I feel like I could eat the world.

“I found myself oscillating between feeling the tugs of cold inhumanity on one side, and feeling the grasp of the most powerful of human experiences, both pleasurable and dreadful, much more deeply than those around me on the other side.”

It let these words hang in the damp air like clouds. Its voice rattled the air while at the same time reverberating inside my head, pushing aside my own thoughts. Whenever it spoke it seared my mind with each syllable. It stared at me, patiently waiting for my response. Its long slender body contorted around itself, taking up most of the dimly lit vestibule. A nearby sconce burned, its light dancing across the figure and giving it the appearance of a knot of black snakes slithering around a porcelain human head.

“And so you chose to become…sorry, to embrace the former?” I asked.

“In a way, yes.” The creature replied flatly. “I gave up what you would call humanity so that I could fully devote myself to my studies. But the detachment from your kin I gained blessed me with insights you could never comprehend. Every facet of the human experience, most of all those your kin would deny the existence of, were bare before me. I gained a deeper understanding of humanity in the centuries following my transformation than any of you ever could.”

“That’s what I seek, that understanding! Please, let me continue so that I may share the power you wield!” By this point I had lost all composure - I set one foot in front of the other almost as if I expected the creature to budge. It sat unmoving aside from the continuous morphing of its tangled body.

“Oh, how human you are.” It said slowly, letting out a flat chuckle that felt mocking in its lack of true emotion. “I could tell you every secret you seek right now, I could imprint them in your mind so that they may never leave. You could carry this knowledge with you throughout your mortal life and live happily, experiencing things that I can only intellectualize while being just as wise as me. But you wouldn’t be satisfied, would you? The answers you seek would only be real if you discovered them on your own through sacrifices that would leave you unable to make full use of them. Ahhhh, how alike the two of us were.”
My entire body suddenly felt heavy, the weight of the reality I now faced became too much. All the hardship, the travel, the neverending nights evading the patrols - it all ended here if this creature refused to let me pass. Desperate, I moved to draw my chipped sword from its scabbard. The creature intervened before my hand could touch the hilt.

“If you do that, everything you worked for will be in vain.” My hand froze. I looked into its black eyes, eyes so dark that they seemed to pull the very light around them into their neverending depth. “In coming this far, in speaking with me, you already stand at a precipice most of your kind can barely grasp, let alone find their footing on. Take this pyrrhic victory with you and live out the rest of your years in its radiance. Your humanity thus augmented by this experience is more powerful than you know. Seek this place again and I will destroy you. Now leave.”

Day # 69. I am oscillatiing between boundless feelings of love &
being a crying emotional mess.

I love it.

I can't stop thinking about that dream.

I was at this big party, and he was there for some reason too. But he was crying. Everyone else was acting like he didn't exist and he was just curled up by a table crying.

I felt bad for him. Despite everything, I walked up to him and asked what was wrong.

I spent the rest of the dream holding him; listening to his words and wails.

I started to remember why I liked him in the first place. Then I woke up.