Chapter Ten: Getting Lost In A Maze Of Your Words

Aspartame popped a Minto Brand Sweet Breeze Ultraspice Breath Mint into his mouth. Good breath is good breath. You can't deny that. Aspartame couldn't deny that. He couldn't possibly denied the sweet spicy minty freshness of Minto Brand Sweet Breeze Ultraspice Breath Mint. No one could. It was the spiciest mint in town.

He dashed about. Dash dash, smash smash. So much dashy to do. He was dashing he was spinning he was dashing again. What a race to be had.

Aspartame had places to be, people to see, and that people were Stacily. Of course. Stacily is a recurring character.

He dashed fast, he dashed bold.

Stacily said hi to him. He said hi back. Stacily said hi again. You can never say hi too much. They were at Stacily's house by the way. The colorful one. Stacily wasn't dressed all colorfully like before though, she was dressed entirely in gray. But in a cool way.

"Have you tried it yet?" Stacily asked.

"No, I haven't," Aspartame admitted. "Not yet, I'm planning to though."

Stacily grinned. "Good."

"So are we going to think," Aspartame asked.

"Not today," Stacily said. "Let's go somewhere else."

So they walked along one-two-one-two. Together. Bop bop bop. And they went to the park or something. Or maybe they went down to the sea shore to sea the dolphins.

They sat on the ground and waited one-two-one-two. It would happen soon. Nightfall.

And so the night fell like a hammer, striking at the earth. Stars like pin pricks. Moons like eyes looking down on everyone, everything. Moongaze. Soon the moonfish would come out. Thousands of them, maybe even millions. Moonfish swarms to fill every bucket, every see. Moonfish coming out your ears that's how many.

"That's what this is about?" Aspartame gasped.

"No no no," Stacily gasped. "I didn't know. I didn't expect this. I'm so sorry."

Aspartame steeled himself. "It's okay. We can do this together. One-two-one-two."

"I hope so," Stacily whispered. "I really hope so."

They jumped to their feet, ready for what would come. They focused their psychic energy, slowly shifting phase until they were in perfect sync. This was it, Psychic Unity. They projected the astrals outward, striking every rising moonfish with a wave of violent positivity. It had been thirty years since this much psychic energy was focused in one place.

With the immediate threat gone, they sat back down. Here we go again.

"Have I ever told you the story," Stacily started, "the biggest story of them all?"

"No, you've only told me your small stories," Aspartame admitted.

"Here we go," Stacily laughed. "It all started when I met my brother. He decended from the sky on a flaming wheel. The wheel had a thousand flaming eyes, and my brother had a thousand arms, each gripping a sword.

"Of course I wasn't very surprised. I'd heard plenty of stories about my brother. Amazing stories, exciting stories, sometimes even frightning stories. I tried to imagine my brother, the flaming wheel, the thousand arms. And when I finally saw him with my own eyes, somehow he looked exactly like I'd imagined, down to the color of his shining golden eyes. I guess it was the latent psychic link. I hadn't learned to open it yet at that time, but maybe it was leaking a little over the years.

"He spoke to me with a thousand voices, each singing in grand a chorus. He told me all the secrets of the galaxy, revealed to me every psychic connection between each of the millions of planets. Psychic knowledge flowed through my brain, sealing themselves into my local copy of the akashic records, ready to sync themselves with the entirety of entireties at a future, more convenient date.

"Then he handed me one of his thousand swords. He pulled iron from the earth and used his flaming wheel to immediately forge another one in its place. I gazed into the sword's shining blade and realized that the blade with a perfect reflection of myself. We formed a perfect psychic duo. I felt the psychic energy gather in my mind, finally released from its lonely prison. I resonated with the blade, and in turn, resonated with my brother. We formed a perfect resonance, focusing more and more psychic energy into that one small spot.

"The thing about that much psychic energy is that it starts to prime a reverse polarity. When that sort of phenomenology occurs, it can has serious effects on consensus reality in the surrounding evirons, and those sorts of effects can last for weeks even months. In this case, it lasted for years. The area remained a n-type zone for so long, some psychoanalysts thought it might be permenant, in spite of the obvious theoretical issues with such a hypothesis. An n-type zone that resonant simply wasn't known.

"My brother, raised three hundred arms and blessed me with ever fiber of the stars before rising gracefully back into the ether. I've never seen him again, at least with my physical eyes. The latent psychic link was fully awakened, and has remained to this day. When I speak, he speaks through me. When he feels, I feel through him. We are two ends of an eternal thread."

"That's a neat story," said Aspartame.

"Yep," said Stacily.

And yet we move forward by grabbing our own hands and pulling with all our strength

To be continued...