[Festival of Illusions] Every Day the Rules Change

[Victor Lark]

89 Spring

The week had been a fantastic blur of sound and color, of day and night, of life and reality and dreams. Victor did not remember the festival’s beginning or how he had wandered into this endless crowd, but neither did he care. He let himself believe that the revelry was contagious and he lost himself in it. He forgot about hunger and fatigue, eating and sleeping whenever the inspiration hit him; he was certain he had spent the greater part of two days laying in someone else’s bed, rolling through some great high that was at the same time ecstatic and terrifying. He had not seen his home in days, but it did not matter. He had become a part of something greater than a singular body with an individual mind. By the festival’s end, his face ached for the persistence of his smile.

At the height of the Day of Illusions (or presumably so, considering that the sun had been dancing between the corners of the city for hours), Victor was running the streets at the center of a giant, multifaceted game of tag. Children and adults alike chased him and fled from him as he lost them and found them. He dodged raining cats and rising walls, ran through sprouting gardens and climbed up collapsing structures as they built themselves up again. He ran for longer than he thought he ever could, but when he was tired he stopped to grab a bite.

He was chewing some tangy cheese when he saw her, watched her giant brown eyes grow with something mocking fear. She had been running; she stopped for an instant, stunned, as Victor recognized her as someone he was meant to chase. He closed his fist around his snack and bolted at the girl, who instantly turned and fled from him.

She spent a few turns gaining distance between them, but when she found a long stretch of mostly uninhabited road, she turned back to face him. She aimed something at him, a toy that looked like a paper flower. Before he knew it, he had been knocked to the ground by a massive gust of wind and she had escaped him.

Holding his backside, Victor stood hastily and looked around him. The alley around him was eerily empty. For the first time in a long time, he felt the bitter pang of too-familiar loneliness. His footfalls were loud echoes on the stone walls around him. The inside of his cheek tasted of salt as it came between his teeth. With a sigh, he looked up at the changing sky. There he saw a less than coincidental path to a rooftop, a vine wall like those from his childhood. He climbed it happily.

And there he found another man. Their eyes met and, despite it all, he knew that it was his turn to run. He gave a quick inhale, darted sideward, and with all the energy he had thought he lost, he ran.

[Mirage]

The city thrummed with the power of the festival. Cheers and calls of joy echoed the streets, flowing behind cascades of music and mirth. This was a time when anything could happen, when nothing was impossible, and Victor was about to see for himself exactly what the city had in store. The man slowly stood, tilting his head as Victor's head came over the lip of the roof. His figure was just a vague outline, and no details could be discerned. When Victor turned to run, the man smiled. He moved, and the chase had begun. As Victor ran, dodging bodies and vendors, he would begin to notice subtle changes. Grass began to sprout from the stones of the street, branching limbs began to poke from windows and alley ways. Suddenly when he turned the next corner he would find himself within a lush tropical jungle where trees reigned where once stood great buildings and masses of people. The crowds of people were now gone, replaced instead by foliage and the occasional monkey or insect. All seemed peaceful for the moment, but if he turned around Victor would be just in time to see the figure appearing out of the brush. The shadowy outline shivered, and the man bent forward, hunching his shoulders as tremors racked his being. Fur sprouted, body lengthened, teeth and claws enlarged, and within a few seconds the black shape of a large panther stood where the man had just moments before. A growl issued forth, and the beast pounded forward. So the chase continues.

[Victor Lark]

The ground went soft beneath his feet, the air thick and humid. Suddenly and gradually he was breathing new scents, so unlike even this city’s unpredictable salt. It occurred to him to stop and marvel at them, but the notion passed in the name of the pursuit, the face of the world that parted around him as he ran against it, away from it, and through it all the same. The thrill could not be sated by mere curiosities. It was his responsibility to embrace the illusion, to challenge it even, but not to wonder at it.

It was only when he heard the shuffling leaves grow silent behind him that Victor thought to pause, however briefly. He heard heavy, rumbling breaths as he turned around, keen on the feeling of djed as it cracked around him. He showed the transforming beast the whites of his eyes, genuine surprise masked with superfluous fear, and stumbled back a few steps as the great cat emerged from the skin of a man. It growled, and Victor grinned. How incredibly unfair!

