″Can I get you something?″ ″What would you be willing to get?″ ″I...″ ″Sorry, ignore her. Coffee. Two.″ The young, doe eyed waiter does an admirable job at hiding his confusion as he leaves the two women to their silence and memories again. - It had been a day like any other when Nadine Svobodova realized she was in a cult. Perhaps it was a bit chilly for June. Maybe the raindrops were ever so slightly larger than usual and made their way towards the ground with more diligence and purpose. With a lot of mental strain she can convince herself that the car exhaust had smelled of imperceptibly cheaper gasoline, but twelve years leave remembrances distorted and there is no good reason why any of those things should have been true. Yet, at the same time Nadine finds it impossible to conceive of the day as having looked or sounded or smelled normal, not when the texture it has in her memory is anything but. It feels like torn fabric at the periphery of her mind. Like a gap with frayed edges prompting the irresistible desire to dig at it with restless fingertips until it rips further. She had been fifteen years old at the time. She still was when she went to present her escape plan before the woman now sat opposite her, though it feels odd to reconcile these two ″her″s within such a meager timeframe. Dissonant. As though she had aged just as many years in the intervening months. That night she had snuck out to see a movie, the title or topic of which she can′t honestly claim to remember. Details don′t tend to stick on days like this. They don′t suit them in how real they feel. Their pragmatic worldliness rolling off the surface like overly bulbous raindrops. She is rather certain she had not liked it very much. Whatever else it might or might not have been about; at one point the main character, a brooding and thoroughly useless man, attempted for one reason or another to infiltrate a cult. It was all very overplayed of course, but when a priest with that second-nature-customer-service-smile looking as though it were stapled onto his lips greeted him, something, somewhere broke. When the priest led him to a sparsely decorated room with an oppressively low, yellowed ceiling and catechism began to bleed from his mouth, Nadine could not help but notice. She could not help but disintegrate. She could not help but understand what her family, what she, was part of. That she was the other in this second rate flick she had only snuck out so see out of habit. Of all the other things Nadine had felt in that moment, it was a small, but nonetheless noticeable part that was angry at having come to the realization through this film. That some talentless hack with a movie camera had made themself responsible for her life unraveling. She felt like they did not deserve this kind of impact and that there was a certain cruelty to not being able to claim sole ownership over one′s scars. It′s a very silly thought, but sometimes the brain needs those to make sense of the big stuff, to cushion the existential crisis just enough to not be hit by a car on the way back; something the non-occurrence of which Nadine finds surprising to this day. If the movie was a blur, then the trip home was a void, with only the fact that she did end up back at the compound as barely adequate proof of a journey no synapse could be bothered to cling onto. It was her parents she confronted first. Children are stupid like that. They took great issue with the word ″cult″ but with none of the actual cultism, or rather they didn′t seem to see the problem with it. More than that: they looked confused as though their daughter had just started throwing a tantrum about the sky being blue. It is, it always has been, and why would its blueness suddenly be so upsetting? She neglected to mention how she came to her conclusion of course, not that it meaningfully helped. While her parents might not have listened, not properly, they still thought it necessary to inform a priest who followed her every step over the following weeks. Thus began the worst three months of Nadine′s young life: the summer of ghosts, as she would later come to refer to it. She had convinced herself that she was on two vitally important twin missions; to find other people trapped in the compound and to escape. Perhaps there was a third, unspoken objective to survive, but she was an astronomical unit shy of ″in the best place mentally″ and so put far less effort into that one. She barely ate, closely observed the routines of everyone in the community and even dabbled in psychosis when her sleeplessness allowed for it. Everybody around her young self suddenly seemed more like a security camera than a person, like a robot, and she treated them as such: vigilant and mute. It was strange how quickly she had accepted this to be her life, being utterly alone and under constant surveillance. Needless to say, time passed slowly and wrought itself into repeating patterns. No one ever listened. the children were either too young to get what she was saying or they, like the adults, did not see anything wrong with being in a cult. It was comfy here, wasn′t it? She was unable to explain at the time in how many distinct ways that wasn′t even remotely the point. Perhaps there might have been a person or two who would have understood, Nadine couldn′t probe the entire compound, even back then she had no delusions of pulling off a stunt like that, but the number of conversations was by no means insubstantial either. She littered her speech with vague allusions that were likely far more obvious than she imagined, and when someone responded in a way she considered promising she would push it further. Never to any avail. There was one person she had hopes for though: Cathrine Allaine. It′s not that she had ever spoken to the girl, it would have felt... presumptuous? Maybe sacrilegious even, but with Nadine′s standing within the church of the astral plane as it was, she doubted trying would do her much additional harm now. Maybe she simply didn′t care anymore? Difficult to say in hindsight, but it definitely wasn′t a suicide mission. Now that she didn′t fit in anymore, she could clearly see the same being true for Cath. The fact that a thirteen-year-old girl would be part of this organization without her parents had been a red flag since day one. A messiah who only ever stared at people. Occasionally she would hear stories of someone actually having an interaction with Cathrine and they always seemed shaken. At that point Nadine still believed this to be the result of self-delusion making lunatics perceive a normal girl as something alien, so she was profoundly unprepared when she cracked the lock to their chosen one′s quarters one night. - ″Two cups of coffee. you want sugar with it?