failing_faith

This is not mine, but I like it.

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THIS IS THE WHITE CITY.
It does not change.

If you listen, perhaps you hear the sound of ringing crystal, that piercing, smooth tone, above the pounding of your own heart. Perhaps you hear the breath of the wind blow across its wide flute, though the air you imagine to be about you is still and cool, unmoving. And perhaps you hear, raised in mourning, simple song, the voices of the dead.

THIS IS THE WHITE CITY.
It sleeps with eyes wide open.

White represents purity and new life to some, grieving and death to others. Here it is melded together into a unity. There are no shadows here. There is nowhere for you to hide. You may be assured that wherever you go in the White City, your presence is known. It is no sinister thing that knows you, no malicious thing which pursues you, but something which many find far more terrifying.

THIS IS THE WHITE CITY.
It knows you wherever you may go.

You may not be able to call it a consciousness, but we used to have names. Our death brings us here, strips the names from us. Perhaps you once knew us, before this translation into what we are. She is daughter of the Calthye, a child of two worlds, and I am the Host. It is Alrien and Audreidi you once knew, but here we are white. We are the City. A place of death, yes, and life perhaps, but life stretched too thin, made transparent and passing forth always too soon. This is where the one called Willow is killed before her old Master, you see. Not was, and not will be. Willow simply is killed, along with the others who perish in this place and, even when blood does not spill, they stain the flawless white with their red.

THIS IS THE WHITE CITY.
It knows not the meaning of time.

Those who pass through, like Willow and her Master, are always bound to time. But I am no longer. Alrien is no longer. Things always are; there is little use with past and present tense here. All is the same. It continues on precisely where it is. The City is created at one point, certainly, but that point is lost to us because it has no meaning. The Calthye is a Watcher over her people, and we are watchers in a different sense. We need not actively watch, because we simply see, and without realising, we know.

THIS IS THE WHITE CITY.
It holds no respect for life.

Are you still curious to know what the fear is? I will tell you: it is nothing; the light. There is nothing. It is the absence which terrifies. It is not empty, nor hollow, nor is it lacking. Perhaps even the word "absence" is presumptuous. You see, for all these words to have meaning, there must be something to compare against the nothing.

But there is nothing.

Black is a nothing of death, a nowhere for things to be forgotten, a stagnancy of non-existence which defines quiet. But white? It is a nothing which exposes, lays bare life and lets it away into nowhere, a non-intelligence which defines silence, and consumes you. Always consumes you.

Black is the forgetting; it is White which is the terrible. White which is despair.

THIS IS THE WHITE CITY.
It takes you for its own.

Breathing is not required of you, and neither is living. Both come to you as they are taken away. I know not where Willow goes when she dies, but it is not our concern. Callous? Hardly. How may one be callous when one is nothing? We are what we are: we are not.

You need not be afraid. In this end, there is nothing to fear; yes, quite literally nothing. But the White, you ask. Is the White not something.

The White is nothing. The essence of this nothing is the White.

Fear comes naturally and easily to the living, however. You may know that we are a faithful guide and we lead you. Not necessarily where you want to go, or think you need to go, but where you must be. Where it is demanded of you. Here, in the embodiment of nowhere.

THIS IS THE WHITE CITY.
It is a tomb of non-life.

You are welcome to stay, as long as need be. When you must go, we lead you back in. Not out, of course. Out is where you go when you come here, because this is nothing.

After you return to what is, you may feel something buried inside you. At least, that is what you think it is, when in reality it is not. There has become a nothing inside of you, and you know the White for the rest of your life, should you return alive. No one does, in truth. There is always a piece of you left here to become nothing itself. You leave without completely remaining as you come. Is it not truth, then, to say you have in part died?

THIS IS THE WHITE CITY.
It is unending patience.

There is no need for the White to turn predatorial, as it receives all it requires. Right here, right now, in this nowhere, this un-being of time.

It pulls at you. You answer it one day, and then days no longer have meaning to you.

All your meaning is contained in the City. There is not meaning in the White.

There is not meaning.

There is not.

It leaves you nothing.
THIS IS THE WHITE CITY.

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