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// Portrait in III Acts 
// Story: Book 1 - The Behemoth came to Canterlot 
// by Equimorto 
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Dreams are memory, remixed. They were her words, spoken to someone else, somewhere else, somewhen else, to explain something. She couldn't remember then. Act first, wound.
A cut that does not stop bleeding. No matter how one tries to stop the flow, blood keeps pouring. Was it her body or the world? A disease, but not in that case. No matter how much blood should have been there. It was the act, not things external to it. No before no after. No source and no destination, only flow. 
Did it even hurt? Or was it beyond the point of hurting? Beyond that point in which the will breaks and the mind ceases bearing its load, and what is left is the spectacle, the show, and its inner and outer exaggerated ridicule. And what seemed so terrible seems so silly, and she laughed, she remembered laughing, she dreamed of laughter. She didn't know if it had ever happened. She didn't know if it had ever happened like that. Act second, farce.
Masks, exaggerated, but something true inspiring them. Not the faces behind them, the actors merely puppets. What her own dreaming if not a joke, and what to do at the sight if not laugh? Something inspiring the masks, meaning and emotion and reality. Reality first exaggerated to the point the exaggeration separated from it, then recalled at the sight of that same exaggeration, a cycle, but a permanent one?
A river of blood, but swum in. Played in. Used to water crops and trees of bone grow from the flesh it bleeds on, but they are cooked and eaten and great gatherings are thrown and lanterns flown and joy is shared. And tricks are played and masks are worm, masks on top of masks, a play is held, is it a cycle? Is there an end? Is there a point? A door to the side of the stage, what stopping her from just leaving? Act third, ascension.
To break free. To leave. To soar through the sea of her memory to the light of clarity and then, what then, awake, elsewhere, something else entirely? Whatever it be, change. How long to get there? How much longer still? Shedding her form, shedding her pain, and still she was too heavy, and still her goal too far. But what else to lose? What else to lose if not herself? Her memories, cast aside, a chance at renewal, a need for a freedom denied.
Burning. Burning up, still too far from the Sun. What then? Falling again? Had she ever been climbing? What was up and what was down? She was drowning. She'd always been drowning. She'd already drowned. It was already darkness. It was already memory, smudged, unintelligible. Where was she, where had she been going? She couldn't tell anymore. All she could tell was it hurt, and she didn't know why, and she didn't remember, and memory and knowledge were one and the same and equally bleeding unravelled. Act first, wound.