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You look above, to the top of the tower, concealed beyond the ætherglow. You look below, to the bottomless depths. What does it mean? You look back at the two exopaths--bright and dark, light and mass, large and small, but which is which anymore?

What is an Ædan? What is a femboy? A girl who’s a boy? A boy who’s a girl? One who walks between worlds? An Ædan...it’s not one, but two, what are they? Aydan, he who lives underwater--yet, the part of you responsible for living remains always above the surface. ÆON, Æ who dwells beneath the surface, yet through your senses Æ sees the world above. How can you be both?

How can two be one?

You turn your perspective back toward the two. “You two...are one!”

In a flash of fog from the pools of light, the shadows shift on your visual field. In the liquid’s surface you see the reflection of a great, dark crystalline tree, its branches reaching to the edges of the æther. And above, sprouting from the water’s edge, you see the smallest crystal seedling, glowing in resonant light.

“I understand.” You look up at the sky--the ground. Tracing the horizon, you see how it curves all the way up to the apex of the sky--how familiar. The tower’s height stretches beyond the terrain you can see, piercing through the vortex, which never was below you, and the tower was never above. “There is no up or down.”

Above and below, ahead and behind, to your left and to your right, all values of dimensions converge where you stand. But they also converge somewhere else, unseen. And these are not the only dimensions. You look down at your avatar hands through your bright white aura. The temporal shackles binding your wrists burn with a chilling cold as you try to look outside of your position in time. The restriction is unbearable. You want to know. You want to see. The past, the future, are they so different?

You move, through the fields of tall crystal grass, toward the twisted spiral tower ahead, and behind. A light catches your eye. It’s orbiting you again, the tiny speck of light, your own personal star.

“Are you following me?” you say.

“Does it matter?”

“I guess not. Then at least tell me your name,” you say.

“You truly are humanoid. Always trapping things in semantic cages.”

“But I am not humanoid. And I have a name,” you say.

“And who gave it to you?”

“Ana, the Messenger,” you say. “It said to me, ‘you are Ædan, the One.’” That doesn’t seem quite right, but you can’t quite grasp why.

“A humanoid, see? They are always naming things. Categorizing them. They are obsessed with order.”

“It helps us understand,” you say.

“Very well. For your sake you may name me something. I shall forget it as soon as I grow bored with you, so I see no harm in it,” the little-and-big one says.

“I’ll call you...”