Chapter 1
The world was white washed and weary and the only one who could be blamed for it remembered nothing.
Clouds had vanished and the sky was a hazy, scary blue of a dying cornflower. If the sky could wilt, it would.
Chalk, something long forgotten or yet to be, was darker than all this. There was the constant faint pulse of light. Maybe it was dying. It hurt her eyes, if she could still see.
Sometimes she remembered she was there. Most of the time she did not.
The moon's remains hung in the sky; in shards. These fragments of white and powder still drifted in a stupor around its shattered whole, the ashen surface of the body clouded over as the space-dust lingered on in a wholly unneeded and pitiful embrace.
There were no echoes and sounds to caress the ears of the living that were not. There was no water to run and no grass to sway.
When the haunting wind blew, the slightest breeze was painful and her hearing would go and come back in ringing waves, up from nothing. Black quiet, only for her ears and not her eyes. If she heard it, the sky's ugly heartbeat that was either dying or beginning would cause the interior of her ears to ring for days afterward. Or weeks. Or moths. Her head would try to rip itself open from within.
There were no days. The candle-white shape of a sun flared occasionally in the sky, wrapped up in its own lacy shrouds of light. What was lace? What were shrouds? She did not know and nothing did. Was lace to be or had it already been? Hadn't everything?
Was this everything that was going to happen, coming from nothing? Or, was it perhaps everything from something sinking into nothing?
This was a skeletal world bleached under the dual pulses of something not night or day. Twilight was gone. Dusk and dawn too. There was existence that was limbo and nothing more.
Just. There. Being.
That's all that was. It was all everything was.
Was all of this — the irregular surface, or what was left of it—
Most of everything was flat. There were no mountains anymore or there had been none yet, but there was one. It rose from the center of everything like the appendage on her head. It was whiter than everything else, as many shades of ivory as could be, and from it, a sort of tumor of spires with roots formed of tangles of lesser buildings sprouted forth from this disgusting infection of what might have been a perfect end or a perfect beginning.
It lingered in air that would still drift with ashes.
It stayed there, looming. Haunting. Being. She wished it would fade and crumble. She wished for dust. She stopped wishing eventually because what was wishing? She waited instead. She always waited.
Every part of it was empty. The hollows inside as barren as everything, and the holes that allowed access were coated with blankets of dust that clung to everything and smothered it quite nicely.
She didn't know what it was for, if she ever did.
She didn't really exist anymore, if this was existing.
It was a white, white world, and she knew once, ages ago when she was pulled from sleeping with her eyes open and standing and walking that she could realize what she was doing and live.
And it was horrible.
She was not bleached-world pale and crumbling-everything ivory. She was not even haunted sky — a sky that pressed into an ugly/beautiful place to stir up ashes with bad winds — cornflower. Cornflowers did not exist. Or they had yet to.
This was very bad. This was not perfect. This was not limbo. This was living and she hated it because she could still do that. Maybe. It was natural.
But. Carefully. Delicately. She is not used to holding anything. Anymore. Or maybe she never was. She does not remember anything and everything at all but She is Her and that is that and there was once a sun and moon. Just hold the angry jagged thing. It is not dust.
If. Things that are not dust and rock and world bones are rare. She is rare. She is alone. She just needs to hold it with light. It is sharp and feels. Something that is not numb makes her reel but maybe she is used to this. She needs to be careful.
She were to simply take something angry and sharp, she knew that she could carefully pare down little parts of her and wash away vibrant, garish things so that little slivers of perfect white showed through where ugly colored light like her fake exterior kept everything nice and number than usual until she slipped into something beyond apathy again and limbo was there.
Everything was there or nothing was.
Sweeps of white-ish fire would rake the empty world. The howling, agonizing wind would stir the sound of burning.
And she would wait in unbreakable silence for it to stop and wait and watch and wait and watch everything.
She always did. Always.
It was a white world. It was a canvas and a skeleton.
It was waiting. For nothing. For everything. For anything. For something. For nothing again.
It was slipping between long periods of black when the curtains of her eyes closed for uncountable amounts of time and lulled her nowhere until she numbed herself out of darkness and into numb light.
It was something beyond boredom.
Or anything. And everything.
It was waiting. And waiting.
Just waiting and waiting. She would boil inside and that hurt. She disliked feeling. So she waited. And stood. She faded. She existed. She forgot, as she always did. She would sit by until more and more slipped away and she was certain as could be that inside her was white, white beams made to hold her nasty colors together would fade too. One day.
It was.
Until it stopped.
And she did too.