☼ ISHAK ☼اسحاق
"Well time has a way of throwing it all in your face / The past, she is haunted, the future is laced"
"Well time has a way of throwing it all in your face / The past, she is haunted, the future is laced"
“Are you scared of this place, Ishak?” Ruth asks. She blinked at you, in the moment before she did. It gives away that she isn’t scared, but you knew that already. Which brings you back to her question: are you?
Are you?
This terrible and terrific island, this place of change, this place of magic, this place? Does it strike fear in you? Does it make your heart beat faster and your stomach churn and your skin sweat and unease bite at your neck?
Well, no.
The island is innocent. You cannot take the island to court, the same way you cannot take a snake. It means no malice in its actions— in its bite.
You aren’t afraid of the bite in this metaphor, by the way. There is nothing here that can hurt you on its own, you think, though uncertainly. All the images it shows you are safely encapsulated from you, with crystal as delineated borders. You do not expect them to do you harm.
The venom, though? You who were a mithridatist for years?
You fear the venom down to your bones.
And in this metaphor, by the way, this is where it breaks down. It’s not like the images are actively doing anything to you, no sorcery influencing you. It’s just an image, at the end of the day.
It’s more like an allergy, like an overreaction to something harmless. (The placebo effect, maybe, if you wanted to keep in line with your first metaphor. You think it should hurt and so it does, even if you would be otherwise immune.)
Are you scared of this place?
Well, no. (It’s you you’re afraid of.)
This place just makes you angry. This place just reminds you of all the things you could see be seeing in your own mirror. All the things that, most days, you shove down somewhere there is no light to shine on them. This place is doing its damndest to reflect the sunlight down anyway.
This place shows you a day where there was no city guard in the hospital. This place shows you your mentor breathing. This place shows you Ruth failing to put you back together. This place shows you all the rotten pieces of you.
You don’t answer Ruth, in the end. You don’t lie to Ruth. You evade, you previcate, you exaggerate, and you understate. You don’t outright lie to Ruth. And in this instance, all of the above would feel like a lie.
You roll on forward with a snappy remark, trying to drag something in this cursed place back to your comfort zone. When Ruth doesn’t deign to respond, you move forward with the most pressing matter.
“Well, maybe,” she responds and pulls away from you, turning away to look around you. (The paths have shifted you think, entrances and exits moving around you. Once again, you hope this island doesn’t have the capacity to want to keep you lost.) “It’s hard to tell, but – that way, I think.”
There’s blood on the ground— inside the crystals— down the path Ruth gestures at. You grimace at it, some fresh new vision to torment you surely forthcoming. But you do your best to wipe the expression away quickly.
“If I had a rope, or yarn, I think I’d tie a line to you. Try not to get separated from me this time?” You are not feeling particularly equitable towards Ruth at the moment. You’ll get over it; even if you could stay mad at her for long, you wouldn’t want to. This isn’t her fault, beyond suggesting to come here in the first place. You think a day or two is a reasonable length of time to be mad about that. Maybe three.
You redo another braid in Ruth’s hair even as you spoke. Quick, efficient, and tight enough to stay. It’ll keep the hair out of her eyes. You tie it off with a tie from your own mane, letting that braid fall loose at the end. It’ll fall apart entirely by the time you leave this place, you’re sure.
“Shall we then?” you say and step towards the path.
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