Her head was still in a debate about the Ladder and if that was who she was now.

It hadn’t been an easy thought process, many fears rearing their ugly heads, many doubts making her question everything.

So she did the next best thing for herself when she needed a clear head and to think.

She called her suspender, told him it was time to try the new suspension they had been working on, the Coma.

‘A sea of faith
I swim and play
Yet drowning all possibilities
Beyond what I believe and know
I cut the cord free of home again’


The mental preparation was the same for her, but the physical setup was different. It required piercing the skin in her chest, torso and legs. Two rows of each, with her laying face up.

And there was pain this time, each hook an intense burning sensation, causing a sharp intake of air.

He almost stopped, but she insisted. She needed this. The dull ache of each hook a reminder of who she was and what she was doing.

Hooks in place, he began the slow, painful process of lifting her body off the table. The skin acted as it should, stretching with her weight. But the pain was new to her. Well, not completely new, it had been painful the first time she did her other suspension. Her skin had just become callused at the piercing points.

When she had been completely lifted off the table, he secured the rigging, and then removed the table, allowing her to freely hang.

So she focused on her breathing, making it steady and listening to her heart beat. Lowing it and bringing herself to a point of meditation and almost zen like state. It wasn’t easy, and it took her a few minutes, long minutes that seemed to stretch on endlessly.

At the end? She was left with the sound of her heart, a steady beat, the endorphins rushing through her body and her thoughts.

‘It turns to silence
A silence sometimes I can hear
Internal violence
A struggle deep within what if’


If she left the Ladder would she still be herself?

‘What if I leave, could I still breathe
What if I breathe, could I still be
And if I leave, would I be me?’


For so many years the Ladder had been part of who she was. But that had been Faye, Therach, Acanthus.

And that wasn’t who she was now. Aurora, Thyrsus, and without an Order.

That thought rang right in her head and heart. Her heart was no longer with the Ladder, it laid elsewhere. In another Order.

And what terrified her the most? Her heart seemed to belong to someone else as well. And that scared her more than anything she had faced in her many years.

Gray blue eyes flutter open, looking at the ceiling, and knowing for once in a long time who she was and what she needed to do.

Song: What If? By Godsmack