Patterns in the dark.
Jun. 30th, 2011 12:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
museworksIt would be pointless to say he repeated, and often, that cycle of starving/feeding just like the still-going cycle of darkness/light. Not simply starving of food, but sometimes of magic; I do not know what magic-wielder he employed but there had to have been one who would set and lift wards on command. At that point I was fairly certain I was going mad; the only reason I didn't consider myself mad quite yet was that I still had some self-awareness, and I couldn't just mental retreat from any of it. I'd read of others who face traumatic events or simply 'highly undesirable situations in which they are helpless' and manage to withdraw into their minds, into their own private worlds that either block it out or turn it into something else. I wish I could have done that, but I was raised to be acutely self-aware, and it seemed that I could not turn that off even in this case.
When it was during one of the dark times, I would stare into the blackness. A darkness so complete that I could even see my own hand when I held it to my face, apart from what was the tiniest, faintest sickly glow from my eyes. I stared into it until I could 'see' things. Not images, no pictures, but just those odd little patterns and faint specks that one might see when closing one's eyes. Like after-images except I could not see anything in the first place, so I don't know where they were from. Perhaps my mind. I would try to follow these 'patterns'. I tried to imagine what they might be from, or what they might go with. Some were recurring, such as patches of faint stripes. Vertical stripes, like bars. Appropriate.
Sometimes I imagined there being someone else behind those patterns, and to her I was the imagined person in her own darkness.
I couldn't stare into the darkness forever, though. Not even when it seemed unending. I had the layout of my chambers memorized at that point so I no longer stumbled. It was a small mercy that it had not occurred to Jovan to have the furniture rearranged. Sometimes instead of staring into the dark I would continue my exercises, as I had done since first brought there. I did not wish to be sickly. Rather, some stubborn part of me wanted to resist the slow wasting-away that was inevitable in those conditions. After the exercises the 'sparks' that I saw in the total darkness were more prominent. Another reason for doing them, I suppose.
Sparks and stripes. Feast and famine. Light and dark.
Darkness until I would wake and see his eyes over me.
Is it any wonder I crave the sun now?
When it was during one of the dark times, I would stare into the blackness. A darkness so complete that I could even see my own hand when I held it to my face, apart from what was the tiniest, faintest sickly glow from my eyes. I stared into it until I could 'see' things. Not images, no pictures, but just those odd little patterns and faint specks that one might see when closing one's eyes. Like after-images except I could not see anything in the first place, so I don't know where they were from. Perhaps my mind. I would try to follow these 'patterns'. I tried to imagine what they might be from, or what they might go with. Some were recurring, such as patches of faint stripes. Vertical stripes, like bars. Appropriate.
Sometimes I imagined there being someone else behind those patterns, and to her I was the imagined person in her own darkness.
I couldn't stare into the darkness forever, though. Not even when it seemed unending. I had the layout of my chambers memorized at that point so I no longer stumbled. It was a small mercy that it had not occurred to Jovan to have the furniture rearranged. Sometimes instead of staring into the dark I would continue my exercises, as I had done since first brought there. I did not wish to be sickly. Rather, some stubborn part of me wanted to resist the slow wasting-away that was inevitable in those conditions. After the exercises the 'sparks' that I saw in the total darkness were more prominent. Another reason for doing them, I suppose.
Sparks and stripes. Feast and famine. Light and dark.
Darkness until I would wake and see his eyes over me.
Is it any wonder I crave the sun now?
