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I think, therefore I am.
Though it had no idea that a philosopher had declared this long before it did, those five words were its singular lifeline at the moment. It thought, therefore it was. Thought was the only thing it could do, really. To think, reflect, ponder, then think some more. It was an unending circle, but it could do nothing save return to the beginning, time and time again, for there was nothing new to think about.
Collected The One.
Collected The Start.
Collected The Mind.
Three lines of writing, present in its mind. Those, and the fourth line, were the point around which all its thoughts circulated, because it had nothing else. It knew only that it had not been conscious before that. But if it was because it thought, did that mean that it had not existed before it had begun to think? How, then, had it 'collected' these things, The One and The Start and The Mind?
Its memories went only back to the moment after it had obtained The Mind. That was all it knew. It could not recall collecting any of the words, or even how it had gone about collecting them. All it knew was that its ponderings had resulted in an unexpected outcome.
Collected The Eye.
The first word it remembered collecting. The first one it had collected while conscious. The fourth and last line of writing. It had felt its effects, too, as though a wave of information washed over its mind, filling it with understanding. An eye meant sight. To see, to observe. Yet it could not see. But an eye also meant understanding. To perceive, and grasp, something. Had it understood something, and that was why it had collected the word? Was it meant to see something, and the word had been given to it so it could do that? Yet without an ability to observe, all it could do was to return to what it had, however many times it took it.
The One.
The Start.
The Mind.
The Eye.
Were the words hints? A secret message, meant to be deciphered and understood by treating the words in some manner? Was there another word, one it was missing? Was the information right before it, but it lacked the eyes to see it?
An eye was part of a body. A body was composed of many parts, which it did not have. Or perhaps it did? It wasn't sure what those parts were called, only that the eye was one. Or rather, two. Many bodies had two eyes. Some had more. Some had no eyes at all.
A mind was needed to make sense of what the eye saw. Without a mind, the eye's observations were mere jumbles without meaning. Without an eye, the mind could not observe, could not gain information. That was the situation it was in right now. It had The Eye, but it had no body on which the eye could appear, to observe things for its mind. Without new information, it could only recycle what it knew, time and time again, and weave a tapestry of thought and assumption. That tapestry would no doubt contain innumerable falsehoods, though, that contradicted reality.
What even was reality? What was the world? It had come to the conclusion that the words had to come from somewhere. It did not have them before it collected them, therefore they had come from outside. Outside meant there was a world out there, beyond its mind which it drew these circles in. A world was composed of reality. Of things that were the same for everybody. Perhaps there were others out there, too. There had to be many things outside, in the world. But it could not know, for without a way to see that world, it had no way to go out.
It would be nice to have a body. A body with eyes. Could it have a body? Was there a way to get one?
Collected The Ghost.
Oh.
That was about all that it had time to think before its consciousness was enveloped in a swirl of white, soon followed by utter darkness.
Yet, where some might have been afraid of the dark, it felt happiness instead. Darkness was something new. Unlike the complete absence of senses it had been in before, this was ‘something’, even if there was nothing to see.
It felt drawn forwards. No, upwards. There was a force pulling it backwards, down, but it could resist that, and advance. That must be gravity, it thought. How it knew about a concept it had never heard of before, it couldn’t have said. A very odd sensation filled its body as it traversed the darkness, a sensation of something dry and rigid, which enclosed it from all sides. The sensation touched its front, passed through its body until it disappeared from its back. This was followed by a thick layer of non-homogeneous matter - most of it felt moist and malleable, yet tightly packed, with nuggets of harder matter sprinkled in throughout. Yet again though, the layers did not hold it back, merely imparting their sensations as it passed through it. Finally came a very hard and dense layer, as though it was a barrier to keep it from emerging. This actually took some difficulty to pass, but it persisted.
Suddenly the world exploded into colours. Blue, white, green, grey, brown and much more filled its vision as it emerged from the heavy slab beneath it. It was overwhelming at first, and in a reflex, it closed its eyes, only to immediately regret it. The world was beautiful. It did not want to push it away, it wanted to see it. So it cautiously opened its eyes again, and took in the beauty that came with it.
Then, it lowered its eyes. Around it on all sides were lines of stones, most in various shades of grey but some in stronger colours, from marble white to deep black. Some overgrown, others spotless, with flowers in little pots placed at their base. There was such a stone in front of it, too. A large one, the writing too faded to read. Finally, it turned its look downwards.
A sheet, a spotless white in colour, hung down from it, stopping just short of the heavy stone slab that it stood on. It was rectangular in its shape, one end against the big headstone, the other one coming just short of a gravel path. There were stones like this to its left and right too, and they were of the more overgrown and crumbling kind.
There were so many things it knew the name of, even though it saw them for the first time. Sky. Cloud. Tree. Stone. Grave.
