Chapter Four: After Syncope
A feeling of strangeness would pass deep inside him, uprooting from within. It comes to pass that he is pulled from unconsciousness, as a shred from that screech unanticipatedly rises from the ashes of the realm between his ears. The damaged man was now awake. His fingertips dug intently into the layers of straw used as padding between and atop the wooden boards he lay on. Torment casts over him in the form of deep reminiscence, as his preparatory struggles to forage for the truth come to light. He now lies idle in his wake, ornamented with the choices that brought him here. His hands now remain with the tokens of his fiery illustration, and his eyes now endure with an infantile perspective of his physical surroundings.
In wait for the reverberation of the final sound, he hears a new one. Scratching. A voice analogous to that of the clawing at the bedrock. Pfevet roots out his fingertips from the straw bed and creates distance between his hands and the forage. His arms ascend toward paradise, and he scratches into the world his own voice.
“I take refuge in the sight that has since been begot to me. A potentiality to observe inaugurates a new unison in my conquering hand. I am a child of your favor. I offer to you my opened mouth, which is mute, so you may grant me the wisdom to articulate the tongue of a newborn. With eloquence, I may climb your breathing tower so I may lick it. From your altar, I defaced you and drew your blood with my hands. You let the malice of your wicked nature come to an end, and you rescued me. Consequentially, you may pursue me, lest I become like the wolves’ prey, to be torn to pieces.”
His hands lower, and his arms fall to one side of his reposed figure. His hands then drift to feel the hard wood of the bedside, clutching to the edge for some support to tug himself closer to the still distant wall. One leg at a time, he heaves each off the edge, empowering his bare feet to touch down with the floor. He finds trouble in his aptness to straighten himself in his posture. Only a grand abundance of time and unwavering devotion could restore his competence necessary to stand once more. Thus, with such unwavering devotion in his steps, he makes his attempt to rise, opposing the surges of torment that run rampant through his body, mind, and soul. Naturally, his efforts are staggered. Yet, in the company of enough passing time, Pfevet comes to a stance.
A sense of newfound strength sheds from him. The passing of more time would bring him to an opening in the wooden wall, tucked away on the other half of the distraught and outlandish lodge. In that passing of time, Pfevet ponders over a cluster of colorable histories this dwelling may have once braved. At the foot of the hole in the wall, he postures himself atop the parched and charred debris, leaning against the surviving logs. He takes in the unfamiliar scene.
Before him is a disassembled estate. Every abode has been left abandoned. Each one remains parched and charred, like the debris which he stands on, surely by some great force. Its sole inhabitant stands before it as an outsider, then and now. The eerie silence hardly affects Pfevet. All of his life has resonated in soft tones of stillness and in quietness. Breaking the eerie silence, is the whistling wind. Carrying with it notes of smoke and ash, blowing between the fragments of what once was. In the sky, cinder forming in the great clouds, ones of shifting colors.
Pfevet takes his step out into a world strange to him.
Atel Enters The Realm
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