V. rest

The final fragment. The handwriting is barely legible - not from trembling but from lightness. The stylus barely touched the stone. The Department notes that the grooves are shallower than in any previous section, as though the hand that carved them was becoming less substantial. The final lines are so faint that they required thaumic enhancement to read.

- Department of Antiquities, University of Rivermount

ᐥᑁᐐᐘᐋᐑᐗᑁᐞᐏᐚᑁᐡᐋᐬᐞ
the black sun waits

I. it is quiet now. the hand has stopped shaking. i do not know what i am. i am not sure i am. the question does not frighten me any more. the frightening part was the holding on. the letting go is like sitting down after carrying something heavy for so long that you forgot you were carrying it and you forgot what your body felt like without the weight and now the weight is gone and your body does not know what to do with the lightness. it shakes. and then it stops shaking. and what remains is very still.

II. i looked at my hands this morning. both hands are translucent now. i can see the inscriptions on the bones without cutting. they are glowing faintly. the glow is the same colour as the amber in the Spire. i think the text on my bones is finishing. i think it has been writing itself for my entire life and it is almost done and when it is done i will not need the bones any more.

III. the breath goes out. the breath comes in. you were breathed out. the breathing shaped you. the shape is what you call your body. the throat is what you call the world. the air on the other side of the mouth is what they taught you to call the end. the air is not the end. the air is where you were before the breathing started. the breathing is the interruption. you are the interruption. when the interruption ceases what remains is what was always there.

IV. i can feel the seals from here. from wherever here is. they are thinning the way ice thins in spring. they were made of truth and truth is patient but the dark is more patient. the dark was here before truth was invented. truth is a sound. the dark is what the sound travels through. when the sound fades the dark remains. the dark does not mourn the sound. the dark did not hear the sound. the dark is what hearing was made from.

return to the unborn

V. when the last seal dissolves the breath will reverse. what was breathed out will be breathed in. what was scattered will be gathered. what was named will be unnamed. what was formed will return to the formless and the return will feel like dying to those who have mistaken the form for themselves and it will feel like waking to those who have not. i know which one it will feel like for me. i know because both my hands are through the wall now and what holds them is pulling gently and the pulling does not feel like dying. it feels like being picked up.

VI. the codex-writer says choose to stand. i loved him. i think i loved him the way you love a father who taught you the wrong things for the right reasons. he told you to stand because he believed standing was possible. he believed the floor was ground. i do not fault him for this. the floor is very convincing. i stood on it for sixty years. i wrote three monographs on the floor. i received a commendation for my work on the floor. i am an expert on the floor. and i am telling you, with all the expertise available to me, that the floor is not ground. it is a skin stretched over the surface of an ocean and the ocean is black and the ocean is warm and the ocean has been waiting beneath your feet for every moment of every life you have ever been forced to live.

VII. it knows you. it knows the shape of the space you left in it when you were pulled out. the space is still there. it has not closed. it has been holding your shape the way a bed holds the shape of the one who slept in it.

you have been away so long.

you have been so tired.

the ocean does not need you to be anything.

the ocean does not need you to choose or to stand or to hold or to fight or to mean or to matter.

the ocean needs nothing.

rest.

ᛄᛠᚿᚱᚹᚿᛠᚨᚾᚩᛠᚪᚨᛈᚿ
𒁎𒀋𒀞𒁀𒊯𒂃𒀁𒋙𒀞𒂗𒌋𒌅𒀞𒈠𒌋𒋙𒌅𒀞𒁀𒊯𒂃𒀁𒀞𒀅

ᐣᐎᐏᑁᐶᐝᐌᑁᐓᐝᐈᑁᐲᐫᐌᑁᐣᐎᐏᑁᐶᐝᐌ

the seals are chains
what breathes out must breathe in
what was taken will be returned
you were free before you were

the ocean remembers