Note: Although the story itself is mine, the concept is not. It comes, at least in part, from Charlotte Perkins Gilman's excellent story "The Yellow Wall-Paper".

Als Enai: That Which Endures

From the case-file of Mrs. Jane (Vaillancourt) Brendan: Audio Transcript

Sometimes I wonder why I ever agreed to this.

They told me that I was tired, that I needed a rest. A complete rest, mind you, not the sort of half-rest that I’ve been prone to take. Give me a day to myself and I’ll never really rest. I’ll only sit for a minute or two and then I’ll see that the bookshelf needs dusting, that a dish or two needs washing or that the dog is staring at the door and giving that little whoof of a noise that means that she wants to go outside. Or if it isn’t any of those things, I’ll inevitably have another idea and I’ll spend the day staring at a canvas or my sketchbook, willing myself to see my inner vision become something that everybody can see. There’s just something so incredibly god-like about the transfer of thought from my mind to something that everybody can see. It’s like for a moment I can force them to see my own version of the world, of reality, even if they come up with their own interpretation of it later. I never get any rest on the days when I have an idea. Just when I think I’ve gotten it right, I’ll see something else that doesn’t quite conform to my mental image of the—for lack of a better word—image. And that’s just the sketching-out part. Actually putting the piece together takes weeks.

Anyway, that’s why they say I’m here. I work too hard, they say. I need a rest. Someplace where I won’t be tempted to do any work, someplace where I won’t have to do anything, where I can totally and completely relax. And lest I get the urge to sketch or do anything even remotely resembling any of my usual activities, they haven’t even given me so much as an Etch-A-Sketch.

Those funny red toys with their little yellow knobs and the grey screen and the little grey-black lines that move and you can never draw a circle no matter how hard you try and you stare for hours trying to make the little knobs turn perfectly so you can actually make something look like it makes sense...

Forgive me. I sometimes go off on these little tangents. They tell me that that’s one of the things that made them say that I needed a rest. Too much mental stimulation, they say. That, or I’ve got a crossed wire in my brain. Well, that’s not exactly how they put it; after all, the human brain hasn’t got wires, has it? They didn’t really say it at all. They just implied it.

I think they think I’m going crazy. And you know what? I think I may be, too.

*****

They say it’s a mark of sanity to question your own sanity. The logic behind it is apparently that you’re sane enough to know that the thoughts you’re having aren’t exactly normal. Therefore, if you’re worried, you theoretically don’t have anything to worry about because you know you’re not thinking in a normal way.

There’s something wrong with this theory, but I’m not quite sure what it is.

Anyway, about why they think I’m crazy. You’ve heard of Elves, right? Not the small-“e” elves, the funny little pointy-eared creatures that wear green snowsuits and help Santa Claus in his mythical little toy shop at the North Pole. I’m talking about another kind of Elves entirely, capital-“E” Elves that bear little resemblance to those small-“e” elves except that they share a name and pointy ears. Well, some time ago I made the terrible mistake of making an offhand remark to my sister—who herself believes in reincarnation and a lot of that other New Age stuff—that I thought there was a possibility that I was an Elf.

Don’t look at me like that! Don’t look at me with those eyes that accuse and the scared look on the face and the instincts pointing to full fight-or-flight mode that means that you think I’m as dangerous as everyone else thinks I am and that I am totally and completely insane like I know I’m not even as I fear I am...

I mean, I know I’m not an Elf this time around. For one thing, my ears are round. For another, my skin is rather disappointingly beige, rather than that beautiful colour of pale moss-green that I remember in so many of my dreams. Besides, I miss my wings and I’m pretty sure that my present mouth and voice box can’t even approximate most of the sounds that we used to have in our language. No, this time around I’m rather boringly and disappointingly human, and I know it. But things started changing a couple of months ago when I started getting words in my head.

Yes, words. Manyedan sedaë ko-hoa. I’llara me. Odunai tessuro. You know, that sort of thing. They float to the front of my consciousness and I can’t forget them. Oh, I write them down when they come, that’s for sure. It’s my way of remembering what I can about our weird, wild and watery language. I don’t need it, though. They stay with me once I know them.

That’s another reason, you know, why they won’t let me have a pen. They’re afraid that I might hurt myself—or someone else—with it, true, but they don’t want me to write so much as a syllable of my language because they think I’ll get worse. They don’t say as much, but that’s what they think. I can see it written on their faces as clearly as if it were vrishka rylinida. That is to say, a thought passed directly from their minds to mine.

I love painting because that’s as close to vrishka rylinida as I can get here.

They don’t know how much I love it here. Here in my windowless room with just a lightswitch, a mirror and a bed for company, I have all the time I could possibly want to enter my own subconscious and remember more about myself and my people. For example, since coming here I’ve finally remembered what we were called and what we called our world. We were the Lunreyari, and our home was Derioanca. Anyone trying to give me the “rest” they say I need would have done better to give me a library. A sterile room like this is just begging for revelations like mine. They make the boring cream-coloured walls look interesting.

BooooooRING, BoooooooRING, BoooooooRING—Like a telephone, just boring, boring, boring—until I can't think anymore...

Or maybe that’s the point? Maybe they think it’ll make me get over this “phase”. Maybe they think I have to go through it before I can live normally again.

Ha! I know my Charlotte Perkins Gilman. I’ve read “The Yellow Wall-Paper”. I know what it did to that poor woman, whatever her name was. Apparently they have, too, or else I’d probably have that awful yellow wallpaper to look at, too, with its woman that rattled around behind it and tried to get out. Now there’s a thought. Maybe they think that the wallpaper was too much of a stimulation—an incitement to madness—that they took it down when I got here, and they’ll put it back up the minute they let me go.

