Poguri’s Awakening

Mother Echo is always busy, her eight legs always in motion. She is the Land of Nou’s first matterstitch – conducting her work in the cave system beneath the capital city of Meridian.

Her role is small but significant in the Great Story of Nou, whispering through the prima materia: that sometimes solid, sometimes liquid, sometimes neither or all-of-the-above-at-once stuff that makes up the world. Every blade of grass in the checkered farms of Ambrosia Hills, the puffy white thistles in the Mellow Marsh, and the sandstone streets of Meridian: all are made from prima materia. It is even the cloth and stitch and warm cottony fluff that gives form to all the Noumina.

As one of the four Great Noumina, the great spider is attuned to the Greater Dreamflow, which carries materia to and from the planet’s Core to keep the colorful landscapes looking…well, Nou.

In her time, Echo has helped countless Noumina. Injuries are common enough after all – a missing nose or a torn ear; even some extreme cases where a limb or tail needs to be replaced. But this thing that Grace brought to the Stitchery, it is hard to imagine that it was ever alive at all. The static on the weblines makes it difficult for her to concentrate: anxious rumors already spreading throughout the city of the “orphan” that washed up at the Sunspring.

Echo rushes everyone out, closing and sealing all the entrances, and ordering that no one disturb her. Everyone except her apprentice, Grace, who will be assisting her directly. The wallaby looks up with conviction, but Echo can see the anxiety behind her eyes.

“Come then, let us begin,” the great spider says.

Mother Echo beckons Grace to come closer, which she does after a moment of hesitation, and together they gaze down at the task before them. A dark blue overcoat lies in tatters, the fabric full of holes, the edges frayed. Two black boots have started to detach from their soles. A pair of long fuzzy brown ears, not attached to a head or anything else, sits in a loose bundle. The rest is little more than tubes and fluff, not so much a Noumin as the assorted pieces of one – incompletely formed or completely torn apart.

“Putting a fellow back together from little more than parts cannot be done,” Echo says matter-of-factly. “Once the lesser dreamflow is disrupted – the head severed, the core destroyed, or the body torn asunder – a Noumin’s life comes to an end and they return to the Dreamflow.”

“B-but…” Grace shuffles her feet, fidgeting with obvious discomfort.

“I do not mean to dampen your enthusiasm, or to imply that we will not give it our best effort, but you must not set your heart on any particular outcome. You are likely to be disappointed.”

The truth is the Mother Echo would be disappointed, too. In spite of all of her knowledge and experience she somehow feels that this stranger has been brought into the world – and to her – for a specific purpose. It is her own sense of this purpose that drives her to attempt the impossible.

“Watch closely now,” she says to Grace, “And stay alert.”

Staring down a variety of lenses and scopes, Mother Echo pulls, cuts, stitches, molds, weaves, stuffs, and mends. Her pincers regulate the flow of materia into the work as she needs it. At her instruction, Grace holds two edges of fabric together to be sewn, or uses her own needles to help complete a complex cross-stitch.

But the mending won’t take. Even though they have practically rebuilt the stranger from scratch, the composition refuses to resolve itself.

“Mother Echo?” Grace says, “Why won’t the dreamflow pathways reconnect?”

“You are approaching the problem with too much precision,” the great spider says, “You must remember to think of the lesser dreamflow as…”

“I remember,” says Grace, “That which circulates within each one of us is a mere microcosm of the Greater Dreamflow, that which gives life to the planet itself.”

“Correct. And so, if a tree falls ill, the keepers must trace the sickness all the way to…?”

Grace’s eyes light up. “The Core! Of course! So then, you’re saying we need to examine his totem?”

Mother Widow chitters her approval. “You’ve got it,” she says, “But you are not yet ready for such an intimate procedure. I will take over from here.”

Disappointment weighs down Grace’s expression, but as the wallaby returns her gaze to the stranger, Mother Echo sees the same conviction that convinced her to select the wallaby as her apprentice in the first place.

“You can save him, Mother Echo. I know it.”

Echo probes the stranger’s core, touching the totem buried deeply within and tracing the lines of creation to learn of his role in the Great Story. But as she wades through the darkness, a swirling grey mist blocks her scrying. Persistent, she probes deeper, and then, a sudden flash. The light sears her mind’s eye, and she is assailed by the acrid stench of burning fabric and the bitter stab of burnt sugar coating the inside of her mouth.

Then it passes. The Stitchery air is as it always has been, its damp earthy notes filling in around her. The whole experience – the light, the heat, the charred Essence – has been entirely in her mind. But for that, no less real.

