Hands on cold tile- feeling the break in the smooth, even, surface of a grout line. There is water on the ground, just enough to cover up to her ankles and it is cold.


    The sharp smell of explosives and smoke, thick, tangy and acrid in the air. The ground shakes once, then twice. She feels deep, rumbling vibrations in her bones.


    The damp wet taste of mold lingers around her.


    Torrents of thought tear through her mind at breakneck speed. Thoughts were there and gone before she could realize she’d even had them. It was all both so horrifically quiet and so overwhelmingly loud that it had her spinning. She was trying and failing to grasp onto something that could keep her grounded.


    A hairbrush drags through long hair, tugging back. The length of hair is in someone else’s hand. It feels wonderful, fingers against scalp, gentleness and care in the movement. She nearly gets lost in the feeling when it falls away and she suddenly finds herself alone.


    Alone in a new place. Walls that appear to be carved out of stone were on either side of her, two doorways with no doors spread evenly along each one. Behind her was a dead end. The hallway appeared to lead into an open room with a warm, soft light glowing from it, spilling golden onto the floor.


    She wandered quietly toward the light, a hope of warmth. She was so cold.


    She peered into each doorway as she passed them by but they were all too dark to see anything. The darkness within them was thick and heavy, choking out the light just past the threshold. Long tendrils like fingers reached for the light and it felt like a living thing, the shifting and moving darkness. Maybe it was.


    Nonetheless she passed those rooms by in favor of pursuing the light at the end of the hall. She would check there first. She could always come back for the dark rooms.


    She found herself in a simple, cozy studio. It was a very cluttered studio, she noted. The floor was an eclectic variety of rugs of every shape and size overlapping each other. There were several desks and cabinets pushed up against walls, chairs both scattered around and stacked up in corners. Every surface that could be utilized had stuff on it- trinkets and baubles and books and statues and, well anything really.


    As she stepped into the room she had the strangest feeling she''d been there before but she didn''t actually recognize anything. It was just a feeling she couldn''t shake. She reached a hand out to run her fingertips over the smooth wooden front of a wardrobe. She wasn''t prepared to be nearly flattened by the torrent of voices and thoughts that welled up through the touch. She snached her hand back sharply and the noise died down right away. Curious, she turned in place and slowly reached out to run one finger along the back of a chair.


    Nothing happened.


    She turned back to the wardrobe and ran the same finger along the front of it and immediately the noise started up, like a crowded room of people all speaking at once. She was better prepared for it this time and instead of pulling back she wrapped her fingers around one handle and carefully pulled the door open.


    She felt like she should have expected it but the wardrobe was not full of clothes but more bits and baubles. There were rows of shelves and they were all packed from the back to the front with any manner of small trinket. She couldn’t make out any kind of organizational pattern to the way they were placed. The noise was somewhat more subdued with the door open, more even like a low chatter. It was much more tolerable.


    Carefully she reached out and picked up the item o n the top shelf that she recognized: a key. Not just a key but the tevvy key she’d finally tossed away after they’d left the ruins. She hadn''t wanted to keep the evidence and the reminder of it after all.


    Now when she picked up the familiar shape it was warm to the touch and she was immediately taken back to the ruins, to the moment they’d had when she’d apologized. She saw her own face, a bit flustered and eyebrows drawn. She heard her own apology and she hated to hear her own voice.


    She placed the key back down on the shelf and the vision fell away like a fine mist dissipating. She was still in front of the wardrobe full of trinkets that were memories that belonged to LoVelly.


    Her Ananas had said that cerebral loops were most dangerous in their lack of predictability. There was no real way to prepare or expect what you might encounter. Sometimes they were confusing labyrinths that were nearly impossible to navigate and even harder to find your way back out of. She counted herself lucky that LoVelly was fairly straightforward.


    She turned to look at the room again with new eyes. All those things, the plethora of objects, were parts of LoVelly.


    She still wasn’t sure how she was supposed to find anything specific, how to find things he knew and things he didn’t. While her eyes swept the room she caught something tucked away at the back between a bookcase and an end table; there was a door. Just a simple wooden thing but she could see light spilling out from beneath.


    The wardrobe forgotten in favor of this new discovery, she made her way to the door. As she approached she saw shadows shifting through the crack beneath as flickers in the light. She paused and watched them, slow moving and lazy. She leaned in close and placed her ear to the door, hoping for a clue to what lay beyond but there was nothing, no sound.


