Jay sucked in a breath, the phantom buzz of Lidia's invasive vision still humming under his skin. He forced a tight, brittle smile onto his face. "Right. Fascinating. Absolutely… illuminating. Now," he held up a hand, forestalling her eager follow-up questions, "how about a version for the rest of us? The ones who don't dissect cosmic tapestries for fun? Dumb it down. Layman terms. Less… soul-probing."
Lidia's bright, academic fervor dimmed. She sighed, a sound like steam escaping a kettle, and shot him a look of profound disappointment. He distinctly heard the thought:
"The dumb version, Lidia," Jay interrupted, his voice flat. "Pretend I'm a particularly slow child who just woke up from a nightmare about being eaten by a giant soul-worm."
She blinked, processing the metaphor. "Ah. Yes. The Devourer manifestation. Crude, but evocative." She straightened, adopting a lecturing posture that looked absurdly earnest on her. "Very well. Imagine…" She gestured vaguely at the air. "...all of existence. Everything. Is a vast, ever-expanding sheet of rubber."
Jay stared. "Rubber."
"Stretchy, resilient rubber," Lidia confirmed, warming to her simplified analogy despite herself. "Now, every single thing that exists – you, me, that chair, a stray dog, a rock – is a weight placed upon this rubber sheet."
"Weights," Jay repeated, deadpan.
"Precisely! Each weight," she continued, tapping her finger in the air, "makes a little dent in the rubber where it sits. The heavier or more… complex the existence, the deeper the dent."
"Okay…" Jay rubbed his temples, the headache building. "We're weights making dents in cosmic rubber. Got it."
"Good! Now," Lidia leaned forward, her ice-blue eyes regaining a spark of intensity. "Most weights just… sit there. Making their little dent. Barely interacting. But Seers…" She puffed up slightly. "We are heavier weights. Or… weights with unusual shapes. Our dents are deeper. More pronounced. We don't just sit; we press. And when we press…" She made a pressing motion with her hands. "...the rubber around us… bends. Changes shape. Reacts."
"Localized reality warping," Jay translated wearily. "Because we're heavier dents."
"Essentially! Though 'warping' implies conscious control, which is often inaccurate. It's more… influence. Unconscious resonance. The weight of our unique existence interacts with the fundamental fabric, causing localized… phenomena. Voices. Visions. Occasionally fire. Or spontaneous weeping in inanimate objects. It varies."
"And the Weave? The pretty light show?"
Lidia waved a dismissive hand. "Irrelevant to the rubber sheet model. That was merely how my specific existence perceives the underlying interactions of the weights and the dents. My 'dent,' if you will, allows me to perceive the pressure gradients and connections between other dents in a… structural way." She eyed him again, the clinical fascination creeping back. "Yours, however…"
Jay braced himself.
"...your 'dent' isn't just deep. It's a… a nodal point. A confluence."She struggled for the simple words. "Imagine… other dents, other weights, seem to… blend into yours. Their pressure feeds into yours. Yours resonates with theirs. You don't just make a dent; you host a… a harmonious cluster* of dents within your own." Her gaze drifted pointedly to his chest, where Tom's presence resonated. "Thoroughly unique. And interesting."
Jay slumped back, the fight draining out of him. Rubber sheets. Weights. Dents. Nodal clusters. It was absurd. Terrifying. And weirdly, it made a twisted kind of sense. He was a heavy, messy dent in reality's rubber sheet, dragging other dents along with him, attracting giant soul-worms who liked to snack on interesting dents.
"So," he said, his voice hollow with exhaustion. "I'm a weirdly heavy, sticky dent that attracts cosmic predators and gives me migraines."
Lidia beamed, misinterpreting his tone as comprehension. "Exactly! A wonderfully concise summation for your cognitive level! See? The rubber sheet model works!"
Jay closed his eyes. "Just… show me the door, Lidia. Please. Before I start wondering what kind of dent you make."
He didn't need to see the Weave to feel her sharp, analytical gaze linger on him. He was a puzzle. A specimen. A fascinatingly broken dent. And he knew, with cold certainty, that Lidia wouldn't rest until she'd measured every last inch of his damage.
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