Below the Heavens is a high fantasy web novel featuring a quick witted protagonist and a world and magic system crafted from scratch, incorporating east Asian culture and influences.
So close to death is the sorrow of love
—the ecliptic joy,
that I can feel its
long fingertips,
its sharp, venom-dipped nails
reach behind, right behind,
my inward-turned eyes:
they no longer see what I've always felt
they've seen,
they see man as you saw him—
in everyone else.
The wheel of life turns, consciousness makes abrupt shifts between, on one hand, a clear and distinct image of reality, and on the other hand, a vague and hallucinatory projection of the realm of imagination. Is it then possible to observe your own consciousness? Does it cease to be conscious of the link to the otherworldly if it is not dusted off?
The wheel of life turns, consciousness makes abrupt shifts between, on one hand, a clear and distinct image of reality, and on the other hand, a vague and hallucinatory projection of the realm of imagination. Is it then possible to observe your own consciousness? Does it cease to be conscious of the link to the otherworldly if it is not dusted off?
Walking past thousands of openings in the ether, long reddish cracks in a seemingly invisible wall, as they would appear to the trained eye, we were truly happy. Lyanna held my hand—something she usually didn't do for some unknown, inexplicable reason. I, on the other hand, was a romantic fool; hence, I loved holding her hand, showing her, and the whole fucking world, that I belonged to her. That I was her grangent, and nobody else's…
We always found ourselves in Magdalena, a quaint, abandoned town nestled far in the western reaches, Lya and I, as we ventured into the Spree. I didn’t know why. And I had never really thought about it. Until now. Something had changed. An unfamiliarity settled in, akin to a glitch in the synaptic code—subtle yet present, behind the scenes—rendering the details of our surroundings more vivid; the once-dimmed sun now brighter, the pale blue sky intensifying, and the weight of the prairie dust seeming to lift…
Breakfast. I always got my breakfast at Pushkin's. It didn't matter how early, how late, how tired, or how stoned I was—the coffee shop next to our apartment building had become my steady waterhole. The gent that owned it, Greg Pushkin—a middle-aged Russian immigrant from the Cuban colonies in the Atlantic—was a good friend, or rather, he'd become one, because I would always pay him straight up, with either creds or dope…
Lyanna was sound asleep. I looked at her. My eyes touched her silky smooth skin, lingered there for a while, then regressed, slowly, back into a semi-dark, blueish abysmal world of nightly dread and anguish—the buzzing strobe-light from the handheld projected screen faintly mirrored my pale, unshaven face on the wall…
It never stopped raining. It never ever stopped raining. Hence, the crimson red always washed away. Good, or bad? I didn't know. I didn't wanna know.
"Inexplicably dead, this man is, isn't he?" I thought, and turned to Lya to get her beautiful but sad-looking face remapped in the kibershop window in front of us…
During the hourly wake of the city's mourners,
I escaped
to where none of us dared venture,
with the veiled chameleon's long shadow
over my shoulder,
I escaped
to where no other nectar but yours—the XY-code's,
was harvested by the drones,
no other sound but the cyber-wind's
was silenced
by the hum of your ill-fated circuitry:
Lyanna—my cherished code and rhythm,
I have now finally understood
that I no longer need to recreate you
to leave a fresh imprint
behind
at the scene of the digital caper—
you are my truest reality
as I once was your most
fraudulent.