The Withered Land: Dragons and Marauders

Dragons and Marauders, Part Fifteen

** Something was wrong, very wrong. Nygeia could sense it. He was distant, and less communicative than usual. She was used to his long silences and his secretive attitude about his past, after all, she, too, had things she had experienced and had done that she did not feel comfortable discussing with anyone, but this was different. It felt like he was purposefully erecting an impenetrable wall between them. This was a pulling away.

And her suspicions had proven to have been valid when, during a moment when they were alone, he had asked her:

"I have always wondered... What happens to you when you leave the Upworlds? Do you disappear? How is it that no one notices? But if you do not disappear, what happens to the Other You? To your body?"

The question had caught her unawares and, a little confused and her defenses down, she'd answered without hesitation or overmuch thought.

"It is hard to explain and, now that I think about it, even harder to describe. My consciousness exists in two places. There and Here. I have to admit that there are times when it is very disorienting. I am still Meredith Chapel back on my homeworld of Earth, where I am much older chronologically and much more physically frail, I do not have the use of my legs, but I am simultaneously Nygeia, here among the Withered Lands, where I am younger, healthier and more physically powerful. It is as if I am deeply sleeping, but not comatose, back among the Upworlds. My body is protected by a quantum bubble, a false vacuum of high-energy particles forming an envelope that places my physical form slightly out of sync with the external world. To the Earth-version of myself, this is all a dream, an incredibly vivid and detailed dream, but a dream, nonetheless. And it is addictive, like a narcotic. I want to keep dreaming. But I know I will be drawn back. But to my consciousness here, on Teshiwahur, it is as if my Earth-human self is the dream, an unwelcome illusion, and everything I see, touch, taste and smell affects me without the protection of a quantum bubble. And I am afraid of what will become of me here, in this place. The Withered Land is dangerous to me..."

"The Withered Land is dangerous to everyone. So how did this happen to you? And why you of all the people among those of the Upworlds?"

"I don't know. I've never known. You know, the oddest part of it all is that I distinctly recall both my childhood back on Earth and my childhood, here, as the offspring of the dread Pahrayah."

"Are you the same person here and there? Do you possess the same character, the same strengths and failings, the same likes and dislikes?"

That question had given her pause. She was reluctant to delve too deeply into those occasions when the sensations and opinions she had as Meredith Chapel were sometimes directly opposite to those of Nygeia, so she simply answered, "I am mostly the same. I'll admit that as Nygeia, I am sometimes more headstrong and more aggressive in how I react to things. And that, as a princess, I sometimes have to reign in my sense of entitlement. Nygeia isn't always a very nice person, as you well know."

"Hmmmn..., that must cause you ... difficulties ... sometimes," he'd paused, and then said, "And on this world called Earth, you have a family?"

She'd hesitated before answering. "I did. A husband. He died. I was devastated. I still miss him."

"Which 'I' misses him? The Sorcerer-Princess or the elderly human?"

"Both, though to different degrees and in different ways."

"Do you remember us, your comrades, here on Teshiwahur when you return to the Upworlds?"

"Of course."

"And do you still think of us as friends? Or do we frighten you?"

"What? Why do you ask me... I'm not sure I understand..."