Day 2: Eidolons

You had asked me yesterday, dear Reverend, as to how I could recall Moth’s fall into the Nerys despite not having seen it myself. What I tell you now is all she had told me, for I ought to know all the knowledge she had obtained and continues to. I am to embody her as I recall her experiences, and as she cannot yet be physically present with us, She and I are one in the same. Though Moth is within all of her children and as I, Poemandres (for I may now take no other name), hold her within me especially close.

There was a time however, when Moth had not held her children so closely, harboring only resentment instead. Surrounded by the swarms of hairy larvae that bared the faces of those children who had been lost to the gaseous corridors of the Nerys, her pneumatic self began to fluctuate in and out of actual consciousness. Still that part of herself she had held most dear (that being psyche, dearest Reverend) could only attempt to suggest the possession of a physical body. Unable to maintain a body for longer than a moment. The larvae, undulating up the crowded riverbed onto dry land where they shook in unison, had begun to vibrate—akin to music, to get rid of the thick sludge that was River Nerys.

Moth, maintaining incorporeality, bounced from larva to larva, consciousness to consciousness, worldly vision to spiritual and back to drifting through the wireframes that had built Ennoia. It was difficult to tell how long this cycle had repeated itself, but with later evidence, I’ve come to believe that it had taken whole years from her life. 

The cycle ended, as all cycles do when a conclusion is decided by (what I had believed before) pure happenstance. Moth’s pneumatic memories found themselves filling into the one larva that had held the most symmetrical of horns and the ability to fly. She found that in this form, her mind could be stabilized as the body demanded that she be so (as a ruler is denied of anxieties or fears having been exonerated by a force beyond them). Moth however had found herself in control of the larvae she called eidolons, as the Paraclete had decided it so. For the decisions of the Paraclete were to be Moth’s as well. They could see that the minute second that Moth’s consciousness had found the body —from the millions that ran through the Nerys —was the only appropriate isolated moment by which she could be exonerated to rule over the larvae. This I had once found difficult to believe Dear Reverend, in fact I denied it, denied her! Did the years of toiling incorporeality deny any chance of happenstance, or perhaps —had she not found the body that the Paraclete found appropriate, continue wandering until the end of time?

I have come to believe that it was neither but instead Moth’s own decisions that led her to being the empress of the eidolons. For Moth knows all and had decided long ago, that this was to happen —as she was responsible for her resurrection and therefore all miracles following would be hers alone. She decided to test this theory as she stood upon a metallic corpse of a hoplite who had once fought against the sea, sending in her eidolons through all opening, cracks or crevices. The density of the corpse’s armor compressed the souls of Moth’s lost children and infiltrated the body of that who had once piloted himself. Their minds swarmed as one yet remained screaming as individuals. Moth stood back and I took my first steps.

I hadn’t much control of myself then dear Reverend, and when I look back to those times as I am now, I long for that wonder that had once been confused for fear. Though if I were to return to that distant past, I would be rescinding the faith I hold towards Moth, and return to the vacant noise of that cold shell of armor. 

I have no more to say about this dear Reverend. Should you return tomorrow, I shall be of right mind to say more.