Initiated of the Order

Alexi

Nothing on the face of this earth—and I do mean nothing—is half so

dangerous as a children’s story that happens to be real, and you and I

are wandering blindfolded through a myth devised by a maniac.

— Master Li Kao (T’ang Dynasty)

Aleonis de Gabrael 

My first waking impression this morning was a hazy glance through frostbitten glass at an overturned trash can. The sound of a dog rummaging through the garbage. The gentle pattering of sleet on the roof. Doppler

shift as a car turns on slick asphalt. Sentence fragments, thoughts bisected in a 3 x 3 set of windowpanes on the far wall. If you’re really intent on a decent reproduction of the event, lie down and close your eyes. Imagine a chill sensation, a hazy image of a toe with overgrown toenails sticking out of the bed covers, and then a camera pan to the rusty trash can outside. Not a dramatic opening for a book, but it’s all this day

has given me.

A Fleet of Shards.

Gabrael,

I’m in the hospital now, writing down the closing chapter of this story. While I do this, I look back upon the project you asked me to undertake, exploring what led me to you, but I feel that I’ve only provided a veneer.

You asked for a concise record of my probation and instead I give you a jigsaw puzzle of my parts which, if put in the proper order, like the permutations of the name of God in Sefer Yetzirah, will make me whole again.

I feel an overwhelming compulsion to schematize my experience. I have digested and regurgitated these events countless times. They are jumbled and rearranged, reinterpreted, and recontextualized by events running both directions in my timeline. In the process, these disparate events become me, my alpha and my omega.