″ ″You may keep the sweetener. It is as much yours by right and essence as it is unbecoming of mine.″ ″Thank you and again, please ignore my friend.″ Such an easy string of words to produce, a statement which quickly becomes reflex upon spending any time in public with Cath, and yet the task itself is utterly impossible to accomplish. ″Please ignore my friend″, ″please levitate in midair″ ″please list everything that exists in descending order of how much it looks like a Chinese Mitten Crab″. After years of flip flopping on whether this property is a gift or a curse, she has only come to conclude that there is no way of explaining the difference to Cath, so what does it matter? By no means could it be said that Nadine herself is ordinary, or incapable of eliciting fascination. As a self-proclaimed witch she considers it part of her job, and if one were to merely look at the two young women, Nadine would likely draw far more attention with her undercut, piercings, and various tattoos of arcane symbols. She could enthrall all she pleased, but she had to make an effort, where Cath could not help it despite her far more homespun appearance. Only the eyes give it away. Eyes which never closed. - The door swung open with little resistance and for a brief, annoying moment there was something like surprise about her plan working, as though she hadn′t been certain before. Inside it was dark, though no darker than the surrounding corridors which meant that Nadine′s eyes had no need to readjust. Most of the rooms in their compound looked the same aside from interior décor, but she had still assumed their prophet′s chambers to be more spacious. She had imagined a kind of miniature palace, perhaps with a chandelier or a fountain, something that absolutely didn′t make sense architecturally speaking, but which was a conceptual necessity. Certainly, there had to be more than just a room. A four by three boudoir with naked, yellowed walls and an ant colony at the footboard of a plain children′s bed with a girl sat atop. Kids can have many reactions to someone entering their room at night. They might jolt upright, pretend to sleep, or simply continue doing whatever it is they were in the process of, depending on their disposition and general environment. When the person entering reveals themselves to be a stranger, they might scream. Nadine was aware of that possibility. They might also pull a blanket over their head and attempt with all their might to convince themselves of what a silly position philosophical realism is, scarcely, though not never, to any avail. Blanket throwing, of course, is an intricate art made yet more difficult by the enormous book in Cathrine′s arms, but Nadine had successfully executed maneuvers of the sort in her own bed on many occasions. No attempt was made despite this. No sounds of terror left the girl′s mouth either. Her pupils merely darted upward as though it were Christmas day and she had just been presented with a new toy, leaving her previous activity utterly uninteresting. The church never had a Christmas tree to hide presents under, but it did have doorframes. And so, that night, a frail being with curly black hair sat behind an ant colony, excitedly awaiting what her new plaything would do, and the plaything gladly obliged. It told its prophet of a tree stood conveniently close to the compound walls, and of covert nightly excursions to the movie theater. Of watchful priests and weak-willed drones. Behind the veil of hair, wide eyes seemed to find delight in her words. Not the horror of realization that Nadine had hoped for but far more of a reaction than she had gotten used to in her months of deprivation. Exhilaratingly so. Enough for the toy to sing on and on as the child drank it all in. - ″Alright, are you really just going to silently stare at me all day? I went through a lot of trouble finding you.″ ″It′s strange″ ″...″ ″People claim that images are capable of saying more than a thousand words and yet they seem confused if you don′t want to waste breath on the things light conveys more efficiently. Are they scared the shapes might give answers their tongues would not have? If so that appears to be all the more reason to look.″ ″They might simply be aware that sight and speech can be used at the same time.″ ″You′re being facetious.″ ″Yes, we call them jokes. While I′m well aware that seeing isn′t the same as looking: People may see a painting and carry on their conversation just fine, but really looking at one has a habit of making them fall silent, I was hoping to actually catch up with you. Not all stories can be told visually.″ ″I guess the asymmetry makes it a bit unfair. You′ve put a lot more effort into telling the last few years on your body, so I got lost in reading them and failed to reciprocate.