Ibimus Illac
Icarus sits down on the riverbank, planting his pale feet into the dark, sucking clay. He slumps forward to look into the water, but sees only his own reflection.
This is not a surprise. Scattered around him are others, peering into the river as if its flat surface were a console. Some try to touch it with their fingers or dip in a hesitant toe, but they shear away at the last moment. One or two stir it with reeds plucked from the bank, but it's futile: the surface never moves and you can't see through it.
Icarus is lucky, though. He has something the others don't. Dae would never let him go out unprepared, even though he probably hadn't foreseen this exact situation, and he would probably tell Ike to just forget about it and move on to the next phase of his life. Afterlife.
Tough luck. He always listens to Dae's advice, but he rarely ends up following it to the letter, and he isn't about to start now.
He pulls the eye out of his pocket and unrolls the optic nerve coiled around it. The eye hangs from its cord like a yoyo, bouncing slightly. He wonders for a crazy moment if he could actually do tricks with it, but then realizes that Dae doesn't need a severe case of vertigo on top of his other problems.
He slowly lowers Dae's eye into the black water, then lets his own fall shut. It should work.
All he sees is blackness. Is that what Dae is seeing? Is it the impenetrable color of the river? Or is it just the space behind his own dead eyelids?
Icarus decides to wait. It's not like he's got anything better to do.
----
He feels again. It's at a distance, underwater, but it comes through: the sharp warning in his head and ribs, the perpetual backstage ache in his neck and jaw, all the gears and chains of his body wound up tight.
He opens his eyes. Only one of them works. Of course. The surprise and its briefness are both familiar. It's dark in the bunk, which is a mercy, but mercy is not something that anyone here is currently in the market for.
He must have stumbled out to the bathroom and pissed but he doesn't remember anything, he's just standing in front of the mirror with water running over his hands. Thank god for autopilot. Sorry, Ike. Sorry sorrysorrysorry. He doesn't want to look at himself. He's only half there.
The water heats to boiling, and he pulls his hands back. Mist slowly eats away the face in the mirror. He closes his eyes. Eye.
When he opens it again, there are words traced in the fog: OMNIA POSSIDEAT.
Praxis clutches the edge of the sink. Once the nausea fades, he lifts a finger to the mirror and writes in shaky letters: NON POSSIDET AERA MINOS.