Backdated to immediately after [EVENT] FOLLOW ME TO PARADISE

I wish I knew you.

Maw would travel from Eridanus to Polaris on guided paws, though for her, it would seem as if she made this path herself; there would be truth in her saying she did so. An autonomous decision made by Autonomy. Whether or not Maw remembered the walk was another thing but it would not matter in the end. No, the goal was the river. There was only the need to reach it and to gaze down its rippling current. She would find herself sitting at its edge to relax, gaze drifting along the water's surface, and then she would know, know Her: Life. The essence of what they were, what gave life to the magic—Maw would find the urge to touch her fingertips to her stone-studs irresistible. As gingerly as one might cradle butterflies, Maw brushes the stone pieces and knows.

Without Her, Maw would not exist. Without Her, none of them would exist. And the gurgling of the river whispers Maw into a dream where a warm voice softens her presence as if her whole consciousness were laying atop a pillow:

"We have always known each other."

Close-up of a shoot of grass budding from the soil and growing tall, trees shuddering from saplings to hundred-year-old ancients, the Sun—the Sun, Earth's Sun, which strangely and in a very alien way, Maw could comprehend—shines on all of it, illuminating it in life. Laughter. Joyful shouts. Human children run by, playing in a field. The vision is both slow-motion and too fast. Maw finds herself going around and around in circles, the subjects of the vision coming in and out of view: human children, human kindness, life on Earth; and even human greed, human violence, poaching, and destruction of land. Around and around again. Then a meteor fizzles into the sky, the sunlight burns away and all that is left is the rainbow shimmer and strangeness of the not-night, and the burning pink-gold Magnolet bearing down on Earth.

And then nothing.

[There was a time where stillness meant nothing to me.]

Then the vision begins again: the grass grows, the trees cleanse the air, the humans arrive again. Life begins anew. Around and around again, Maw rides the carousel of Knowing. Around and around—and again, the meteor greets her vision, and again, it begins anew... Cycle. After cycle. After cycle... they Coil like a snake ready to strike, twisting with bared fangs. The madness of it all was consuming.

"We have known each other all this time," says the voice, as Maw's mind comes back to the caves, watching the river bustle and flow. And Maw knows that She is life—the All covet Her. The Chaos wants life. The Order wants life. Natural Order fell in love with life, and set Her as its guardian. Briefly, Maw sees the memory of a human and its hybrid within the caves, and Master Vargas creating a chrysalis: and in that chrysalis, Maw knows it is Her. A version of Her. A Cycle. But She is taken by Dhracia and leaves the cave as an infant, awakening in the snow of a far-away place—but Maw knows it. Earth.

And Maw would understand that Earth is Her Ward, and that the caves were Not Earth and as such, Her presence was scarce and latent.

Maw would know She was cognizance, the power to enact intention, humanness... Hume. Fifth of Fate's decree.

With that, the feathershard begins to glimmer, as if it were to dissipate. Maw was alive with the will of Hume fueling her stone, and the unfortunate side-effect of being Enlightened began to creep its way into her core. She'd have to tell others about Hume. To share Her name and Her passion for Earth and its inhabitants, its Humans—and was Maw not almost human, to stand upright on two legs? Would life on Earth evolve like she had? Would the air turn wild with Hume's magic and give birth to a new age?

The feathershard did not dissipate, and instead, flecks of it scattered across the stone pieces of her paw and settled there, and forever the green would shine with Magnolet sparkles when hit with the right light. And by Maw's Enlightened intention, a two-inch chunk of Magnolet itself replaced the feather in her paw so that she may show and share it with others.

@Maw has become Enlightened, urged to share information about HUME. The longer Maw goes without being able to tell others of Hume, the more mad she will feel: and the madness will eventually consume her, her obsession and knowing of Hume too great for her mind to bear. This climax of madness can be reset by resting in her chrysalis, but the cycle will always start again.

Maw has entered her First Coil. Each time Maw awakens from madness, she will enter a new Coil. Upon Maw awakening into her Ninth Coil, the madness will ease and she may live peacefully with her knowledge of Hume.

She did not know how long she had been sitting there. Perhaps since time immemorial; time immeasurable; time matters little when you are a rock and the universe seems to unravel before you. What mattered instead was that she was there, at long last, along that river, equal parts guided to this location and found there by herself. It was not all she found.

Embedded in her palm, a stone of chrysoberyl. She had quite the relationship with this stone; how it stiffened her hand, throbbed with her life and gave her power. The impulse to touch it made her wince, but gently and softly she complied, handling it like delicate sea glass. It held her to the earth, in more ways than one.

That earth, that Earth, and its incredible tale would whirl all around the electric circuits and synapses of her mind, and indeed she received what she'd asked for exactly, just like all the other times she had made her wishes.

"We have always known each other."

It was so much. It was far, far too much, more than she could have dreamed of receiving, and yet perfect; honestly and sincerely what she wanted. She supposed she could not complain or retort or wish for any less, since now that she knew, she could understand that there was no abridged answer to give.

Earth. Earth. Earth. Earth. Again and again, this little rock that spun out in space, a place Maw had never been to and never imagined, a place that up until this point could only have existed in her mind as a story in a book somewhere. She knew it all somehow, with an uncanny familiarity. That was the Sun—and that was the... the thing it was in, she had only seen in visions—and those were the people, the humans. If she could have blinked or moved a muscle, she might've; they looked similar to her.