    Finally she turned the doorknob only to find that the door was locked. She pulled and pushed and tried to jiggle it but there was absolutely no give. She would need to find a key or try something else.


    When she turned back to the room at large she felt off, as if everything had shifted. It wasn’t the same room it had been a dib ago although it was rather similar. She couldn’t pin down what exactly was making her feel off but she knew it to be true. Something was different.


    She trailed her fingers along the smooth edge of a table as she walked past it. Chatter that took the form of long dark jagged lines sprang forth at her and faded as she passed by. Anything she touched brought forth the memories and thoughts associated with it and suddenly the clutter made sense. LoVelly’s mind was jumbled and unorganized. It was a wonder he remembered anything at all.


    She looked at piles of things stacked up on a desk, scraps of paper, writing tools, a knick-knack of some kind, perhaps a jumping mard?- some tools and their various attachments, a candy dressed in shiny metallic wrapping, the list went on. She wasn’t sure how to begin, where to begin.


    Was she supposed to…to organize all this? It would take a lifetime and then some. She liked to think she was a tidy person, especially looking at the mess she was in, but she wasn’t great at starting a big cleanup project like this. This was best left to people like Pidka who were self starters, meticulous and thorough.


    She turned around and swept her gaze over the room at large, trying to find some kind of starting point. What caught her eye was the book laid face down, open, on the arm of the chair. She carefully stepped through the room, right to the chair, looking down at the book conspicuously laid out for her.


    This she could work with.


    She plucked the book up with care to preserve the page it was open to. When she flipped it around however she found it was blank. All the pages, as she flipped a few back and forth, appeared to be blank. She rolled her eyes and groaned because of course. She glanced up at the various book shelves around the room, looking for a clue to where the one in her hand could belong. She supposed she would have to play the games required for the task at hand, if she must.


    Like everything else in the room there was clutter on the shelves as much as there were books. Sometimes the things obscured the books behind them and she had to carefully check around and behind them. Behind one such pile she found three small volumes tucked together that appeared in the same fashion as the one in her hand. Each one was a bit different from the others but they were clearly a set and she felt confident in that assumption when she slid the fourth book in alongside the others. She reached instead for the first volume, dark in binding with a faded, curling script, a language she wasn’t familiar with.


    She tipped the book out by its spine and even the light touch sent a swell of tingles up through her. It wasn’t the same, exactly, as the feeling she got when her and LoVelly touched but it wasn’t dissimilar either. She let the feeling creep as she took the book up and flipped the cover open. Like the first book it appeared blank at first but when she dragged her hand across the page to flip it a dark, curling script began to appear in her wake.


    As she touched her hand to the page once more she was alarmed when the writing swirled itself around her finger as if attracted to a magnet and then began to draw up, up her wrist and arm. The tingling feeling returned in full force and when her jaw dropped in surprise a complicated combination of clicks and high pitched noises escaped in place of her voice.


    Suddenly she was no longer in the little room. She was far away in a place she immediately knew she recognized.


    She looked down at the water that lapped at her ankles, feeling the cold sapping what heat was left in her. Except she wasn’t her, was she? It was more accurate to say she was LoVelly but even that wasn’t quite right. She was someone LoVelly used to be. Someone she used to know.


    The beautiful blue tiles of a temple floor looked ethereal in the glow of a blinding light emanating from the back corner of the room. The roof was gone, torn away by inhuman force like a can lid peeled back. The light of Sol filtered into the room through the wreckage and she saw the clusters of dappled half crescents that indicated an eclipse of Sol by Dharlarly, the larger moon. This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.


    She felt herself step forward, toward the light shining like a flare, just a passenger along for the ride through a memory. A hand swept out in front and then to the side and the debris that littered her path was pushed aside by an unseen force and she was able to press on. As she came closer she could just barely make out the silhouette of a person against the blinding light.


    As she came even closer still she realized that the silhouette was all there really was. There was no person at the center of the light, they were the light. Features like arms and legs ended in bright shocks of shifting and sparking colors instead of fingers or toes.


    She dropped to her knees before the figure, reaching out but not touching. Bursts of light sprang forth like wings made of lightning leaving fractal patterns hanging behind like afterimages burned into a screen left on too long. The figure opened their eyes and she was shocked to see her own eyes looking back, the same eyes she shared with Klia and her ana. How strange it was to see them there on the face of a stranger she only knew was herself because her self that was LoVelly knew.


