Sometimes it salts the tip of your tongue. It rests there, balanced on a knife's edge, and it will take nothing more than a spare glance to wield it. You brace yourself and swallow, and glass shatters in your throat, and you drink your blood with a dancer's poise. Copper tinges your senses, paints your insides with shards of metal. It spills through your organs, and you are on your knees.
(click: "Sometimes it salts the tip of your tongue. It rests there, balanced on a knife's edge, and it will take nothing more than a spare glance to wield it. You brace yourself and swallow, and glass shatters in your throat, and you drink your blood with a dancer's poise. Copper tinges your senses, paints your insides with shards of metal. It spills through your organs, and you are on your knees.")[[[You are on your knees with your hands at your throat.->2]]]//You are used to this.
(click: "You are used to this.")[You are used to this.]
(click: "You are used to this.")[You are used to this.
(You have always been more comfortable with [[stasis->5]].)
]//Can you remember anything else?
//Yes. The skies and the trees and the wind.//
(click:"Yes. The skies and the trees and the wind.")[How can you be sure? These are the words they sing in songs, the ones they play in movies. These are the comforts of simple stories. Can you tell me what the color of the sky is? What do trees look like? How does the wind feel?]
(click:"How does the wind feel?")[//The wind tastes like freedom. The sky is blue. The trees stand tall like soldiers, and they wield their branches as swords.//]//(click-replace: "The wind tastes like freedom. The sky is blue. The trees stand tall like soldiers, and they wield their branches as swords.")[The wind tastes like ^^~~freedom?~~^^ ice. It...is cold and...]//(click: "It...is cold and...")[//There is ice in your throat. Your insides are raw and you are being sliced apart, stripped bare from within. The trees are wicked things, their bark well-versed in destruction. And the sky? The sky is thick, and it holds you down. It wraps you in an embrace you are oddly familiar with.
You are choking.//
Do you see now? Tell me again what you remember of the world.]
(click:"Tell me again what you remember of the world.")[//You cannot speak. There is no warmth, but you are burning. This is your world. Fire made of ice and veins filtered with glass - this is who you are. There are no other memories.//]
(click:"this is who you are.")[//[[Is this your life?->6]]//
]//This is your life.//
You don't know anything else, do you?
[[You are used to this.->4]]//This is your life.//
You are used to this. Is that not lonely?
How come you sit at your desk all the same? How come you study for tomorrow's tests with the fervor of someone who comprehends time?
If this is your life, how are you not afraid?
(click: "how are you not afraid?")[//You have been afraid before. When the girl across the street gripped your wrist so tight that it turned blue. When the man who taught you math yelled so loud his voice smoothed the walls the way the creek made pebbles. When you felt, for the first time, what it meant to carry a double-edged blade.
You are afraid now, you realize. Your teeth glint like razors and you are choking now, and you desperately, //desperately,// would like to live. You are sick of sharp objects, you think. You are tired of sunsets and gnarled trees and of the promise of snowfall. You are tired of the taste of blood in your mouth and the pressure of a vice around your lungs. And, of course, you are afraid again. You would give your life for pain to be a newcomer; but alas, you are stuck with Atlas' burden - a reminder, lest you complain.//
Perhaps you would like to try again?
[[Generate New Reality->1]]
]//You are on your knees with your hands at your throat.//
Have you been here before?
//You haven't.//
(click-replace: "You haven't.")[How did you forget?] (click-replace: "How did you forget?")[Why don't you remember?] (click-replace: "Why don't you remember?")[You promised yourself that you would not forget.] (click-replace: "You promised yourself that you would not forget.")[[[Is this truly your life?->3]]]