The Art of the Small (I)

"-. 11 January, 1989 .-"

It was the dawn of the seventh day when he was shown into a large meditation room or other on the third floor that he couldn't be bothered to closely examine or commit to memory. He was already stuffed full of mind-bending exercises and soul-shaking talks. After seven days of all that, and drinking nothing but tea and water, and eating nothing but onion and banana juice and the MAOI brew he'd taken and spilled his guts over during the past 45 minutes, Peter Jason Quill was more than ready to get it all over with.

Probably not the best attitude for whatever he was about to experience, but it was all the attitude he had available.

He and his mother were shown to two thin mattresses next to each other on the floor in the middle of that room. Peter would have expected a thick smell of incense to pervade the place, but there was no such thing. There also wasn't some great diagram which they had to lay on or sit or anything. The room was instead fairly spacious but largely bare and very clean. Airy. As if recently freshened. Once he sat down, people finally started meeting his expectations by giving him last-minute words of wisdom.

Or maybe not him because grandma went to his mama first. "The proportion of single-parent households in a community predicts its rate of violent crime and burglary, but the community's poverty level does not," That… what did that have to do with anything? "I have the statistics if you want to see them after. Do keep this in mind during whatever it is."

Again, what?

But Meredith the Younger, though not amused, wasn't dismissive either.

And that's about as much as Peter saw of that because grandpa knelt next to him soon after. "You, boy, are in desperate need of fathering." That… that was ridiculously true and obvious and not something he needed to be told, Peter thought sullenly. "You've also taken to using self-deprecating humor to push aside your righteous anger to an unhealthy degree." What was this, pick at Peter's wounds day? "So if you see any easy way out of this second chance at life during whatever's going to happen, please keep this in mind."

The earnestness in that plea had no business at all being delivered with such sarcastic tones!

"Nobody likes to deal with overachieving fools," Yao said idly as he knelt in front of him with the Soul Wine cup in hand. "But such is my burden, though I don't bear it gladly."

Peter looked from the Ancient one to his grandfather, dully.

Jason Quill shrugged fatalistically. "I'll teach you how not to be a fool for the rest of your life if you'll let me, son, but time is the only thing we don't have now."

Well gee, thanks! "Is everyone more informed of whatever problem I am than I am?"

"Yes," the Ancient One said calmly, holding out the cup.

Peter turned his nose and tried not to show any of the dread he was swimming in. His mama had already drunk hers, so he was finally as out of time as everyone else said he was.

He took the cup and drank it down.

And some 45-some minutes later, he got all the proof he never wanted that there was no joining his mother or his mother joining him on this here expedition. There was a single moment where he was even aware of her. Or of the Ancient One pervading him and his surroundings in every direction for millions of miles, like a field of stars on the black canvas of the universe.

Then the veil pulled abruptly away and he could see everything and nothing from inside. Except not really because… because he'd been grafted with Power without any of the mind. Power that roiled and spread and scattered everywhere. Substance without Consciousness caught in every Motion but his. It was sparkling, titillating bait for any and all manner of things and no-things and tendrils reaching out of the aborted mire of existence to sluice and stare and prod and bite on him with eyes and coils and mouths and fangs dripping poison everywhere holy shit he was being eaten!

Terror almost blanked his mind instantly but he got no such reprieve or any other. Horror only failed to eclipse it because they both filled him to an extent that defied conception. It was like being force-fed all the ghastliness men are protected by the opacity of the region of Prescription and Custom. Like an animal being led to slaughter he'd done as told by others, he'd relinquished that protection and was now alone, falling deep into the unexplored regions of Nature haunted by… by…

It was too much too fast too unfathomable as he fell only to be caught in some acrid snare he couldn't see. Rippling, fleshy maws that formed and chewed on whatever part of him was Some-Thing and rose to take him and everything else of him he could suddenly see and not unsee. Just like the horror devouring him and its many guises he couldn't see or unsee. It was the Cerberus guarding the entrance to Hades. The Dragon which Þ̸͙̺͉̇͝ͅớ̶̭̖͚͇̬̍̀̃̍̾̇̊͊̈͌̈́̚r̶̛̯̜͍̺̳̭̰̦̭̪̼͉̋̇̂̈́̊̚ͅr̷̙̪̈͗̀́͐̀͜ was fated to kill; the Snake which tempted Ē̸̬̫̮͇̹̗̥̯̭͇̙̪̯͚̃̒̅̍́̄̀͑̀́͘͜͝v̷͎̣̱̇͗̎́ą̴̨̛̣͈͉̘̩͖̠̖̼̩̤͈͔͓͚̀̇͒͑̀̇͋̃̃̆͑́͆͌̕, and whose head will be crushed by the heel of the w̷̧̯̖͇͓̲̝͓̗̼͉̘͑̒̃̎ͅo̴̧̩̤̱̤̪̩͈̟̩̥̭͑̅̽̅̆̂͊̇̓̅̕͠m̶̧̾̓͆̽̂͗̿̀à̴̖̣̥̞̬͚́̓̾̑̓̊͗̿̚ṉ̴̡͍͖̪̺̤̤̑̓́͒̅͒͛͒̚͝. The Hobgoblin watching the place where the treasure is buried. The appetite that sates himself through the eyes of every rapist and murderer. The malice gazing from the eyes of every evil king who will not permit that within his kingdom a child should grow up which might surpass him in power.

