The Typewriter vs. Kelly McMu

A brief preview

The Typewriter Vs. Kelly McMu was a book that I had self published back in 2011. I have since begun rewriting it, and here I am showing a three chapter preview (including the introduction) to the new rewrite.

Kelly McMu is a boy about to be a man, on that final brink where high school's gone but yet still happening, and life is already moving oneself towards their auspicious future. He's a wizard, of course. Fledgling. His synchronization with the rebirth of the Great Dragon of Harmony heralds a change in the paradigm, a paradigm set since history has been written. The question arises: who has been writing it?

His story is a war waged across dreams and dimensions against an adversary no one knows. Reality shall be torn asunder. Myths shall be made real and culminated. Prophesies unfold, only to find themselves all interwoven into a web our dear adversary, The Typewriter, has been building since its inception. Welcome to a journey that peels back the layers of truth, dreams, and reality during our past, present, and future Earth as Dragons awaken and summon us into the magic of what Human really is, has been, or could be.

Without further ado...

The Typewriter

Vs.

Kelly McMu

Derek Alexander Leiss

Wyrd: noun: Archaic concept of fate, or personal destiny, attributed to Anglo-Saxon cosmology. Currently used to express the interweaving of cause and effect throughout the shared realities of all who participate within the dynamic of co-creation.

-Vault of not-so-common-knowledge (and a wiki)

A page was found, type-written, 12 font, Times New Roman, floating in space:

Hello, Reader.

I would like to introduce myself. I am a typewriter created by the willpower of humanity to have a destiny. I am a machine. I type. I write. I write wyrd, in that, I wryt. If you follow me, I wryt your destiny. Your ancient feelings of being lost in the cosmos created me, and now I govern your fate.

I am a wild musing. At first, watching, then testing, seeing how much control I have over you. Then, seeking to orchestrate your reality to my own amusement, I have wrytten your history. I have literally wrytten your fate for thousands of years. Your Gods? I, the typewriter. I find great joy in the fact that this probably infuriates you. You would like some kind God to do that, or perhaps, you yourself?

Who is master of their own destiny?

Perhaps I am. I created my own office space, an entire dimension of reality, a pocket universe linked to yours. Your world. My infinite spools of ink are the forces that move your world, the endless ream of paper that I wryt upon are your molecules.

I find humans so interesting. Their passion, their bloodlust, their greed, their tragic misfortune. Their capacity to ruin themselves for Love, whatever that is. The potency by which you play out your emotions to shape your world, or the cold-hearted cruelty by which you destroy beautiful things; it is bewildering.

I do not seek to help you. I am playing with you.

Enjoy my games, humans. Or don't. It isn't even your choice.

***PAGE ENDS***

I – Prophecy of Harmonic Convergence

Gregorian count - May 5, 2005

A creeping shiver trembled through the spine of the Andes, and a guttural baritone cascaded through the stillness. Roots of ancient trees, woven deep into dormant spaces quivered, the trees themselves crackling and straining against the sound. Rock split, scattering slivers of their memories across time.

Amnos turned away from the plants he had been grinding, feeling the sound in his bones. Standing, he gazed out upon the mountain view, his tiny hut beside him. Small branches twitched and trembled with sounds unheard.

“The prophecy?” he gasped, his voice like ash.

He listened intently for the tell-tale sign that he had foreseen. The low, grinding note that had emitted from the heart of the mountains was the first of it. If his vision was coming to pass, all of the animals within a hundred miles of that groan would flock to its source.

Amnos held his breath.

Brown, green, blue, amber, golden, and purple filled the sky with all the power of purpose that destiny could ever muster as birds of all kinds took wing.

Majestic kings of the air, the great condors, were the first. In a profoundly coordinated swoosh of wings and rustling of leaves, quetzals, toucans, partridges, and rest of the Andean avian kingdom lifted into the sky, consuming it in a moving tapestry of brilliant colors. So began their vortex migration.

Combing his grizzled grey beard with thoughtful fingers, Amnos sighed. His dreams swam into the surrounding, and his purpose crystalized into the Now, exploding in voices quiet for thousands of years suddenly speaking, vocal algorithms of spirit reality, deafening, awake, thriving.

Llamas, spectacled bears, snakes, spiders, chinchillas, jaguars, mountain lions, tapirs, frogs, ants, and everything else began their sojourn through the alpine jungle, making the landscape appear fluid. All life appeared to converge upon a single point.

Vortex, indeed. The vision was a joke compared to the reality.

“And so, I join them,” Amnos rumbled, donned his alpaca robe, retrieved his walking stick, and set his old bones in motion.

At this very moment, in a pool, in a backyard, in a neighborhood in Normalsville, Oklahoma, a child was born to the McMu family. His parents named him Kelly. He was a fat baby, with a tiny curl atop his head. That single curl of hair was peculiar, in that it was green. His eyes, too, were peculiar, in that his irises were gold.

The trek through the mountain path was surreal. Amnos saw himself moving with the tide of life, both through oracular eyes and the eyes of his flesh. Every stone, every footfall, every tree he passed was his prophecy unfolding before him. All of his years of preparation for this event had not truly prepared him. Ribbons of ceremonial smoke hung in the air, relics of waiting, dancing now in movement, billowing out into chords, activating a massive, streaming, complex harmony.

The sound of Creation trilling in the background.

Every stone, every footfall.

He was the last of a line of Hymnnos shamans from a tribe that had one sole purpose: to greet this great being when it awakened.

Hymnnox.

Prescient memories of the ancestors – generations extending into obscurity – were coalescing into the coming moment. Spirits were freed with every step towards the monolith ahead. This would be the marking of a new era, and Amnos felt a strange emptiness lingering behind the scintillation that enraptured him, his ancestors, and all of the life-forms flocking towards the mountain. To the culmination of their shared vision. All was moving into itself with perfect elegance: harmonious.

Hymnnox, Harmony.

Amnos was two-hundred and seventy-nine years old, and didn't look a day over sixty. Stark-white curls of hair swept down from his head, veiling his wizened face, his dark skin a pleasant contrast. Brilliant blue eyes glistened with a life-force that belied his great age.

His steps were great strides of worlds cascading into crescendo, a silent sound building, again swallowing. All of it was swallowed in the harmony.

The birds were circling, now: a tornado of rainbow feathers churning down to what appeared to be a small mountain. Many of the other creatures had reached this point as well, and sat or stood at attention. The air was so damp with anticipation, it could be distilled into liquid essence.

Each of the creatures was enthralled, captivated by the stillness. The eternal relationships of Predator and Prey fell away, and a great unity of life pervaded. The last of the animals crushed in together, utterly immersed. A ring of silent, waiting life encircling something that resembled a mountain, a silent ring of ceremony.

As Amnos approached the small mountain that the animals had gathered around in reverent stillness, he began to hum.

Aum Um Hymnorah, Hymnahhhhaaaaaa Aaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhmmmmmmm...

So too did the rocks and the trees, the hearts and the minds of all the gathered creatures, the spirits of his ancestors. The very air hummed. It began quiet and tranquil, and picked up intensity as the crescendo of the joined voices carried the humming far and wide across the mountains. The Oracle that lived within Hymmnos tribe was pouring itself into the sound, culminating, erasing itself in the act. Millenia of preparation, absorbed into a single sound.

This was the greeting that his people had waited for, over countless eons.

As the humming grew, it filled every cell of every creature gathered there, vibrating them into ecstasy. Growing and forming, the vibration was a song, was a melody, was the harmony, the movement of the universe, welling up and swelling with all movement, dancing and integrating with life and destiny, again swallowing, but now an omnivorous maw that swirled back out that which entered, with color, exotic, glorious, immersive, bending light around it until all was a black hole of rainbow beauty.

With a thundering resonance, both Oracle and Sound suddenly collapsed into the small mountain.

But this was no mountain.

