THE MAGICIAN ( dr. strange.. )

004. Riddle Me This..

"What's your name?"

Stephen's eyes closed.

Gyan Mudra with his right hand called to his mind a tranquil concentration. The energy flowed quite similarly to how, in a lotus posture, his body did not remain still in air. Instead it allowed the air to move him, ever so slightly, as if the very waves of a calm sea bounced slowly beneath him, just to keep the man anchored on the same spot. Beneath his center, the floor lit with a thin, simple circle of bright orange light. It burned his carpet and the smoke joined the incense burning somewhere in his room in a straight line from the tip of the stick to the ceiling.

Prana Mudra activated his inner energy, kept it awake, alert. Chi, life force, whatever one would want to call that which makes a flesh carcass human, Stephen made a statement with his left hand to keep vigilant through his meditation.

The purpose of the meditation was in the focus his mind's eyes. It was a chanted whisper on his lips and into the inner voice echoing his thoughts as they tossed and turned everything he knew about the Magician.

In order to find the answer to her and to this, Stephen looked at a lit gallery.

His mind became a long hallway and he envisioned it clearly in the serenity of his slow breath, turning off the control and switching into auto-pilot, allowing the higher consciousness to roam on that soft red carpet, hand tailored with golden threads in runic symbols. Each ten runes spoke of the same concept, the teachings of Buddha which inspired this Eldritch practice in the Sanctums all across Earth: Nothing ever exists entirely alone. Everything is in relation to everything else.

It may have been a narrow hallway and the ceiling may have existed as just a dense and uncertain fog roaming above, closer to the presence of clouds rumbling thunder than the idea that there was pure nothingness above the head of Stephen Strange. He walked amongst it all, but in reality, these finer details were not the centerpiece. The nucleus were not even the walls, otherwise rather simple with their wallpapers imitating the inside of a Victorian mansion in the midst of a colonial life based on luxury.

No. The true center of interest there were paintings hanging on both walls, paintings framed in opulence, bordered in gold which somehow still did not steal away from the light of the moving pictures they held within, mystified and blurred through the lenses of memory.

Stephen was walking on the hallway of memories in his own mind, taking account of the numbers underneath each painting. He had concentrated and called forth only the masterpieces made out of each time anything related to the Magician occurred in his life. He let his subconscious choose, through the higher knowledge of his life force, for he might have forgotten, in hubris, key moments if left alone to put together the gallery.

"You already know where I live."

He took the memory of the Magician's voice with him on this journey down the hall. With his hands holding each other behind his back, Stephen walked proudly, taking his time to study each frame's story. From the moment decided to take a look at the cassettes -that chilling marionette trick still haunted him- to the latest butterfly of smoke, he had a long way to go, but there wasn't much to dissect, apart from her words.

"I am sure your ticket didn't give you the wrong time to send you a day later at this location."

He passed the frame with a squint. In his room, an orange lightning lifted from the thinness of the circle burning the carpet and connected with the ticket, on his nightstand, lifting it the air and transporting it to float in there, beside the sorcerer in his meditative state.

"Do you know how many YouTube videos there are with sightings of you flying through the sky, red cape fluttering and all?" Stephen paused beside that memory as the Magician too took a break. Her wide eyes made him huff. A smile would have loved to build on his lips, but he did not bother putting any energy in giving them movement. "I didn't count, obviously, there were far too many."