″ She′s right. Apart from some questionable outfit choices, Cathrine looks exactly as Nadine imagined she would under that makeup. There′s a scar just below her hairline, but that too might have always been there and merely concealed. She′s the same down to the exaggerated head tilt. The hair, the eyes, the way she sits cross legged on a chair. Maybe it′s simply testament to Nadine not having known anyone over this sort of timespan, but the self-resemblance seems almost uncanny to her. Seldom unsure of what to say, the witch chuckles and points at one of her tattoos, a cursive rendition of the alchemical symbol for cinnabar. ″Oh these are mainly marketing″ ″Shame, it′s a compelling story they tell.″ ″And that′s what good marketing is supposed to do, don′t you think?″ ″I suppose it is, yes. Very troubling.″ ″What? That the shapes fail to reveal information my tongue is willing to?″ ″That good stories should be untrue. I don′t think it suits them and I doubt they enjoy it. Like a spring: You can squish or stretch them but they bounce back to being true even if they weren′t before. It would all be very precarious otherwise. Reality would be. Ontology is squishy but specifically in the way of memory-foam: At the very least meta-stable. Dislodging the universe from that grove, much like ripping the spring, requires a considerable effort.″ ″Sure, but you can paint the spring, or move it. Not all attributes are so punitive. I did say ″mainly″, but I′d be surprised if you were able to figure out the composition just by staring.″ ″Maybe I can′t yet... What do you want to hear? You know I′m bad at gauging what things are obvious.″ ″I still have no idea when you got out.″ - Sound travels through air but the lack of sound clings to it. When Nadine had finished her monologue a pause so viscous as to almost be visible had suffused every inch between the two girls desperately attempting to draw space into a singularity. Like stretched out gum straining to retake its original shape. She could feel it; the wild nervous energy of excitement, exhaustion and uncertainty vibrating against a medium that no longer gave way as air should. ″So what will you do?″ Five whole words. Four more than most were ever graced with. Perhaps a ″thank you″ at mealtimes if one were particularly lucky. Something to write in your journal: ″the prophet spoke to me when I passed her the bread. All will be well. My faith shall reward me.″. The voice had an unnaturally crisp quality as though syllables were appearing in midair just outside of Nadine′s ear canal instead of working themselves laboriously through the fleshy physicality of a human vocal tract and oh so young. No one had ever really explained why it is that Cathrine′s face had to be hidden behind layers and layers of paint at all times. Maybe she really was kidnapped. Maybe this was so no one could find her, but the doll-like appearance only served to make her speech even more dissonant. When someone barely looks like a person it is hard to think of them as a child. Perhaps that was the point. However Cath came to be with the astral plane, it must have been fucked up in one way or another. Legality scarcely delineates ethics, and empathy inevitably puts one on collision course with the law eventually, but it can′t have been legal either. Toddlers rarely just materialize and adults occasionally find within themselves surprising hints of a conscience when children are involved. In all likelihood very few knew and the rest could convince themselves that there was no young girl, only a bit of walking iconography. ″Get out, obviously. Away.″ ″hmmmm... no″ Unblinking eyes, themselves voids drawing silence inward, stayed fixed on Nadine as the head surrounding them mechanically rolled to the side. ″what do you mean ″no″?″ ″It′s possible that you′ll get out, but you make it seem as though that were your current plan. It′s not.″ ″yeah it is.″ ″How come you never had to pass through my chambers any of those times you went to see a movie then?″ Another pause, less sticky and more pulsing. ″Well sure, I can leave the compound, but I can′t *leave* leave. I′m a teenager. I don′t have money! There are still people here!″ ″How does there being people here stop you from leaving? It′s a perfectly fine piece of architecture, significantly above average for the area value wise, so I′d assume it′s the people here that are your reason for escape in the first place.″ ″Not all though. There are people who don′t want to be here.″ ″Do you know that?″ ″Do you want to be here?″ ″Physically? I don′t think I care about the building. Just stone and wood at the end of the day. Most of them are. Not something I feel strongly about, but I do want to know if they′re right.″ ″Right?! If they′re right?! Obviously not! Were you not listening? They′re fucking nutjobs.″ ″If that were true, could they not still be right?″ ″I... I don′t care! I just want out.″ ″Then why are you here?″ Something about the facial expression made her angry in a way Nadine had never felt before. This scrawny, strange girl two years her junior looked at her with what felt like contempt. It wasn′t of course, Cath likely wasn′t capable of such feelings, but looking back she could have understood it; the disgust that wasn′t there. The way nothing in her face moved except for her mouth, the way her eyes seemed uncomfortably wide open at all times, the way she was made up like a doll. Something about it made Nadine certain that she would not flinch if she were to punch the girl, would not flinch if she stabbed her. At most she would show the decency of bleeding like a person. In retrospect Nadine knew what had inspired the rage, that it wasn′t just an aversion to the inhumanity of Catherine Alaine. She was forced to admit that she had held a metaphorical scissor all this time and that the threads binding her where therefore only in place because she did not truly want them gone. She had been a coward masquerading as a rebel and this girl prophet forced her to confront that. A frail being with curly black hair sat behind an ant colony. It had made its toy cry, and having never owned a toy capable of such things, the girl′s fondness for it grew considerably. Soon they would be