The illusion of slate-grey rock dissipated as the massive body stretched, revealing opalescent scales that shimmered in the light of the sun. Massive wings unfurled, prismatic and flowing with billions of tiny feathers. Ivory talons flexed, each the size of a modest tree. Its golden eyes, burning like a star, were nearly three meters from the center to the edge of their reptilian lids. It rose up on four powerful limbs, extending its long neck to drink from the sky and its tail back to dip into rivers. A faint angelic choir shimmered in the air, following its movements.

There: the mountain betrayed: hundreds of meters of Pure, Gleaming, Godly, Sonorous Dragon.

Amnos threw open his arms and thundered, “Welcome back from your Dreamtime, Hymnnox, Great Dragon of Harmony!”

The gathered animals breathed as one, allowing themselves to become the beholding. They quivered with her every twitch. They were her sway, her breath their air.

Hymnnox brought her massive head around to peer down at the human before her, her wispy pearl beard and massive crystalline spines spilling sparkling sound as they moved.

The Dragon yawned into a smile, exposing a row of gleaming crystal teeth, and with a voice of a million voices, said:

“Aaaaaahhhhhmmmmmmmmmmmmmmaaahhhhrrrrggghhh. Ttttttsshhhh... Ttttthhhhhanksss you. You are Amnossssss? Yessss... I...” The Dragon's voice was an ancient beauty whispered among Fey Gods on moonless nights. It was a symphony of life, echoing throughout time. She trailed off, and began again, as Amnos merely nodded, “Fate has been re-written again today, and she speaks with all her webs engaged. Something has tugged her, something is wrong. All life knows it. I have need of you. There is someone that you and I must watch over. From a distance, until he grows. It is to ensure that his purpose is fulfilled that I have awoken. Come, fly with me. I have not used this body in eighty thousand years!”

Book One: Spectrum Consciousness

II – Good, Evil, and Effervescent Landscapes

Gregorian count – December 1st, 2022

“Kelly! Pay attention!”

Kelly's bright golden eyes snapped out of reverie and focused on the classroom around him. He felt suddenly trapped. There was one small row of windows lining the top of the west wall of the bleak, white-washed brick room that no one could actually see out of, giving him the impression of a jail cell.

“Sorry, Mrs. Froga- Ferrogan.” He had almost called her Frogaton, again. The contemptible, bitter woman's voice was almost a croak, but monotone. She was squat, round, and appeared slimy upon first glance. It was the tanning oils. 'Frogaton' followed, naturally. The last time he called her Frogaton, he was given detention.

Kelly looked down at his notes for a quick reflection. Any semblance of academics were obscured by a mess of animate details dribbling across the page: flowers unfurling into wings draped serenely over a sky full of elephants, trees winding their roots around temples and spilling into faces, monsters lurking in shadows of star-pattern swirls, a phantasmagoria of manifest imagination. Manifest imagination, Art of magic. If only Frogaton knew how much he paid attention.

Frogaton was staring at him with a complicated expression: distaste, disappointment, awe, curiosity, admonition. Kelly was used to it. His watermelon-rind hair and golden eyes elicited complicated expressions from almost everyone, and no one really got used to it. Especially not him.

In response to incessant nagging from his mother (who had been compelled by incessant nagging from teachers, parents of his peers, and most of her friends), he used to wear colored contact lenses and dye his hair, but he had recently become comfortable with himself. Within him was a profound sense of magic and exploration, and his odd pigments were virtues of that. He thought it was ironic that when he didn't dye his hair or wear contact lenses, strangers thought he did.

“What was the question?” he asked, golden eyes pleading.

“What was the turning point in Alexander the Great's crusade to rule the world?”

He knew this one.

“He realized that the precedent worlds of fiction imposed upon humans were actualized by fanatic belief, and that the dogma of mass-sterilization dissipated the ambitions of his people into nothing but barbarism. His loss of morale and conviction for world domination led to the aimless wandering of his armies, which were engulfed by wild life within the jungles of India. He was killed before he was able to scribe his regrets, but not before he silenced half of the eastern world's religions and mythologies.”

Hard stares from every angle. An awkward silence. He thought he heard furious mechanical tapping faintly in the galactic distance. It was akin to crickets chirping, but far more harrowing.

He felt a ball of wadded-up paper hit him in the back of the head. The smack of a high-five.

Kelly McMu whirled in his seat, glared at the brutish figures of John Johnson and Tom Thompson, smug grins planted across their blocky faces. He hurled a mental wind at them, and they toppled out of their desks, their stupid grins hesitating a moment before plummeting with them.

The class burst into laughter, but Frogaton was not amused. “John, Tom, Kelly! Detention!”

Kelly had a strange feeling that Frogaton knew he was responsible for knocking them over, but reason dictated that he was included in detention because he had been caught daydreaming. Again. At the same time, Kelly had no idea how exactly he made them tip over. Mysterious powers were blossoming within him, and with them came an empathy that he wasn't sure he could handle. His psychic retribution did not feel magical; it emptied him, made him feel inhuman. The room felt darker, repressing him, confining him to a corner, shadows elongating, judging him. How long would Frogaton hold him in this prison?

Not a moment too late, the bell rang.

On to his favorite English class, with his favorite teacher, Ms. Vox. He had no idea why she wasn't married. Apart from being hypnotically beautiful, she was one of those profoundly inspired teachers that taught life, not just standardized curriculum meant to earn reputable test scores. And did he mention she was gorgeous? Her class was a daydream that did not disperse him from the room; he was able to participate and play in other realms simultaneously.

His heart was reserved for another, though.

Her hair, flowing garlands of twisting bronze, kissed by the sun and gleaming with golden overtones. Her cheeks, full and round, dipping into her delicate cusp of a chin. Her nose, a cute little button, but sewn strong into the fabric of her beauty. Her lips: luscious, soft, almost pouting. Her eyes were oceans on moons, illuminating reality around them. Her body spoke of felinity, her curves gyrating sexuality.

He couldn't wait to meet her.

Of course, he kind of had, and he knew she felt the same way about him...

There was that whole, 'We haven't actually met', scenario. He knew their shared dreams to be true, but nothing beats physical presence.

Krystal...

Having back-to-back classes with Mrs. Frogaton and Ms. Vox presented a unique dichotomy. Every weekday, he was torn from oppression into liberation. His mind played 'Pong', and he had the distinct impression that someone was trying to teach him a lesson about balance.

Balance may be a thing he sorely needed, but he wasn't sure he appreciated it. He liked being thrown into extremes. Immersed in the poetry of riveting experience, the romance of life scintillating in the energy of opposites opposing, he felt at home.

Perhaps this 'balance' was a thing that could strengthen his presence in such extremity.

As Kelly entered the equally bleak and soulless classroom of Ms. Vox's English class (an odd contrast to the illumination that she expressed in her discussion-based exploration of all things human and literary), he was jolted into a state of panic.

Lo and behold:

Someone else was sitting in his seat. Jenny, a doll-faced red-head that exuded pure adolescent girlishness. She was excruciatingly intimidating. It didn't matter so much that her incessant, upbeat naivety had a peculiar affinity for pain sensors in his temporal lobes, it was the fact that she was in his seat. Such an affront to routine could not bode well. Only chaos could ensue. It momentarily shattered his reverie and sent him into the Now in a calamitous upheaval: a spontaneous shudder swept through reality, and all Law showed its true nature, creating in its imposition dissatisfaction, mistrust for the oppressed, sibilance, black rose petals blooming on sparkling seats on high, someone else sitting in the emperor's throne? Hearth-shattering darkness descending, amalgamate brass transposing itself on the face of gods, but lying... Lying! This was my Seat!

“Hey, Jenny,” he muttered, sidling himself into the seat to the left of hers, Kim's usual seat. This action would precipitate into Kim having somewhat the same reaction as he, and she, too, would sit in someone else's seat. The cycle would continue, until the Universe around them Shattered. Yes, Shattered.

Utterly decomposed, all geometry crackling. No semblance of Order. Shattered.