Derision. Malice. Obsession.

Peter flinched from all of it, terrible and abhorrent and dreadful and unfathomably enormous in its grotesque tremendousness. He flinched and looked away and wished to flee. But there was nowhere to flee and look and flinch away and he couldn't… he didn't know how to…

Indulge me in an exercise.

The memory ignited in his depths like a flash of light. He latched onto it.

Always you overstretch. Always you overestimate. Always you assume.

He latched onto it with all the clarity of someone who'd been dumped in a freezing pool of obsession and ill will and derision.

By now you will have realized that while the uses and purposes of these are important, the integrity and being of the Ego is in no way dependent upon them.

Peter Quill acknowledged the great mass of Substance grafted onto him by an unworthy father. He thought of it. He saw it. He felt it. He knew it. He knew every last acid drip and fang and tentacle and eldritch mouth chewing on it. He saw it all. He felt it all. He knew it all. Like he knew there was nowhere to go but inwards.

Now, in imagination, separate yourself.

Peter pulled himself away from all of it and inwards. Inwards. Inwards, inwards, inwards and smaller and smaller and smaller and away from everything that fed the Horror.

The graft snapped.

Then there was nothing left but him. Peter Jason Quill. Peter Quill. Peter. Pete. My little Star-Lord. Star-Lord. That was the one name that actually fit him on either side of the lifeline, wasn't it? Star-Lord. Star-Lord. Star-Lord. I am Star-Lord. I AM Star-Lord! Star-Lord I AM. I AM!

He fell away from the abomination. His Will was clear and focused as if for the first time ever.

Then there was no more fear. No more pain. No more suffering. Just him plummeting amidst the grasping coils and teeth of a cosmic horror that was too large for even the smallest of its bits and pieces to perceive him. He thought he could finally glimpse it fully, for a moment. A great, monstrous Serpent made of eyes and teeth and flesh and spume that encircled the world. It emerged from the quagmire where all misqualified and aborted desire fell and churned, waiting for fools to look into the abyss and drive them mad with the mistaken belief that it was the true nature of the universe. Peter watched as it emerged fully from the sludge, opened wide its great maw and dove to feast on all the parts of himself he'd cast aside.

Then he was so small that he slipped down between molecules and atoms and photons and everything that composed everything.

The next thing he knew, strands of weaved light rays were all around him. They looked like superheated filaments that connected galaxies. They flew in and out of sight as he fell between and past them. They glinted and twanged and echoed with myriad echoes. Of steps and fires and births and words once spoken and those that might yet be. The filaments stretched and met and continued, some coiled and some not. They travelled eternally in every direction, except when they met others like them and twisted. Twined. Melded. It looked like chaos weaved to form, but he had an odd certainty that there was a deliberate sort of order to it. Like a tapestry.

Or web.

It was strangely beautiful, this Web of Everything. This… this microverse he'd fallen in.

Then he saw it. A massive creature even more unfathomable than the first. A gargantuan spider-shaped being, with myriad legs of length he couldn't even begin to guess at.

Strangely, the sight of it summoned no fear within him. Not just because of his laser-focused state but because, even in this grand a scope, its features and actions seemed… entirely natural. It hung there, suspended at the center of the Web. Grasping. Pulling. Tugging. Pushing. Weaving the Present out of the strands of every other universe and time that ever was.

Star-Lord's descent ended abruptly but gently, on a strand thinner than the smallest particle but wide enough for a world to rest upon. He hung there in front of the spider monster's head and just beheld it, for a time. Up close, the Weaver was… Transcendental. That was the only word that fit its multi-faceted, layered, amalgamated form. Worldscapes and nebulae made up its carapace. Each strand of hair was someone's past life. Its every eye was a Big Bang. All its legs were made of the immortalised memory of times undone. And on its head, which never showed any acknowledgement of his existence any more than any other part of it – which was none at all – laid a grandiose crown of petals of bright light.

The flower atop the Great Weaver's head bloomed open then, and from it emerged a… a…

"Hello Peter. I'm Peter."