MIRROR - open

[ABATHUR .]

A pedipalp swept up, then down, brushing dust off his eyes. He was still, in careful contemplation, focus, easily disturbed. Meditation, some would say - and perhaps that was true. He couldn't close his eyes, but that didn't change anything, did it?

He tried to remember the exact definition. "To engage in contemplation, reflection. To focus one's thoughts on, ponder over." He could still see the words now, letters dancing in front of his eyes, taunting - instinctively, he reached up the opposite palp, brushing his eyes once more, but it did nothing to assist the feeling that flooded through him. Was it failure, he wondered? If it was, it felt different. Perhaps he should meditate some more, figure himself out.

Or perhaps he shouldn't, and instead focus on anything else. Maybe everything else.

It made him wonder, as he focused on his sense of touch, mentally blocking out his vision so as not to impair the process, what the opposite of meditation would be. What focusing on everything other than how you were feeling was. What letting the input of the world control your thoughts, flow through your body like the very blood that kept it alive. Or perhaps that, too, was a form of meditation. He certainly felt calmer now, not thinking about the elephant in the room, instead taking it all in.

The slight breeze, as it pushed against everything. The pawsteps of clan denizens, wandering around the square near which he was positioned. He could feel their breaths, too, and if he focused on each one of them, could begin to hear their heartbeats. It would've been too much if he was trying to think on top of it. It would've overloaded his mind, made him stumble around, practically as blind as he was now. And his mind wandered, and he wondered, once more - was this inevitable? Was his attunement with his sense of touch something in the works by his body for years? Was it a result of a need to 'see,' to navigate somehow, of his blindness? Or was it just chance?

Does not matter.

Or did it?

His curiosity was a powerful force, after all, and if he wanted to learn something, every cell in his body shared his want.

How could self figure that out?

That was a very good question.


So he thought.


And thought.


And the world seemed to tune itself out, all the senses going fuzzy, blurring together into one, a pseudo-tactile sensation that reminded him so strongly of -

Of being blind.

Perhaps he should save thinking for when he wasn't reverse-meditating; it didn't seem to have very good effects on him.

He shook, for a momentary second, and woke himself up from the false slumber he had appeared to be in. He needed to do something today. He had been promoted what seemed like aeons ago, he couldn't just do nothing. He had to - to - to be useful. To live. But the feeling of hundreds of different vibrations running through the ground didn't leave him, even if he actively made them feel less severe, less big, less in-his-face, and that alone made him want to keep sitting there, thinking. Just thinking.

So he began to move, and he felt the pawsteps and the wind and the talking fade away, the only feeling that of his own blood passing through his body, and the ground under his many limbs. He didn't even realize where he was, for the longest time, walking until he felt a large structure in front of him, an action that made him pause. It seemed familiar, almost. Something about the shape reminded him of...

Oh.

He was in front of the library.

He sat there, 'head' tilted up as if looking at it, though anyone who looked at him, at his once verdant eyes now drowned in white could tell that he wasn't seeing anything. And he waited, for something to happen, far too afraid to walk in, and too confused at his own body to leave.

Why had he brought himself here?

(don't bother matching if you don't feel like it lmao
except for you, stilly, bc i know you'll do it anyway)

tags - "speech"

[wormwood.]

Everything stays, right where you left it.

But it still changes, ever so slightly, daily and nightly.

Focusing on everything except for your own unpleasant thoughts, at least to Aurum, was a godsend. As of late, he had found less and less going on in his head that he needed to distract himself from, but when he did need to? He still enjoyed the feeling of just throwing himself out into the world, desperately seeking out every avenue of work or play he could find just so that he wouldn't have to focus on the suffocating thoughts that were choking him. Never had he considered it a sort of meditation, though. Usually, he just thought of it as a grand escape from meditation, because he always thought of meditating as focusing inward, and watching yourself deteriorate as the bad thoughts closed in around you. Some claimed that meditation was their godsend, but the lion found that he was never able to believe them, or understand them. The closest the proxy ever found himself coming to a form of meditation was... reminiscing, he supposed. After all, when he was fondly reminiscing about old memories that he missed, he actually felt... happy, and relaxed. He didn't feel as though everything was tumbling in around him, in a desperate chase to erase everything good from his existence. Instead, he felt like he was watching an amazing movie, or indulging himself in a wonderful book. He could find himself back in the paws of a younger version of himself, and even though sometimes that could bring bad things with it, it could also bring a lot of good as well.

The angel had certainly noticed that... something was going on with Abathur. It was impossible for him not to, really. Although it wasn't some official "angel power" or anything like that, Aurum liked to think that he was tuned into the emotions of his clanmates around him, since it usually enabled him to help them – or at least try to help them – before anybody else would. Usually this was really just him noticing the small details, like the way that Abathur was seemingly zoning out occasionally as of late, an occurence that Aurum had not known the arachnid to do at all in the past. After all, Abathur had constantly been hyper focused, using his knowledge and precision to articulate things to people quickly and carefully, sometimes to an extent where the layman could no longer understand. However, lately, the massive spider had been... drifting. Preoccupied, upset, emotional. At least, as close to emotional as Abathur could seemingly get to. Aurum could still remember wandering through the trees and having a mostly finished scarf tossed upon his head, just because Abathur had noticed some minuscule mistake in it. Abathur seemed to have been taking his usual precision and thoughtfulness and focusing it inward, not in a good way. As if he was criticizing himself harshly, and thought that something was wrong. Aurum had no knowledge of the blindness, but he could certainly tell that Abathur was internalizing something, and he had been aching to reach out. He just hadn't been sure how to, really.

Often, Aurum could just be found around the library when he didn't have anything else to do, wandering through the aisles and looking for any new books that particularly caught his eye. He had been on one of these trips when Abathur stopped outside of the library, and when the proxy stepped out and saw the other, he found himself freezing. After a moment of just staring, Aurum quickly put the few books he had picked out aside, pushing them next to the front doors before he quickly descended the steps. Clearing his throat so that Abathur would be aware of his presence, Aurum came to a stop a little bit away, watching the arachnid with concern. He swallowed thickly for a moment before finally speaking, breaking free from his looping thought process, "Abathur...? Abathur, it's Aurum. Are you okay? Your eyes... they don't look quite right." It wasn't the most eloquent the lion had ever been, but what was he supposed to say? He could just come out and ask if Abathur was blind, but that wasn't necessarily what the white milky gaze meant, and he also didn't want to throw the other into a panic... although he honestly couldn't imagine Abathur in a panic.

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