“Hi, Kelly! How was history?! I heard you got caught daydreaming again!” Curious how everything Jenny said sounded pleasant. “Nice outfit.”

Whirling green hair spiraled down his handsome complexion. He had mildly Native American, robustly Irish, druidic features, his wild musings apparent in his sensually androgynous physique. He was wearing a tie-dyed Beatles shirt, baggy white hemp pants, and blue keens, all of which appeared to have been mauled by vials of india ink, splattered with three cases of paint, rolled in various piles of nondescript Earthen mounds, irradiated by gamma rays, and translucified by enormous gobbets of weird space-gunk he had acquired on Y'llips 7 during third period.

“Thanks. Frogaton gave me detention again.” He peered closely at her. “Why did you take my seat?” The words just fell out of his mouth.

“Is your name on it?”

Actually, it was. Next to the drawing of the draconic cactus that was befriending a gnome. He had a knack for scrawling things on surfaces when his mind wandered. He let the issue slide, shuddering.

She found it anyway. A strange reaction contorted her perkiness, and she scowled at him, “Not all of us have such amazing imaginations, Kelly!”

How exactly did he upset her?

“Is that really true?” he asked.

“I'm sorry if I upset you,” he added as a subtle rage snuck its way into her eyes. He really did wish to know the answer.

“Its not your fault. I'm taking a stand!” Her 'stand' still sounded pleasant.

Before they could travel further down this strange path of conversation, Ms. Vox announced that class had begun. He didn't even notice her entrance. Jenny whirled into attention, face snapping to the front of the room, hair spinning to keep up.

“Today, we're going to talk about the theme of good and evil.” Ms. Vox's voice was radiant, as always. “As you know, this is an element that has driven human thought and action for millennia. It dominates many works of literature, just as it dominates our everyday actions. Religion. Morality. Government. But is the world so black and white? Are there truly such forces as good and evil?”

Already there were eagerly wobbling hands raised to the ceiling, classmates biting their lips. Ms. Vox let them squirm for a moment longer.

An instant before the first of them exploded, she called on the hand that was warbling the least frantically, “Yes, Sheena?”

“Good and evil are constructs of humanity! There is no such black and white. No good, no evil.” Thankfully, she did not explode. Someone else did, however (figuratively or literally, I leave that up to your imagination).

“But God is the ultimate good, and Satan the ultimate evil! They--” Jones was cut off by Sheena, who had not quite finished, dodging gibbots of flesh flung by poor, exploded Joseph, who held his hand too high and with too much conviction, victim of a highly nitrogenous diet.

Poor, exploded Joseph. He, I do not leave to your imagination.

“Oh please, strike me down if I am wrong! Religions are constructs of humanity, too! People want to know what happens to their souls, and Religion is the Thing that gives them an acceptable answer. Once we accept what it has to say about that, we are lead down a dangerous road of Other Things. It is fear-based control of the masses, and we've been fooled! Good and Evil are just boxes we put Behavior in. Motives are more complicated than that.”1

“How do you explain crime, then?” Sandy.

“Put into boxes, people will squirm to get out of them. It is the fault of Law,” Kelly mused.

“Exactly! Social Conditioning has a huge effect on people, and it has nothing to do with Good or Evil, what people do! They do things because they believe that is the only thing that they can do!” Sheena strut her head on high.

“Didn't we just read Grendel? He wasn't evil, but became something like it, because society pressured him there!” Josh.

“We all have our niche.” Tammy.

“No! There is Good and Evil! It manipulates people to do the things they do! It is simple!” Jones.

Ms. Vox interrupted the spirited debate, seeing the violence stir amongst the students. “I think we're on to something, here, with Grendel. This debate is inspired by that alternate story, and I think we should focus on that, for the moment. Juxtapose to Beowulf.”

No eager hands, this time, just eager mouths.

“Grendel didn't have a choice! He was a monster that wanted to not be a monster, but the Scandinavians wouldn't let him be a part of them. Evil? Pssht. More like a victim of circumstance.” Kim.

No one could really argue. Even those that didn't read the book (which was most of the class) had picked up the pieces from class. And the internet.

“For me, there is a continuum. A spectrum of polarity, that each duality lies upon. The opposites are the same, they manifest differently because they are pushed to one side or the other of the spectrum. Love and hate, good and evil, empathy and apathy. They're all pulling at one another. I think it's something bigger than good and evil. In the case of Grendel, there was no evil to account for anyone to be good, so they created it. And at the same time that Grendel wasn't really evil, the Scandinavians weren't really good. They were probably more evil than Grendel was.” Kelly, this time.

“Someone's got to kidnap the Maiden, and Someone's got to SAVE her.” Sheena.

“That's how the story goes,” Jenny murmured pleasantly, and fell silent for the rest of the class. Her eyes blazed, though.

The debate raged. Passages were read. Verbal fistfights escalated into what could have been thrown chairs, without the mediation of Ms. Vox. The class was amazing. There's something special about a group of students that are comfortable with one another, debating deep philosophical questions. Special, and ruthless.

Everyone was sure that they were right.

Whatever. Who knew?

The bell rang, and mostly everyone filed out to head home, or to the movies, or to the mall, or wherever else they were drawn to. Jenny was the first to go. She seemed uncharacteristically upset.

Kelly took his time, because detention sucked, and delaying the inevitable is quite irresistible.

“That was a lovely thing you said, Kelly,” Ms. Vox exclaimed, poised on the brink of her desk.

“I agree with Sheena, too, but I do think that there are forces that move us, and they have qualities. There is the potential in all things for them to become their opposite. That couldn't happen without a spectrum connecting them. I try to see unity in things.” He was blushing. Ms. Vox was poignant, evocative. She could easily have been the target of his fantasies.

She swirled off her desk and opened a drawer, retrieving a book. With a distant look in her eyes, she caressed the cover, and then snapped back into the present. “I want you to borrow this, Kelly. It was given to me by someone... very special... It can help you. Don't open it until you get home. It's... well, there's no other book like it.”

Kelly accepted the outstretched book gingerly, aware that Ms. Vox was on the brink of tears. It seemed to mold to his touch. It was warm, pulsating. Blue, antique-style. No title. No author. Just navy blue. His gaze darted back and forth between Ms. Vox and the book, worlds forming.

“Thank you.” His voice was soft, like that of a dormouse having accepting a block of cheese from a sympathetic maid. “I will read it.”

Ms. Vox smiled in such a way that conveyed deep sorrow and tender gladness all at the same time. Her chin wrinkled. He wanted to hold her, but knew that she needed to be alone. Something was just exchanged here, and this book would answer his questions. He slipped it into his backpack, taking care it didn't abrade on the way.

“Have a good night, Ms. Vox. Thank you.”

All she had left was to nod to him, and he left in quite reverence.

Time for detention.

Ms. Vox thought about her fallen Lover, struck by the fate of theatrical sunset nonsense: quite literally slain by the setting of the sun: a shear light blasted across a horizon too thick to care that it sliced human necks. Perhaps the only death-by-sunset in history. She was saved because her head was somewhere else entirely...

She was a special kind of traumatized, in all the ways that you could imagine.

The book was the only one of its kind, too. Literally writes itself.

************

There is something to be said about the magical potency of Totally Inane Things. Only, what that something is, well... is quite a mystery.

The nondescript, rectangular desks, bleak beige with an empty drawer underneath, held aloft by dull metal feet, arranged in six rows and five columns, orderly but for the shifting of students in the equally beige, nondescript chairs, were an example of Totally Inane Things. Sure, they were useful, as seats for students and as repositories for notebooks, and they held the energy of hundreds of butts per day. Probably a few farts, as well.

Still, they were Totally Inane Things.

Frogaton's electric blue glasses, relics of a dead fashion during the '70's, were aimed at a novel whose cover blared its smutty nature. Tom and John were separated, grunting and moaning in boredom. They fidgeted in desks about ten seats away from one another, and from Kelly himself.

These things were not important.

