Welcome to Gaia! ::

In what Mikhael tried to think of as the height of his maturity, he took to living outside the villa in a large tent, attempting to channel himself into some pubescent version of Chris McCandless. He had shaken off the shackles of modern day life. Rejected the imprisonment of bondage with modern day technology. After all, what had it ever done for him?

Gotten him thrown in a cage. Dissected, hunted.

He could hear Gray nearby, casually flipping the pages of whatever book he was reading. Mik slouched against one of the support beams holding the tent up and sulked. McCandless didn't have any kind of guardian. He'd braved the Alaskan wilderness on his own, scavenging to survive! And here he was stuck in a backyard, with a babysitter. And if that wasn't enough, Aki or Elle or someone would probably come out to make sure he was alright or offer him soup, like he was some baby who couldn't take care of himself. He loved them. Of course he did. But he was trying to be his own man. It was so unfair. They'd never treat Levi like that. No way. The pirate would just shake his head and beam and wink and be on his way to wherever he went, never with any by-your-leave.

Mik jumped up to his feet, ducking his head a little to avoid the overhang of the tent.

"Levi, where are you going?" His interpretation of Aki was an inappropriately high falsetto.
"Out, babe." It wasn't important that Mik had never heard Levi call Aki "babe" once in his life. Or that Aki would probably object to the title. His scornful fantasy was in full steam.
"Oh, okay! Have fun! Don't pick up toooo many hookers!" Mikhael fluttered his hands against his cheeks in contempt.
"No promises, babe. Pick up an extra juicy one for you." He wasn't sure what exactly an "extra juicy hooker" entailed, but it wasn't important. More important was how fantasy Levi was leaving with a wink and a smile and his authority completely intact. Contemptible. Mikhael was completely jealous. He grit his teeth.

"Hey, everything alright in there? I could hear you talking to...yourself. Or something." Mik could see the outline of Gray's body through the front of the tent.

"Fine." Mikhael felt completely vindicated and made a few childish faces at the tent wall until he heard Gray's footsteps recede.

Mik flopped over onto his sleeping bag and writhed in agony, almost crushing his bag of Oreos. He stuffed his head in his pillow and shut his eyes, trying to will himself to teleport to the Andes or some place. In the Andes, he'd be all alone with whatever lived in the Andes. Goats? Chocolate mints?

Maybe Levi was there. Okay, dumb thought. But he hadn't seen the pirate in a while. Out like he always was, at the docks, working on his ship. Whatever he did. Whatever it was, it included him less and less.

Okay, that wasn't completely fair. If anyone treated Mik like an adult, it was Levi. And he was around, and willing to hang out when Mik needed it. But he still felt...uneasy around Levi lately. He couldn't help it. It wasn't Levi's fault. Levi was just Levi, the same as he'd always been. Charming and vibrant and loyal. He'd even bundled up a "care package" for Mik, in his usual style: slim jims wrapped in a Playboy centerfold. Mik frowned at his feet. It wasn't Levi that was changing, was it? Or anyone. Aki, or Raife or Gray.

It was him.

"History, Stephen said, is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake."

Awake. AWAKE.

Mikhael bolted upright from rest, heaving chest, all sticky sweet-damp sleep flesh. His mind scattered thoughts like buckshot, fleeting to glimpse, piercing then dissipating into the heavy fog around him.

Oh god breathe did you breathe did you sweat soiled damp muggy do you know where you are where am I this is not me where am I do not know where is this where am I top down heavy air vast and sleep like sleep am I? Where am I?

"Where am I?" The cold restricted his lungs, tightened his chest and pushed him from the bed in a roundabout manner. His feet hit dirt, billowing dust clouds around his toes.

The sightline never ended, a vast nothing obscured only by the curving earth. He stepped forward, squinting across the landscape, imperceptibly broadening his horizons.

The landscape remained mute.

