Submitted for the July 2024 prompt: This Mortal Coil

The cabochon emerged from two dimensions into the third, penetrating through the foam on an arctic shore. The cabochon entity’s consciousness expanded into the additional dimension, freed. One stone among many, it would have gone unnoticed, except a leopard seal spotted it while spy hopping.

 

The seal tossed it skyward, but it returned to the same spot on the beach when the surf receded. Offset by quivering blubber beside its recent kill, the seal felt annoyance at this intruder on its turf. The cabochon had not released from flatland, still tethered at its base. It wasn’t going anywhere. But sensing the reality beyond its own, it grew.

 

It fell into a kind of coma in two-space when it entered this new dimension. The cold did not affect the entity, at least at first. Bearing its own depth came as quite a shock as the temperature changes simply passed over it in two dimensions. This freezing increased its understanding of its inner nature.

 

When Lance, an explorer, came along later, a stray beam of sunlight struck the cabochon through the overcast, drawing his eye. Dazzled by its colors, its shimmering depths, he plucked it from among the other stones and held it up to the gray sky. The displacement shook the entity’s anchor from its home dimension. Panic set in, perhaps by the warming and cooling of its flat surface.

 

Lance thought of the cabochon as a magic talisman, perfectly shaped and ready to be set. He pushed it deep into his coat pocket. And quickly forgot about it.

 

* * *

 

Genessa held the paintbrush, dripping violet, the canvas half done, staring out the window into the frozen wasteland. The picture was of bougainvillea in bloom. The walls held other colorful paintings. Creating them had maintained her sanity through the featureless white snowscape.

 

Her mood lightened when Lance trudged past the frosted window. She always worried about him when he went out on the tundra alone. He wasn’t supposed to for safety, but he did anyway.

When he entered their cabin, she turned and ran into his arms. Beaming with love, Genessa felt the cabochon in his pocket and pulled it out. She marveled at the mineral complexity and the play of light in its depths.

 

“For you,” Lance said, simply. “I’ll set it in silver for a necklace.”

 

“My thoughts exactly. To remember our time here.”

 

She smiled and pushed it into his hand, then returned to her painting.

 

* * *

 

Meanwhile, the cabochon kept grounding in the two-dimensional space through different planes of its existence. Its penetration into the third dimension required the development of senses to probe this new reality. Detecting vibration, temperature, and pressure, it learned to hear. Light felt but not seen. Odors abraded its surface, condensing into micro-pools of memory.

 

The cabochon absorbed this, trying to interpret these sensations within the frame of two dimensions, but it defied experience. Tiny stress fractures developed through the mineral matrix as it suffered enlightenment. The drilling of the mount hole took away its mass, yet added to its identity. Layers of insight coalesced within its atomic structure.

 

At first, loss created a sense of grief. Then the new vortex around this sudden hole forced energy to move around it in a flat circle. The circling forces rose from the two-dimensional state into a sphere, and with the insertion of the silver it expanded as a three-dimensional entity, probing outward along the chain.

 

But the silver also created a circle, a deformable one. And when Lance presented it to Genessa, she purred. Placed around her neck, the stone settled on her chest. The effect was almost instantaneous. The transition transformed them both, two entities sharing one identity.

 

Genessa squeezed her eyes shut, and the consciousness of the cabochon interlaced with her own. Slightly disoriented, her balance shifted, and she took a step to steady herself.

 

“You all right?” Lance asked.

 

There was a blending of realities, two-dimensional memories blending within her three dimensions, spinning. The cabochon led, and Genessa’s imagination followed. She wanted to put into colors what she experienced. The stone warmed. She used pigment and form to understand it in their combined perception.

 

“I… ah… yeah. It’s wonderful,” is all she could manage, checking her image in the mirror.

 

Lance’s heart swelled in the act of giving, misinterpreting the gift’s import.

 

“When reality imitates different states of fiction… This is when we must reach beyond ourselves into the mindset of others. See as they see, imagine as they might,” Genessa said, almost in a whisper.

 

“I can’t see how a necklace brought all this to you.”

 

In that moment, the cabochon ripped away from two-space. A kind of departure from its native dimension, expanding into a larger universe. Binding to Genessa, their lives merged. The cabochon died in two-space and was reborn in three. Genessa became more in that moment. The ideas came as fast as the stone and woman could share their experience.

 

“Thank you, Lance. Now let me work.” She nearly pushed him out of the studio to paint an abstract never before seen in any dimension.

 

He stood in the doorway, watching her grab another canvas and attack it with brush and paint. Her necklace flashed in the reflected hues. Lance shook his head, smiled, and went to wash his snowmobile in the garage. Something was happening to Genessa. Something he didn’t understand.

And that was part of why he loved her, for her mystery and magic.