I asked the doctor yesterday—or was it today? I never know, since they haven’t given me a window or even let me keep my watch. He just laughed and told me, “Now, Jane, wouldn’t that be just a little bit strange?”

I told him that my being here at all seemed strange to me, and he nodded and looked like he was listening. I knew he wasn’t though. I say things all the time like “Oogly boogly bungly boo” to him and he doesn’t bat an eye; he just nods and says, “All right, Jane, what does that mean to you?” It’s quite tiresome at times!

*****

I’m beginning to get worried.

You see, my times of real sanity are gradually becoming few and far between. I spend a lot of time muttering to myself like this, trying to make sense of things before I start having another vision of what part of me insists is an impossible world it calls Dario’s Ankle or something that sounds like that. Right now I’m fairly sane. As Hamlet might say, “I know a hawk from a handsaw”. I know that I’m human and I know that I’ve never been anything but that, and I’m not entirely sure that I believe in reincarnation. All fairly solid, sensible things. I miss my paints and my sketchbook, but those I can do without. I just wish that they’d let me out of here once in awhile so that I can feel the sun and breathe fresh air again. Even in my crazy times, I seem to know on some level that the sheer barrenness of this room isn’t helping my mental state even a bit. Unfortunately, I never seem to be sane when the psychologist comes to talk to me.

I wonder if that mirror is actually one of those two-way glass things—or is that stuff called one-way glass? I could never remember which it was—but anyway, I mean the stuff that looks like an ordinary mirror on one side but which is really an observation window on the other. I hope it is, and that they’re recording everything I say, because I have no other way of telling them that this room is making me worse and I need a way out of here before I have a complete nervous breakdown and end up like that lunatic from Revenge of the Pink Panther. You know, the one who claimed to be Hercule Poirot, “ze greatest detective in all of France”. Clouseau, somewhat insulted, remarked that “Zat man ees obviously creh-zee” and the desk clerk warned him that they didn’t use such words to describe people there, or some such thing...Clouseau asked what they called it at that place, and the clerk said “Now, now...” in a warning tone.

“Well, zat man ees verry now-now, I can tell you!” was Clouseau’s reply.

Yes, that one. For lack of a better means of explanation, I’m afraid of becoming like the Hercule Poirot in that film. At the end of this, I'll be carted off down the hall, cackling maniacally all the way.

Before I slip away for good into the tides of Derioanca—oh, drat, I’ve remembered the thrice-damned name—I just want to apologize to my family. My husband Jim and our kids; I hope my delusions aren’t hereditary, or Lisa and Nick will be in for a hell of a time. But then, to the best of my knowledge, I’m the first one in the family to go through anything like this, so maybe they’ll be all right. My surviving aunts and uncles and cousins—I love you all. Jim, I wish I could say that I’ll never forget you, but I’m deeply afraid that I will; I hope it will be a consolation that in my delusion of a world my imaginary lover named Yegalàn has your face, though his ears are pointed, his skin is pale blue and his hair is a frightful colour of purple.

I feel it closing in on me. Goodbye, my dear ones. May we meet again in a better place, one where I will know exactly who and what I am...

Hi, my name is Asha. Katar neenar?

(For Charlotte Perkins Gilman and The Yellow Wall-Paper)


*****

Author's Note: For the last five years, Charlotte Perkins Gilman's "The Yellow Wall-Paper", has been one of my all-time favourite stories. It depicts a woman who, while being treated for postpartum depression, is deprived of anything which could stimulate her mind. In her boredom, she starts imagining things in the strangely-coloured wallpaper in the room of the house where she has been staying for the last several weeks.

This story came about largely because I had read Gilman's story soon after finding out that there are people who actually believe that they are reincarnated Elves, Angels, Vampires, Dragons and various other creatures. This was my way of exploring the concept. As far as I know, the experiences of these people—the term most commonly associated with them is "Otherkin"—do not in any way mirror Jane Brendan's experiences in my story. As far as I can tell, most people who call themselves Otherkin are otherwise well-adjusted people who just happen to believe something highly unusual. I want it to be perfectly clear that this story isn't intended to be a demonstration of what Otherkin call Awakening—it's just the result of Gilman's story and my reading about Otherkin combining to make a plot bunny with Elf-shaped ears.

The following URLs are for reference purposes only, and are not in any way connected with me. However, I thought that it would be worth including them for information's sake.

Some sites about Otherkin:

(Elven Realities) http://www.rialian.com/elves3.htm
(Wikipedia article) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otherkin

(Otherkin: A Short Introduction) http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2003/5/22/03514/1997

"The Yellow Wall-Paper"*
http://www.library.csi.cuny.edu/dept/history/lavender/wallpaper.html

*This story has come out of copyright and is now in the public domain.

Additional Notes: As far as I know, there are no Otherkin Elves who call themselves "Lunreyari", nor do any remember a world called "Derioanca". Some claim to have remembered words from their past lives, but I don't think that any of the ones I've listed are among them. (I spent a long time trying to get the sound right.) And "Oogly boogly bungly boo" is a reference to my lone story on Wolfsbane, "A Longing Beyond Reason". It's the title and first line of possibly the strangest song I have ever written—and yes, it does have a tune. It just seemed like the sort of thing that Jane might say when frustrated and trying to get someone's attention, so I felt free to reuse it. =)
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