Don't Forget to Breathe

It was only a matter of hours before Bunnu was to be imprisoned and it would take several more years before he was able to marshal the resources for his daring escape, the first in a series of which would eventually propel him to notoriety within the Republic as one of the greatest escape artists of all time. Yet, at the moment, his immediate concerns were of a different nature.

Now, he stood frozen in place, listening to a sound that usually wouldn’t otherwise capture his attention; an insignificant, everyday sound that, for some reason, brought the past back to him with a renewed clarity.

And as the other cell doors swung open and inmates filed out to make their way to the Yard, Bunnu now envisioned them: these surly gray fibrous masses beyond his door, in the spaces between walls, trolling the depths of the building itself—hunched, faceless amalgamations of loosely-configured men, leaking abrasive Matter upon the hard surface of the floors when even the slightest breeze whistled through their cavernous bristled epidermis. He imagined them: these husky, ashen Beings, scurrying in droves through damp, uninviting corridors, nestled back against the wall, lingering behind corners, lying in wait for even the smallest squeak of his door hinge, so that they may swarm inward upon him and the bristles that comprised them could unravel and twirl in his direction, skimming from ceiling to floor, scraping against the walls and curving in through the crevice to creep along the shivering mass of cells upon his exterior and cover the body whole. His hand would freeze upon the door knob and be shattered to splinters of flesh as he, in defiance of this coarse invasion, struggled to break free of their grip: to no avail. Gray fibers covered with loose granules of cosmic dust—similar in consistency to incense ash—would plunge through every orifice in search of alveoli to stop the breathing at its source. He would then be flooded with this strange, granular matter and made to respire by proxy as the invading agent would not allow him the benefit of self-respiration, as it was too selfish and far less efficient than the sort of respiration that could be achieved through mutual means.
Bunnu shivered as he broke into a cold sweat.
The very anticipation of this process was, for him, horrifying, for he could imagine the Dust spiraling in corners, plotting en masse an elaborate offensive upon those who sought seclusion from the outside Universe. The Dust: it was older than Time, bound by its allegiance to the Tangible—to the very Physical Substance of creation— to make pointed attacks fueled by conspiracy upon its bitter rival, the amorphously-composed Intangible Will. This conflict, too, was older than time: one that had always existed and one that continues perpetually between the abstractions of Tangible Form and those of Intangible Will, the two locked in eternal combat for they could know no other state than to oppose the infringement of each upon the confines of the other. The tangible, however, was more resolved—more given to complicity—for without this, there was no hope of overcoming the tenacity of something so refined. Accordingly, there were many natures to such Dust, many inclinations that Bunnu was impelled to delineate—for the sake of convenience—by arbitrary color. For example, red dust, though it wasn’t truly red, came as a result of an incredible shift in gravitational force, perhaps from an explosion of a vast star in a distant galaxy. The particles of dust traveled and accumulated through void, attracting each to the other by sheer weight of their micro-gravities as they fused with hot gas to form masses, which would loom in stasis for many billions of years and later crumble to their constituents in vast explosions, sending each particle off again upon its own distinct immaculate trajectory. These particles carry with them their memories in aggregation of them with their associates and of their associates with their collection of foregone associates, allowing them by means of interconnecting social networks to seek old members of former Alma Maters (i.e. one particle of red dust recognizes another that he had once been fused together with to form a rock on the surface of a distant planet and seeks to relive old glories together. The particle, in question, however, is wedged between the teeth of a beached whale, and thus the alliance-seeking granule, must seek to merge with the whale itself in order for this reunion to become a reality).
It was these elements of the outside that Bunnu had now come to fear. This cosmic dust which plotted against him and sought to sap his Will with impurities: he had no choice but to resist it, for his insulation from the outside world had given him purpose. He could not, now, allow the outside to infiltrate the defenses and make inroads to that part of him untouchable even by Light and Dark.

Scattered waves roll back in to the sea.