Mikhael was used to being disappointed, so he started off. Not before, however, he gathered up his bedsheets and enshrouded in a makeshift toga. Cold air adjusted around him until he no longer noticed a stiff wind from a soft one.

As he traveled, he experienced the remarkable sensation of making no progress. Nobody experiences this in a true sense in reality. Most commonly used as a phrase to indicate frustration with a tedious task, people often make little progress, or regress, but nobody actually makes no progress. In the real world, to lack progress is to stop acting. To completely disassociate from the original action. But Mikhael was moving and yet staying the same. He was walking forward, shuffling dust under his bare feet, but the horizon never moved. The only distinguishing landmark was his bed behind him, and as long as he faced forward, it did not exist. There was nothing else to guide him. Every rock was imperceptable from every other rock, the earth was smooth and dentless.

After he had walked for a while --and it was a while, in the way we deliniate a while, that is, relating to the words "interminable" and "long" and "quite a", as there was no concrete concept of time in this place-- he came to an astounding conclusion. This place could not exist. Although there was complete evidence to the contrary --he pinched himself-- there was no other solution. The reality sent him down heavily onto the dirt.

He stared up at the while blue of the sky. Cloudless, it stared back at him, lopsided eyes opening up in imprints of the blinding sun on his pupils. He shut them quickly and they still danced, a jerky floating waltz over capilaries and the warming orange of under-skin.

No, I am alone. He could feel sleep weighing over him like a blanket, and let it overtake him. What would it matter? One minute or a hundred, in this place that didn't exist.

When Mikhael awoke, it was impossible to tell how long he'd been sleeping. Wherever, whenever he was, the sun didn't rise or fall...rather, there wasn't a sun to rise or fall at all, just an indeterminable dim light; as if it was always in the inbetween time between night and morning. Eternally dawn. His eyes ached along the edges, the slow, soft warmth of the nothing-sun having dried his eyes under his eyelids in sleep. He let them water and closed his eyes, rolling them to wet them and provide a new defense against a new "day."

As he stood back up, the dirt fell off him like dry sand, shifting around his feet and disappearing into itself.

He walked.

He walked.

Some time later, the landscape changed, almost imperceptibly. The air warmed slightly, and the ground felt tensioned, as if he was walking into the center of a tornado without knowing it. He could see, in the distance, a small white speck, an inevitability of the path he was following. He tried turning, walking away, but the path was a whatever-path, and it followed him and he followed the white speck, as if on purpose, but with no choice.

As he approached closer, he could see a woman who was familiar and unfamiliar. He'd never seen her before, but he instinctively knew: the dark hair, the spreading wings, even the soft curve of her cheek, the bow of her lips.

His mirror image.

"My mother?" He breathed in softly, biting his lip.

He raced forward, across the landscape, but she seemed to get closer slowly still, as if he would reach her in due time, in all determined time. He stopped breathlessly in front of her, silty dust billowing up around his feet and screening around them. It seemed to settle before it reached her, leaving her an untouched fantasy. He stared for a moment, into kind eyes. Flawless skin, a simple white dress. Impossibly delicate features. Where his hair was feathered and light, hers was flat iron straight and thick.

She held her hands out to him, a small smile on her lips.

"Are you my...am I...?"

Those lips parted slowly, an eternity, and her words wrapped around him, almost unspoken in their delicacy.

"No, Mikhael. This is not death, and I am not your mother." She moved fluidly, shifting her whole body in the first moment since he'd seen the speck of her on the horizon. "I am...what you imagine your mother to be. This is not your mother. I am not your mother. I am you, and this is your in between. It could be death, or it could be life. Or it could be eternity or it could be nothing. It rests on your hands." She looked out to the horizon.

"Do you remember what happened?"

Mikhael shook his head.

"Good. I'm glad. Sometimes the unknowing is better. I will tell you, but for now, sleep again."

Suddenly, his eyes were too heavy, and he collapsed at the illusion's feet.