Censuring: a warning

Home is still. Not frozen, merely still. Every moment a silence, every ripple flowing back into quiet. I heard a bell ring out only once in all the times I have been here. There is a lake made out of the sky, and everything is translucent casting reflections of neverwere. It is the closest thing to a home I have, and I am never more afraid than when I am here. Outside, I am a Power. Outside, I am feared and respected. Here, I am barely Moshe. It takes everything I have to hold my beauty together. The one thing that is me, the one thing that defined me long before I was claimed by this place.

My beauty is not stripped away. I do not know if this is a kindness. Awareness shivers through me, studies. Pushes and pulls. I have no secrets, not here, and never from this place.

“You drew on my power near the anomaly.”

They aren’t words. They’re reality, each one inside my mind without a need for speech or even thought. I whimper, unable not to at the force of the concepts bearing down upon me. Anomaly means the space the inhabitants call the universe.

“The wandering magician was being foolish. I returned him to his place. He was seeking –.”

Stillness runs through me. For a moment even the Far Realm I am in, the entity I serve. For a moment it isn’t, and then I am again. Me again. Here again.

“I apologize.” The voice of the Realm is different. Subtler. Less terrible by a small degree.

“Apologize?”

“I unmade you for a moment. You are restored.”

I say nothing as loudly as I can even as my body starts shaking. The Realm waits, and waits again. Nothing so small as judgement regards me. “This is the seat of your power. The place of you. You do not make mistakes here?”

“Nothing is beyond error.”

I wrap my arms about myself. “The wandering magician is – I am concerned. About him, for him. Jaysel –.”

“Not that whole name. Not here.”

The words are flat, without anything behind them. “Jay is only a part of this,” I whisper.

“To you, perhaps. But not to others.”

“I do not understand. He has no desire to leave the universe.”

“The desire is rooted in fear. There are motives stronger than fear.”

“There are. The wandering magician will not stop his questioning. I have no answers to give him, not in this. There are things I am forbidden to know?”

“Explain me, Walker.”

“I am a Walker of the Far Realms. Of your Realm. You are – we don’t use names. The Stillness Between Falling. That is my term, because rain does not fit you. Others Realms have other names. Functions? This is something far beyond me. Each Walker is chosen, but you also have Aspects. Part of you that can – act, when you need to. Mostly you watch each other. I do not pretend to understand.”

“The anomaly has Powers within it. Time. Space. Justice. Ideas given form. Form defines function. The Far Realms are a means to an end. Others are not as safe. Not all are Realms who could become; some cannot become. It is a danger to draw their attention.”

“Like a fire calling a moth.” I feel regard turn inward.

“Yes. If the moth could consume the light.”

I stare. Jay’s progenitor could devour a –. I cut the thought off, as if the thought could make it happen. “And Jay?”

“We do not know. It is thought: the next stage in the – evolution you would deem a war between us all. Or an end game. We do not know.”

“And I have Jay pissed off at me.”

I didn’t know the Far Realm could laugh. The sound is still stillness, but somehow it ripples as well. “Yes. Your survival is useful in how others perceive my strength. There will be no punishment, but do not draw upon Me again without asking.”

The words are not a command. I have no idea what to make of this. I say I will try not to, and then am back where I was in a wild spot in Outside, negotiating the end to a conflict as only I can.

I am so distracted I almost forget to seduce my target.

I am scared to go back to the universe. I fear I will have no choice.