Anamnesis 1:3
Read from the beginning! Verse 1 can be found here, and Verse 2 here.
Chapter 1: as in names
Verse 3: an amen, sis
It is midday, and the Forest is quiet as Yahde takes her first step into its shadowy realm. Immediately, a cloud of toxic spores explodes nearby. The suddenness of it spurs her into a speed she doesn’t know she has, and she spins out of the way. Another cloud poofs out, and she dodges again, only to succumb to the third cloud, which catches her from behind.
Numbness spreads through her body, she loses control of her limbs, and then she crumples to the ground. Consciousness flickers in and out, and she is dimly aware of being dragged deeper into the Forest by something, though she cannot see what it is.
Her head smacks against roots and loose rocks—in the dark patches of lost consciousness, she becomes aware of waves lapping endlessly upon a shore. A person waits on the rocks—
Trees and vines again fill her vision. One of the bold predatory creatures attempts to damage her skin, and she notes its confusion when it fails. It has dragged her to the very heart of the Forest. She shakes her left hand, and the creature runs off. Towering above, the tallest central trees reach many dozens of meters up to graze the rim of the puncture.
She brushes against the leaves of a branch, triggering a thick vine to unfurl and wrap around her, almost prehensile in its grip. It has immense strength as it constricts and lifts her off the ground. These vines could crush one of the large herbivorous insects in moments, but Yahde calmly grips the end of the tendril and unwraps it until she falls from its grasp, unharmed. She admires the tenacity of this Forest and its occupants, but it is no threat to her.
The vine shrinks away, but Yahde approaches the tree again.
She places a hand against its trunk and says, “I will forgive you for trying to eat me if you help me get up there.”
She points to the puncture through the patchy canopy.
The tree recoils as if stunned by this request, but then a moment later, the vine sinks into view again. It does not immediately enwrap her, this time awaiting her consent. Yahde moves into it and raises her arms. The vine coils around her torso and lifts her, reaching as high as it can extend until another, higher vine takes her and continues the ascent. Above a certain height, the vines and branches are smaller and less frequent. The bulbs with their sap coated fibers are still plentiful though, and the current vine simply presses her against a cluster of them and releases.
After a brief, disorienting moment of fear that she might fall, she realizes that the fibers and their sap support her completely. She finds that with a great amount of effort she can unstick herself from the fibers and climb up to the next cluster. Even with her strength and fortitude, Yahde is quickly exhausted. Still at least ten meters from the rim, with the tree wobbling wildly at such a height from her motion, she feels certain of her imminent failure.
As she wonders whether she would survive such a fall, a chorus of deep thrums reaches her ears. The flying predators, some of whom have nests in the tunnels and caverns accessible through the torn mineral flesh of the puncture, begin to swarm around her.
Each has a body about the length and size of her leg, held aloft by four shimmering, iridescent wings. Their powerful serrated mandibles clack against their maxillae to make a sharp, percussive sound, which Yahde has seen them use to cause their prey to freeze in fear. She fears they too will try to attack and eat her. They will not succeed in that, but they might succeed in dislodging her and causing her to plummet to her death.
She calls out to them, her voice uneven and wavering as the tree flails. “You will not harm me; ask the tree. However, if you help me to that tunnel up there, I will owe you a great debt.”
They stop their clacking, then flurry around the trees as they confer. A moment later, they return, flying in close. Yahde allows four of them to carefully take her limbs into their jaws. Their delicate grip touches her, but even the sharp serrated spikes cannot puncture her flesh. They detach her from the sappy fibers with a concerted tug, and then lift her to the mouth of the blood vessel tunnel that yawns above.
At the ragged edge of the tunnel crusted with calcification and efflorescence, Yahde debates whether she should attempt to climb up to the top of her father’s hand and see the greater world, of which she knows only sky and cloud. She thinks she might be able to manage it, but the rock is still slick from the morning fog. After her harrowing experience on the tree, she feels certain that to fall from this height means a shattering death. The tunnel it is, then.
She looks at the veins in her own hand and reckons that this is too close to the palm to be the large vein that sits on the top beside the tendons. Yet this tunnel is still easily twice her height. What the larger veins and arteries are like, she can only imagine.
The creatures who deposited her here have transformed the round tunnel into a patchwork of bulbous mounds. The nests are made from spittle secreted by the creatures, which then hardens in the cool darkness like clay left in the sun. Looking closer at the tunnel walls, she can see the folds of petrified endothelial cells making a subtle spiral pattern. They must have guided whatever kind of blood flowed through a stone titan’s veins.
Considering this, she recognizes that her father truly is dead. Some part of her wondered whether he might simply be slumbering, recovering from the cataclysm that led to her birth. She thinks about her recent recklessness, having felt invincible in the face of violent creatures and trees. She reconsiders.
Busy insects who are not part of the hunting parties slow and quieten their rustling and clicking as they see Yahde walking through their tunnel, until only the soft padding of her feet can be heard. Dozens of eyes reflect the dim light back to her. By the time she reaches complete darkness, the tunnel is empty once again.
For a long time she simply walks in the dark. She can feel the curve of the vein’s inner surface through her bare feet, and so notices when it turns without having to rely on touching the side. Having no reference, she cannot determine how long she has walked. She tires gradually, but she does not require sleep, so she continues on without surcease.
Eventually, dim mirage-like shapes appear in her vision. Is it her mind attempting to provide some sort of stimulus in the absence of any? The shifting forms are vaguely red, blue, and green mingled with shadow and doubt, like fish glimpsed through murky water. She does not know how she knows what fish are.
The shapes morph into images that lay just beyond the edge of her comprehension, familiar yet mysterious. Some of them appear to be symbols that she feels she should know, that she does know, but whose meanings remain out of reach.
They do prompt clearer images to appear in her mind, though, which she finds difficult to distinguish from the darkness in her vision. First, a vague impression of an all-encompassing light surrounding her. Then, the view of small feet walking many paths, over and over again, until the feet know them better than the mind that remains unseen. After that, a table holding three books that seem unimaginably huge, and whose pages won’t open for her.
Other images, things she increasingly recognizes as memories, appear in fragments and impressions. Memories, from some time before.
An echoing susurration from far behind her tells her that a storm rages just beyond the stone flesh. The shards of her forgotten past remain a puzzle as she forges onward, further and further through the veins of her father, in the darkness, inescapably toward his heart.