His own djed whorled hastily around his throat. Sprinting sideward, he grabbed hold of a low hanging branch and used the momentum of the chase to swing himself up and onto it. Protected momentarily by the height, he opened his mouth at the fast-approaching predator and the noise he emitted was not his own voice, but a taunting imitation of a panther’s snarl. Victor knew firsthand the capabilities of such a cat, as well as the consequences of angering one; he thought to raise the stakes, if he could not level the play.

He was quick to scramble for the next limb upward, moving around the trunk until he found another with a sturdy-seeming landing. He leapt and miraculously found purchase on the other side, growling again at the panther with its own voice. From there he resumed his flight, in a more literal sense, through the new forest’s canopy.

[Mirage]

The beast hand bounded forward, its intentions clear in its every movement. Eyes of richest brown, fur as black as... It made to chance after Victor as he swung up on the branch, but it paused in confusion as it heard its own voice from the man. This bought Victor just a bit of time, time enough to scamper far enough from the creature's reach that he could start gaining distance on it. As Victor made his pace through the trees, the panther would make tracks along the ground, looking over head and pressing through brush and foliage in search of its prey. The sounds of its kind both aiding in its search and keeping it from pursuing too close. The chase would continue on as such for what seemed like an endless time, but even as the sun begins to set Victor would find his breath was still not lacking, and his arms and legs still felt fresh and new! Whatever this chases purpose, it was not to tire out the man. Suddenly the sounds of pursuit would fall silent, and the forest itself would still. Victor would find himself, without realizing it, at the final tree at the edge of a near endless drop over a cliff. From his vantage in the tree he could see the sunset as it just began to dip below the horizon, and the world was thrown into twilight. If he looked down he would see the panther once more at the foot of his tree, looking up at him with eyes that spoke of intelligence and purpose. With one great leap it would land on the lowest branch, and begin making its way up to the top. Victor would find himself unable to move, held by invisible chains that forced him to watch as the creature grew closer and closer. On the third branch down the beast would pause, and its fur would shimmer. Its skin appeared to come alive, and suddenly the entire creature would disperse into a flurry of black flakes. As a few flew past Victor's head he might notice that they were black winged butterflies... In the panther's place there now flapped a single Raven, and with its call it flew up to float at eye level with Victor. Its eyes held wisdom, its feathers were a beautiful hodgepodge of nearly every color imaginable, and opening its mouth it would let loose a caw so deafeningly loud that the limbs around them shook. The chains that held Victor would suddenly disappear, and the man would be pushed back by some powerful force, over the cliff to fall toward the tree line below... Falling... Victor would fall down through the trees below, and just before hitting the ground his world would be engulfed in colors. He was still falling, falling through a tunnel of light and sounds, taste and smells that held some meaning to him. He might see brief visions of his past flicker by in the colors, and perhaps voices of those he had know would whisper softly in his ear. This experience would last for only a short moment, for then everything would go black. Blinking, Victor would open his eyes and find himself running through the streets of Alvadas once more, dodging bodies and vendors as if nothing had changed. Behind him his pursuer had disappeared, but someone new had taken his place. The girl had returned, giggling and smiling right in front of Victor. If he was not careful he might stumble over her. Smiling, the girl would press a finger against Victor's arm, "Your it!" With that she would turn, skipping and laughing down the street. Her hair... For whatever color it was before, it now was the color of a raven's feathers...

[Victor Lark]

Helplessness did not become him.

Victor never ceased to struggle against the mysterious force that bound him, unburdened by the scrutiny of a human face and the composure it required. He might have paused briefly at the sight of the bird, that un-black creature which haunted the turning pages of so many hazy dreams, but ultimately its presence only made him fight harder. “I’ll get you!” He cried, but the blithe threat was drowned in the noise of the changing world. He tried to push a laugh from his throat, but his body was too concerned with finding purchase on some wall or ledge or image or state of being.

In the chaos, he smelled black lake water and burning candles and the peculiar scent of sweat when it is mixed with velvet and perfume; he looked for his home in Ravok, the mother whose socializing voice rang just outside of eyes’ reach, and was instead met the taste of so many kisses and almost-kisses, and then the tumble of dirt and blood, the kelvic woman who had died in the wilds’ secrecy with only one terrible, unfeeling witness; he tried to remember the details of her face, but was instead presented with the sadness of another animal-woman, the cat-thing, who had screamed when he had stolen her only friend. In the wake of her mourning, he finally experienced a fraction of a thought resembling happiness: the hot morning sun on a cool knot of sheets, the curve of fragile white shoulders beneath his fingertips. He thought to wake him, to influence the image, but he had no time to act on the thought.

