All my hair stood on end as I walked over to the disk, the ground reaching up to replace the broken floor and find level, it was always flat when I stepped but it was hard not to stumble watching the earth shift beneath me. I was still rattled from what I saw before, it happened very fast and I couldn’t quite keep up with what was happening.

“Take it, something to help you keep up with what’s happening.”

Odd, “that’s just what I was thinking, what happened, and what is this?” I peered at the golden medallion in her hand, a black butterfly was scorched into the center, looks like dim charcoal. Flecks of firelight kept appearing in the image like boiling tar.

She smiled again, “here, catch.” And flipped the coin up into the air toward me with her thumb. I must have made a funny noise in surprise as I hurried to catch the flying object, what if it broke or something, I don’t know what this thing is! I caught it in a sort of crouch before it hit the ground and was struck with intense, searing pain.

“HOT!” It stuck to me, oh god it stuck to my hand, “HELP! WHY?” Squirming and squealing on the ground I rolled around unable to remove the searing pain from my hand.

“Which hand ya catch it with?” Rang out my gran’s voice over my screaming, now seated on the floor stroking the beak of her turtle. Marble watched me writhing with concern. I started to get used to the pain, was it going away?

The heat shot up my arm and throughout my whole body, “left arm!” I whimpered. The pain pulsed through my body again and the world went dark.

‘I know, Marble. I know that was rather unpleasant to watch.’ A frown appearing on the smooth face of the ageless woman… ‘You’ve seen me go through worse.’

Nemorosa never aged, no one knows how old she really is, appearing to be somewhere in her early 30s but definitely wasn’t. She ran a lot around our village from behind the scenes, people would seek council, problems would need fixing that only she could figure out; working in her hut or gone out through the trees, preferring always to leave things to others, “letting them figure it out is better than my helping.”

Soft grass and smooth branches enveloped Nita, the ground and house itself swallowing her up at the command of its master, carried up into a bed to rest. Rosa got up from the floor, ‘she’s alright, just pain, no damage. Promise.’ Patting the turtles head in consolation.

ZzZZZaP!

Both her and Marble appeared upstairs in a flash, the turtle groaned disapprovingly. “Oh hush, we can’t all be slow as you!” She mocked.

‘You could warn me next time, damn hag!’ The turtle thought back at her, they both laughed and sat down beside Nita in a newly constructed bed.

She rolled her granddaughters arm over to view her hand, some tender redness emanating from the black symbol now presently embedded in her palm. A pitch black, four winged butterfly. “These things do hurt… sorry sweetheart.” One hand holding Nita’s and the other gently brushing the hair off of her forehead. ‘Mar, I’m gonna be here for a few days. You good to tend the shop?’

‘Yeah Ma, don’t be too harsh with her.’

‘And you don’t get fat off all my fish, I counted them and we both know your limits.’

He huffed dejectedly, maintaining eye contact with the woman as a current welled up beneath him and carried him down the stairs behind him into the house below, a final glance at Nita before his head dipped below the second floor. Nemorosa sat facing away from her granddaughter and the house moved to provide her a seat, with a slight recline in her throne of branches, she closed her eyes.

Deep breaths, enter a rhythm. Don’t think about the rhythm or you will break the rhythm. So Hum… So Hum… Sssooo Hhhuumm… The space behind the eyes opens to reveal a little room, a space, a room isn't quite right. Sitting there is Nita, asleep within her sleep, a little white butterfly flutters about the room, it senses Nemorosa and darts toward Nita’s forehead and dives in. She wakes up with a jolt inside her mind.

‘AH!’ She thinks, startled and looking at a wispy phantasm of her grandmother. I’m in a little room, what and where is this. I have the faintest impression there were things going on in third person perspective while I was away! Rosa snorts at that.

‘You still on fire, hot stuff?’ I blush in my dream at her question, realizing I am not quite… covered. ‘Oh that, yeah, just think clothes on. Like literally, “clothes on”.’ Clothes appear on me. I can hardly feel my edges, I look around the room, my grandma is perched on a stool like a cat.

‘Your fashion is beguiling.’ Her mouth doesn't move and her eyes are little white slits in an otherwise pitch black shadow silhouette, but somehow I know it’s her. ‘Take the talant back out of your forehead, yeah that thing there. Come out.’

The butterfly floats out and shines light throughout the room, pearlescent veins of color run throughout its radiant wings. ‘This here is a man made talant, or me made, hehe cuz I made it! Sort of. Ahem. These things are kinda all over the place, naturally occurring ones, and we don’t really know how exactly they work or what they are… But they’re functional.’ She held up an arm and hundreds of white symbols glow through her void like skin. The tiny room we’re sitting in shatters like an eggshell into an enormous landscape, completely barren, with a starlike orb in what must be the center of it all. I feel like my entire being is oozing out and I have no solid form. ‘You don’t! Everything here is sort of like your imagination, well, your imagination comes from here. That big ball of light is your in-sense.’

‘I’m not sure if I like you being in my head, grandma!’ Everything feels wrong and yucky and my stomach feels like im in free fall and I feel raw emotionality and thought and perception without any sort of container! The big ball of light swivels toward the two of us, it feels as though the entire universe is shifting. At the center of the light is a solid black pupil, it stares directly at me.

LISTEN TO THE MATRIARCH

I feel the voice boom within me and all that is, an intuitive comprehension of what’s going on washes over me, but I can’t quite define it. I turn back to Nemorosa, ‘is he talking about you?’

‘Bahaha, he? That’s you! That’s more you than you are! But yes it’s talking about me. Just to let you get a better picture of what’s going on here, we’re spatially located about two and a half inches behind your eyebrows. Eh, maybe three. Space is weird and I’d rather not get into it now!

I’m not a dumb or gullible person, i’ve never known people to really lie here, this forest has… rules it does not like to have broken. I don’t know if the rules in wherever I am is different, gran isn't getting walloped by a branch, and I trust her as much or more so than The Tree.

A vague impression of a tree appeared within the barren landscape, rather a sprout… I watch it press up through the barren earth. ‘Huh.’ I think.

‘Hehe, so cute.’