[INIT]: Paths Multiplied
Anterior Paths
How long had it been? I couldn't count the lives I'd led after Delia. I'd been elves and goblins and demons and pyxies and so much more. I was even a slime mould once. And each time I returned to the Meadow – for it was certainly a place that deserved a proper noun – Phyllo and I would rest and relax together, getting to know each other better.
She was a good soul. Not a person, per se, but certainly something like a person. The longer we knew each other, the more each aspect of her seemed to age before me. The child grew into a young woman. The venerated soul grew into something unfamiliar. And each time we met, it felt like coming home.
After all, it was home.
The first time I remembered the Meadow during one of my lives was as a prin, destined to rule their homeland. They – or I – remembered what it was to be a woman in other worlds, what it was to be a dead soul wandering from life to life. But most of all, they remembered the poet of Antel. How could they not remember that poet? They were siblings, after all.
My heart, as that prin, was broken. The poet of Antel had abdicated their title at a young age, and they'd become something greater. By the end of their long, difficult life, they'd forgotten everything about it. The prin of Antel longed to see their sibling again, but they could only remember the sadness, not the places where it was felt.
And one day, the prin followed the path of the poet, leaving the throne behind, wandering until they stumbled upon their sibling's body. They died with the poet in their arms.
I couldn't say why I thought of any of that as I continued running through the jungle. Perhaps because I'd returned to Antel? Perhaps because my memories had returned a short time before that moment? Perhaps because I was consciously, desperately aware that I was about to see Phyllo again.
Why was it that lives where I remembered the past were the ones that made me long for her touch the most?
This time I was a thief. I'd been born into poverty, the child of a thief, who was themself the child of a thief, and so on. We lived in the nation ruled by the very same prin. When I remembered my past, I got careless, and I was caught. Punishment for theft was the trial of running, so I ran. If I could just but make it to the far side of the jungle, to the next country, I would be free.
But I felt the fox's teeth in my leg, then the bear's claws in my back. And very little time passed before it all started fading, just as it had so many times before. I almost relished the sensation. The darkness, the cold, the warmth, and at last
The nothing.
Empty Paths
I'd experienced the sensations before. Or rather, I'd not experienced the nonsensations before. It was truly nothing. No time. No light. No darkness. It was the same deep enduring nothing that Roisin, Nyxara, and Delia had seen within the Devouring flame. It tickled the same bits of consciousness as the darkness before the Meadow. But it was different than the darkness in an important way.
Leaving wasn't a choice.
Not that it was impossible or that it was a non-option. Entirely the opposite. I would remain in the nothing for an eternity wrapped within a microsecond. And then I would be in the darkness, not certain if anything had changed at all. I couldn't say if I was sitting or standing. I couldn't say if my eyes were open or my heart was beating or anything else.
I just was.
But in that microcosm of the multi-verse, I dreamed. Of new worlds. Of far off lands. Of new lives in places I'd never seen or heard of. And when I'd return to the Meadow, it would be ever more full of paths. I was a dreamer, after all, and dreaming was how I created the world.
The world? A world? Did it make any difference? Were any of the worlds I lived any truly different than each other? Were they not all part of the same beautiful tapestry I weaved, at least to some extent?
Lafleur may have been a vast isolated place, but it had stars, and stars meant other worlds, and other worlds meant something, right? Antel was its own kind of special place, but it had many of the same constellations as Lafleur, if a little skewed. Even the world of creatures and darkness was something of the same. For all I knew, we were living on the body of a woman from Lafleur or Antel or the world of fae things.
Dreaming, as passive as it might seem, was how I created. A goddess in my own right almost, though not quite like Phyllo.
What even was Phyllo the goddess of?
I didn't have much time to consider it. Suddenly the nothing was gone, and I was in the darkness, walking back to the Meadow without hesitation. I longed to see her much the way I still longed to see Jasmin again. But that was a complicated desire I pushed to the side at every turn.
"You saw it again, didn't you Rose?" Phyllo's voice was soft, cracking. "The end."
I blushed. She was often aware of things like that, but she'd never mentioned it before. "How could you tell?"
Her movements were sprightly, much more fluid than she had any right looking as mature as she did. But I noticed as I watched that the young girl version of her had returned. Or perhaps replaced. Dark brown hair, violet eyes, a sly smile that said no one could stop her. That was all new, but it was still certainly Phyllo.
"Well, for starters, the Meadow was getting smaller before," she waved a hand around. I'd lived so many lives, it had been getting a bit more interesting deciding a path to walk. "And now, look. It's different."
She was right. The trees at the widest point were a mile apart to make room for the billions of paths that had sprouted in my time away. Was the thief of Antel a dreamer? Perhaps. But this was different. The paths looked unique. No longer a bundle of twisty passages all alike in form and function. I could see one path that still led to Lafleur. I could see a dozen to Antel. There was even a path back to the world of creatures.
I'd never known the paths to be so obvious and unique, but there they were, laid bare before me.
My feet carried me not to Phyllo's embrace, but to the path with the silver and emerald grass that I knew without doubt would take me to Roisin and Delia's world once more. "Lafleur." My whisper brought a gasp from Phyllo, who'd joined me.
"You can see it now?" Her arms wrapped around my shoulders. "I'm so sorry, Rose. I don't know how it happened. But this means you're growing into yourself."
"At least it also means I won't accidentally go somewhere I'm not meant to," I gave a hollow laugh. Return to Lafleur was tempting, but what did it mean that the path was silver and emerald? "Or at least where I'm not ready to tread."
"That's entirely fair, love," she whispered before inhaling deeply in my hair. "You smell like moss. Tell me about it."
Paths of Loss
Phyllo was rapt as she listened to the tales of the thief, the prin, and the poet, their lives intertwined by proximity, chance, and love. Was it wrong to omit the part where I remembered things I shouldn't? Possibly. Did that affect my decision to withhold the information? Absolutely not. She wasn't ready to know how big it was all becoming.
Or rather, how deeply connected life in Antel was. And I wasn't ready to explore what that meant for them or me or anyone really.
"I have a question," I said as I finished telling her how I arrived in the Meadow smelling of moss, sweat, and relief. "And I know the rules about the divine leash. I understand some things you cannot say. So confirm for me with a simple yes or no."
"A yes, a no, or utter silence. Remember, I can only tell you what you already know." She smiled up at me from her position with her head in my lap. "But go ahead. Ask."
"How does it all work?" She scowled at the words. "That's not quite the question I meant to ask. What I meant was 'if I go back to Lafleur, will it be the world Delia created, or the one before I dreamed the answer', and with that, 'is world, in this place, just another word for life'? Because if that's the case, this is all much bigger, much more complex."
"I don't know." Her scowl had faded to a smile, but settled on something like introspection. "No one ever told me how it works. So I'm going on the knowledge I've gained. So far as Lafleur? I don't know." Her face brightened. "It's weird. I really ought to know that one, given the circumstance, but I just don't. And for some reason that makes me delightfully ecstatic."
"And the third question?"
"No," she said softly. "They're distinct lives, certainly, but your experience is what shapes the world. Arguably, the world Roisin and Jasmin fell in love and fought beside each other in is a different world than the one where Nyxara set up their tragedy. But it's also the same because her choices changed theirs."
"But it's not about the lives?"
"It's about the choices, the changes, the chances." She sat up and walked to a path that looked wrong. I'd still not seen a 'video game' in all my lives, but something told me that path would lead straight to that knowledge. "Let's say you walk this path," she waved grandly, "then you'd be in a world of things you've never seen. But that world will be fundamentally different for the time you spend there. So that another life in that world, which to my knowledge never happens, would be touched by those choices."
"But what about causality? What if she's born before or after?"
"You." Phyllo was firm and grave. "Not she. But that's something you won't understand until you arrive. It's difficult to explain, Rose. And you'll hate me for this. But you should consider this path."
"Why would I hate you for it?"
My feet were already carrying me. I had a choice, but I couldn't veer away from the wrongness of that path. It called to me, begged me to let it destroy some part of me. And I wanted that so badly.
"If only you could remember your past. You would understand all too well." She bowed, something almost improper, then met my gaze as I walked past the trees. "But the moment you return, you'll stare me down, and you'll threaten to kill me. Not that you could or would. But you'll want to."
Her words were already fading behind me. I couldn't explain it, but the farther I walked the path, the less anything made sense. Not my circumstance, not my location, not my mind. And certainly not my body. Why was my body so very unwelcoming?
My life in [world] began with questions, and for the next thirty years, there would be no answers.