MintiLime

The following is from Silnarion’s POV

I feel brighter. 

My body feels weightless, as does my soul. My mind seems to spin with calculations yet remains calm and still.

Like an impressionist painting, my eyes’ visions are swirled and blurred masterpieces filled with vibrant color.

The world is beautiful.

A dream’s open future welcomes me into its arms. With each movement, I swirl paint across the canvas, blending colors and changing shapes.

I see my arms block a burly square’s attack. The painter’s palette knife, displeased with the scene, I become. Wielding myself I poke and prod until the shape leaves the scene.

Lashing out against the next hideous smudge, I quickly find that I am adding to the canvas. Crimson red and black blood flow from myself, dying the ground around me with vibrant hues. 

I would have preferred black cherry instead. Burgundy, violet, and black in a delicious combination growing from trees of emerald and amber swirl in my mind. 

Not to be confused with the rum cherry, the mountain cherry, I note to myself. A moment’s consideration leads me to recognize that rum cherry ought to be further differentiated from cherry rum.

Rum… I suppose that might be why I feel as if riding upon a tilt a whirl… whirlwind, whirlpool, whirly burly-

Burly. Burly is the enemy facing me. I strike out again, always, continually.

I dance around the opponent, wind from my movements lashing out to humiliate the slow moving doll.

As a much quicker moving doll, I enjoy the favor of the world. I can feel the zealous gaze of horrid lumps cast aside. Those weaker creatures who disgraced the canvas are awed by my presence and grace.

This is only right.

I have the most glorious form, with soul and body and soul.

The strings of life hold me together and prove their worth by choreographing the most wonderful show.

And who is the guiding hand?

My puppet strings are wielded by the owner, which is me. 

It is me, isn’t it? 

It is me. 

What am I? Wait… it’s who am I… do I know who I am? Does it matter what I am if I know who I am?

I taste sour cherry metallic red. Wiping my hand across my face, dizzyingly swirling liquid comes with chunks of horribly congealed blood. 

My joints seem a bit too loose, my wooden limbs a bit splintered. Extra strings wrap up my wounds.

Warm devotion wraps my body and strengthens my spirit. The pulsating thrumming in my skull echoes louder, louder than the gong of the Temple of Joy. 

My vision shakes as I whip my vessel around, as I am pounded by the enemy, as I fight and fall and conquer.

The scene around me grows more smeared, less clear as the impressionistic world becomes abstract. 

My mind’s concentration fades and flickers as the rest of me continues on quite well at its own discretion.

Slowly, my eyes close. My limbs still flail, flail but gracefully still I hope. My hands no longer feel when they make contact. My legs, they feel as if carved from stone. Fluid motion leaves as jerking, erratic motions become more prevalent.

The lightness grows so large that I feel as if I am merely tethered by that lone string of mine. 

Through my mind’s fog I perceive more figures joining the swirling of the dizzying dance. 

My limbs are arrested by stronger hands. A boot presses upon my back, a metal circlet clasps my neck, and my face is excruciatingly peeled off. Discarded flesh lies in front my body. Pressed into the ground, I look at the black mass in front of me. 

With the last strength I have, I bring one numb, dead hand to my head. My nose, eyes, and mouth are all still there.

I am still here, but I know I lost something… How could it be in the dirt and yet still here?

My breath quickens. Breath! I gasp, mouth wide like a fish. I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe, I need to breathe. I taste blood and dirt and I feel my rib cage restrict my lungs, I feel them beat in my chest like my heart, like my heart? All three pulsate within me trapped and cornered.

Scrabbling at my chest, I hiss in pain as nails dig in to bruised and battered prison. I need to break the iron bars, I need to free myself-

A curtain falls over the scene, as my consciousness fades to black.

When next I know, I am a small speck of light within myself, wrapped within layers of silken soul thread. A sea of tears and light exists outside the confines of my nest.

A brighter light zips around curiously, strung upon a line of twinkling starlight. It bounces up and down like a child’s toy thrown and recalled by a string.  

In a daze, I watch the show with a sense of strange familiarity.