They acted like her, too. Sometimes good, sometimes bad. Full of mistakes. And then, as she was while in Paradise, they were... saved? Destroyed? Nothing. Turned to stillness, or nothing, or perhaps nothing was something—they were set still. Reborn. Recycled. Spinning and twirling through life after life; life, like the rolling water of the river; life was a dance, life was a circle, everything led back to Her. Blisteringly beautiful magnolet comet in the sky.

Hume. What she was, that thread that intertwined between the sentiences of Maw and all the humans. All who envied her, loved her—Order and Chaos, which Maw has seen and known. Maw knew what it was to be envied, and to be loved; but not like this. And that would make sense, as Maw's own power was but a branch of Hers. Hume.

Burning, white hot, emblazoned in her mind was the memory of these figures—one she recognized—playing their parts in this dance. All to create Her again. To bring her back to... Earth. Earth, Her Ward, to which She always returned, time and time again. But that was not here, so then why...? Why were You remade here? Why are we here, and not there? If you can go there then... can we? And oh so much more.

When her cognizance, consciousness—when Maw returned to the caves (in the not-Earth), Maw felt soft, and shaken, and renewed. Something crept into the center of her being, and she felt herself welcome it with open arms. This looping, unending Coil, unendingly fascinating, sent circuits into overdrive—her mind, fastened and functional like that of a Human’s, had begun its path to being taken over by this memetic virus. She watched in silence as the feathershard dispersed into her precious chrysoberyl, and the Magnolet proof of all this existence hardened as a pit in her palm. She watched in her mind as monstrous intention sprung forth and overwrote her former absence of will, and as the other systems of her mind responded to its presence—its implications—with questions.

She watched as the silence met the heat, the circling Coil of hot, pain, flashing fangs, flashing drops of water—tears. She watched the—her own. Tears. It was you all along. All at once she came back into being, truly being in her own flesh, except now with the knowledge that the space around her, the space beyond her, had meaning. She was one note in a tapestry so much bigger than herself. And yet she was connected, as they all were, and she was allowed to know. Like they all were…? Like they all have to. But why? And…

How is it that you can grant these wishes?

Maybe you can give everything because you have been given all the love in the world. It made her want to sob. It made her want to vomit. It made her want to get up and stare at all the life surrounding her and understand what she now knew of it. She stared at the Magnolet in her paw—hand. She thought of how it had formed, suddenly formed there. From whence the ability to form it had come. Or maybe that’s just your power? The power to will things, to… wish them into being?

And of course, although she understood now more than ever how small she was in the middle of everything than ever before, she was a self and selves are selfish, and that’s really not so bad, is it? She transferred the Magnolet to her stiff hand, letting the two stones greet each other. Cut from the same cloth…? Not quite, but… was my magic shaped from yours? You are the source of my life, which has never been separate from the power I have, but it takes a lot for me to make mine do as I wish. She wondered now, like she had wondered when she was young, what linked her life to the lightning. Was it Her…?

And how it had shaped her—Maw. Her life. She had run over the events of that life again and again, although she had likely forgotten quite a bit of it. The joys and sorrows and middle places of it. Life felt natural for her to want to protect, to care for; not just her own. Despite having come close more than once, she had never ended another’s—not a Greater Gembound’s. Tahi… don’t. She stared hard at the Magnolet and willed her eyes to become entranced. Soon, in time, her feet would beg her for motion, and she would have to set a course. This was preferable—better than being aimless. So many other thoughts to have. Why did you cry? So many questions to answer. What made you cry? And if she could surpass her reticent nature, so many things to tell. Hey—

You want to know so bad? Or do you just want me to admit it?

A pause.

I think I love Her too.

The knowledge of Hume had touched something deep in her heart, something that remained a thought without words. Understood in her mind alone. She believed she could understand why the Chaos and the Order envied Her. She believed she could understand why the Natural Order had fallen for Her. What was not to love? While life had allowed her to suffer, and to enact suffering by her own hand, it had also brought her the capacity for joy. For boredom. For peace. For a million other things—and she had seen Her bring that to Earth as well. To here, even; wherever they were. Maw had watched Order and Chaos in their envy; she had witnessed the workings of Chaos and Order attempting to create their living specimens. She realized now that the creations of creatures like Vargas, Tsetse, even Mother, were likely a mockery; a copy; an echo. These were the agents of forces who wanted to act through life as well.

Two commands clashed: the will to spread and to seek understanding. In essence, the desire to speak and to listen. This, she knew, could be resolved in the art that combined both elements: conversation. For the first time in, perhaps, her entire life, the urge to converse with someone, anyone other than herself felt truly… overpowering. Loneliness was a familiar itch but before she had not experienced such a mesmerizing allure to the idea of scratching it. Her free hand twitched.

In a flicker of light and stardust, wings bowed upward and outward, flaring; but these were not the same as before. Not accompanied by the antlers or the ghastly reminders of painful choices, these were evidence of something new. A new era. A new cycle.

Familiar, all so familiar—as family tends to be—she took flight. Destination: Draco.

- exit -