Capítulo 32: CHAPTER 32 - UFFHILL AND UMLAVE - UMLAVE RETURNS TO THE OLD QUEENDOM

"Oh, I love red velvet cake, it's so gory it makes me feel like a gladiator when I eat it" Echo said to him at last night's party as they lounged in the corner, presumably for the sole purpose of making him laugh as she stole a slice. Now he was thankful that there were leftovers in the refrigerator, so he took out a plate and sat at the end of the dinner table to finish it off. "Apparently, I'm going to have to finish this myself" Uffhill smiled, thinking of how Umlave had left days previous, down through the chamber on some personal journey to Recapture for a stop, then to the ruins of her old queendom to see the trail gate once more. Since she had forgotten to turn off the television, the static had fallen off and collected into a ball that bounced around in the living room. It didn't make any noise so it wasn't really a problem. He looked back at the plate. Eventually the piece was reduced in size to such a degree that he scoured the surface for a final bite. "Hey darling, did you save me a piece?" Umlave asked, plopping camping bags onto the floor. "I'll trade you for souvenirs" he offered, leaning over for a kiss as she sat down at the table besides him. There's something very attractive about a plate that's been scraped clean, almost peaceful, like the mind's resting state. Uffhill's eyes glanced up, then, kicking the floor the chair scooched back almost a foot. Every so often patrons evolve and take on new forms. That was common knowledge, until it happens to someone you know. "Do you like my new look?" Umlave asked, sliding her hand across the top of her chest over a body of paper skin tattooed with intricate mandalas of brash calligraphy. "How did you … is that paper?" he gaped, studying the overt difference. There is something about the peristalsis of red velvet cake that is more soothing than an ordinary swallow, and it turned his mind to the calm of the remainder of his body. Umlave watched him stare as the ball of tv static arced over the position of his head from farther away in the living room. "Good read darling, it is a little less smooth than normal and more fragile, but a good fit" she replied. "I would think so, it's just a little … different" the patron countered. Imperceptibly shifting back in the chair, she redirected her line of sight to the tarnished plate of smeared crimson, "do you like different?". Abandoning his fear, he interlocked his fingers into hers, pressing them tight, "I've always loved different". Paraphernalia from the camping trip crumbled out of the condensed mass of the suitcase between the oval shaped mouth of the zipper. It fell onto the floor diverting his attention, allowing her to return hers to its previous station. Applying the other hand, he polished it with the inquisitive cheek of his palm. Umlave felt a compelling draft of affirmation pass through her, the blurry aspects of his features became definite. But she should have known better. "This looks like wallpaper, all these patterns …" he witnessed, until the object was retrieved in a quick singular motion. "oh, so it's like wallpaper is it? You just like it because it reminds you of that girl you dated when you were a local on the trail … what was her name again? Va?" she charged. "That one was too fierce for her own good, but that's long gone, don't look at me like that" he relented, parrying off guilt drenched stares in quick succession. "Alright, if you can tell the difference then … that's a start" she said, sensing his keen juvenile anticipation in the unwrapping of a flimsy garment. Heeding an unspoken request Umlave, without moving a finger tore back the paper layer covering both her hands, wrists and the portion of her head to her shoulders. "How did this happen?" Uffhill cried. The harmless ball of static had hit the back of his chair at just the exact moment that the remainder of his wife was exposed to room temperature. "So first I meandered through Recapture. There is barely anything there except for a few dough farmers, and some surviving dreamstuff golems. Eventually I got to my old queendom. Happily, those oaks that I loved so much survived, whole acres of them. That fact made me feel pretentious, but in a good way. Then I went further, past the estate of verdant simplicity which a local is preserving. It was pretty boring until I found the highway and went down that way through Desensitize, to the main square where the ruins of the old trail gate are piled up. Looking them over I realized something fascinating. The Couple and Echo have shed so many secrets, I doubt they can remember even one out of ten of them". "Keeper, the realm was a lot simpler back then, what were your first thoughts when you saw those undisturbed ruins?" the patron requested, his solicitation tinged with the gold of nostalgia. Pouring through the medium of the fiefdom, the divisions of the apartment were substituted by walls of memory. Both listened, hearing birdsong through the dense aether laden wind. "I was gatekeeper" she whispered to herself, remembering the days that she would permit those who sacrificed a dream for the Couple to float through mandalas which she had crafted. Examining the signature of the ruins, a less than obvious thought occurred, "the gate is a scar? A disembodied scar from the moment that Echo's ghost escaped and returned to her body? Normally a ghost exists a body incorporeally without creating a scar". So much made little sense. There was the Cezit Order, who were dreamstuff replicants that unknown to her dwelt within the trail gate. "That is why whispers flowed into the gate" she said, "and the order would call to collect the whispers and usher them unto the gate, and they would themselves hide by tucking themselves within a whisper and leading the others". This had all been told to her by Valco. "Wait just a minute!" he shouted, halting the perceptual retelling. "Yes, I