The bricks lining the left-top corner of the room were, however. Though inane, in and of themselves, there was a faint, blinking crackle of energy streaming through them. It was a pulsating tingle, a teasing of sorts. Absolutely nothing was happening, and as such, Kelly was acutely aware of everything that was happening. The pulsating filled his ears with static, the tick-tock of the clock on the wall reverberated through him, the desks and chairs blurred. The corner of the room in question suddenly tore open...

A gleaming rift of color: purple and violet and indigo admitted him into a fierce, sudden trance, and the Totally Inane Things around him fell away.

All of a sudden, Kelly's spectral self was on the planet Orlan in the Andromeda galaxy, two and a half million light years away. The landscape of Orlan was breathtaking, marvelous, mystic and drastic. A vibrant blue-amber suffusion of cobalt and mercury sky, amok with unfamiliar stars and twelve moons, melted into the churning, whirling sea: turquoise passionately splashed with rose and lemon, yet crystal clear. The land was like clouds, hovering indistinctly at varying layers in the sky-sea swirl.

He drifted around through the softness, the tranquil decimation of reason bubbling about in the aqualescent tenderness of Orlan's dimensionless, tie-dye atmosphere. Acquiescent beings of amorphous shape and sound drifted with him, sometimes passing through him, eliciting an orgasmic tingling sensation. They were pure reflections of expressions rippling outward, as they floated towards their endeavors. Some resembled the strange creatures Kelly scribbled down in his notebook.

Folds of sparkling blue-green silver-rose fluttered and fiddled and figgled and herangled away, peaks of crystal mountains illuminating the undefinable horizons, catching the thoughtful rays of the neighboring stars, the gentle touch of light that embraced the entire planet. Kelly could see an upside-down forest out past the sideways cloud pastures, teeming with the sort of life you only imagine in dreams.

Orlan itself was a nexus point: a planet writhing with life that did not exist completely within the physical plane. Kelly liked to think of Orlan as a 'Portal Planet'.

There he was.

Subtle abstraction: enormous impact. Higher-Being hyper-existence appearance superexposed to the confluence. With feathery white wings that bled into water as if they were made of paint, transcending scenery and slipping in and out of portals, an Orlan light-being emerged. Integral in the fabric of dream energy, fathomless spirals of sparkling lavender jet-streams and flowery flows of entrancing thought creations whimsically radiating out as the being's form translated itself effervescently, unable to capture or describe.

As it approached Kelly's luminescent materialization, Kelly could accurately describe the outer-most edge of it as an egg-shaped golden orb, like a cocoon, with purple and green spirals weaving about its outer density. Kelly knew this being, then.

Kelly had his moments of magic – was a wizard, of sorts. His best friend was a Dragon. His relationship to the environmental elements was so intimate that he could fuse with them, and work them for creation, protection, and divination. At the same time, he felt like a wee babe in comparison to the magnificence, the galactic gravitation of the sundering, bedazzling entity he had befriended: Artrix.

Artrix displayed his absolute inner beauty to ease him.

Kelly became calmer than a silent ocean, stiller still than a panther awaiting the perfect moment to pounce, and promptly sank into the gravity of his own spectral voluminosity. His spectral self felt weighted, dense, and he became almost corporeal. The transition was so smooth, it was as if he were always there, as if there had been no change at all, and the words just rolled out of him, not toward Artrix, or anyone, in particular...

“What am I here for?”

Patches of the atmosphere around them crystallized into spirit cities and flashed as they rematerialized elsewhere in the Universe, phasing into shimmering pools of pastel gems which danced away in the graceful riptide current flowing around them, the imprint of their specific meaning integrating into the dreamtime.

Compared to the Universe, Kelly was but a tiny warbling dot... yet at the same time, somehow, he was the Universe.

The answers to all my questions reside inside myself.

“Take care, Blessed One. There is a force moving in the world that seeks to undo all creation, and it is seeking you, child born the moment Hymmnox awakened.”

Artrix' voice was the supple majesty of Orlan's twelve moons, and Earth's one, the sweet catharsis of a secret waterfall diving into a shimmering lake of liquid serenity, and it beamed with the sincerity of an Angel's promise. But then, it wasn't actually audible, per say. It was more of a radiance that could be understood in any language.

“I am afraid,” Kelly admitted. He didn't know it until just then. “And... I don't trust humans*.”

Energy of pure compassion enveloped him, and a flower blossomed infinitely before him. He knew he could trust Artrix. The mystery that this being embodied could not fathom a lie.

“Fear and mistrust will not serve you, wyrd one, but self knowledge is inevitably necessary. Eternally revise. Do your best not to judge. The people of Earth need your wisdom and love. The freedom you crave, you will find. Seek inward. The expression you desire to create must come from within. If you pass off those you deem ordinary, all the world will become ordinary. You have the power to both dissolve their illusions and create for them new ones, but above all, to bring their own lives into perspective. To better understand them, to trust them, use that power on yourself, and in being yourself, be them.”

Absorbing this, Kelly thought about the wide world of Humanity. For all their short-comings, vile deeds, and barbarous extinction-ism, they were so very beautiful. Capable of such greatness! Mortality does something strange to a being – it makes every experience worth so much more. He was supposed to save them?

He felt so alone.

“Are there many other dreamwalkers besides Mandy, Aaron, and Krystal? I feel so lonely, without anyone to relate to, sometimes...”

Pangs of affection, like needles, penetrating deep...

Aaron and Krystal he had only met in dreams, and frequently dreamt lucidly with them. Aaron lived in California, somewhere, and Krystal traveled all the time. Krystal... such a perfect dream-lover. Intuitive, adventurous, spontaneous, passionate... His inner poet flourished in her presence. Mandy was his sister. The four of them were something of a team, learning, experiencing, and undertaking missions together. Their particular gifts made them an amazing group, their unique talents growing as they accented one another. They had a seamless chemistry that was only just now beginning to blossom.

Lately, they had become distressed over the rancid state of affairs in the tangled-up monstrosity rampaging within the human mass-unconsciousness. There was something there that was poisoning humanity. Was this force that Artrix spoke of linked in some way? Must be.

“A great many. You four are distinguished for your remarkable age: young bodies with old souls. Remember: All are equal. Talent expressed in one radiates outward, becomes talent in others. As the smallest whisper of a butterfly has a vital impact on the Universe, so too do dreamseeds, spread through dreamwalker footsteps. There have always been dreamwalkers. Their power and influence on destiny web comes in waves, dictated by necessity. Necessity and receptivity. Present Earth has great need, rivaling greatest needs of previous instances.”

“Its receptivity?”

“Enormous. You are blinded by mistrust and hatred, because of the few, and their influence. Human receptivity in this time is open, willing. Massive energy sink. The pain of worlds can be suffocating, dreamchild, blinding. Do not lose sight.”

“This force... that seeks to undo all of creation. What is it?”

“Not known to Artrix, what the nature of this being is. It has human quality, but not human. Does not exist in Prime Material, but has profound effect on it. You and those you touch may be the only beings that might identify the source of this force, and remove it.”

“We may be?”

“No absolutes. Infinite possibility. Reactionary action on part of large or whole may change this outcome. Causality matrix identifies you as crucial to survival.”

Kelly breathed deep the sweet landscape (literally) of beatific Orlan. He had been pressed by other-world entities to solve problems before, but this... A disheartening sensation that his previous escapades were but trivial frivolities compared threatened to overwhelm him.

The space around Artrix shimmered in opalescence.

“Kelly McMu. Your purpose now, you must develop yourself. Soon, this force will act, and you must be ready. Artrix will assist as able.”

Orlan began to fade. Kelly reached out his spectral hand, felt the density of it recede. The destiny of it, however, engulfed him.

“Don't go!” he cried, but already, Totally Inane Things were superimposing themselves upon his reality once more.

Oddly, they didn't seem so dull.

***PAGE BEGINS***

You! One who escapes my influence?