    Her arms reached out and hands cupped the face of the figure of light and she recognized the noise that tore from her throat as someone choking back a sob. Her lungs drew in a deep, shuddering breath and for the first time in a while it felt like something, like relief, like cold water against a burn, like fresh air after lungfuls of smoke. She wanted to take another just for the feel of it but she wasn''t driving this body.


    Where her hands cupped a cheek and smoothed over a cheekbone, her skin began to crackle like broken pottery and in the cracks a light shone through. The light was just as blinding as what was before her and as she moved her hands the broken pieces fell away to reveal a form of light just like the figure.


    “My love, I think we need to put an end to this.” The words fell from her lips despite the shapes feeling strange and wrong in her mouth. The tears were hot against her face and gods she was so cold.


    The figure raised a hand up between them, turning it over and back. There weren''t discernible fingers there as the light danced and arced back and forth.


    A sound like wind chimes twinkled and she recognized the whisper-quiet words between the bells.


    “Look at me…like this… I don''t belong anywhere but with you.”


    A feeling like mist, brief and cool to the touch, drifted down and her head tipped back to see the portal that had opened above them. The smell of atmosphere and something metallic came sharp and tangy after the cool feeling. Through the ethereal window she saw a soft field blowing in a gentle wind. She knew that place too. Beyond the field was a dense fog that obscured any path out but it wasn''t a bad place to be lost. It was warm and the wind blew sweet like blooming flowers.


    She was pulled so jarringly from the moment when the book slipped and fell from her hand. There was no sound as it hit the floor, pages fluttering on the way down. She nearly fell down with it only barely bracing herself on the shelf as the black ink that had soaked her skin began to fall from her skin like dried paint flakes.


    She felt shaky, a bit rattled by the intensity of the vision- the memory.


    LoVelly was right in his assessment that they''d known each other in another life. She''d suspected it too after the visions she''d had and the strange connection they seemed to share but it was another thing altogether to feel it so viscerally through LoVelly’s mind.


    She didn''t even bother to pick up the discarded book, reaching desperately for the next volume. She suddenly hungered for more, anything. All this time she''d been asking what was LoVelly when she just as easily could have been asking what were they?


    She tore the cover open and flipped the pages not caring where she landed as her hands scoured the pages, watching the words appear only to draw up into her, covering her skin.


    The scene began to unfold with a sound like an engine roaring in her ears. She was swirling around, being thrown like a ragdoll in a wind that threatened to rip the air from her lungs. There was a hand in hers and she opened her eyes, unaware they''d been closed, braced against the storm. There across from her was the being of light from before. The one with her eyes. They held on like they were a part of each other but even that was not enough to stop them from being torn in half and flung apart.


    Suddenly everything froze, mid motion, mid destruction, and something new invaded her perception. This one was not made of light or anything eokl,y. All she could parse were strange violet eyes that burned into her eyes, if she had any.


    That''s enough for you.


    The foreign sounds echoed directly in her head, felt like syrup dripping into her brain. It…they, moved and it was strange, like they were drawn into real life, moving like a flipbook but it felt like some of the pages were missing. Like they were jumping past the parts of motions that made them look smooth. It made her metaphorical skin crawl and she was able to momentarily demand control in order to shrink away from the thing.


    She was flying back- no, everything was rushing in reverse past her, the storm, the light being, the not-LoVelly, the books, the room, everything rushing and blending together as it went. She could hardly tell what was what until she was being flung like she was being thrown from a speeding vehicle suddenly braking. She was thrown so hard she was afraid it might do her real harm to land.


    And then just like that she was blinking her eyes open to a dark-boarded ceiling in an inn that was surprisingly well dusted. She didn’t move for just a tes, listening. LoVelly’s breathing hitched and then picked up right before he gasped when he realized her eyes were open. She turned her head to meet his eyes and she tried to reach up to brush her hair back where it had fallen only to realize that their hands were still interlcked between them.


    She looked at him, really looked at him. She’d done it before but she felt like she had this new perspective and maybe somehow he would look different. Maybe she would be able to truly see him, or something like that.


    And for just a tes, she thought she did.


    Long, dark hair, straight as a rielaf frond, hung in ribbons around a deceptively soft face for a jaw so square. Dark eyes stared back at her and as she tried to parse the entire picture in her mind she swore she saw the face shifting, another face she knew but from somewhere long ago, another lifetime, but she knew them. All of them.