It was only when he realized that his reflex for reality was wrong, that he did not particularly need what he wanted, only then that the world granted it to him. The sight of Alvadas’s cobblestone streets and colorful walls comforted him in a strange and bittersweet way. There was a ground beneath his feet, at least. Leverage to run on. Walls to hide behind. The cry of a stranger who was not a stranger.

That was more like it.

“I’ll get you!” He yelled after the girl, as if he had never said it before. With his unending energy he recovered from that bout of stumbling confusion and loped after her. He followed her closely, pushing his legs to the greatest extent of their power for more minutes than he could bother to count, but even on little child’s legs she remained always ahead of him, just out of reach.

Victor refused to be a mouse in a maze, wanting only what he could see and seeing only what was before him. He stopped the pursuit for an instant when he came upon a turn she did not take, and was instead inspired to take it. The irregular streets and buildings often provided him with an easy window or low-hanging awning to climb up on, and this alley was no different. A series of ledges lifted him to a low roof. From his new vantage he searched the streets for that raven-colored head. When he thought he saw her, he ran alongside her from above. Just a little further, and he could jump down before his prey and catch her by surprise!

[Mirage]

The little girl was unaware of the man's presence above her, and so she could not have foreseen his coming. She moved happily, skipping and hopping through the crowds and around stands, dancing her way through the masses as Victor made his way along the roof. Then he jumped, and the girl looked up in surprise... and then was gone. A great hole opened in the cobblestones, cracking the street as Victor fell right towards it. None of the other citizens seemed to notice it, and indeed they simply stepped over the smaller cracks and went on their way. Victor, however, was blunged into the opening and fell into complete darkness. This falling was unlike the last one. There were no colors, there were no sounds or smells or sensations at all. There was nothing, and emptiness. A void without a trace of anything. This was a world without illusion, without the wonders of life that Mizahar holds. Victor would fall for only a few seconds, but without a means to count the time it could feel like an eternity. Finally, however, he would find himself dropped into a canopy of white... into a pile of snow in fact. The man would find himself now in a vast and empty tundra of white. Piles of snow dotted the area, but no trees or vegetation of any kind could be seen. Some rock formations might be visible in the distance, but with the glare of the sun it was hard to tell. He could fill the chill in the air, the harsh chill that wracked this world with every gust of wind. Suddenly a voice would call out, "Hey! Over here!" The girl had returned, and she waved smiling and laughing at Victor some ways off. Turning she began to run once more. As Victor gave chase he would find that more and more the snow began to fall, harder and harder until it began to pile up past his ankles. Still on she ran, her feet gracing the very tops of the piles and she never seemed to be burdened by the snow in her way. Yet still the snow would pile higher and higher for Victor, past his knees and almost to his waist. The cold would creep beneath his skin, chilling him to the bone and causing him to shiver. So cold, cold to the point of hypothermia, cold enough to freeze the very blood in his veins, and yet Victor would yet live. His body was charged, filled with strength that defied the cold, and so he could press on as the snow came up to his chest now. As much as he ran he could not seem to catch the girl, and on she would continue, skipping and giggling until she ducked behind a large rock formation. It would be difficult, but Victor could dig his way toward the rocks, hopefully to escape from the howling wind and falling snow that was growing fiercer by the second.

[Victor Lark]

Faced with crossing the great obstacle, Victor immediately decided on the more difficult option. He hoisted himself up from the sea of snow with a happy groan, waiting a long moment on the great rock with his legs dangling into the white, wet abyss. He watched the clouds of his breath condense on that slick black sanctuary. His heart throbbed angrily in his chest as it pushed enchanted warmth to limbs that burned numb in a cold that was not cold.

For a moment, he forgot about the girl. The black abyss stuck in his memory like an unrelenting leech, chewing away until there was nothing there but the endless emptiness that had become his world for so many seconds. It was too familiar, that emptiness; it reflected the wasting nothing which he had always known was inside of him and never managed to fill; it reminded him that no amount of trickery could make him powerful and no amount of emotion could make him empathize. This strange world was the same as reality, in its heart. It was running, searching, and never reaching.

