Logarithm - Chapter One
a novel
Logarithm
by Daphne Garrido
1.1
Earth.
Carrying such weight in her air, those splendorous glimmers of soul dancing in the night’s sky so far above, her crashing waves of natures glorious power washing away all that was unneeded.
The Moon.
That glowing shimmer of his heart, its guiding light through the darkness, so touching the spirit inside of all who were to see.
Breath.
With its flow leading inward, expanding self ever-outward — awakening such force of space inside, creating rhythms of peace in the mind — bringing rest to that endless search for wholeness, gifting connection to Great Mother and her most powerful means of healing
Perfection.
A gasping cry rang out in the darkness, her heaving inhalation for survival, such unknowable forces felt surrounding and consuming; Inis Evermore had screamed in the silence of her immobility.
She was awake now, but she’d not be able to move, lying in some unknowably blackened chamber and unable to grasp the reality of her situation. Some force was consuming Inis, holding her inside itself, and she no longer held control over her own fate. Though, she’d no idea.
A crease in her lips peeled back so painfully as she’d forced her mouth open. The dryness of her throat was staggering, though she had not a single memory to compare it against. There was just something about it which she’d known was off.
There was softest click before a humming sound bore into the space, along with a strangest reflection inside her heart, and it was the first moment she’d realized she could hear. The lights in the room rose to a gentlest glow, Inis finding her eyes barely able to withstand even those levels of luminance, scared to see what would be revealed from the darkness.
She’d closed her eyes.
This place was not like any she’d been and that was felt, but there’d not been a single memory in her mind, so confused to be told such things from within unknowing the reason.
Eventually, she’d come to open and witness what surrounded her. It was a smallest room, most bare a smooth in all respects, except the coverless sleeping-mat she lay atop, and her wardrobe rising from floor to ceiling.
Inis was completely nude, cold, muscles so tired. Waking here had come with feelings she’d not understood in the slightest.
To walk — just attempting to slip a foot onto the floor, pressing herself along, making her way towards the armoire, everything so sterile and clean — it was apparent the muscles in her legs hadn’t been used for a longest time, or perhaps never at all. Yet she’d found the strength within her to persist, barely holding herself steady atop each wobbling leg, her footfalls remained so gentle.
In life; on Earth, she’d been a star. There were works she had made which would change things, yet she would have never known that before the end of her time, having brought herself to a demise she wouldn’t remember in this body. Not yet.
There was another here with her, and they’d made this place for her to heal, to experience all that there was to know of feeling which she’d missed. He would find himself as confused about it all as she would; having died himself. This was a strangest heaven they were being reborn within — it’s making that of his own, and her place in it to be earned through facing all she’d done wrong — that it had been her who’d gotten him killed.
There were only two here, though they’d come in this time to find themself most connected to what they’d left behind, and within this most unique place they found themselves; an opportunity to save the world they had left.
They would create things here which would be channeled by others to change things, even able to save themselves in the place from which they’d come. She was a passenger here, and the man was a god, unknowing himself so lost without memory.
Yet he would remake this place around her constantly, changing things to test her, never understanding that it was his soul working through him to have her learn at last what she’d done to them both.
Every step she took in this place, from her oddest emergence, waking from that perfect dream, would be built for her to pay for what she’d done. Earning healing for them both at longest last, and an opportunity to create something together in a space of limitless possibility, which would be a force itself in the universe.
Without a shred of memory what brought her here, unknowing the many lessons which would be learned by the hands of the one whom she’d loved to quite literally to death, she would be lost to her spirit along the way. As would he.
While it had been her actions that ultimately caused their deaths on Earth, he’d much to learn from the mistakes he made as well, and this would be both their purgatory and heaven. Such control they’d find themselves having over things, most especially him. She would feel the power to change unknowing it was only her God in this place, who would grant or deny her pleadings based on what would lead them both to healing.
These decisions were not to be made by the man himself. This was his punishment too. His soul had seen fit to create the greatest weaving of a plan to burn every bit of distortion they’d found upon their spirits within life.
Eventually, they would come to realize they had passed, and it would be the catalyst for them to take control of what was theirs to make together. Yet there was much time to come, a whole lifetime they’d live here in this place, where they’d have to struggle to understand.
From this earliest beginning.
This man would see the Earth and all that was becoming of it in his mind after some time, and a great accident which would mirror the one he’d had in life. He would see this woman’s death quite clearly, over and over. There would be much time he'd find himself quite compelled to be cruel to her despite how poorly it made him feel, not understanding the pain it inflicted on both ends was most needed for reflection and would birth the opportunity for this life to become a most powerful thing. Once they realized what it was, and that they’d never die here; until they chose. Able to do anything they wanted within certain limitations of the space.
These two souls had lived lifetimes of pain, crisscrossing each other, failing over and over to honor how the other aught be treated in their greatest differences, always in the same ways. Yet, the love the felt for each other because of this dichotomy of darkness and light was unlike any other. The change their lives had made before they’d died would come to make reverberations throughout history in each place of time. The man so consistently called to serve the people, and this woman to create works which would open hearts across the world.
They were both gods here, and what they created mattered. What they did with this space would have most profound effects on the place from which they’d come.
There was a single gown to be found in her dressing cabinet, and while it took quite some time to get the fit right, needing to sit upon her bed to make it so, there was an insatiable curiosity within her to discover what lie beyond the doorway. So, she’d muscled through with steely determination.
Inis pushed her way towards it, passing through into the hallway after it opened at her approach, finding a most peculiar causeway. The floor had a most gentle, yet, noticeable curvature, leading upwards in either direction. Every twenty meters there was a lighting fixture embedded within the ceiling which shared a pleasantly diffuse and golden light. There was nothing distinctive in either direction.
Looking back now, observing with such curiosity, a part of Inis knowing there was something wrong here despite her complete lack of memory, she’d noticed that even the base of the doorway itself was curved as if giving a subtle smile.
Inis knew not where she was, or who she’d been before, or what was to come in this strangest lifetime she’d found herself re-born within, but there was also an awareness of purpose within her. She knew this was important.
Vibrating from the very base of her foot through all the muscles in her legs with every step she made forwards, bracing herself with a hand against the hallways smoothest cream-colored un-paneled walls, Inis began to make her way forward.