Darkness… I can't see anything; I don't feel anything…
Snow’s thoughts came slow, a drifting sound, in the vastness of… darkness. He felt the feeling of only being no flesh in which he was mobile; only mind.
My mind…yes… I’m my mind.
The quiet russel of waves began to bleed from the foreboding darkness. Snow trailed its sound, his being eager for an anchor. Its trail thickened as he followed. Becoming more than simply sound. Smells, creeks, drips. With each new thickening, he built himself. Amassing a temple a body for his mind until he was complete.
Darkness faded the outer edges of this reality. But in his present vantage was full; around him was the area in which his parents' tomb was buried, flooded. He understood now that actually all around him was his mind and he himself was actually his consciousness.
Mind encapsulating consciousness
he thought.
The scenery changed at his whim, and now he stood atop the half submerged building from which he fell.
“I’ve grown to like this view”A familiar voice said… his own. But not from him, not from the consciousness that Snow himself presently inhabited.
The source of his voice was next to him now, sitting in a fetal position, his clothes tattered, skin pale, body malnourished, and raven black hair subtly caressed by the wind. It was him before he’d awakened, back then living in the death of his world.
His old self turned to look up at him, his eyes sparkling with the shine of 1,000 iridescent crystals moving in sync.
“I never expected to see you here… remnant”
“This is my mind”
Snow replied, confused as to how he was conversing with himself.
“Our mind you mean”
Snow frowned at this reply.
“There can only be one me… I don’t know what yo—“
“Are you sure about that?”
His old self chuckled.
“You’re so Nivea you are remnant… I’ve watched you question everything and question nothing at the same”
This must be some kind of test from whatever that insane bastard did to me.
“I don't know what that bastard did to use but I’m very real remnant”
His old self replied to his thoughts.
“We made me after all, by forgetting me”
“If that’s the case, then why do you refer to me as remnant and not our name”
“Because that’s what you are, but I guess I have to spell it out for you…”
His old self paused, looking down, and turned to lie on his side, his back to snow.
“It was right after our birthday that this world died… do you know what day you arrived in the Sunsky?”
Snow's answer arrived late and showed confusion.
“The 25th day of the last mont—“
Snow didn’t finish, the sentence losing its taste in his throat…
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
“That’s right… our birthday”
His old self turned slightly to look over his shoulder at him. And sighed.
Snow’s gaze grows distant in the silent between them.
“But… I remember it was agonizing, yes, but it was only weeks….”
“For you it was only weeks, but that’s because you made yourself forget.”
“Your telling me I went insane and cut a years worth of my own memory”
Snow replied anger and confusion in his tone.
“It’s basic psychology remnant, it would happen to anyone. We just needed to protect ourselves so we moved it all else were and now here I am”
Snow sat down next to himself. Looking out at the faded brown light emanating from the floating light poles ahead, and glanced over at him.
“So you're… my insane self”
He said his tone void and placid.
“Pretty much”
Snow pushed a moment before chuckling.
It actually made too much sense, he didn’t ever question how he got so deep into the city as to reach the priestess cathedral. Whilst climbing buildings no less. The momentary fear of seeing himself as insane was subsiding.
“Why do you call me remnant, you didn’t really give me a good answer”
The reply was plain, nonchalant, almost.
“Because you're just what remains from after a death within ourselves…a remnant”
Snow remained silent a while.
“I see… and you?”
“Me?”
His old self lifted himself from his bed of stone and returned to his fetal position.
“I guess… I'm the death, maybe”
Snow glanced at him and then replied in a wistful tone.
“If I’m just a remnant, and you're our death… then where’s our life?”
They both didn’t answer, leaving the question to rest in the air of their mind.
Snow sighed and laid on his back.
“I have to get out of here, back to the real world, you wouldn’t happen to know how death?”
“I’m getting bored with spelling things out for you remnant… we share this space but I was the only active person within here all the time… but now that you're here to leave would mean—”
“to accept you back as part of us”
Snow replied, cutting him off.
“Yes. But… we need our life to combine us , a death and a shell don’t make a person”
Snow stood sighing as he did so.
“Let’s go find him then”
His forgotten self traced his movements and spoke through their consciousness
Are you sure this is what you want? You’ll… remember it all…
Replying ?through their mind, Snow said
I’m sure… it’s all a part of us; we face so much uncertainty so much is unknown; I have to at least know myself. I have to be harmony.
“Ok then.”
His old self replied outside of their mind.
And Snow felt a tug at his pants, a boy stood there now, a wire bent awkwardly in his hand trying to become something. Snow smiled and patted the small boy's head
“You smile with the eternal grin of a skull remnant, you’ll be lonely… more than ever so with these memories”
His forgotten self said.
Snow brightened his smile and looked at the night sky one last time.
“I think I’ll find a way to manage”
The boy beside him faded into a stream of sparkling gold and his forgotten self into a stream of black and they moved to envelope flow inside of Snow.
Darkness once again was around Snow, but he could feel the semblance of himself far away, and the guiding life within him laying the path. He felt that foreign force that had grabbed his mind before.
He flexed his control within his mind, all of his mind. And he dispelled that force completely. And flickers of light began to spill over the vast darkness. He still followed his life’s trail. Until he began to feel the sensations of his flesh, he could feel that he was mangled in some parts.
The force that had attacked his flesh needed dealing with all well, with conscious effort he exerted control of the light and darkness all around him and used it to attack within his own flesh, cutting out the foreign and creating a new.
He was forcing a moment of creation and psychomachy within himself. The control over his muse was euphoric and supreme.
He felt true dominion over his life and death, over the light and darkness within. An effect caused by the forced separation of mind and soul from his flesh and being trapped in the confines of only his consciousness.
But now that he was passing the limbo where those things met and became one he had supreme control over it all. So he welded that supreme power. Memories of the painting he’d seen appeared, the woman and man overlapping and being made one, and an idea formed.
Opening his eyes, Snow felt the cold of stone and marble touching his nakedness. He lifted himself the dry smell of dust all around; it was completely dark but he could see.
The night vision of his muse passively active. But that was not of note to him at all right now. Because he once again saw himself except he saw the version himself presently in the real world. But he didn’t see his own eyes, but the eyes of another.
And through his own eyes at the same time he saw this other…her… a woman, her face heart-shaped and twin with snow’s, fine with the true features of women, her skin a Warm beige and her body nude just like her male counterpart a few feet across in their shared sight of one another.
Her hair black and long, trailing down to the middle of her back and settling right above her breast in the front; they felt this session together; she was toned and elegant with the curves of a woman.
And her eyes… sparkling, with the shine of 1,000 iridescent crystals moving in sync, just like Snow's. He stared at her and she stared at him; she was him and he was her, both bodies with the same consciousness.
“It—it really worked”
they both said in unison.