Grace looks up at her with curiosity. “What happened?”

The great spider shakes her head. “No. Nothing.”

In that one strange moment, the engravings along the surface of the totem told her what she never would have believed otherwise. She isn’t even certain if she believes it now. Could the rumors be true?

But how? Why now?

To her knowledge – and it is vast – no orphans have ever appeared in the Great Story. They are little more than myths that emerged from wild speculation – one of the many what ifs of the relationships between dreamers and their mediums. The stranger’s totem has all the distinctive markings of a medium, yet he lacks any specific imprint, as if all evidence of the dreamer who summoned him has been worn smooth.

For her part, Echo has managed to make something whole out of little more than miscellaneous parts. But the end result is not what she expects. While she knows the capital city fetches all types, this fellow is unlike anyone – or anything – she has ever seen.

The overcoat has been thoroughly re-stitched, the larger holes covered with multicolored patches. The boots, fully mended, stick out from the bottom, and the two rabbitish ears poke out through holes at the top. As an afterthought she decides to use the leftover stuffing to trim the edges of the hood and the coat’s bottom hem.

“Mother Echo?” Grace’s eyes are filled with anticipation, “Is it done? Is he…?”

“It is too early to say,” the great spider says, “All we can do now is wait.”

Grace nods slowly. “And this?” she says of a little ball of yellow fluff they had somehow managed to overlook.

“Some kind of tail, perhaps? Give it here.”

Echo quickly stitches the fluff ball to the Noumin’s bottom using a knotty length of rope. Exhausted, she sets her work aside. If there were going to be any answers, they would have to come from the stranger himself. But looking at him now, she wonders if her intuition was wrong, if this thing was ever alive at all. She gazes down into the hood, into a darkness of such depth that looking for too long gives her the sense of falling into a void.

“I need to rest,” she says, as she climbs back into the shadows of the Stitchery’s rotunda. Grace nods in acknowledgement, but she doesn’t move from the stranger’s side. Echo knows that in spite of her warnings, her apprentice has every hope that the strange Noumin will recover.

“Who are you, stranger?” the wallaby whispers.

“What are you?” thinks Mother Echo.

****

A spark of consciousness flares in the void. But it cannot penetrate the darkness alone. The stranger feels something even blacker than the void itself reach down and take hold of him. It coils around his body, gently at first, almost a caress. Then the embrace tightens, first secure, then restricting, and finally crushing. For just an instant, he thinks he hears a small voice cry out to him from the dark.

Wake up!

And from this place of endless darkness and pervasive cold, the stranger climbs into a world of vivid color and soaking warmth. First sight: colors igniting into a brilliant haze and slowly cooling to fill in every last detail, highlight, and shadow. Then feeling: electric waves coursing outward from his core to bring life to plush limbs.

A large circular cavern surrounds him, illuminated by large glowing crystals of blue, yellow, and red set within its earthen walls. It has the look of a workshop, cluttered in spite of its considerable size, with soft, cushiony materia clusters and tall spools of colorful thread. Shelves carved into the walls are overloaded with jars of colorful orbs, powders, and liquids. Short rocky platforms are stacked high with other miscellaneous items including needles, layers of cloth, and twisted bundles of tubing.

At the center stands a thick white pillar, its gnarled surface coated in patches of glistening blue moss. A white staircase wraps around it, spiraling into the darkness above and winding down into a circle of empty space cut into the brown earth.

A movement to his left draws his attention to a pair of focused emerald green eyes, deeply set into an honest face. The cream-colored wallaby looks at him for a moment longer, then her expression suddenly flashes from intrigue to surprise and she leaps back and away from him.

“Mother Echo!” she shrieks. There is excitement in her voice.

He feels the movements of something big – something enormous – something whose Presence is greater still. The giant thing stirs, high within the distant reaches of the cavern, a movement the stranger sees inside his mind before he sees it with his eyes. Then all at once, with an unlikely speed for its size, a majestic black spider descends on eight fingery legs. In spite of its sudden entrance and considerable size, the spider does not inspire fear. It gazes upon him with six red eyes, each a different size as viewed through the various lenses and scopes affixed to its large furry head.

“Hmmmm?” A rumbling voice starts deep inside the spider’s abdomen and resonates between her pincers with a harmonic chime. “You’re awake,” she exclaims, moving closer and looming tall above him. “Now, who are you?”

The stranger fumbles for the answer at the edge of a deep crevasse, wrenching it from the fathomless dark flooding his mind. His throat is an hourglass – words like dry sand barely able to slip through – and he can’t feel his mouth.

