Mirabilis

I blink awake slowly, my senses seem to be dialled up to a hundred or it's really hot, the wind is searing on my skin, the rocks are really sharp and the sun is glaring very brightly today. I groan as the pounding of my head increases as I try to get up. I heave out another mouthful of something foul and the heave turns into a cough.

There is a pounding sound that is slowly getting louder before a shadow blots out the sun, giving me a reprieve from one of the many things currently assaulting me. I look up with a squint and she Jonah glaring down at me before shaking his head and moving away. The pounding is the sound his feet make as he stomps off towards Michael. I know I should be there checking on him as well but Estergon is already there and soon so will Jonah. Besides, the glare of the sun is back and I'm still trying to get a hold of myself.

I breathe in and out slowly trying to centre myself and pull it all in but let it pass over me. It doesn't control me, nothing controls me, I feel these sensations but I am beyond them. I breathe as I tell myself this, not trying to stop myself from feeling but trying to control my discomfort and reaction to the stimuli.

I feel everything, I am everything, I am one with the wind, the rocks, the sunlight. I breathe and centre myself as slowly but surely all the amplified senses seem to become more manageable. I stand and stretch before fully opening my eyes. There is something lodged and growing at the pit of my stomach or at least it feels like there is. Almost like a full bladder in need of relieving, but this definitely isn't pee because it feels hot and pleasant inside me like a building orgasm. Michael is still out but I stumble towards them anyway, Jonah picks hip up onto a shoulder and starts walking towards the path.

"Is he okay?" I ask as Jonah walks passed me.

"I said you could drink, not go for a bloody swim. Do you have any idea how many people don't return from meddling with these ponds?" He asks rhetorically before stamping off away.

"Sorry," I say lamely to his back.

Estergon is quiet but passes me my clothes before starting to get dressed himself. "Did you manage to drink? I don't think Jonah will let us up here again." I ask him, last I saw him he was just staring into to the water. He just grunts and begins stumbling towards Jonah drunkenly. Yep, he definitely drank.

We stable on together, me trying to control the reaction to my senses and hold in the building pressure inside me from blowing, it will be so good when I finally let it out. I think to myself in order to reinforce the importance of not letting it out up here right now. We eventually reach the cloud and struggle for a while to walk through it without losing our footing and plummeting to our deaths in this disoriented state.

How do the bloody earthlings manage this route in this state, I'm starting to have a whole lot more respect for them now. We are saved from a stupid death by the unmistakable aura of Rumeria flaring up a stones throw away and we following it down and out of the cloud as carefully as we can.

"Thanks for coming to get us," I say leaning on him slightly to relieve the pressure building within me, and I'm so tired.

"Are you kidding me? A free and easy way of getting power without much effort and you think I would miss that?" He asks with a laugh while taking out his water skin I assume to show us the liquid inside.

"It's empty," I say the obvious as I watch him pressing the skin with a bewildered expression. "The water can't be collected, you have to drink from up there," I say putting it together.

"Shit." He says then looks up longingly then at us and up again then at us and sighs. "Once you guys feel better you will accompany me up there, I'm not sure I could make it back down safely alone judging by the states you're both in." He says helping us down.

It takes several hours but we eventually get to the cave. I immediately go towards Jonah and he grunts before indicating I follow him. We go through his private side door that no one is allowed in inside the cave, through a completely dark corridor into a forking path, to the right is a pool is still clear water, to the left its warded so I can't feel anything. We go left and a door is opened into a very well furnished study with a small library of books all over the walls. Mahogany rags and black iron wood are not things you expect to find in a cave.

We walk through the study without much ceremony and through another door, down some twisting stairs and into an armoury. To the left of the armoury is another warded door and that is apparently our destination. I'm practically jumping up and down from holding it in so long. Inside the door is a round room are a wide thick sleeping cot and a pot plant with a strange tree growing inside the large clay pot. The walls are enchanted to produce a dim light when a person walks in and also warded for strength and protection.

"You will stay here until you finish the first part of your awakening, you probably won't need food or rest or water. The cave will tell me if you are close to dying so don't worry about holding back I'm curious what you will ultimately Awaken as, though you pissed me off today, enjoy." He says as he slams the door in my face and I hear him walk away.

I moan as I let it out and have the single most amazing orgasm that has ever been experienced since the birth of the worlds. I let go and am just free and pure pleasure that borders on pain rocks my entire body and mind. I convulse on the floor as fluids gush from my nether lips and drool from my other lips. That's the last thing I remember before more energy that I have ever imagined rushes through me, using me as a conduit of some kind to condense itself and change itself into a different kind of energy.

My mind opens to new things and concepts that it just isn't ready for. And most of them make no sense but some of them, some of them could change the face of the world.

* *

Michael

I come slowly to consciousness, which is completely different from waking from sleep. I keep my eyes closed feigning sleep and paying close attention to all my senses before remembering what has happened and where I am. I sigh as I sit up and look around there is no one around in the cave but something is definitely different.

I stand and the fur blanket that was on me slides off, I'm naked. I have no pubs I notice, I have no hair under my armpits, I touch my head. As bald as a baby's ass, so is my face. Okey, I doubt anyone had time to shave me so this must have happened in that strange water, that was a terrifying experience by the way but I survived, we all survived.

