Being absorbed. That was the only way to describe the experience of entering the boundaries of the Spired City because doing so meant ripping through the fabric of Scohthice. It meant moving outside the invisible machine of time and space that functions to keep all of what is thought to be reality from a chaotic, spontaneous dismemberment. It didn’t hurt, it didn’t feel like anything. There was simply an unbinding of the constraints of consciousness that marked moving through and outside the universal clink.

Once inside the boundaries, the view was spectacular. The Mandajia that made up the whole of the Scohthice was all around to infinity. The Mandajia were the celestial gears, the perfect circles and squares, that entrapped all creatures including those who fancied themselves human. Vawndila had taught Tobi many things while inside the Spired City, including that the Mandajia were to the Scohthice what neutrons, protons, electrons, and quarks were to the atom.

Tobi had inquired as to how the Spired City had come into being. That was a question that the enlightened child had no answer to. She herself only knew of the city because her mother had taught her how to navigate there before her death. She had told the girl that there were some who would never be able to travel there and if that were the case that she would know one of two things about that individual: that they were either a duplicate or were not to be trusted because that was a sure sign their heart was black enough to one day Give Over.

To be continued…