    “This isn’t…the first time we’ve done this.” LoVelly breathed into the space between them. “I remember now. Some of it anyway. How did you do that?”


    “I dunno. Cerebral loops are…weird. What was that thing that flung me out? Was that you?” She wrinkled her face thinking of it still. LoVelly’s brows drew in as he wrinkled his face back.


    “The what?” he asked.


    “That. I dunno. It wasn’t a person but it was…person shaped. It moved really weird and it-nevermind.” She dropped it judging from the look on LoVelly’s face. He really didn’t know. “Must have just been part of the loop.” she murmured mostly to herself.


    “Is it over?” he asked. She looked at him blankly for a moment and it must have been just as obvious because he shook their joined hands. “The loop. You said you’d know but I couldn’t tell and you said it would hurt.”


    “Oh. Oh.” She peeled her fingers back from his, feeling stiff in fact from holding so tight. “Yes. It’s over. We can let go.” They disentangled and LoVelly rubbed his hands together, trying to rub feeling back in. They were quiet for a while but Mez could see the gears turning in LoVelly’s head.


    “That was really weird,” he begain finally, “I just kind of remember things now. Some things. And if I focus hard enough I can sort of remember things related to those things.” She allowed him to talk it out, figuring it was mostly for himself, his way of processing.


    “I remember those things you saw. I remember being there. I…feel those ones the most. Like it’s fresh now.” He took a deep breath in his nose and blew it out his mouth.


    “Are you okay?” She asked.


    “I think so.” He shrugged, which just kind of jostled him a bit.


    They were already so close but now they would be breathing the same air, if Mezalie breathed. It was a strange feeling, this building roiling in her gut that had nothing to do with her stomach or any other physical function.


    She’d seen it. They’d been together through lifetimes. He’d come for her when she’d needed it, without even knowing what or who he was. She’d never felt a physical attraction or a want for it but perhaps she just hadn’t met anyone like LoVelly. Because surely that was what this feeling was, building now within her ribcage like a caught fae?


    It felt like the right thing to do to lean across, to bridge the gap between them. She looked up to lock eyes and when she looked into the endless depths she hesitated. What if she was wrong? But, always on the same page, LoVelly leaned forward to close the final distance, to seal their lips together.


    It was only a tes, at first, but she had expected so much more, if she was being honest. All the times they had touched and floods of feeling and emotion erupted on the contact so she had expected…something. Instead it was just lips on lips and it wasn’t bad but it wasn’t much of anything.


    She tried as a last ditch attempt to move her lips against his but it somehow made it worse. They pulled away with what she thought were probably identical looks of bewilderment.


    “That was-”


    “I thought-” They stumbled over each other in an attempt to ease the awkward air that had formed. LoVelly pushed himself up on one elbow, waving a hand between them. “I really thought that was the right move,” he said, with a face that said it wasn’t.


    “Me too,” she agreed but made a motion like she’d touched something gross, “but that was bad, right?” Her eyebrows drew in as she said it. She didn’t want to hurt his feelings if he felt differently but to her relief he nodded immediately.


    “It was weird. Like kissing my sister.” He gasped suddenly pointing an accusing finger at her. “We’re not sisters are we!?” His face was so serious that she did her best not to laugh.


    “Lov’, look at us.” She gestured between the two of them with a deadpan look. “Do we look like sisters?” She tried to hold the look but as soon as she saw the muscle in his face twitch from hold back his own laughter she lost it. Within moments they were in stitches, continually prompted by the others’ laughter until a new fit had overtaken them. She had to keep taking gasping breaths to keep up with the laughter that her body seemed to remember how to do until she was only letting out raspy clicks and pops. She had to slap a hand over LoVelly’s face, shhhing him repeatedly before they got ahold of themselves.


    “I don’t think kissing is for us.” She said finally, feeling better about letting it sit between them now.


    “No. I don’t think so either. Not this time around.” He agreed, turning to look at her. She could feel his big, round, eyes on the side of her face. “That’s okay?”


    “Yeah.”


    “Are you disappointed?”


    She considered it for a moment.


    “No. Not really. Not as long as you stay.”


    “I think you already know,” was all he said in reply. Because she did. She’d said it, or a version of her had.


    “Nowhere else but with you.” She said aloud anyway, just because it felt nice to say.