“Po…Poguri…” he rasps.

“Poe-gyur-ree,” repeats the wallaby, sounding out the name delicately, as if it might fall apart in her mouth. She extends the final syllable, showing all of her teeth in a bright smile. “It is a pleasure to meet you,” she says, “I am called Grace, and this is…”

“Mother Echo,” the spider says, “First Matterstitch of the Land of Nou.”

“Where am I?” asks Poguri.

The spider’s six eyes focus on him for a long time. “You are inside my Stitchery, beneath the city of Meridian.”

Meridian. He struggles to remember, probing the dark depths of his mind. He touches a vague memory: a flash of color, the echo of laughter, and the warmth of sunlight overhead.

“How did I get here?” he asks.

The wallaby and the spider exchange glances.

“Grace found you,” says Mother Echo, “Over by the Sunspring. But you were…”

A strange expression crosses the wallaby’s face. For just an instant she looks ill, but quickly composes herself.

“M-Mother Echo,” she mumbles, her gaze fixing upon the ground, “ I don’t think we should…”

“He has the right to know,” says the spider, “It may help him to remember.”

A lengthy silence. Grace swallows hard and looks up into Mother Echo’s eyes. Then she nods, and turns towards Poguri.

“When I found you,” she says, “You were in pretty bad shape. The others at the Sunspring didn’t even realize that you were a Noumin at all. Since dreamsprings act as gateways between different parts of Nou, it’s common enough to find someone separated from their belongings – you know, springdrift. I might’ve made the same mistake if I hadn’t found…your ears nearby.” The sickly look returns to her face. “I gathered up everything I could find and rushed here to Mother Echo.”

The great spider nods. “I had just about given up trying to put you back together,” she says, “In all my time as a matterstitch, I had never seen injuries like yours. Imagine my surprise when you awoke. To be honest, it amazes me that you are able to move or speak at all.”

Mother Echo hesitates, her mandible pinching at the air. “As Grace says, there wasn’t…much to work with. I had to improvise in places.”

Poguri gazes down the length of his body, examining his arms, the full length of his overcoat, and then down at his black boots. He reaches up and feels along his ears. Nothing seems out of place. But he doesn’t know if he would recognize it if it were.

“Improvise?”

“Let’s just say you should hold on to your overcoat.” Mother Echo makes a series of clicking sounds. She closes her eyes and a tremble courses through her body.

Grace’s face registers a look of disbelief. “Mother Echo, are you…laughing?”

The great spider’s eyes open their widest. “I do not laugh, child,” she says, with just a trace of amusement in her voice. Her body stiffens as she struggles to bring the trembling under control. Grace giggles. Poguri glances back and forth between them.

“Forgive me, little one, I seldom get the chance to…” She shakes her massive head. “At any rate, take heed,” she says, her voice hard as stone, “That coat of yours is practically the only thing holding the rest of you together.”

Poguri’s ears twitch, and he wraps his arms around his body. The smile drains from Grace’s face. There is a long, awkward silence, and then Mother Echo turns to Poguri with her usual piercing gaze.

“I do not mean to suggest that a brisk run through the streets will see you come undone,” she says, “I am merely advising you to be cautious.”

Poguri nods, and pulls his arms in closer. “Thank you,” he says, “For saving my life.”

The great spider shakes her furry head. “It is my role, little one,” she says, “It is in my nature. Aside from that, there were certain peculiarities that compelled me.”

“What do you mean?”

Grace gives Mother Echo a questioning look. Perhaps this is the first she has heard of these “peculiarities”.

“Ordinarily a Noumin’s totem guides my stitching,” says the spider, “As the totem defines who and what a Noumin is, it allows me to restore them to their original condition. But I was unable to determine much of anything from yours.”

Poguri can visualize his totem as clearly as if it has been carved inside his mind. He can feel its rough-hewn edges and curves – a small black figurine deeply buried at his core, beneath all the cloth and tubes and fluff. It doesn’t look like much, but it whispers to him – his name amongst other things – and about the world. But many of the details are blurred, clouded by a bitter gray noise.

“I think whatever obscures your memories is the same thing that barred me from scrying your totem.” Mother Echo shifts her considerable weight. “But there were soft impressions that osmosed through the darkness and gave me enough, as I said, to improvise.”

Grace looks at Poguri with sympathetic eyes. “Do you remember anything about what happened to you before you showed up here?”

Fragments float on the surface of his memory, but probing any deeper is to fumble blindly through the dark. Worse, it makes his head hurt, like something inside his hood is stitched too tight, the pain running all the way to the tips of his ears.