I can't put a finger on the difference I feel or perceive but I table that for finding clothes. After putting on one of those robe things I find lying around I walk outside and find no one in the immediate vicinity. I look around for any unusual sights, a few raptors are circling and diving into another part of the mountain lower down as though they are attacking something. An eagle flies higher up without fear as it gazes on the land below. Down on the ground, I can see some of the most enormous herbivorous dinosaurs eating away at the trees in packs, they have to be in packs for on this world even dinosaurs aren't apex animals.

I take a deep breath and think on my life to this point. Growing up in and around New York, becoming a soldier, becoming a husband and a father, finding myself spiritually, my love of exploring and travelling that the army nearly took out of me. My many interests and hobbies especially after the accident when I had nothing but time alone trapped in my own mind and body unless I used my time for something challenging, always trying to improve myself and become more than I thought it was possible to be. And now I'm here, in a world with dinosaurs and magic and pools of water that take you to other worlds. It's all very unreal for me and I really don't know how I haven't had a panic attack or an existential crisis or something.

There is also a denial in me still about the time difference between Earth and Gaia, I can't accept that I never got to see James grow up and have kids of his own. That little Jennifer will never know the scent of her father or the love that I have even now swelling for her in my chest. I'm training my ass off to acquire a level of skill that could make me be able to take care of myself in this beautiful dangerous world that is the true home of humanity but I have no true goal worthy of the sagas.

I want to be able to travel, I want to explore all of Gaia without fear of attack or death, but I want more than that as well. I want to be the very best I can be, I owe it to myself to be the ultimate Michael O'Hare I can become and many of the limits I had to contend with on Earth in achieving that ideal self have been removed.

There is absolutely nothing standing between me and a depth of being I don't even yet understand but I saw it in that pool, I felt it and I now remember. The next step in transcending the human condition, existing as an element, a law of nature that is unsurmountable though that is also a contradiction from the lesson from the thing within my soul, because nothing is insurmountable.

I take another deep breath and now I wonder whether or not I've been breathing at all. I take a breath and hold it, waiting for the discomfort biology has trained me to expect but it doesn't come. I look around myself, I go inside and grab a spear before taking a walk on the mountainside. Going slightly lower because the things that live higher up can easily kill me, all the while holding my breath and trying to understand what is happening to me.

I eventually take another breath not because I need to but because I feel weird not breathing and I can't smell anything, which is also weird in it's own way. I find a cliff with a nice flat rock outcrop and sit on with my feet dangling over the edge to what would be a quick death if I ever fell. I'm enjoying the freedom my body has from itself because I suddenly realise that's what I've acquired my second dip into that pool, I've acquired freedom.

I've been out and about for at least two hours and I don't feel the need to pee or even the slightest of hunger. I am very aware of my body and being disabled makes you aware of exactly what you can't feel so when I don't feel my bladder or hunger for at least an hour I try to evaluate myself, and I have been evaluating myself just from reflex even here on Gaia. Every single one of my senses almost always feels good on Gaia. I think when I Awaken one day if I live long enough I will probably be an Earth Mage or something along those lines. Or is it a Gaia Mage on this planet, I'll have to ask about that sometime, it seems a bit of a misnomer.

I sit on the cliff in a full lotus and take a deep breath to centre myself. I close my eyes and step into myself with my consciousness with a breath and just sink within my mind in meditation. I come back slowly and starting with my breath try to feel my physical body as I feel the bristling of hair follicles in my nose as I inhale and exhale.

I stay there for a while feeling my breathingbas it affects my nose as the air passes into my cavities. Then I let other sensations let themselves be known slowly as they vie for the attention of a part of my awareness that we sometimes refer to as subconscious, the mind between a consciousness and unconscious awareness. That little itch on the thigh were the small bug just walked, that beat of your heart that suddenly seems stronger and louder than the rest, the discomfort in your shoulder from your position as you slept last night, other sensations that are ever present but we mostly ignore in our daily lives.

At least these are the sensations I normally would encounter but what I do encounter instead is a quiet body. Not a body that feels no sensations for it does and they are everywhere even better than they have ever been. No, what I interpret as a quiet body is a body that doesn't complain about any of its minor ailments but instead eases them and balances them until everything is in complete equilibrium within its loop.

Then the knowledge comes slowly as such knowledge does on Gaia and I learn/remember/hear the name of my skill, for that's what I have somehow achieved. I have acquired a Gaia acknowledged skill by the name of homeostasis and I stare at it for a moment in awe, bustling in the wonder and complicated puzzle that is a skill.

I try to feel for everything I can within myself organ by organ, sensation by sensation and it takes a while but eventually I get there. Identifying organs by name as the memory of my anatomy comes easily to mind recalling even the smallest of bones and seemingly the most inconsequential of things. The circulatory system, the nervous system, the digestive system, the respiratory system how they all work, what we got wrong, what we got right, the purpose of 'junk' DNA.

I get lost within myself and my affinity for the human body, or to be specific my affinity for my body increased. I look at my bones and my piping and my cilia and all those little things within my body. The expectation of seeing them seemingly helping me sort of will myself passed the barrier that's been preventing me to see them begin with.

I'm there lost within myself for a while. I don't even know how long but when I do resurface it is complete night and the sight of the stars at night is glorious, and I should get the fuck back to the safety of the cave before one the night predictors come to say hello.