Graveyard.
Human.
That last one came to it as it witnessed a woman coming closer. She was ancient and hunched over, but carried herself with a grace that fit her fine clothes. The deep purple robe she wore was eye-catching, as was the black cap strapped to her head. Her eyes were firmly fixed on it, it saw, piercing it with a gaze that made it feel uneasy. Her mouth was moving, opening and closing and forming shapes, then closing again. When it did not show a reaction,, her frown deepened, and she repeated the movements, now standing near it.
It was not sure what this meant. Was there something it was missing? Did this woman attempt to communicate, using her mouth? Was it missing something it needed to understand her?
Collected The Sound.
Again, its world exploded as a new realm of sensations was opened to it. To the symphony of colours came an orchestra of tones, almost overwhelming it a second time that day. Leaves were rustling, birds were chirping, the wind was blowing and making the woman’s loose fabric flap and flutter around her spindly legs. Even the little shifts of her wooden sandals on the gravel ground produced little crunching sounds as stone ground against stone, rock against wood, pebble against ground. And there were words.
“-ou Obake? Answer me!”
Words coming from the old woman, but it wasn’t sure what they meant. ‘Obake’? That wasn’t a word. It understood everything but that. Was it… a name? Its name?
Its lack of response seemed to further upset the woman, who produced something from her robe’s pocket. It could not see what it was, because as she brought it out, it began shining with a horribly burning light, bright as the sun. Shocked and letting out a silent scream, it reeled back.
“Ha… your foul essence is burning away, Obake! Weak as you are, you cannot stand my prayer slips. Let your corrupted spirit be cleansed by my exorcism!”
With a sharp wave of her arm and a flick of her wrist, she threw the item. Obake knew, right then, that its short life was about to end. That was saddening… It would have liked to see more sights and hear more sounds. The world it had found itself in was so wonderful, and promising so much more beyond each horizon. There were a lot of sights it wasn’t going to see now.
Fumph!
“What?!”
As the flying item was about to strike Obake and unceremoniously end its brief un-life, it suddenly burst into flames and fell to the ground. The woman stared with bewilderment as the magical shine faded, showing a paper slip bearing symbols in black and red ink. The flame shifted from orange to a ghastly green as it burnt the ink away along with the paper, reducing both to cinders.
“To be able to stop one of my exorcism slips… you are stronger than you appear. Still, it shall do you no good.” Saying this, she grasped the beaded necklace around her neck and raised it up. “Hearken to me, spirits of eld, and aid me in purifying this soul that desecrates your graves! Aid me in…”
Obake paid little mind to what else she said, for it felt that whatever force had saved it from certain death, would not come to its aid again. It turned and fled, not knowing which way, only away from the woman that would have her dead.
Just as it leapt over the fence at the edge of the graveyard, it heard a distant rumbling, and it hunched over while running. The next moment, a beam of burning light grazed its sheet, burning a shallow line into it.
Collected The Touch.
Pain burst forth from the injury, and Obake shuddered, unable to give voice to its torment with a scream. It was alone with that pain, and it knew that it could not give into it, or it would get caught. So it kept running, practically tumbling down the hillside, changing directions each time it rumbled and narrowly dodging two more of the deadly beams. Then it reached the bottom of the hill. A large river ran through the little valley it had carved over the centuries, and with no bridge to be seen, Obake saw no other escape than to jump in. The cold waters flooded over it from all sides, grasping its light body and sweeping it along, to unknown destinations.
Obake saw one last beam striking the water, missing it by a far bigger margin, before going under. It chose to leave itself to the floods, wherever they might carry it, only away from the danger. In its choice, it paid little mind to the first message it received at that moment, that was quite different from the ones it had seen so far.
Prerequisites met. The Eye, The Sound and The Touch have been merged into The Sense.
On the shore, the elderly woman lowered her prayer bead necklace. Though she breathed a bit heavily after the jog, the mere fact that a woman her age had managed to run like this in the first place was quite impressive.
“Disappointing… it got away. Still… to set one of my prayer slips ablaze is no feat a common spirit can accomplish. This one is dangerous.” She lifted her eyes to the city that rose in the distance, right in the path of the river. “It cannot be allowed to cause trouble in Shimosa. Were it to desecrate one of the temples… no, I will not permit it to get to this point.”
It was good that she had followed her gut feeling and travelled to the old graveyard. It had never misled her when it came to the presence of evil spirits, sharp as they were. And they would not disappoint her now, when she sniffed it out in the city. Doubtlessly it would attempt to hide amidst the people of the city, as spirits were wont to do. But no spirit, no matter how hidden, had escaped her notice, and none had withstood her evil-excising ability. She wasn’t The Pure for nothing, after all.