But then a sudden series of images flashes through his mind, of being submerged in golden water, with a blurry figure looming over him. Eager brown hands break the surface and wrap around his body, their grip firm but gentle as they pull him out of the water.

His vision clears and a small dark face looks back at him, the face of a dreamer, one of the enigmatic visitors from the other world. The boy, as he remembers some of the dreamers are called, is short and bony, an array of sharp angles. He has a burnished brown complexion and untamed waves of coarse golden hair. There is a haunted quality to his deep-set chestnut eyes – an intensity that frays Poguri at the edges.

A bombardment of emotions washes over him. Panic. Urgency. Need.

Fire ignites in the darkest recesses of his mind. He remembers that there are two worlds – this one the Dreaming, that one the Waking. He remembers that the dreamers are the only ones from either side capable of crossing back and forth, and the mediums…

“Poguri?” Grace’s voice, laced with anxiety.

The vision washes away and he is back inside Mother Echo’s Stitchery. He presses gloved hands to either side of his head, but as the dark barrier re-establishes he is unable to see anything more.

“Are you still with us, little one?” Mother Echo. Closer than before. Scrutinizing him through her lenses and scopes.

“Your eyes went dark all of a sudden,” Grace says, “We thought…”

“I remembered something,” Poguri says, “A golden lake. I was in the water, struggling to climb out, when someone with large hands reached down to grab me. Then I saw him. I-I remember him.”

“Who?” asks Mother Echo.

“Elan,” says Poguri, shaking his head. “My companion.”

The wallaby and the spider exchange glances. Poguri sees in Grace’s face the moment she makes the realization.

“Are you saying…” Mother Echo moves in closer, and Poguri can feel the weight of her gaze. “That you really are a medium?”

He nods, understanding the gravity of his claim. Mediums aren’t just any Noumina, but the physical link between dreamers and the Land of Nou, revered for their roles as emissaries.

“If what you say is true then perhaps the golden lake you saw was the Sunspring,” says Mother Echo, “And your vision was a memory of the Ritual of the Calling.”

Ritual of the Calling? Of course. The ceremony during which the dreamers summon the mediums from the Dreamflow – create their bodies from raw materia.

“The final rite is for the new medium to be immersed in the waters of the Sunspring, instilling the breath of life.” Echo rises to her full height. “But if you are indeed a medium, Poguri, then I fear your situation is worse than we thought.”

Grace’s eyes widen. “Mother Echo, surely you don’t mean…? But those are just rumors.”

Poguri glances back and forth between the spider and the wallaby, a prickle of apprehension standing his ears on end. The tension in the air is palpable.

“That you turned up here in such a condition, alone and unaccounted for, might suggest that you are…an orphan.”

Orphan. The word itself doesn’t mean anything to him, but something in Mother Echo’s tone sends a chill coursing through his body.

“W-what does it mean?” he asks.

“There are only whispers in the Great Story,” says Mother Echo, “But it is said that if the connection between medium and dreamer is severed, the dreamer would be cast out of Nou forever.”

“How would it be severed?” Poguri asks.

The spider seems hesitant to continue. “One obvious possibility would be…if the medium were to suffer grievous bodily harm, physically breaking the dreamer’s connection to this world. The medium would dissolve back into the Dreamflow, never to emerge again.”

Grace fidgets with obvious discomfort.

“But…I’m still here,” says Poguri.

“Which raises a number of questions,” says Mother Echo, “Perhaps your return was disrupted somehow, with parts of you washing up here in Meridian instead.”

“Or maybe the connection is still in tact?” says Poguri, “If Elan is still here, then I must try to find him.”

“I suppose all things are possible by the Dreamflow,” Mother Echo nods. “In that case, your first priority should be to regain the time you’ve lost. It might give you an idea of where to start looking.”

“Isn’t there anything else we can do to help, Mother Echo?”

The spider seems contemplative. “Memories are beyond my ability to re-stitch, but there is one thing I can do. Grace…”

“Yes?”

“Take Poguri up to the scrying chamber.”

“Oh yes, of course!” says the wallaby, thumping her tail, “That’s a great idea.”

“What is the scrying chamber?” Poguri asks.

“It is something you will have to see for yourself,” says Mother Echo.

“This way, Poguri,” says Grace, bouncing her way to the white pillar and spiral staircase.

He follows her up into the darkest reaches of the cavern, where the crystal torches cannot reach. A pale green light carves an opening in the ceiling, revealing the entrance to another large chamber above…