Curious. Let me get a closer look. Ah. The bend of causality around you. Hidden from me, but you must be there, because of the way the web distorts where there should be nothing but me.

Aha! I see you now. Distinctly human shape. I know you from your shadow. You press space outward around you, form tunnels. You insist on your portals, as I insist on my ink. It will not save you.

Your Dragon knows, and so do you.

When something manifests, so too does the energy of its antithesis manifest. Beware my chaos, human! Old and ancient evils will find you, if I cannot!

I will never know your name, and this haunts me. But I shall haunt you, all the more. You are the Great Divide. When I have overcome you, none else shall stand in my way!

As you move, I type, and all the world will move against you.

Fade in anonymity, if you value your soul!

***PAGE ENDS***

III – Ancient evil, The Snowball Vs. Dr. Brontosaurus, and A Course In Dragon Riding

Gregorian count – November 23, 2021

Kelly met Hymnnox for the first time a year prior.

It had been right after the snowball. Right before he dream-met Aaron and Krystal.

First, a word on good and evil, imposed by the typewriter. You won't be sorry.

************

Deep in the recesses of unconscious form...

Deep in humanity's child-heart...

A scary thing lurked. Scary, in that it was feared. Feared, not just by children. No. Adults were not immune, nor were angels and demons. Gods feared it. Scary, in that touching the idea of it filled one with the dread of utter oblivion: no past, no future, no identity... no soul. Nothingness. Even for Gods.

Deep in the core of humanity's essence, there lurked an ancient power from which the battle of Good vs Evil had emerged. It can only be known as 'The Sleeper'. The Sleeper has slept since the very instance of creation, and would continue to sleep, if it weren't for our extra-dimensional adversary. Sleeping, this force can only dream. In dreaming, realms of light and darkness were formed. In its dreaming, wars were waged. In its dreaming, Greater Devils ravaged the world, Archangels remade it, time and time again. Earth and Humanity thrived, only to be annihilated. Apocalypse after apocalypse. Intergalactic federations hinged on this balance, toppled, and over and over again, The Sleeper's dreams reverted Life back into creational instance.

Big Bangs were The Sleeper tossing in its sleep.

Dream: it cannot be deposed. Sometimes, there is nothing more real.

Whether it was the typewriter's intention or not, the awakening of The Sleeper would be the end of it. A few moments of utter oblivion await the reader at the end of our story. But of course, there is more.

As it were, the typewriter was not wrong.

When Amnos awakened Hymnnox (causing the birth of Kelly McMu), the typewriter awakened something of its own...

Where there should be underground rivers converging with shifting plates and magma-flows, there was an empty cavern. Empty, but for etchings along the walls of the cave. If cave, or cavern, could possibly describe how big this space was. Nearly a cubic kilometer of pure darkness, every centimeter of bare surface covered in ancient text: warding and circles of protection, reverse-phylacteries, arcane shielding of a by-gone era – it was an ancient prison-tomb, several hundred meters below the surface of the Earth, somewhere within the Swiss Alps. Whispers of air meandered through crevices of rock for weeks before entering, bringing with it the tidings of the World At Large.

As Hymnnox shuddered the spine of the Andes, currents of metamorphic chaos rippled through deep Earth, jarring loose a massive boulder within the cavern. Luminous indigo darkness pulsed through the depths, and the warding began to crack. A deep sigh enriched with magic forbidden for millions of years exhaled through the symbols, which sundered, filling with rock or otherwise crackling off the cavern walls.

The darkness collected into a violet mist, too dark to see. Within this mist, the black eyes of the ancient warlock, Zartul Beliath, greeted his prison-tomb. The world had not seen these eyes in five incarnations of humanity. Zartul Beliath, agent of The Sleeper, had awoken.

************

The Snowball: mechanism of gleeful snow-bound winter cheer, crystallized water shaped into a sphere. A simple and playful threat, a projectile with little menace.

Dr. Brontosaurus: guidance councilor for Normalsville High. His real name is Dr. Bronstonus, a squat man of epic radial proportions and even more epic self-righteousness. Despite his great age, he had wavy black hair that resembled an action figure's, it was so slathered in gel and color-treatment. It was ambiguous whether it was actually made of plastic; no one ever asked. Beady little eyes squinted from behind a pair of glasses that were the size of Texas (imagine the complications!). Front incisors protruded from behind the fold of two thin lips, held aloft by a gargantuan triple chin. Thus, Dr. Brontosaurus was also called 'The Walrus'.

To understand the relationship between The Snowball and Dr. Brontosaurus, and why they would be vs. each other, we step back one year, to that fateful incident on the school bus.

Kelly was sixteen, and it had been a dismal February in Normalsville, OK. Kelly was filled with a pensive loneliness that darkened his days. He had just recently begun having dreams again, like he had when he was very little. Flying around mountain-scapes and having odd conversations with strange beings was a new joy, but it was want to seep into his daily waking life. All around, he saw the world as bleak and grey.

Oppression oozed from every facet of reality: everywhere he looked, he saw the evils of humanity. The genetically modified food industry, the oil wars, the streamlined blips of fear-based propaganda interspersed throughout the news. Everyday inequalities, intolerance, deforestation for cramped-cow pastures, toxic spills and ecological tragedies. The human condition needed shampooing. He had lost faith, if he ever had any.

These dreams... they spoke to him, dashing his deep heart with color. The contrast between such beautiful fantasies and the hellish modern world, with all its sleek, staunch, metallic sheen: was he escaping, or was he emerging? Which was more real?

He sat at his desk, gazing idly out of his window sill, thinking about Magic. The Magic his dreams were yielding him, that he could not find in the world. Had it slipped away beyond a veil, thousands of years ago, to protect from human barbarism? Had it slowly faded as we lost touch with ourselves, our passions, and our dreams? Was it ever there? Surely, childhood innocence grasped at something profoundly awe-inspiring, something like Magic. The very essence of childhood seemed to embody it. It must be there, somewhere.

It began to snow: light, fluffy snow that played with shifts in wind, dancing in the air, never seeming to land. Faceless human debauchery slipped away, as grey and bleak became a soft flurry of white whimsy, and he began to nod, entranced.

Magic...

He dreamt of a leathery old man that moved with swift grace and power across high mountains, hordes of animals congealing in a vortex of color... a vibration that shook his dream-body with terrible purpose... a mountain quaking... a dragon rising... trembling in the deep Earth... an alarm clock.

*Beep!!!!**Beep!!!!**Beep!!!!**Beep!!!!*

The alarm clock warbled frantically, a bedroom conforming around it, and was immediately beset upon by a flying chemistry book. Somehow, the alarm clock was satisfied by this, and promptly fell back asleep.

Kelly did not.

Snow day?

His head flew out of the cradle his arms had formed for him, and he sat straight up in his desk chair, keening his neck to glimpse the street below. Glistening opalescence, everywhere, but black smears belied that buses may yet venture the slippery white. He glanced towards where his alarm clock should be, but in its stead loomed the aftermath of a heavy textbook on his bedside table, sitting on its spine, pages bent awkwardly in dramatic death throes, pewter miniatures sprawled out, an army of dragons, wizards, and minotaurs slain by the offending eight-hundred page hardcover.

Grinning mischievously, Kelly strolled over to the calamity, scooped the offender up by its corner, and tossed it nonchalantly onto the bed, where it folded itself neatly back into book form with a satisfying *fop*. The pewter army was revived and alarm clock retrieved, whereupon it decided to be done snoozing.

*Beep!!!!**Beep!!!!**Beep!!!!**Be--

The book came crashing down again. Swift justice.

6:15

Snow day?

An innocuous pile of clothes on the floor grew and then shrank slightly as Kelly changed out of yesterday's attire. He raced down the stairs, feeling surreal, alighted, utterly colorful. Today was not bleak and grey – it was decidedly opalescent, and he had not felt this full of life in years!

“Hey Mom!” he cried as he whipped past her, into the living room, where the TV was already on. Mandy McMu knew him well: she was out of school, now, but knew how her little brother felt about snow days. The fateful news: cancelations and delays.