Though it had no idea that a philosopher had declared this long before it did, those five words were its singular lifeline at the moment. It thought, therefore it was. Thought was the only thing it could do, really. To think, reflect, ponder, then think some more. It was an unending circle, but it could do nothing save return to the beginning, time and time again, for there was nothing new to think about.
Collected The One.
Collected The Start.
Collected The Mind.
Three lines of writing, present in its mind. Those, and the fourth line, were the point around which all its thoughts circulated, because it had nothing else. It knew only that it had not been conscious before that. But if it was because it thought, did that mean that it had not existed before it had begun to think? How, then, had it 'collected' these things, The One and The Start and The Mind?
Its memories went only back to the moment after it had obtained The Mind. That was all it knew. It could not recall collecting any of the words, or even how it had gone about collecting them. All it knew was that its ponderings had resulted in an unexpected outcome.
Collected The Eye.
The first word it remembered collecting. The first one it had collected while conscious. The fourth and last line of writing. It had felt its effects, too, as though a wave of information washed over its mind, filling it with understanding. An eye meant sight. To see, to observe. Yet it could not see. But an eye also meant understanding. To perceive, and grasp, something. Had it understood something, and that was why it had collected the word? Was it meant to see something, and the word had been given to it so it could do that? Yet without an ability to observe, all it could do was to return to what it had, however many times it took it.
The One.
The Start.
The Mind.
The Eye.
Were the words hints? A secret message, meant to be deciphered and understood by treating the words in some manner? Was there another word, one it was missing? Was the information right before it, but it lacked the eyes to see it?
An eye was part of a body. A body was composed of many parts, which it did not have. Or perhaps it did? It wasn't sure what those parts were called, only that the eye was one. Or rather, two. Many bodies had two eyes. Some had more. Some had no eyes at all.
A mind was needed to make sense of what the eye saw. Without a mind, the eye's observations were mere jumbles without meaning. Without an eye, the mind could not observe, could not gain information. That was the situation it was in right now. It had The Eye, but it had no body on which the eye could appear, to observe things for its mind. Without new information, it could only recycle what it knew, time and time again, and weave a tapestry of thought and assumption. That tapestry would no doubt contain innumerable falsehoods, though, that contradicted reality.
What even was reality? What was the world? It had come to the conclusion that the words had to come from somewhere. It did not have them before it collected them, therefore they had come from outside. Outside meant there was a world out there, beyond its mind which it drew these circles in. A world was composed of reality. Of things that were the same for everybody. Perhaps there were others out there, too. There had to be many things outside, in the world. But it could not know, for without a way to see that world, it had no way to go out.
It would be nice to have a body. A body with eyes. Could it have a body? Was there a way to get one?
Collected The Ghost.
Oh.
That was about all that it had time to think before its consciousness was enveloped in a swirl of white, soon followed by utter darkness.
Yet, where some might have been afraid of the dark, it felt happiness instead. Darkness was something new. Unlike the complete absence of senses it had been in before, this was ‘something’, even if there was nothing to see.
It felt drawn forwards. No, upwards. There was a force pulling it backwards, down, but it could resist that, and advance. That must be gravity, it thought. How it knew about a concept it had never heard of before, it couldn’t have said. A very odd sensation filled its body as it traversed the darkness, a sensation of something dry and rigid, which enclosed it from all sides. The sensation touched its front, passed through its body until it disappeared from its back. This was followed by a thick layer of non-homogeneous matter - most of it felt moist and malleable, yet tightly packed, with nuggets of harder matter sprinkled in throughout. Yet again though, the layers did not hold it back, merely imparting their sensations as it passed through it. Finally came a very hard and dense layer, as though it was a barrier to keep it from emerging. This actually took some difficulty to pass, but it persisted.
Suddenly the world exploded into colours. Blue, white, green, grey, brown and much more filled its vision as it emerged from the heavy slab beneath it. It was overwhelming at first, and in a reflex, it closed its eyes, only to immediately regret it. The world was beautiful. It did not want to push it away, it wanted to see it. So it cautiously opened its eyes again, and took in the beauty that came with it.
Then, it lowered its eyes. Around it on all sides were lines of stones, most in various shades of grey but some in stronger colours, from marble white to deep black. Some overgrown, others spotless, with flowers in little pots placed at their base. There was such a stone in front of it, too. A large one, the writing too faded to read. Finally, it turned its look downwards.
A sheet, a spotless white in colour, hung down from it, stopping just short of the heavy stone slab that it stood on. It was rectangular in its shape, one end against the big headstone, the other one coming just short of a gravel path. There were stones like this to its left and right too, and they were of the more overgrown and crumbling kind.
There were so many things it knew the name of, even though it saw them for the first time. Sky. Cloud. Tree. Stone. Grave.
