Fractals and Dreams

When his body betrayed him-- when his legs stopped listening, when his feet dug into the snow, all while he tried to push forward, to escape-- he knew it was her. He felt her ghostly tendrils pluck at his brain, its strings twanging out of tune, its guest all too unfamiliar with how to play. 

The fog was swarming in around him, and he knew that's why she'd stopped him. She wanted another of his memories, to live through him again. When it would stop-- when she would be satisfied-- might never come.  

Fine, then. If she wanted a memory, she would get one. It just wouldn't be his.  

He hadn't tried it before, not intentionally-- not for someone else. He'd managed to slowly, feebly draw up one of his own, for Málmr, back in that tavern what felt like eons ago; but never had he pulled a memory from another, not by choice. But he would do it now.  

The fog curled up around him as he sharpened his focus, his breath still held in his chest; he reached out with his will, sought her phantom fingers digging into his head, and once he found them, he inhaled, readying himself for that turbulent arrival.

-----

His senses were cut. Snipped from him completely, like a bud from a rosebush, instantly withering as soon as they'd left him. He was nothing, and no one, save for someone else's eyes and ears.  

He couldn't feel his heart race, couldn't feel the rolling in his gut, couldn't taste the dryness of his tongue. His panic was pure, permeating, inescapable. He was her.  

But he fought it. He fought hard, the only thing allowing him to feel separate being that he'd latched onto her as he'd stepped in, found her digging claws and held them before shifting into one of her memories. He wrestled with it through the entire scene, forgetting who he was at times, remembering at others; it was constant combat, and a desperate sort at that. It was like fighting waves that drowned him, coming up every so often for the briefest gasps of air, struggling to keep it in his lungs. But even the thought of drowning or breathing felt foreign to him in her mind, from her perspective; they were little more than echoes he had to strain to hear.  

The memory began to fade and his grip tightened on hers, a layering of handholds on his head, his body and senses, and as he gasped in that second breath of reality, he felt a relief he had never expected. His knees buckled and he doubled over, the light of the fire flaring in his periphery, as he mentally wrestled with her, grappled to drag her out.

"Get out," he spat, voice crawling out of his throat like sludge. "I'm not yours. She wasn't either."  

This time he wanted the fog. Something in him coaxed him to it, told him it would help; two mages of the mind battled over his body, and his only option was to tear her from it.  

"I don't care if you don't feel anything," he lied. "No one is yours to take, no one owes you anything," he said, truthfully. He knew the guilt of saying it would eat him alive, but so did the guilt of everything; he was used to drowning in it by now. Every day was another swim through guilt's dark waves, and today would be no different.  

Then it struck him. Not a thought, nor an idea; just an instinct, one he was unfamiliar with, that he'd never relied on before. It made him dig deep into his head, to find a memory-- her memory-- her. That was all she was. A collection of memories, and nothing more. He could wrap his will around her memory, all of her, and latch on, and conjure the fog like with any other. 

 White mist left his nose first, a dragon's smoke, before his chest heaved and a wave of fog poured from his throat, wreathing his head like a flame on a matchstick. His head fell once it had left him, his body weak with exertion, and he curled his fist into the snow, gasping for breath.

  "Stay out," he hissed. He didn't turn his head to look at her; he wasn't even sure he could. "My life is my own."