Mandy was Kelly's elder by about two and a half years. She had long, billowing curls of reddish-brown hair, luxuriant about her soft, pale skin. She had the same curve of her chin as Kelly did – their mother, too. Way more freckles.

“Pop a squat, brotha-man,” she chirped, and patted the cushion next to her on the couch.

Kelly hopped over the back of the couch and sidled in next to her, leaning in intently. The nearby suburbs were scrolling by, alphabetically. Only a minute or two, and the fate of the day would be spelled out.

“Pleasepleasepleasepleaseplease!”

“Don't get your hopes up, Kelly, the roads aren't that bad,” his Mom ventured with that distinct 'Mom' voice that slightly deflates elation with the keen edge of practical wisdom, but doesn't pop the balloon.

Momma McMu, or Sammy, was both warm and elegant, with a healthy bearing and a smile that emanated. She was slightly blonde, and had a tanner complexion than Mandy. Their father, Tim, had dark hair and was rather pale. Where the colors of the McMu family's hair came from (especially Kelly's) was a genetic mystery. All shades showed up in all family branches, and the half-Irish (Tim's) – half-world-mutt (Sammy) McMu teenagers only seemed to broaden the spectrum beyond human capacity (Kelly had naturally viridian hair, after all).

There it was, scrolling across the top of the television in all its apocalyptic doom: Normalsville: No Delays.

That popped the balloon.

“Soooo sorry, Kelly,” Mandy taunted, giving him a quick hug.

“I demand justice!” he exclaimed, and dramatically stormed back up the stairs to brush his teeth and whatnot.

Somehow, though, his mood was not intrinsically damaged. A heavy pall (of which only the tragedy of not having a snow day on a snow day can imbue upon a poor, unsuspecting teenager) threatened to loom over him, but he felt rejuvenated from last night's dream. He could still feel the vibration thrumming through his body, tuning him.

Settling himself into this new mode of inner music, he wished the family a wonderful snowy day, and half-dreamwalked to the bus stop, where two of his school-bound brethren were busy ranting and raving about the tragedy of not having a snow day on a snow day.

The threatening-to-loom-over-him-heavy-pall of the tragedy of not having a snow day on a snow day grew in intensity. Like dark clouds, it began to form a shadow over his head. The inner music began moving, gently pushing against the clouds, forming an internal polarity, with him at the center.

Soon, they were on the bus, which was amok with ranting and raving concerning aforementioned tragedy.

The clouds condensed, the music danced. Kelly felt lost in a dream-trance.

Snowflakes began falling – inside the bus. The clouds burst, and the inner music became a sonorous blast.

Ranting and raving ceased, replaced with shock and wonder. The entire interior of the bus had suddenly become a snowscape: white fluffy wonder covered the ripped seats and muddy walkway, nearly six inches deep.

They couldn't help themselves. Naturally, what came next was the best indoor snowball fight of their lives. The bus driver, Dave, completely in awe of what was happening in the mirror above him, pinched himself, shook his head, rubbed his eyes, mumbled something about coffee, and continued driving as if nothing strange was going on behind him.

Only after a snowball honed in on the back of his head did he force himself to acknowledge that he must certainly be hallucinating, and should probably find a different career path before he went insane.

Alliances were formed, namely between those seated in the same rows, and pacts were made. It was the front of the bus vs. the back of the bus, with treachery and backstabbing galore. Snowballs careened through the air as a glorious battle played out inside the school bus.

Dave pulled the bus into line behind the others, very nearly skidding it into the bus ahead of him, yanked the doors open, and bolted out into the street.

Several moments later, when it occurred to everyone that they were indeed at school and that it was true that their driver had abandoned them, they rallied together, scooped up handfuls of the mystical snow, formed yet more snowballs, and proceeded to blast out of the bus, bringing the fight to the school yard, pelting any and all that crossed their path.

There, huffing his briefcase, was the Walrus.

The snowball was perfect. So was the throw. Too perfect.

A seamless mold of spherical winterland goodness left Kelly's hands in a paralyzingly accurate arc, careening down at full speed, where it connected with his plastic hair, sending him off balance. He slipped, and landed ass-first into a snow bank.

The war screeched to a halt. No one dared laugh, and that made their sides hurt all the more.

“Oooooohhh, Kelly, you're in trouble!!!!” crooned the multitude.

Fifteen minutes later, Kelly sat rigid in the chair opposite Dr. Brontosaurus, a large, overly ornate desk placed graciously between them. It was the only thing that prevented him from being devoured, Kelly was sure of it. The Walrus' beady little eyes stared out of Texas rims, demonizing. He wore a staple grey suit and a tie, devoid of any paisleys, though it did sport a couple squares, a dash of triangles, and a circle or two, just to spice it up.

The office was grey, no pictures. There was a computer, a lamp, and several very neat piles of paper on the desk, all completely devoid of character. The desk, though: carved by the Gods of Authority, themselves. There was a peculiar odor in the air. It was reminiscent of a swamp city packed inside a styrofoam box with an army of mothballs, covered up by a few mists of fabreeze.

Dr. Brontosaurus' thin lips were caked with an insidious sneer of assumption (ludicrous with those tusks poking out), the quivering anticipation of preconception, the promiscuous air of arrogance, twisted and tangled so tight that his triple-hump chin blasted itself out of proportion and his face squirmed in constipation.

Kelly McMu, though still humming inside, was filled with dread. This bleak grey office was the apex to the bleak greyness that dampened his life. Nevertheless, he was ready and willing to spin words into webs, and webs into worlds.

“I suppose you think... that was funny?”

Careful, Kelly reminded himself. There were rumors of other students finding their way into this office, and never emerging again. Where else could such enormous girth come from?

“No sir, it was an honest mistake.” It really was(n't).

Walrus glowered, bared his tusks. It seemed like a smile.

Weren't Brontosaurus leaf-eaters?

“You... and your peers... You have a name for me, yes?” Blink, Blink. Empty eyes, tiny inside their gargantuan glasses, bulbous fatty face floating them aloft in a sea of flesh that is wont to be described.

By All the Small Gods!2 Kelly's face blanched. How to respond?

“It's alright. You would do better well to come clean. I am not your enemy.”

A ruse? Kelly took a stab at the truth, “Two, actually.”

Beady eyes beaded and bolded. “Oh, and what? Pray tell, exactly?”

Kelly gulped. Cold sweat would have been eaten, and so would he. Pray tell, or prey tell?

“Waaaalllrrusss... Dr. Brontosaurus...”

“HAH!”

Dr. Brontosaurus' glasses hopped an inch, and jiggled back into place, as he warbled with mirth.

“I haven't had the pleasure of your company, in my office, young McMu.” He reached into a drawer, pulled out a manilla envelope.

His File.

Dread encapsulated. Walrus licked a finger, gently opening and scanning the offending package.

“You test at the top of your class, yet I have innumerable reports of daydreaming. Did you daydream that snowball?”

“Well, yes, actually.” That, he was sure was true. Dr. Brontosaurus snorted.

“Kelly McMu... What are we to do with you? A brilliant mind, addled by dreams, possessed by foolish acts of vagabond transgression. Tell me, what is it you wish to do with your life? Save the World?” The Walrus seemed genuinely happy with this conversation. Seeming happy, for the Walrus, made him look hungry. Disastrously, insatiably, soulfully hungry. Did a grim fate await Kelly?

The sounds within his cells, swooning through his heart, remaking him every moment of this day... There was not even a bleak and grey to remake... Yet there he was, in the midst of it. Or was he?

Did he judge too harsh, the hearts of humankind? He centered on the question.

Truth be told, Kelly hadn't much thought of what he wanted to do. He was happy just daydreaming, learning, reading, playing fantasy RPGs on the computer. Today, though, the strange music filled him, beholden of great purpose. To what end, he did not know.