forced to part, but sooner still they would become friends, would become permanent fixtures in each other′s internal monologue. The child had need of knowledge and the toy of freedom, desires which should of course grow irreconcilable in time, but for one precious year their need for each other outweighed these. - Cathrine stirs her coffee thoughtfully, and Nadine wonders if she will ever get around to drinking the damn thing as hers has nearly reached depletion already. ″Hyrum died. I mean we knew he would eventually, but he died more so that most people nowadays. I think as a species we have largely substituted proper death for an anticlimactic fading away and have only gotten longer equally anticlimactic lives in return, not him though. Always had been a creature of the old ways I suppose. The bodies of most folks age like houses, where small things keep breaking until the whole structure is rendered derelict, but he did it more like a bridge: only slight visual changes up until the whole mass of metal suddenly comes crashing down. Old man′s mind stayed sharp for two more years, but I had to start leading the ceremonies and such while he lay in his chamber praying and drawing diagrams. You would have appreciated his schematics: sprawling shape-littered things that seem to begin outside of themselves and end nowhere. Star charts on every wall five layers deep and intricately connected. That′s when I most hoped him to be right... Then came the ritual-″ ″Wait, back up, when did rituals become a thing?″ Cathrine′s eyebrows utter surprise at the question, whose answer she well knows and expected her friend to share. ″Just then. It was the first we ever had and the last one I witnessed before leaving. I hear the people who stayed tried more over the years, though I can′t quite figure out why they would. Submitting oneself to repetition has always appeared a terrible fate to me.″ The church of the astral plane was never a large organization, only numbering around two hundred people at its height distributed across one compound and the surrounding area. Apart from there never having been a website due to their founder, Hyrum Godall, harboring a profound distaste for anything digital, Nadine would name as the second reason for the small following that people were profoundly selfish in their occultism while AP could not promise any more than a noble sacrifice. A goal to dedicate your life to and possibly a spot in some future history, a laborious quest with no chance of experiencing the reward for your success ″Heaven is lost, let us find it!″. ″Intriguing. Alright, what kind of ritual was it?″ ″He had been thinking about how ascension could be guided, sort of steered from the ground, and he thought he had figured it out, he just had to coordinate around the... time of departure let′s say.″ ″You′re telling me he predicted when he′d die?″ ″Yeah, though I must admit it becomes less impressive with context. He figured out when he′d decide to not take his medication and we made preparations to get him and everyone as far away from light pollution as we could. We lit some fires is specific spots, drew some shapes and we chanted. Not Hyrum of course, his job was easier. Quiet observation transitions into death quite cleanly. I was sure I′d be able to sense it happen, felt like I should be capable of it, and yet... Nothing. Preoccupied with chanting perhaps, though that′s most likely an excuse. At some point the old man was gone and we didn′t even notice. Just a camping chair with a corpse in it and not a new star in sight.″ To break their teachings down in a straightforward and therefore necessarily woefully oversimplified manner: The light of god is literal and more over ″let there be light″ is singular. To the church there existed once an actual unitary shining beacon in the sky to guide humanity into the paradise of heaven, far beyond the Inanis of the night sky. When lucifer was banished however, he tore with him bits of that heavenly light and shattered it across the astral plane to confuse the souls of humans and make it impossible for them to find god. The Inanis is a place teeming with demons, unfortunately, so any soul that strays through it aimlessly is doomed to quickly meet its fate and surrender the light stored within it in turn. The more pious the brighter. These are most of the stars we see today, so holds the church, and they only increase our confusion. One who knows of this mechanism is thus presented with an option to break our cycle: They can use their own souls to paint maps into the sky, conspicuous patterns and pointers so that the way will once more be clear for future generations. Hyrum, a learned man across many fields, was convinced that past sects and thinkers have taken up this quest long before he founded the church and that the sky therefore already held a great many secrets for us that simply needed decoding. It takes great dedication to stand out in the sea of lights, he will say, it takes lifelong study of astronomy to become a competent navigator, he will say. You will perish as all before you, but if you are diligent and if you are virtuous and if you are brave, you can be the leading light for all humanity to come. ″You looked for it?″ ″Yes. It wasn′t difficult. The old man left rigorous documentation, and even if he didn′t quite make it where he wanted to, what would it say about our merit if he wasn′t bright enough to be noticed either way. A good story while it lasted, I suppose, but in the end not good enough. Not even close. Though hope is not entirely lost: Hopefully we′ll be able to build something useful from the skeletal remains of his tale.″ ″Something useful?″ ″Don′t you think you′re being unfair? I′ve given you a story that seemed much to your interest while only receiving the knowledge of having been in some ways misled by your appearance in turn. This catching up ought not be one sided, don′t you agree?″