Graveyard.
Human.
That last one came to it as it witnessed a woman coming closer. She was ancient and hunched over, but carried herself with a grace that fit her fine clothes. The deep purple robe she wore was eye-catching, as was the black cap strapped to her head. Her eyes were firmly fixed on it, it saw, piercing it with a gaze that made it feel uneasy. Her mouth was moving, opening and closing and forming shapes, then closing again. When it did not show a reaction,, her frown deepened, and she repeated the movements, now standing near it.
It was not sure what this meant. Was there something it was missing? Did this woman attempt to communicate, using her mouth? Was it missing something it needed to understand her?
Collected The Sound.
Again, its world exploded as a new realm of sensations was opened to it. To the symphony of colours came an orchestra of tones, almost overwhelming it a second time that day. Leaves were rustling, birds were chirping, the wind was blowing and making the woman’s loose fabric flap and flutter around her spindly legs. Even the little shifts of her wooden sandals on the gravel ground produced little crunching sounds as stone ground against stone, rock against wood, pebble against ground. And there were words.
“-ou Obake? Answer me!”
Words coming from the old woman, but it wasn’t sure what they meant. ‘Obake’? That wasn’t a word. It understood everything but that. Was it… a name? Its name?
Its lack of response seemed to further upset the woman, who produced something from her robe’s pocket. It could not see what it was, because as she brought it out, it began shining with a horribly burning light, bright as the sun. Shocked and letting out a silent scream, it reeled back.
“Ha… your foul essence is burning away, Obake! Weak as you are, you cannot stand my prayer slips. Let your corrupted spirit be cleansed by my exorcism!”
With a sharp wave of her arm and a flick of her wrist, she threw the item. Obake knew, right then, that its short life was about to end. That was saddening… It would have liked to see more sights and hear more sounds. The world it had found itself in was so wonderful, and promising so much more beyond each horizon. There were a lot of sights it wasn’t going to see now.
Fumph!
“What?!”
As the flying item was about to strike Obake and unceremoniously end its brief un-life, it suddenly burst into flames and fell to the ground. The woman stared with bewilderment as the magical shine faded, showing a paper slip bearing symbols in black and red ink. The flame shifted from orange to a ghastly green as it burnt the ink away along with the paper, reducing both to cinders.
“To be able to stop one of my exorcism slips… you are stronger than you appear. Still, it shall do you no good.” Saying this, she grasped the beaded necklace around her neck and raised it up. “Hearken to me, spirits of eld, and aid me in purifying this soul that desecrates your graves! Aid me in…”
Obake paid little mind to what else she said, for it felt that whatever force had saved it from certain death, would not come to its aid again. It turned and fled, not knowing which way, only away from the woman that would have her dead.
Just as it leapt over the fence at the edge of the graveyard, it heard a distant rumbling, and it hunched over while running. The next moment, a beam of burning light grazed its sheet, burning a shallow line into it.
Collected The Touch.
Pain burst forth from the injury, and Obake shuddered, unable to give voice to its torment with a scream. It was alone with that pain, and it knew that it could not give into it, or it would get caught. So it kept running, practically tumbling down the hillside, changing directions each time it rumbled and narrowly dodging two more of the deadly beams. Then it reached the bottom of the hill. A large river ran through the little valley it had carved over the centuries, and with no bridge to be seen, Obake saw no other escape than to jump in. The cold waters flooded over it from all sides, grasping its light body and sweeping it along, to unknown destinations.
Obake saw one last beam striking the water, missing it by a far bigger margin, before going under. It chose to leave itself to the floods, wherever they might carry it, only away from the danger. In its choice, it paid little mind to the first message it received at that moment, that was quite different from the ones it had seen so far.
Prerequisites met. The Eye, The Sound and The Touch have been merged into The Sense.
On the shore, the elderly woman lowered her prayer bead necklace. Though she breathed a bit heavily after the jog, the mere fact that a woman her age had managed to run like this in the first place was quite impressive.
“Disappointing… it got away. Still… to set one of my prayer slips ablaze is no feat a common spirit can accomplish. This one is dangerous.” She lifted her eyes to the city that rose in the distance, right in the path of the river. “It cannot be allowed to cause trouble in Shimosa. Were it to desecrate one of the temples… no, I will not permit it to get to this point.”
It was good that she had followed her gut feeling and travelled to the old graveyard. It had never misled her when it came to the presence of evil spirits, sharp as they were. And they would not disappoint her now, when she sniffed it out in the city. Doubtlessly it would attempt to hide amidst the people of the city, as spirits were wont to do. But no spirit, no matter how hidden, had escaped her notice, and none had withstood her evil-excising ability. She wasn’t The Pure for nothing, after all.