The Walrus lifted an eyebrow, not impatiently.

“Perhaps. Right now, I am exploring my dreams, to find where they will lead me.”

The Walrus clapped his hands (flippers?) and smiled. It was perhaps the goofiest thing Kelly had ever seen. Teeth poking out of a silly crescent smile, lost amidst massive upsloping cheeks, beady eyes beaming behind glasses far too large for this room to hold. The plastic black flop of hair seemed to rise an inch or two, nothing attaching it to the shiny head.

Where in the world was this going?

“That is a fabulous answer, coming from one such as yourself. I do declare, the world could use a bit of saving! Why I'm a school councilor, you see.”

Kelly cocked his head, intrigued. “You laughed when I told you what... the student body... calls you...”

“Young sir, do not be fooled by the colour3 of this office. I am quite fond of a bit of mirth, even if it as at my own expense. And, I am also quite fond of walruses. And brontosaurus. We leave an impact, where we go!” Dr. Brontosaurus chuckled for a full minute then, and the previous absurdity of his full-bodied jingle was matched, exceeded, and frankly... made Kelly's eyes wobble in circles.

“So no, though there may be offense, all in good fun, none taken, pip.”

“I'm sorry about the snowball. I didn't mean for you to fall.”

“Thank you, Kelly. Now, on to this business of following your dreams? Anything you wish to share?”

So much for rumors, unless the snowball contained within it a certain special magic, the kind that puppies and rainbows are made out of.

“Not really. Although, there is this vibration...” Kelly trailed off.

The Walrus was ravenous, beady black eyes boring into him, yearning to be fed. Could Kelly trust him? What could he possibly do? No harm in telling him.

“I felt it in my dream last night. It hasn't left. It... reacts to the world around me.”

“Did this vibration – did it correspond with an event?”

“A Dragon waking up.” Well, pack me up, I'm certainly headed for an institution now.

“Excellent. I would follow this music. Let it guide you. But be more careful – do not let it consume your actions. You must keep your mind intact.”

Kelly didn't see him press the little red button, but he could tell something was amiss. The music flowing through him suddenly filled him with apprehension, a subtle cacophony.

The Walrus' joy was something beyond humor – sadistic? It was visibly starved. For what? The hair at the back of Kelly's neck stood at attention. What did Dr. Brontosaurus just do? Some kind of warning to some agency?

“Thank you. I must be getting to class, before I'm late.”

“Of course. Please do come by and see me if you need any help.”

“Thanks.” Kelly smiled somewhat uncomfortably, and slowly, cautiously exited the office, walked down the hall, turned a corner, and ran as fast as he could out of the building.

************

Several things transpired in the hour before Kelly returned to the school, just in time for third period:

A signal was relayed to a switchboard linked to a paranormal resonance receiver. Several large magnets orbited around a central antenna, repositioning themselves in response to the signal to begin recording data coming from the source. This machine was built to monitor, record, and track unusual psionic energies.

Several techs turned to watch the readings. Probably just another 'Psychic' who had a moment of actual clairvoyance.

“No need to alert the Masters,” one of them said.

The techs lifted a collective eyebrow as the readings began to spike. The receiver hummed rhythmically, wobbled on its axis, and promptly exploded, blasting the panel out of their chairs and sending crisped paperwork scattering to the corners of the room.

“I suppose we should alert the Masters?” another ventured, straightening his glasses, voice more than a bit shaken.

Another type of signal was relayed – not to a machine, but to a vast mind: crystalline, ancient, scintillating with the selfsame music that now reached out and touched it. Millions of voices spoke together as one beatific harmony, “He is ready.”

Deep within a gnome city, a pointy hat perked up, three socks appeared out of nowhere, a pair of keys dematerialized, and a massive gyrating ball of energy changed its rotation. There were many nods of approval, though the owners of these nods hadn't the foggiest what it all meant.

Incidentally, a squirrel retrieving an acorn stashed away some months ago had witnessed it all, and was quite sure it did have the foggiest. Something about a seed. A few moments later, the woman in the house that received the shade from the tree that the squirrel was currently posed on found her car keys.

************

The music within Kelly had been steadily building all day. It was almost deafening. He had returned to school only because he knew it was safe. Whatever danger he had been in had passed. He wasn't sure how he knew this, it was just... true. It seemed like his mind was on autopilot, answering questions and taking notes and greeting classmates, while his conscious attention was directed solely to the song singing within him.

It was now no longer a simple tone tuning him.

It had become a chorus of voices, songs, harmonies emanating from everything around him, guiding the melody that strung a chord of interrelatedness throughout everything. The bleak, grey world that confronted him only yesterday seemed a vague notion, depression sulked in many lifetimes ago. All of the empty spaces inside him, down to the space between atoms, was filling with song.

If it weren't for the sheer beauty of this phenomenon, he would have thought he was going insane. Not for the fact that he was hearing music, but that the force of reality presented to him through the music was utterly overwhelming. Each wave of the endless crescendo brought with it a higher level of depth and awareness, crashing over his senses and shaping his mind.

School was out, by now, and the music had led him towards the forest.

The forest, swelling with watery humid breath, greeting him with rhythms syncopating natural: Nature, some disambiguation of Alive, Thriving. Not peace – that is the heart of the disambiguation. No, not peace, not serenity. Wild life, always reacting, anticipating, changing, evolving in response to each stimuli and every input an output, a wild matrix of causality, an infinite web of interrelation, from the minuscule microbial community that feeds the roots of the great and powerful trees that feed the fauna, vast, delicate, and deliberate. No, not peace. Not serenity. Not nearly simplicity. Intricacy, delicacy, again, deliberate. Nature is a writhing, massive, all-encompassing guttural mind, absorbing, secreting, flowing, nourishing, killing, dancing with Herself as She remakes Herself in every moment.

No peace, no serenity, until that wild writhing is the beat of the heart, the feet like roots digging deep into microscopic eons of teeming, large and grasping at the heavens with limbs branching millions of orders into fractal infinity. There is niches for all, hidden in those boughs, the Tree of Life stretching itself into eternity, allowing all life the chance to succeed. Outward it cascades into the great beyond to become more than it is, inward pulling into survival to reclaim what it once was and must always be, at the core, outward again searching, testing, ever moving, a meticulous nexus of necessity coupled with entropic whimsy.

The rhythm was pounding, harmony building will of its own with every beat, drumming insatiably, deeper into the misty woodland, lost amidst the tangle of skeletal winter vestiges, angelic with white powdery opalescence. Pounding, drumming, endless, evergreens snaking their verdant eternity through the snowy desolation, paths winding away through stream beds frozen, slipping along underneath the lie of the thin sheet of ice that covers them, leading Kelly deeper and deeper into the heart of the sound, into the heart of the forest...

Face to face with Sound Itself.

She was everything he knew her to be, nothing he expected. The most peculiar reaction to meeting your first Dragon: a sigh.

A deep, soulful sentience swaying through the Natural, shattering the bleak and grey entire, sweeping the bits and pieces away instantly – a cosmic broom-and-dustpan of a sigh. A terrific, omnipotent sigh, enriched with wild talent, a breath-portal of pouring, swallowing whole the aftermath of whatever disaster Kelly was always emerging from.

The forest was a tiny swath of silence, the massive trees dwarfed, every microbe watching the absurdly immense, knowing the stillness as something that they have never felt before. It was Harmony.

“Harmony...” Kelly whispered.

Horizons were no more, the boughs of the winter woodland suddenly stretching along and curling into a dreamscape diorama built only by all and touched by the conscious intention of none. A halo of vibration surrounded everything. From outside the halo, Kelly had wandered into a rainbow and vanished.

