"We forget so many things," Dyssia murmurs. It's barely a whisper, inaudible amidst the sounds of razor wires shredding and mines blasting, and yet she knows Dionysus hears it perfectly. "It's how we survive."

And the worst thing about going mad is that it's so simple to do, once you figure out the trick the first time. It's not losing your mind, not really. Not mind control, not a state of altered perception where you kill your friends and family and don't remember a thing until you're standing at the sink washing the blood from your fingers.

No, madness is collaborative. Madness is "Yes, And." Madness is hearing the voice of Dionysus, and knowing already the feeling of sinking--of seeing that first blast of blue in her head, not because Dionysus put it there, is forcing her to see it, but because she can imagine it into being, hold the thought in her hand like a marble, and now it's not a thought, not imagination, but as real as any of her other senses. 

Which is really inconvenient, you know, when said senses are pretty friggin' booked with helping the thoughts avoid the body being turned into a messy slurry spread over several hillsides.

Or, you know. Not several. Or even slurry, which is a pleasing yet technically inaccurate word. But still, a single solid lump made entirely out of misery and wishing it weren't present.

"Every day, we wake up," she says, slithering a hair's breadth from an explosion, "and we put on a mask called Normal. We tell ourselves nice, twee stories about how the world is, enforce order in our heads by telling ourselves that because the world [i]should[/i] be a certain way, therefore there's such a thing as Justice or Truth. We ignore our senses, go through life shrouded and blind in fear of the moment of total recollection."

It's what we all agreed on. What an interesting phrase, bouncing around her head like a rubber ball in a rock tumbler which is itself falling down the stairs.

She shouldn't. She knows she shouldn't. The weight of Dekal over her shoulder tells her she shouldn't. The mines and gas and razorwire are making compelling arguments.

"Can you show me how to see?"