Mirror in the Aether

I

From somewhere she emerges. A familiar face in a whorl of vague collection. She looks pained or maybe it's more something like - disapproving? She's wearing something but I'm not really registering what it is. I think I recognise the boots. But that face is one I know well. Those cheekbones and the sleek plump lips. She's gently pouting, the clear suggestion of a kiss to me through the wash of blurred images. Her eyes are sharp ovals, with dark lashes and a deep turquoise allure. There's a faint strength to the jawline. The whisper of an unfading furrow on the forehead. A hint of the leanness that comes with the closure of the third act. She's looking directly at me and I hear her words though I can't see her speak. They match her expression. She's scolding me, chastising me for some foolish questioning or conversation or - could it be some stupid thing I've merely been thinking? It's because of some misconception, some disconnect or clash between my conclusions and her intentions. It's just a misunderstanding but she's unrelenting in the expression of her frustrations. 

I feel a trembling anxiety in the pit of my stomach, twisting and pulsing. My limbs jerk in response. From the background my mother appears from some time ago. I'm not sure when. She's a suspended image; a frame from the past. I know it's her. At perhaps 40 or 45, but truly it is her as I know her. She is ambivalent; merely a presence. She comes forth and I don't see what she wears, but her face is clear and she speaks to me of pillars and arches, of lost architecture that's foreign and ancient and alien. There is a message from her, a trusted wisdom. Be-wilfully received.

I pass round the heavens however many times and rise again. My neck feels like a series of coiled wires and my ear aches in the heat generated from the crush against my skull. Once more I feel the moist sheen of evaporating sweat on my chest. Lights from Victorian lamp posts stretch out as part of a vast array outside the huge arched window. A mighty filter that shields me from fire and darkness. Vast swollen bulbs glow heavily and reach out beyond the limits of the peninsula. I hear a great crescendo of electricity in its earliest utilisations. A means of comfort. Comfort and routine. Comfort through routine. You need routine. A regimen. Bide your time. Do your bidding. Out here time is merely a theory.
The return. The beauty of the woman's face, the fullness of her lips, her eyes. They stir me and I need to atone for my errors so that I can try to win her. Can I explain my true understanding and show her that I have always known as she does? If she receives me in good faith then truly we can be together and she can pretend to the outside world that she's as ambivalent as my mother but really she worships me like Ramesses. 

I quickly fade and reemerge and now I'm in a sarcophagus. Surrounded by trinkets and salves, ornate weapons and tools. Jewels and riches and bargaining rights. I see my ceremonial face in the mirror of the interior door. The image of my avatar, the ideal self which looms down upon the families and subjects and slaves. A vision of the human divine. The great leader that built the empire and oversees it still. Searing light illuminates the interior. It's a great burning force of Egyptian might. My skin blistering and melting like I know it would out there in the vastness of space. The misconception is that it's cold and silent, but I know it as an unsilenced cacophonous shrieking of hatred in perpetual flame.

I see a great swarm of vermin and they rush toward me and I am but a gaping maw that will swallow them all but then the attractive woman is naked and she lies with me in the sarcophagus and we dine together and ignore the swarm and she tells me a secret which is that the arches I envisioned upon the imposing plinths are beautiful and she knows that my title is too little for such greatness and-