Once more her mind is focused on the vivid landscape. Her own personal garden in need of some minor maintenance. Her eyes – as powerful as any eagle – see for miles with swift attention to detail. From her mountain-top throne she nourishes the land, exchanging decay for new growth. Coaxing life along with a little nudge. Species take shape, manifesting themselves from the seeds of her imagination.

Here, everything is entwined. Each aspect of creation mutually dependent.

Despite her attempts to become absorbed in the tasks at hand, a maelstrom of malevolence has taken root in the recesses of waking reality. A wrenching deep within, a pinprick of pain suckling at her center of power, forming and feeding without her calculated consent. Her left side goes numb – loses all feeling, dead weight eating at her heart.

They have arrived, confrontation is now unavoidable.

Drawing upon centuries of iron-will (naturally selected) she prepares for the challenge, feeling the link between herself and the surreal surroundings. A psychic in a fluid reality. The sense of numbness fades away, she discards it – an unwanted intrusion. Parasitic entities propelled outward and into the ethereal boundaries reverberating from one point of awareness, perfectly aligned. Attuned to vivid vibrations. With a slow exhale of breath, she rises. Prepared for battle.

Thunder looms on distant dreamscapes. The farthest reaches of her lands, just beyond the fog of perception. Clouds of soot, dirty swabs of cotton, stealthy kidnappers – all steadily approach. A pestilence putridly perpetuating itself indefinitely. The storm rolls closer, sounding like steel on steel. Metallic crashes assimilating and appropriating cannon-fodder collections.

This is no torrential rain; this is something much more ominous.
Fists are clenched at her sides, nails digging into palms.

A pervasive smell reaches her nose – a noxious odor; more potent and offensive than any she’s ever imagined. Trying to keep calm, her illusionary identity expands in a sonic burst (sound without sound) feelings disconnect from spinal column, detached from central nervous system, becoming one with all things, she is free of her frail form. Her manufactured manifestation. Now she monitors ruthlessly, taken aback at the abominations accumulating at an accelerated pace.

These calloused creatures she yearns to castigate.
Their reckless abandon aggravates.
Their institutionalized irrationalities irritate.

She sends quenching rains to better the browning earth (now barren) beneath stretching shrouds of presumed purity. Travesty trickery. Servile slaves are strip-mining what she has spent so long preserving. The water droplets so lovingly lathered upon the land pass through the greasy film of filth, turning into black burning acid before impacting with a scorching hiss. Suspended as she is, thought processes are suppressed as instinct takes hold. For every forest destroyed, every river run dry, she is creating two more. For every fertile scrubland reconstituted as desert expanse, entire hillsides of luxuriant green spring into being. Still, she is sure it is not enough. Her strength is waning, her spirit growing dim.

Her presence here will fade into fiction.

She realizes all is lost. Once vibrant gardens wallow in their newly acquired dilapidation. Forcefully applied. Vampiric. The last ounces of her power are slipping away and with every remaining bit of being she manages to condense. Beauty is left to die, the ground rushes towards her, and nothingness replaces all coherence.

(The space of one breath.)

“Lyiana, are you listening? I need those reports.”

With a start she snaps to attention, smoothing her satin suit around her thighs. Previous memories are slipping out of grasp. She looks around her dimly-lit cubicle and sees Mr. Globtion staring expectantly. Opening a drawer, she finds the quarterly earning statements.

“Here they are Sir, I apologize”

He grabs them from her outstretched hand and trots off with a muttered reprimand. When he has disappeared from view, her eyes dart to a small window, taking in a view of bland buildings blanketed in smog.

She tries to remember how things used to be. What things were like – before.

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