Of Icarus, By Icarus

Hand on the glass. Focus. Push intention. Focus harder. Press one fingertip in and feel the cool, verdant silver ripple against skin. Further. Plunge further. Empty your mind of anything but the need to find entry as you watch the mirror sink past your wrist, up your arm, and swallow you whole. 

The gentleman trips, resistance suddenly and unceremoniously absent, and finds himself sprawled onto a pleasantly humid knoll. It is nothing of the dark, rough, clinging Neath-turf, but real, genuine sunlit grass. Sunlight. The sun. The sun. His sun. He’s here. Parabola’s doorstep. He’s here. A ripple of invigorating adrenaline bolts down his spine as the man scrambles to his feet with a dawning grin and tilts his head backwards to scan the— no, no. A dense forest canopy — a jungle, even. Too much foliage. Beckoning light tickles, dappled, like a faint brush of fingertips across his cheek, and it is most certainly not enough. He hardly notices his feet have begun to carry him away, up the hill, until what minuscule glimpses he can catch of the sky blink out of his sight again. 

Bark the color of bitter cocoa flashes by in a blur as the man breaks into a sprint. He notes, faintly, that he has never been capable of moving remotely as swift as he is now, and allows a panting giggle to bubble out of him at the vague notion that, just perhaps, he is traveling at the speed of light. The knotted roots and burred thicket of the brush could not begin to impede his steps, and are crushed with defeated, cracking sighs at every footfall. He catches sight of something waxen and barbed and nostalgically gold, sprouting in a line up his calves. Something that spurs him only more enthusiastically on. 

It is not more than a dream’s worth of fleeting moments before the oppressive dimness of too-thick vegetation trickles to an end and flies out of his way, a blockade so very easily soared over, and radiance hits the man’s face in a torrent. His wild gaze snaps to the source in an instant as his sprint falters, slows, and stumbles, legs forgotten, until he falls to his knees under the weight of that achingly needed warmth. “Good god,” is all he can bring himself to mumble, awe-stricken in tone and expression. It is so lovingly blinding. The man lets his heaving body slip from his mind entirely, emptying it in favour of flooding his eyes and nostrils and mouth and skull with this— his great luminescence. His great masterpiece, his perfect destination, his unmatched and unrivaled and utterly superior will. The things he’ll do; the change he will bring forth with nothing but a flick of one hand and an intention. He’ll progress. He’ll burn. He’ll set himself alight, and his body will come apart one drip at a time in the name of… what? In his— in the sun’s name. In the name of being useful for its paramount desire. In the name of its ultimate law, and… the sun? His s— the sun? 

The man would have pondered on the shift of his thoughts, his impulse, his intention, turned aside & aside further until it all flowed back the way it came like a sightless stream rerouted, were it not for the unfurling of the false-heavens above him. Like the once-violant, now merely distant waves of the zee, the Parabolan sky ripples with the viscous writhing of a titanic force against the face of an empyrean ocean. The sun cracks, radiance split by still greater radiance, before shattering. Immense, infinitely-turning celestial cogs rip through the dreamers’ sun as the truest sun steps forth, colossal past any hope of understanding in magnitude and intensity, and tears the world around it asunder to make way for its crimson and cosmogone. Laughter rips out of the man’s throat like a victorious roar, a beast finally having clawed up to the apex of its feast, as the realm of dreams drowns in the colors of the Machine.

“MY SUN!” comes a zealot’s cry, trembling with continued hysterics. “I FINALLY, AGONIZINGLY, ADORINGLY ARRIVE! ONCE MORE, I IMPLORE; LEND ME YOUR—” And he chokes, neck open and bared to the light’s grip, as his plea melts in his mouth. The words run, like wax, down his tongue and into his throat, choking him and rendering him mute save for one familiar, comforting, repeated prayer. A cyclical prayer that rolls into his stomach, satisfyingly filling it, and wads in his ears like cotton until all he can hear is cosmogone. The world has grown dark in comparison to such a vast quantity — such a vast intensity of brilliance, such that his vision is naught but gilded. He feels the atmosphere bead on his face and roll off, much like a candle just recently lit, and revels in the sensation. He basks. He drinks fire. He burns, and melts, and turns moldable in the searing hands of the sun. He proffers his palms to the sun, rendered pointless past the duty to serve the sun, and thanks the sun for the opportunity. He thanks the sun. He thanks the sun. He thanks the sun the sun the sun the sun the sun the sun the sun the sun the sun the sun the sun the sun the sun the sun the sun the sun the sun the sun the sun the sun the sun the sun the sun the sun the sun the sun the sun the sun the sun the sun the sun the THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN  THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN  THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN  THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE  SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE  SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE  SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE  SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE  SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE  SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN  THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE  SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE  SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE  SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE  SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE  SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE  SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE  SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE  SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE  SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE  SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN please,  god,  someone  help  me THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE  SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE  SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN  THE  SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE  SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE  SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE  SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN