Some days you wish that you had made choices that would have led you to what hopefully would have been a different place. One must have faith that it would have been a different place.
I would imagine that should the Geometry of myself become representational and manifested, I should appear as a misshapen box tied with a red bow; incapable of storing; incapable of giving forth.
As it would happen, on this particular day, I was silently in praise of the fact that the unattainable algorithm that had come to the product of the present, continued to go forth unto the Grid, exponentially; and I mean not the begats of flesh.
Kalitsia's incessant humming brought me up, or down, were it, into myself from wherever I was. Her happy and inconscient inconsistent tune angered me. I then became conscious again of the effect our cargo was having on us—the effect of 300 milliscobles of Elusian spores.
Kalitsia and her kind use them in a kind of communal communion, in which breath itself becomes the Eucharist. I realized then that the word Eucharist had just served as the catalyst for terrible panic within myself.
Drifting through space, a ship; drifting through ship's lung, spores—being sucked through my nasal passages like a superbly fine snuff. She had purposefully broken the seals after the violent episode we had on Thaumis IX.
I have nothing to do. I must do something. To simply exist here was...embroidered salt, I thought. Salt is bad. Strokes, Lot's wife, high blood pressure. My head felt funny. She was saying something. Damn her. What is she saying? She's giving a discourse on the history of the Caith sid. To me?
The evidence was always there, sometimes so plain anyone looking could gain the wisdom. A perfect example of the old wisdom appears. These were my thoughts as her words became discernible to my ears once again.
She stood in her chair, looked to a point near the top of the ship and began to speak in a highly thespianic voice.
"And the men were thrown into a sledge drawn by a discoloured cat; and the cat in its rapid course bore them off to the extreme limits of Pohjola, as far as the vast deserts of Lapland, where the horse's footsteps no longer resounds, and the mare's foal finds no pasture. Thus Lemminkainen mocked at young men, old men, and men in the prime of life, by means of his incantations."
"Now listen here! Listen, I say! I don't feel too good in my head. Stop all this, for God's sake!," I pleaded with her.
"This," she resumed in her natural voice, "is a starting point for the historical research into the great witch craze of 1100-1700 AD. And please, spells are what started this whole mess, so do not, I repeat do not, let me go get my wand later. Your wrist watch is sufficient to replace us."
Of course this was her brand of humor. In the midst of absolute terror and mind-bleeding horrors, she jokes. Since her resurgence into power the Caith sid had become her constant mad muses. I wondered what would be made of our landing, were we to manage to land. I couldn't handle the cameras. And then to see the image of myself played over and over on the news feeds! Maybe we should not land.
Sensistit, our navigator, looked back over his shoulder, his forehead glistening with his ever-present perspiration. He took some cratin leaf out of his pocket and bit a chunk off, his eyes wide as saucers. Chew, chew, chew, sweat, sweat, sweat. Sensistit was never one to waste words. I could tell by his expression that he was just as alarmed as I, if not more so. I wouldn't tell him that cratin leaf would probably serve to intensify the effects of the spores. This brought a malevolent grin to my face.
"Not to offend you Kalitsia, but I was under the impression that the Caith sid bring bad experiences to those they visit. Back in the Gemir Age, underneath Sedona, 12 engineers on the Grid Field Generation project..."
Kalitsia interrupted with hysterical laughter.
"I was captured by a reclusive one of no known rank or race. It spooked my intestine and I knew it to be. It appeared as a dark She-Wolf. She spoke in my mother's voice, telling me that she had traveled far to meet me, her adherent. At this I became quite pale and turned...tale. I awoke in a small underground room with tree roots coming through the dirt ceiling. There were bottles of wine or blood stored on shelves in the corner. I hovered over my own body, which was lying face-up before a balance. In the left bowl of the balance was tangril weed and in the right bowl of the balance was Elusian spore."
"I floated there above myself, looking myself in the face, unable to move either of myself, but able to see, to hear, to think. An old crone appeared, covered with dirty rags. She whispered to me that she was a woman who had been burned in life unto death some 8000 spirals ago. I laid before her for three nights and no days, dreaming strange dreams, listening to vague whispers, seeing the glint of her green and vivaciously hungry eyes. My intestines ruptured and I knew. I now know that I had been trapped under the Earth in a Piscean spiral where tangril weed and Elusian spore nourished me. In this way did the Caith sid come to give wisdom. I came to myself, nude, alone, nestled deep in Dudley forest. Twas the northwestern corner of Connecticut, not far from Cornwall, in the shadow of three mountains, where only the blackest of hearts tread. Mysterious deaths of the residents there in the Eighteenth Century, unexplained madness and violence in the following centuries. It continues there to this day. In that ancient place I stood, as bare as the day I was born. Strange cyclopean noises I heard coming forth from the sky and the ground. A black cat emerged and then dissipated, leaving only a pair of green eyes in the darkness of the deep wood."
With that, I wiped my dripping forehead with my sleeve and turned to face the grid layout. Sensistit stood and began to take his clothes off.
Point zero zero zero. Two alspris before we reach the Earth quadrant.
Since I laid visuals on Kalitsia, I felt that there was an ever-so-soft pulling at the red silken bow. I began to profusely sweat. My face was burning. And then the word popped into my mind again.
Eucharist.
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