Except for this snow. It came so close to his soulless core, and the unimaginable pain felt almost like feeling. It was an illusion, undeniably, but that had not mattered yet and it did not matter still. He could not help but wonder, though: could he only feel something like this, something so awesome and terrible at once, if it were a lie? Was he right to have accepted Ionu’s games as they came, instead of challenging them with his own tricks?

He crawled as well as he could to the other side of the sheer boulder and offered a hand out to her.

“Stop,” he demanded, and even though he had been granted boundless energy and power, his chest heaved with feigned exertion. He did not care that she might not be real, but he wanted to know whether the chase was his own selfish delusion or if he shared his fantasy with another true and living person. More than that, he wanted to reach her. “Come here, darling.”

[Mirage]

Stop... This word rang out through the world of ice and snow, and upon its command the world stilled. Snowflakes halted in their decent, the wind ceased to howl. All was still... all was quite, unmoving as if some hand had come forth to stop all there was in this existance. The girl paused as well, looking up to where Victor sat upon the rocks above. Her hair of raven still waved as if caught in a fierce storm, and her eyes shown out in an eire light. At his command the child moved, vanishing in a whirl of snowflakes to appear by his side. A smile touched her lips, and when she spoke her voice vibrated through the world, "As you command."

[Victor Lark]

Watching the girl disappear, Victor retracted his arm from the otherwise unmoving air. The whorl of snowflakes that enveloped her settled in the stillness, and only then did he recognize how everything had paused. He looked up, around. The confusion that raked through his mind manifested as glass stoicism on his face, that face which knew more the comfort of nothingness than the casual vicissitudes of absent-minded emotion.

He jumped when he heard her speak.

He slipped and scrambled on his poor purchase, turning as quickly as he could to face her. The sharp steel of his eyes dulled at the sight of her, scouring the suspended world around them for a few more moments before it settled on her again. He gave her a frown, but something told him that she did not care about his various charades. Victor had thought of so many questions in chimes previous, but as she stood before him then he found himself without words.

Indecisive silence poured from his stuttering mouth. Finally, he asked the questions to which he thought he already knew the answer. “What is this place? Who are you?”

[Mirage]

The girl smiled, "This," She waved a hand to emphasize the world around, "Is what you have always wanted." Her cryptic words would hang in the silence, words that seemed to hold far more meaning than the obvious one. This world was what he had wanted? Was she talking about ice and snow, or perhaps that emptiness from before? What about the jungle and the run through the streets, and that passage of lights and colors? Were those what Victor wished for and desired? Or was it... Perhaps it was not the parts, but the entire whole... Looking around now Victor would find that the landscape would change, shifting to form whatever his mind would conjure up. If he called for a vast and unending sea he would find the rock with him upon it submerged, if he wished to fly amongst the clouds he would float there unsupported by floors or platforms. The sky would move and change as he wished it, the wounds and smells could be summoned at will. He could CREATE anything he wished, but just for a chime or two. A whirl of white would call Victor's attention once more as the girl was engulfed in flickering lights. When these dispersed a figure would stand in her place, a face which Victor had come to know and trust. Before him now stood a man, Seven Xu, who reached out a hand and greeted Victor with a warm smile, "Take my hand." If he accepted the offer his world would suddenly be engulfed in lights, swirling and filling his vision with colors and pictures of his life, but just as quickly as they had come they would disperse. Suddenly Victor would find himself in a tavern, but not just any tavern... "Welcome to the Sun and Stars Tavern my friend. Can I get you a drink?" The Sun and Stars Tavern? Was he mistaken? But now, if Victor looked about him he would find things were just as they had been before. Though empty, the tables and chairs all sparkled as if freshly cleaned. "Well I suppose it would be the Stallion's Rear now, but I have always liked the Sun and Star's Tavern personally." Behind the bar there stood a man, one whom Victor had never met before. He stood about 6 feet tall, long bond hair pulled back into a pony tail, and he dressed as if he were the bartender here. In his hands he cleaned a used mug of ale with a pristine white cloth, his icy blue eyes looking over Victor as he spoke, "You seem a bit travel weary. Tell me, where have you come from, and why..." Setting the mug down the man leaned to rest his elbows on the counter, locking eyes with Victor, "are you here?"

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