thought that hint to be rather confounding as well, but it's true" the patroness guaranteed, batting back neural ripples of incredulity. In Uffhill's mind, the previous night flashed before his eyes, the way Echo was reclining on the chair, happy as a lark from the synthesis of overeating, good company and four cans of cherry omelet soda. Because of everything, he had not given a second thought of when she thieved a slice of red velvet cake from off plate. Ideas quickly reshaped themselves, conclusions snapped into place like ruthless architecture. "Are you telling me that she … we all knew she was different … that she is less perfect in a certain way than an average local? If the ghost tore through and made a scar, it can only mean she was … let me rephrase that. Echo is delicate. Is that what you are saying?" he questioned, a mask of epiphany causing her to witness the boldness in the features of his face, something that had many a time belonged to her in full. "Obviously when you take into consideration the past eons, she has grown a lot stronger with every strife that we have faced" Umlave answered, comfortable in her ability to lecture on the prose of history. Drawing him back into the fiefdom, he saw Umlave retrace her steps to the Pyramid of Darkness where the dust of the book of whispers had become the southern desert. Near the periphery some clusters of rocks were hollowed out by the wind into elongated flutes. Along the length of one of them was a caveat scratched into the stone, but of course it was meant for mortal men. An elderly hermit crab crouched by the end of one of them, sitting in the hollow and stroking a long white beard with its claw, regarding her. "Anyway, before I was so politely interrupted, I found an oasis at the center of that territory with a crisp pool …" she visualized, returning to the story, "Floating to the bottom I was distracted by the motions of life and without realizing it became embedded into the rock beneath a bed of coral. Colorful entities that lived in that stratum pulsated around me. Then cracking open, the rock gave way, and my body had become this white sponge coral. I thought, 'I am like that sponge within the center of the skull'. I let the little fish and other things swim between the tiny spaces, tickling me. Have you ever been tickled under water? It is really great. Then propped my hands over the edge, lifting myself back up onto the sand. Before I knew it, a portion of sand which had been called by the wind rushed up to meet me and washed over my body until igniting in flame. Dust became pulp and molded itself as paper, draping over my figure. I looked over at the paper of my torso and saw mandalas imprinted by the ink, alternating white and black" the patroness visualized in words for his consideration. It was the ink of the book of whispers. "Did you hear the secret of the book of whispers?" he pleaded, needing the atoms of veracity hidden in the kernels of magic, wreathed in formulae and hypothetical gossip. Looking across the table, he examined the white sponge coral, porous and in the shape of human beauty. "Just as the Couple performed the RODI, ushering dream from their minds to the base reality, I am that semipermeable barrier of the skull from which it can flow through numerous pores" she pontificated, then stuck out a pink tongue which now had the character of the cerebrum. When tempers soar, a good principal to rely on is restraint, but that was not the emotion that prevented her from telling him the rest. That was shame. For as the patroness returned to normality from hyperventilating at the strain of quick evolution, she could feel a burning sensation, and stuck out her tongue. Resting on it was a drop of coffee like a perfect pearl that one would find within a clam. It lifted off of her tongue and hovered in the air before her, then vanished. It had happened so quickly that she could not in hindsight genuinely tell whether it was of importance. One cannot lose face when in the pursuit of a listener, flighty as they are. The events afterwards were of little import, so she briefly summarized the trek backwards. How at the outskirts of the oasis was a tribe that instead of living and dying transitioned through states of visibility and invisibility, how they enjoyed her constellation salamander form and the way the nodes of grain-stars emit light which diluted and draped the body of the amphibian. Satisfied, they let her gobble them up in her mouth and waddle back up to district, where calling upon the skulls embedded in the fabric of the wreckage of Recapture they flocked to her and under her command destroyed the trail gate, it's substance being communicated to her body by the action of their destruction. Miserably, a shockwave from the Reverse Incarnation, Visioness's final attack against Echo in their battle struck her, and the tribe were forced to nurse her back to health over a day, feeding her bowls of soup and wafting the aroma into her face with fans. "I brought them back with me to the portion. They all work now in an underpants factory, but it is much better than living in the desert" she finished. "Darling, that's enough, your new look is great. I love it" Uffhill relented, his mind weary from heeding such a enterprising memory. She smiled back, then noticed how a smear of the red velvet cake remained at the corner of his mouth, so she tore off a piece of her paper-skin and used it as a napkin to dab the mess away. Maybe one day … practice for when they had a baby. In the other room the ball of static rebounded until it became stuck between the space of the couch and the wall … that place that's really hard to get out, and where no one would find it until much later. Uffhill sighed with exhaustion and leaned back in his chair. Thoughts of the transformation revolved in his mind. A wife made of paper and coral. He was not amused. And that old flame that wasn't flammable was starting to sound pretty good.