard, as if a stone had lodged in it. “Much worse.” He evened his breaths as best he could, reducing his pant to something more steady, and buried his face in his hands, tugging at his hair again. He struggled to keep his voice from breaking over the stone in his throat. “And even that memory was bad. I… I didn’t want to remember it.”

 He hadn’t lost sight of himself, not this time; he hadn’t forgotten who he was. He’d lived his own memory, as himself. But carrying the spirit with him— tucked neatly into his head like a fish in linen— had made his skull rattle, the entry and exit of living the memory much more turbulent. It had felt less like its usual, sickly version of both falling asleep and waking up, and instead felt much more like falling off a ledge, only to desperately clamber back up on his hands and knees.

 He could feel her prying at him, her anguish and frustration cutting at his mind like shards of glass; on impulse he let out a violent huff from behind his teeth, much more like a growl, and shook his head, rising up to his feet for a moment, his own frustration too much to keep in one place.

 “He lied to me,” he snapped, the growl still lingering. “He was a liar, he—” His vision blurred, briefly, but he clamped his teeth together, bit back the oncoming tears. “He was a liar. He was pretending that— he was—”

His voice faltered, and he stared blankly forward, watched the snowflakes melt into nothing as they crossed over his dwindling fire.

 He wasn’t sure what Málmr was. A Witchfinder, yes. That was about as much as Sylen could grant him. Maybe he was a good man; Sylen couldn’t tell. He’d certainly thought so, until he’d learned that the trust he’d given Málmr— the easy acceptance of Málmr’s odd behavior, the admittance of his own memory-riddled curse— had been twisted, that he shouldn’t have gifted his trust at all. It had been broken.

 His eyelids fluttered and he turned away from the flame, its flickering tendrils reminding him too much of what came after the fish and the apples, the smiling and laughing. Sylen instead looked down at his hands, at the hem of his shirt, which he toyed with, now— something tangible, to help him try and think of nothing.

 “I can’t control it,” he said, voice low, “and even if I could, I wouldn’t do it again. Not for anyone. I’m sorry.” His knuckles curled tight around the fabric, nearly shaking with how harshly he gripped it, a feeble attempt at forcing back every awful thing he was feeling. “It could— the curse, it— if I use it, if it keeps happening—”

 He didn’t want to say it. Not aloud. He’d thought it plenty of times— hundreds, even. It was a constant fear, something that gnawed at his heart with nasty teeth, its acidic tongue always slipping over his ribs, its claws reaching up and digging into his head, tearing at his thoughts. But now, he felt enough guilt over what this spirit had realized— what he’d unwittingly forced her to realize— that he felt he owed her some sort of explanation.

 His heart pounded in his chest, in his ears. “I could turn into a monster.”