It is night. Or, what seems like night; time has no weight here.

You tread softly, your bare footsteps cushioned by the doughy dirt beneath.

You wander aimlessly through the dreamland, weaving in and out of the shapeless structures and the formless houses, where no being—no corporeal being—dwelled.

You once were accustomed to the dry, summer days, where the hills were scorched gold and the sky painted with an oceanic tint, and you assimilated yourself into the harsh winters where the aquatic shades of blue froze over, turning icy and white. Now, there is little more than sludge upon steel and vomit upon the void. It is your home, and it is beautiful.

You once sought an audience from any who would listen; now, She is all who is left to attend.

"Where is Order?" You asked Her, your words trembling with trepidation, despite your best efforts to appear unreadable.

"There is no need for Order," She spoke, her once-cacophonic voice now forsaken for a soothingly soft song, "Order makes the world plain, and the plain, unbearable."

The voice now appears before you, Her physical form mutated and twisted, now the bastard child of Order and Chaos, a Siamese twin with one mind and two souls. The wind has come to a standstill, and so has your blood. The puddle you stand upon begins to evaporate from the searing heat Chaos emits.

"Order has become me; Order is I."

You don't even notice that She has a mouth until She opens it. Thin, translucent skin pulsed with the beat of each of Her organs. All the colors have come together to create a muddied pool of brown and gray, Her drab uniform being an assault to the eyes. Your heart cowers behind your rib cage. "I pity you," She spoke, ever more gently, "your feeble mind simply cannot handle the reality of the world."

"You know nothing of me, nor of my mind," you reply, growing oddly more confident.

"Your words are ill-chosen, your time the passing of a shadow. Realize that you must return to the reality of yourself; you must know yourself by your proper name: Man, the finite. For you, there is a time to build, a time to destroy, and you are gone almost before you arrive. For me, time is but a feather in passing."

The colors of her flesh begin to branch, a technicolor vomit that seeped from every pore. A dizzying display of color flashed before your eyes. Her form turned mosaic as she let the silence momentarily take control. So beautiful, so chaotic.

"Don't you see? The feeble flicker of humanity has long been extinguished. We can only learn so much from a flayed corpse.

"The eyes of the Gods are upon you, and they are disappointed in what they see. You regard the earth that surrounds you as inanimate in nature, and you regard it much in the same manner that we regard you."

The droplets from the puddle slither up your legs, like leeches searching for a new victim. The truth burns, and it burns furiously.

"You are a paradox. You are as finite as you are immortal, your actions echoing a thousand times, and those echoes a thousand times more, but under the weight of the eternal sun, and in the forever of the relentless sea, the echoes silence. One generation passes, another comes, but Chaos is forever. Like the sun's nightly baptism, I am always born again."

Pain began to throb violently around your head, and your tearful eyes fluttered as you struggled to keep them open. Your skull is a mortar and pestle, grinding the bone into a fine powder. The rest of the world—or what remained of it—began to fade away and detach, as you became trapped in your own mind. The world became a blur, a blur that swirled itself out of reality. The worm of doubt crawled through your brain, eating away at reason.

You tried to speak, but Chaos ripped the words from out of the depth of your very being. As the wind passed your lips, little more could emerge than a hushed groan, a wail reaching out for guidance. There is silence; the air between you thins.

"Already have I walked through the hallways of your mind, and already have I seen what resides in the chambers of your soul. I know that, when you lean upon your house, it will not stand; it will crumble beneath your burden. I know that, of the flowers in your gardens, all will wither; the ponds and lakes have all turned to vapor.

"Do you know, where are now the trees, and the leaves upon their branches? And of the oceans, and the creatures who inhabit? Let me tell you—the beasts have washed up on the shore, and the wind has rattled the tree of its leaves, leaving it barren.

"Where now is your family, your friends, those you love, those you hate, those you know, and those you don't? Gone—They are gone. Nothing more than feigned familiars, factitious friends. You must realize these pools of parasites, these swarms of sycophants, pulled you astray from our warmth. Chaos is your true friend. They were little more than dreams that disappeared at the dawn of day and visions that vanished in the void of vanity. They wilted, as do flowers in winter. Vanity of vanities, all is vanity."

As you lay, a heavy, oppressive silence falls over you. Your headache began to dampen as you felt the strength to stand again. A primal urge awakens in you as the delirium blooms, your veins thirst with blood, and your heart lusts for control. Your mind is rid of its internal conflict, and your clock no longer ticks mindlessly.

"I exist in the sludge between fiction and fact. I am birth without death. I am the purest, most raw, form of life."

When you open your eyes again, there is no Chaos, and there is no void. You find yourself treading amongst the clouds. Among infinite hues of white reigned a brilliant sun, its holy presence trimming the weight from your soul. You have been reborn in the blue above.

"You are Man, the finite. No corner of this earth may hide from you, for you walk above it all," rang a familiar voice.

"No corner of this earth may hide from me," you say, "for I walk above it all."