To begin I detailed my ritual such as had been passed down by my ancestors. I expected to be told I was doing something wrong. As it happens the ritual itself is less important than having a ritual. She taught me to cultivate a different fungus than I had used to this point. She gave me the spores to start my own colony. Then we began what she called the “inner work”. An epic quest to find myself inside my own mind. She told me every ritual reveals not only the future but the seer themself. We began the expedition.
I saw lightning strike the desert.
What should have been a promising beginning reminded me of the possibility there may be nothing inside me to know. Am I the desert? I awoke screaming on the sofa, Aurora, fixing eggs in the kitchen. She had me sit and eat.
“When we engage in pursuits of the mind like this it is often too easy to forget that our minds are part of our bodies.”
“What do you mean?”
“The mind doesn’t exist without the body. Eat something. Take a bath if you need one. Take care of your body and your body will take care of your mind.” I looked around at the rotting food and piled junk. “First of all, I said take care of your body, not your living space. And secondly, it’s hard to always practice what you preach. And thirdly, fuck you.” She smirked, “start again.”
I saw a cuttlefish releasing ink then through the blackness a flamingo colony stood still. Lightning struck the desert again.
I am defensive when I do not need to be. When no danger presents itself. Insight here on the desert planet Morricone. When I came to I stood before a mirror and knew that reflected back at me was a stranger. Not in a metaphorical sense, though that I suppose was also true, but in a literal sense. Aurora joined me in the mirror and put a hand on the stranger’s shoulder. “Every journey into the mind is fraught with danger. If you’re not careful in your practice you can end up breaking your mind. And undoing that damage is never easy. Start again.”
I smelled the algal scent of a pond rippling in slow motion. A cave of sleeping bats. I smelled the morning air and heard breath as if in my head. I walked through the cave to locate the pond inside. The darkness inside filled my heart and a chittering began from the bats above. I saw smoke rising backwards into a cigarette.
When I am disturbed or redirected I become unmoored from myself until I can breathe and refocus. Not a terribly interesting insight but I suppose knowing oneself is not always interesting.
We ended for the day.
“Why were you exiled?”
“I refused the visor. These robes are a bio-polymer grown from my own body in a nutrient bath. They help to shed the flesh and focus on the sight. The cables that run from my hood into this device, a chronolytic spindle, aids in the storage and recall of visions. I can access any vision I have had since I put on the spindle which is often helpful when you’re on your tenth or fifteenth sight of the day. All I need do is connect within myself, pull an image or word, and it will cycle through visions matching those criteria. The visor is the final rite. It is a band of obsidian that is permanently affixed over your eyes, effectively blinding you to the world as it is now. I refused. To never see a sunset again would have crushed me. I was the first of the order to do so. And so I was exiled. With no ill will. It’s just they didn’t know what else to do with me.”
“I’ve seen the visor in a vision I had early in my practice. An Adept walking into fire. I know it will help me understand the Forge at that moment, but to get there, I can’t see the path forward.”
She warned me about dreams and worse nightmares increasing in intensity with this work. She instructed me to keep a dream journal and track them. I went back to the Second Chance exhausted and collapsed onto my bed. My dream was this:
I sat in the family kitchen of my youth. My mother nurtured me with both food and affection. Suddenly, my mother was gone and it became apparent the windows and doors had disappeared. I felt my tongue become too large for my mouth and then all the lights flickered out. Who else was in this room with me and with no windows or doors, how would I escape?
We spent the morning going over practices like automatic writing but more importantly we went over astral projection; the method by which I would obtain permission and coordinates from the Adepts at Concord.
“The important thing to remember is that astral, of the stars, projection is an inner-space which is pinned to a given star system. So each star system you can only ever access one astral plane. The last I knew Concord orbited a star they called Lasthope located in this sector at roughly these coordinates.” She slid a piece of paper across the table. “It will be impossible to track or board Concord without the exact coordinates provided by a monk of the order. They do grant audiences but you must astrally project yourself within this star system to be granted permission. Let’s do one more ritual to see you off, if you feel like it.”
“I do. Thank you for everything.”
“Don’t mention it.”
The early morning haze cleared to reveal the beaten tracks of an elk migration. AUTOMATED. Dew drops pooled on an abandoned spider web, weighing it into concavity. EXPANSIVE. I walked down the elk path to find a massive stag, its breath an engine exhaust in the cold morning air. It bowed low. I bowed a return. We parted ways as equals, my spirits further buoyed by this auspicious meeting.
My practice is a well worn path. I seek the approval of those who tread it before me, and I will have it.
We said our goodbyes and she gave me the comms line to connect with her when the channels were clear. I sincerely hoped we would meet again. I checked back in with Captain Darwin to see if he’d made any progress with the Ganthanum. He had and he thanked me. An engineer he works with was retrofitting the transport vehicle with an advanced shielding system using the Ganthanum. He had already reached out to the Bursar to see about additional deliveries of it through normal cargo shipping channels. We spent some time reminiscing and recounting our time with the Vorhath. It truly is a remarkable beast. Then Harrow and I returned to the Second Chance, ready to continue our quest.
Corvid Grin 
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