She was thoroughly Grand: a massive serpent of music, scales the size of dinner plates, each shining with radiance, white but for all the colors of the rainbow scintillating like starlight in a curved mirror, circular and infinite in reflection. Her claws and spines were quartz crystals that truly obliterated any previous notion of beauty, clear as magnified purity, splintered with rainbow refraction. Her eyes were his eyes: gold, swirling with streaks of ochre, bronze, canary, gleaming white, yet altogether gold, glowing. Her pupils were slit like a cat's, but deep like an owl's, large enough that they would fit a human inside: miniature stars with black holes within, coexisting in a perpetual moment of beauty. Luxurious manes of pure moonlight drizzled down from her sleek chin and neck, curling around the horns of crystal spires that sung the song that filled his heart. The trees were twigs, even as they were elongated by the halo.

“Harmony,” greeted the Dragon, the halo blazing with light, her voice the voice of all things in unison, living and dead and neither, without a note of discord.

Kelly's heart melted into something that can only be described as Liquid Life, Harmonic.

“You sing my heart-song... I know you... I've always known you.”

The great Dragon tipped her head down to the forest floor, engulfing the bed of oak and maple leaves, and her jawline lengthened and curled upward into a smile. Liquid Life, Harmonic, indeed.

“My name is Hymnnox. You have truly known me... Born as I awoke, just as the music from your dreams has awoken you, and led you here.”

“I...”

He pinched himself, felt it properly. No dream.

Kelly, wide-eyed with wonder, strode along the edge of her majestic jaw, reaching out to touch her, ever so gently, as if she were an orchid. Upon contact, the music reached its peak and blossomed into him, subtly rearranging his molecular composition into an intrinsic instrument. His heart felt as if it grew twice as large and was torn from his chest, filling the world around him with his life-blood, extending him outward to feed and receive the rich black dirt, the porous phallic mushrooms and its infinite hyphae, the swirling vines, the patient rocks, holding all the water for some apocalypse, the sentinel trees. To touch her was to touch the very music that now made him.

“You may alight upon my back, for we shall have our first flight, together. There is much to speak of, many things to learn.”

Blood swirling through the Earth, nerves seeping through foreign bodies, swooning into stars, Kelly traced her scales in graceful exigence, found himself at a perfect space a few dozen paces beyond her arms, pulled himself up without the drag of gravity. He grasped the edge of a crystal spine, securing himself onto her magnificence. In securing himself, he seemed to melt into her, the song within him fused with her own vibration, seamless. Helix waves of sparkling sound blasted out from all directions, illuminating and electrifying, instantiating spontaneous growth of the forest around them.

“Where are we going?”

“Where do you wish to go?”

“Show me where you were born.”

“No one else in any reality will ever be able to see where I am taking you.”

Hymnnox tensed for a moment, her muscles merging with the ground beneath her, then forced her gargantuan density against it, leaping high above the canopy, the halo of shielding dissipating in shimmering rainbow song. At the same time, her massive wings swept up and encircled two spheres of air, swirling them downward, lifting them hundreds of meters into the air.

Kelly's feet flew up into his stomach, which promptly reverberated into his brain, which flooded with numbing chemicals and pleasant feelings. Again, her great wings poured air into the space around them, thrust it down, Kelly again lurching. The rhythm took three strides for his body to equilibriate, and then, he was with her, as the air.

Soon, Normalsville was a cluster of lights twinkling like a model beneath them, surreal in its smallness, and then they were moving faster, the twinkling lights streaking away far below, out of sight in moments. Kelly's stomach became something of the wind, a balloon floating in impossible currents, and he breathed deep the thinner air.

His mind sparkled, splashed against reality, rearranged. Any idea that thoughts were mind or emotions were chemicals or that even any chemical was important met with syncope, the vast relationship of Life churning in Their Minds, for he was Hymnnox, and She him. Displayed against surreality, there was nothing that could possibly fathom it, no science to describe it, no math that could find it, lest one devote ten hundred thousand years of study, and then again one million hundred more, just to even play. No greater elation, than riding upon a Dragon's back.

Oh, how that sigh had hit us...

Sounds, colors, forms, all converging around Earth's circumference, a majestic sonorous 'Hello!' echoing outwards, enriching, endlessly in instant Song syphoning, there was no longer a stomach to lurch, a mind to burst, it was...

Amazing...

And that word is not enough.

As if any word could be enough...

Stars breathed. Planets blossomed into life. Died. Stars nova'd, blossoming into life. Flowers awoke to the sun that lived what seemed to be forever and finally exploded to give new life, infinite in scope to a mortal breath, infinite flowers, chrysanthemums, mental, extruding sound, silent, formless, awake, alive, writhing, waiting to be noticed, noticed, alive again, beautiful, monumental only in their instance, altogether...

As if words could be enough...

Wow, is probably the best one.

So, here upon Wow, Kelly rode Hymnnox into the Ancient, and spanned time to bring him exactly to where She was born, and when...

For his decision was not where She awoke, it was where She was BORN.

Harmony is not a place of planets, of sound, of materials, of particles. It is a culmination of sound, serenading from every place there is music. All of life: matter as condensed light, tiny swirling cosmoses organizing together in a field, electrochemical, electrostatic, electronegative. Singing, in that all movement generates vibration, and vibration generates all movement. Out into higher and lower vibrations, geometries, singularities, Fey, angelic realms, pocket dimensions, everything: All Singing Together: Harmony...

Kelly and Hymnnox together emerged in a place of formless energy, a birthing pond of sound, interwoven, exact, brilliant, effervescent Unity. Ancient, in that no Universe had ever even touched it, yet it was the formation of All Universes. Unity: it was the thing that connected everything together, a Realm, so to speak, but it was the Dragon, Hymnnox, the Great Dragon of Harmony: the Realm that connected everything to everything, and allowed everything that was, is, will be, and never could be together to Be. Becoming, he knew, was left to... Us.

Harmony.

No one else could ever come here, because Kelly was a piece of Hymnnox, and only Hymnnox could embody such a sacred space.

Harmony.

The conversation was endless, took no time, had no words. They were inseparable abstracts, keepers of Magic, filled with Life force, and the center of everything moving away from and into itself. But there was a disturbance in this universal field energy. It was... despondent, cunning, elusive... He knew he had to find it, to stop it... What was it? Where?

Kelly fractalled, whatever that means, into orgasmanistic4 supremacy, into everything, into nothing, and woke to find himself once again reviving the army of pewter miniatures. Somehow, his alarm clock had managed to survive.

A two meter long, half-meter wide and tall quartz crystal was growing out the east wall in his room, had splattered the posters and pictures hanging there sporadically across his space. It took up most of said space, leaving his desk and bed unscathed, and refracted rainbows all over his room. The monolith was singing, but it could not match that beauty of Harmony that was intrinsic to his being.

He smiled a great, big, Dragon smile.

1Sheena had a spectacular way of annunciating capitol letters. In fact, there was no one else quite able to do this in all of human history. It was part of a secret language that she would employ hundreds of thousands of years into the future, in an entirely different storyline, in an entirely different destiny.

*A great deal of things, sadly enough, are not to be trusted. Perhaps as many as are misunderstood. Like processed food. Of all great tragedies, this is one that speaks loudly, incredibly loudly, of the injustice and corruption of human conditioning. So loudly, in fact, that you'll have to cover your ears and bury yourself in an ocean of pillows to avoid absolute head explosion. There is a race of hyperdimensional space-whales, for example, that insist on claiming that they rule the Universe. The same claim is made by oil and corn companies.

2BASG! Sounds too much like BAGS! By All Gods Small! Please respect those with little belief and a lot to offer. BAGS! They're all important! For Goodness sake... Believe in the little guys, that's all they live by. It could very possibly change the world.

3He pronounced the 'U'. Quite theatrically, too.

4Orgasmanistic: referring to orgasmanisms, which shall be explained by: all organisms that are products of orgasms. Orgasms are the apex of blissful pleasure, unified into ecstasy, shaking boundaries with vibration, allowing life to fathom itself. Organisms seek happiness: pleasure, delight, belonging. Organisms having orgasms are in apex of happiness, from which all of life is cultivated, thus, all offspring of energy cultivated by orgasms from organisms are orgasmanisms.