It was absolutely terrifying. He didn’t know what was happening. Didn’t know who – or what – he was. His perceptions of the world made no sense. He had no way of understanding the sensations coming to him from his eyes, his ears, or his skin. The words that came to him were meaningless in their multitude. Even as his mind began to organize and simplify, the languages baffled him.
Every time he conceived a thing – an object, a thought, a body part – he had dozens of ways to name it. There was no way to tell which one was right. In as much as he knew he was human – again – he thought he was going crazy. Every time an idea crystallized in his mind, it fragmented into thousands of pieces. He knew he had once known how to describe these things, how to understand the world around him in all of the ways. But now there were too many, and he couldn’t distinguish between them.
It calmed him to decide they were all correct. And while he may have once had a mother tongue, it was no longer dominant. Whatever word solidified first and rang the truest in his head became what he called these new sensations and experiences, this new body.
From any other perspective, it was crazy. He was crazy. Daniel spent his first days back in the human sphere babbling in over 20 languages, never using the same one consecutively within a sentence. Then, gradually, the words organized themselves. It was miraculous, and so beautiful he no longer wanted to kill himself to stop the chaos. His entire lexicon bloomed in his mind, becoming almost corporeal, like a living – no, evolving – thing within his head.
He would have been content to spend the rest of his life just following the ways connections jointed it, how it could be deconstructed and rebuilt, how nearly every part of it could be altered and reformed to do just about anything.
When his mind came back completely, he wasn’t surprised to find out he had a Ph.D in philology.
2. He relearned his body.
The most overwhelming sensation Daniel associates with Descending was pain. He knows that logically, it didn’t hurt. That Oma dropped him into the corporeal sphere as lightly as a feather – a naked feather, but lightly all the same.
But he’d forgotten what – and this sounds dumb and he knows it – feeling felt like. He’d forgotten what having skin was like. What having eyes and eyelids was like, that you had to open your mouth sometimes to breathe, that sounds only traveled finite distances.
He had to relearn how to blink – and how often. His eyes were dry and painful for days, because he kept looking at the sun. Because it was bright and beautiful, even though it made him cry.
More quickly, he learned about the vulnerability of having skin again. His feet started bleeding immediately and he got a dozen splinters (because he was naked – thanks, Oma). Ascertaining what would puncture his skin was both a challenge and almost exciting. Bleeding was actually somewhat fascinating.
He was clumsy for weeks after returning. Standing and walking came automatically, but navigation didn’t. He walked into solid things – trees, doors, other people, small animals – repeatedly. Though he remembered nothing of either living or Ascending at the time, he did know that this was a new problem, and that no matter how hard he tried he could no longer move through solid matter.
![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2007-12-21 04:40 am (UTC)All at once.
It was absolutely terrifying. He didn’t know what was happening. Didn’t know who – or what – he was. His perceptions of the world made no sense. He had no way of understanding the sensations coming to him from his eyes, his ears, or his skin. The words that came to him were meaningless in their multitude. Even as his mind began to organize and simplify, the languages baffled him.
Every time he conceived a thing – an object, a thought, a body part – he had dozens of ways to name it. There was no way to tell which one was right. In as much as he knew he was human – again – he thought he was going crazy. Every time an idea crystallized in his mind, it fragmented into thousands of pieces. He knew he had once known how to describe these things, how to understand the world around him in all of the ways. But now there were too many, and he couldn’t distinguish between them.
It calmed him to decide they were all correct. And while he may have once had a mother tongue, it was no longer dominant. Whatever word solidified first and rang the truest in his head became what he called these new sensations and experiences, this new body.
From any other perspective, it was crazy. He was crazy. Daniel spent his first days back in the human sphere babbling in over 20 languages, never using the same one consecutively within a sentence. Then, gradually, the words organized themselves. It was miraculous, and so beautiful he no longer wanted to kill himself to stop the chaos. His entire lexicon bloomed in his mind, becoming almost corporeal, like a living – no, evolving – thing within his head.
He would have been content to spend the rest of his life just following the ways connections jointed it, how it could be deconstructed and rebuilt, how nearly every part of it could be altered and reformed to do just about anything.
When his mind came back completely, he wasn’t surprised to find out he had a Ph.D in philology.
2. He relearned his body.
The most overwhelming sensation Daniel associates with Descending was pain. He knows that logically, it didn’t hurt. That Oma dropped him into the corporeal sphere as lightly as a feather – a naked feather, but lightly all the same.
But he’d forgotten what – and this sounds dumb and he knows it – feeling felt like. He’d forgotten what having skin was like. What having eyes and eyelids was like, that you had to open your mouth sometimes to breathe, that sounds only traveled finite distances.
He had to relearn how to blink – and how often. His eyes were dry and painful for days, because he kept looking at the sun. Because it was bright and beautiful, even though it made him cry.
More quickly, he learned about the vulnerability of having skin again. His feet started bleeding immediately and he got a dozen splinters (because he was naked – thanks, Oma). Ascertaining what would puncture his skin was both a challenge and almost exciting. Bleeding was actually somewhat fascinating.
He was clumsy for weeks after returning. Standing and walking came automatically, but navigation didn’t. He walked into solid things – trees, doors, other people, small animals – repeatedly. Though he remembered nothing of either living or Ascending at the time, he did know that this was a new problem, and that no matter how hard he tried he could no longer move through solid matter.