[Clara 02]

After the pain.

Everything in Clara's life would now be divided between before and after the pain.

Now she slept.

Some place dark and warm a pervasive red light pulsed around her and she slept.

With the cessation of the burning pistons churning away in her skull a clarity had come Clara had not felt since childhood.

Everything made perfect sense and with the supreme understanding of each preceding event there was no fear.

After what may have been seconds or an eternity Clara acknowledged the presence of another.

Her mind began to take stock of this other but came only to the conclusion that it should be classified as a thing.

There was nothing prior to the pain that may have helped Clara to understand what she was now in the company of.

"What are you?" Clara wondered and so wondering made real the question.

In this place she was safe and all things were possible though not all things imagined made real.

The thing expanded and contracted like a cloud seeming to make these liquid movements its language "I am. In you I am. In you I have become. From you I will become further. From you I will consume and become what you are but unlike any other of you. I am the end. I am the abyssal plane made real. I am the void made flesh."

"Am I going to die?" The warm red light surrounding Clara waned and the other seemed to fill the space with its darkness.

Still Clara felt no fear.

This was a place made for her. It would not allow the intrusion of an enemy but the essence of the other seemed to defy the very fabric of life.

The very atoms which made the real things real and kept the boundaries strong against the dark things.

"You will die. All living things must secede from life and in doing so become mulch for the great churning ovens of life. You will die. Not this day. Not the next. I am in you. I will become further. You must not die this day or the next." The other twisted and in doing so made known its answer.

Before and after.

This was after and the red light drained away the way water drains from a sink.

Sound returned.

Smells returned.

Light that was mean and cold returned.

Only for a handful of heartbeats.

Then the other decreased until it wasn't there at all.

The warm red returned and Clara slept.

Safe.

Unafraid.

-Contributed by Cogent Ascending