Chapter 1: 00

One day, I dreamt of something perfect.

Other than myself, I mean, ehe.

It had the same sort of light though, the kind of bright luminance chocolate has when it melts in your mouth and takes away all of your worries.

It was so much vaster than I was. Brilliance? Grace? All of humanity in their city.

I was at peace.

It wasn't my peace.

In that dream, I reached out with my hands, clasped at the perfect thing.

I tarnished it.

Perfection doesn't meet with perfection, it turns out.

I toppled over, after that. I'd reached too far, my hands were covered with black ash, clothes stained with ambrosia from the white rain.

White water. Black ash.

I lay atop the debris. I looked at it. It was a thousand thousand ruined parchments. I read them without viewing them.

They were really human constructs. They weren't, because I couldn't see any flaws in them, but you could call them the embodiment of human ingenuity, human talent.

(For a second, the thought of all that was inhuman and all that was denied human crept into me, but then I remembered that I didn't actually care about things like that, and I was in my peace again.)

My friends who are actually good at biology or trivia tell me you lose language processing in dreams. Well, not me, because I'm a prophetess, and not here!

If I had left them intact, I would have been able to replicate them. One set of texts had not only perfect songs with a resonant and positive effect on their listeners but perfect notation for them, and mountains and mountains of description of the theory and the methods through which it was created, with proofs drawn from the one consistent and complete maths linked to the unitary science, with methods of argument from a rhetoric that reaches out to all of its victims not only en masse but individually, immediately working out how they work things out and moulding itself specifically to them as well as mastering those general techniques of persuasion.

I can't even say that last thing consists of a talent different than my own! Did I see something better than me? That can't be. I'm perfect. Whatever. What was tarnished was tarnished, whatever it was, some fantasy set of skills that abnegates the need for hard work, humanity's armada against its conscious enemies.

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Some pages were missing, others were stained with ink, others were burned with some idiot child of light's mental magnifying glass. I began to pick up fragments, but what was not stained with white water was tainted by hands full of black ash. I traced the rips, vicious, ursine, obscene with my dainty little index finger, the one that had caused it.

Ah, every tear I had made had killed an art. Or just art in general, unified art. There was no longer a way to describe the gashes.

I woke up. Screamed through the princess curtains. Found I hadn't made a sound. Everything was silent, and the night was black.

I stumbled about. My television was still on. A military teletext channel, teletext like it wasn't 2067! The dumb default set by my father. Its blue glow reverberated through the room. There was nothing else really there, not even me or all the things I owned and commanded.

I threw my pillow across the room, a notable distance. I stomped over to my bathroom and looked at my face, flushed, nipped at by the vaguest spots of acne, the dye that kept my hair blonde instead of nearing brunette running its course, like that wasn't the least of my concerns, I hadn't tied it up at all so it was really my fault but it was so fucked. A prophetess is allowed to look crazy, does it mean she should?

A prophetess bears maddening dreams and their consequences. Does it mean she wants to?

I considered going down to the kitchen for chocolate. Some expensive brand wrapped in sweet goldenrod, a real pick-me-up, but all my friends would be cuter than me if I put on too much weight, and I'd have to brush my teeth again. Couldn't be bothered.

So, I threw myself back down, didn't text any of my friends. Won't have them worry about silly little me.

I did a little dream interpretation. White water. Like the hotel?

Black ash. Sounds like her name. Brackash, Carmen. Her parents renamed when they got married or whatever.

I hate her so. I'm in Indianapolis, she's in the Second City, we've got the entire Atlantic Ocean, all of Europe and then the Persian Gulf separating us.

Just kidding. Since she reflects every unnerving psychic phenomenon, every time I get a dream like this it's like she's in my head again.

Ah.

I rubbed my face into my pillow. Closed my eyes. I can't waste time until the next morning, I have class tomorrow!

It wasn't easy, but I went back to sleep, dreamlessly.

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