Sure enough geezer. Carter lamented calming himself down. A geezer would just be a youngster to this guy.
A thousand years wasn’t a number a human like himself could attribute to any being on earth. Perhaps, maybe only deities could get the privilege of that age.
When the number was spoken aloud by the voice of his father, he could only stare and feel like a bolt of lightning struck him.
His face did not change whatsoever, but his posture straightened and his eyes widened a bit.
After lamenting a bit more about the few things that just happened, he erased what he just heard from his mind and retraced his line of thought, not wanting to comment on a subject he had no business in.
He was curious, but he didn’t want to stretch and ask every question like a fool, especially now that he knew how old the entity was and how disrespectful he truly was.
Imagining the playful voice of his father, whose age hadn’t even reached forty, with the appearance of a bearded old monk, was making every hair on Carter’s body stand on end.
Shaking his head sligtly, he reorganised himself.
My main priority is to recover the parts of my memories, especially the reson I died.
He thought about how he would recover them and recalled why the entity was his only way as it was no stretch to say this fiery sun knew way more about him than it lets know, perhaps even more than the young man knew about himself.
Which only meant that being prudent and not totally blunt was way more efficient as your enemy knowing more about you than you about them was just a recipe for desaster.
Even if he was overcautious or overthinking.
Which means that I also need to know more about it and what it meant with ‘soul pulling’ and about this place and all the white lines and…
He stopped thinking for a bit.
With all that being said, knowing more about Noir wasn’t his only reason for wanting to ask about this place. Much like a kid with a new toy, Carter was strangely attracted to the shiny lights all over.
Which unbeknownst to him, had started moving like snails towards infinity.
After admiring the place, by not more than a second due to how mesmerizing but hypnotizing it was, he focused back to his thoughts.
… and finally, I need to know what a lord is, because there’s no way it has the same meaning as what I’m used to.
He inhaled, preparing to speak.
But as he opened his mouth, he found himself hanging there, the silence so deep, it felt blasphemous to utter a word.
So he closed it.
He was scared of the peace this place could give him, but by now, with his tense nerves calmer than before and the entity not being too much of a pain, he began losing himself to the silence of the void and the comfort of his chair.
The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.
The young-man opened his closed eyes, the first thing he saw a white figure, isolated from the place it was around, only weak lines of light accompanying its presence, reminding him of the moon in the night sky.
He couldn’t help but ask.
“Aren’t you lonely here?” A question curious but genuine.
He didn’t know what he wanted as he let the words leave his mouth without caution.
It didn’t respond, letting Carter enjoy a bit more time in the quietness.
It was ironic, feeling peace in a quiet place devoid of people while asking its resident if it wasn’t suffocating.
The entity, a dim white sun, finally let out a chuckle, a low and deprecating chuckle that none but himself could hear.
I should stop dehumanizing this en- him. Yeah, I remember his name being Noir. I don't think it's a fitting one but it is still a name, a human one.
When Carter opened his eyes to look again and saw the white light coming out of the humanoid shape, it wasn’t ‘entity’ nor ‘mimic’ that appeared in his mind but a lonely human in the constant suffering of burns in a white fire.
And then, just in front, he saw a sharp line, not longer than a head, opening itself like an eye.
Behind it was Noir stretching his one hand like he was about to cast a spell, the other on the armrest where it helped his head rest, always confident and comfortable in his white and blue chair.
Caught off guard, Carter recovered quickly yet clumsily.
He was curious about the diagonal line above the round table.
He tilted his head, trying to look, peer inside the opening in another angle, but it felt like there was nothing he could see.
Other lines sprouted like branches or, following the same analogy as an eye, non-symmetric eyelashes, to the opposite end of the shape. They weren’t straight but rather curly.
Little by little, something finally appeared inside the medium.
It was as if Carter looked through another eye, another perspective, which wasn’t tilted like the medium it appeared in. Funnily enough, it was like watching a movie from the eyes of another human.
The scene that appeared was familiar. Not in a way where Carter knew it, but in a way where it was a place that every human can pretty much define and understand.
Houses, trees, streets, people, some jogging, some walking, few cars, and the familiar light of the morning sun, it was an everyday morning.
Trying to reach with a longing hand, Carter could only but stop himself as such a scene was long gone of his reach.
You can’t cherish things until you lose them, they say… Should’ve been grateful to live.
When he finished his thought, the scene changed. Now the perspective was from above, much like a drone traversing through streets and houses.
The ‘drone’ was a bit different though, fazing through every obstacle, passing through physical object like air, it felt like the perspective belonged to another space entirely.
Curious, the young man leaned in, staring with narrowed eyes to catch details of the places, with one arm on his chin while the other he had stopped laying on the table below the other. His back was bent in his seat, eyes fixed on the levitating object.
After a bit of time, while Carter was still focused on the scenes showed, the diagonal eye shaped medium leaved its place above the round table, its front not leaving the stare of the wondering Carter, whose eyes were glued to the scenes in it.
It moved at decent pace to the still stretched arm Noir, who had, though he had no eyes, a funny look on his glowing white face.
The medium, beautiful and glowing with a dim white brilliance settled on the same dim white glowing stretched hand, whose now had its palm facing up.
Noir still had the voice of Carter’s father, playful and soft to the ears as he said.
“How can you long for something you never had Carter?” He didn’t wait for an answer as if it was a rhetorical question. “I have a suggestion, in exchange of you freeing me from my cage, I can put your longing soul in a new world and a new life, new environment and new experiences and, cherry on top, with memories of your previous life.” With a dim smile, he stretched his other hand and continued. “Isn’t that what you call a marvellous idea?”
No. Carter thought sharply.
But now he, again, couldn’t help himself from asking a question.
“Is what you call lords in your world, like… gods?” With, unparalleled focus, the young man listnened.
But, for the third time, Noir looked at the young man with a dumbfounded look.
“That is a dumb question, Carter; I am a lord not a god.”