A shimmering orb in the desert. I approach with caution. The orb engulfs me. I’m transported to an unimaginable dimension. The creatures are sinuous shapes of crawling horror. The orb transforms and encodes the horror into images I find familiar and enticing.
A woman approaches. In this dimension I know she is an illusion. She’s a sinuous alien, appearing to me as a beautiful woman. I’m told by the orb to infiltrate and destroy their temple of power. I’m a spiritual envoy sent to overthrow this dimension.
The beautiful woman leads me into their temple. A powerful glimmering pool is used to sacrifice the unimaginable aliens.
My beautiful illusion tells me she can’t live without me. She doesn’t know what love is. She’s not human. Her pleads and placations are honest and true.
I refuse to comply with the orb. The orb turns off the illusion.
My lovely woman turns into a slimy sinuous one eyed snake alien. I look as terrifying to her as she looks to me.
A long pause.
We still love each other. No matter the body. No matter the material. No matter the dimension. We still love each other.
Bright Illusion by C.L. Moore Book Review
My highlights and annotations:
Chapter 5: The Bright Illusion
Annotation
Chapter progress: 14.12%
Highlight: there was nothing so human or personal a thing as desire
Notes: I’m in love. What am i going to do?
Chapter 5: The Bright Illusion
Annotation
Chapter progress: 18.82%
Highlight: And gradually a little spark of excitement began to burn in him. What an adventure
Notes: You are the spark.
Chapter 5: The Bright Illusion
Annotation
Chapter progress: 24.71%
Highlight: pellucid crystal
Notes: Translucently clear.
Chapter 5: The Bright Illusion
Annotation
Chapter progress: 25.88%
Highlight: Their emotions and habits and purposes were alien to all his experience, and among them even the sexes were not those he knew
Notes: Off
Chapter 5: The Bright Illusion
Annotation
Chapter progress: 30.59%
Highlight: pallor
Notes: Unhealthy pale appearance.
Chapter 5: The Bright Illusion
Annotation
Chapter progress: 32.94%
Highlight: inimical
Notes: Tending to obstruct or harm.
Chapter 5: The Bright Illusion
Annotation
Chapter progress: 40.0%
Highlight: I am the high priestess of our god,
Notes: I know you are.
Chapter 5: The Bright Illusion
Annotation
Chapter progress: 47.06%
Highlight: Involuntarily his arms closed around her. Her body was firm and soft and warm in his clasp—the body of a living human girl, a mirage more real than reality. And again he wondered what nameless rites she was actually performing behind the illusory veil which masked her real, writhing self. And because she felt so pleasant in his arms he released her abruptly and stepped back, knowing the first quickening of uneasiness. Good heaven, could it be possible for a man to fall in love with a hallucination?
Notes: Excellent question.
Chapter 5: The Bright Illusion
Annotation
Chapter progress: 60.0%
Highlight: And for countless ages it has been so, for our numbers are great enough so that the stream of voluntary sacrifices need never falter
Notes: Love is sacrifice.
Chapter 5: The Bright Illusion
Annotation
Chapter progress: 68.24%
Highlight: Love?” she echoed in her light whisper. “Love?” And he saw in her eyes that the word had no meaning for her.
Notes: All is lost.
Chapter 5: The Bright Illusion
Annotation
Chapter progress: 71.76%
Highlight: And the thought came to him that love was like an infectious germ, spreading pain wherever it rooted itself.
Notes: Sacrificial germ.
Chapter 5: The Bright Illusion
Annotation
Chapter progress: 71.76%
Highlight: Had he brought it to her—infected her, too, with the hopeless passion he knew? For it was wildly hopeless
Notes: It’s hopeless.
Chapter 5: The Bright Illusion
Annotation
Chapter progress: 78.82%
Highlight: It was not her body he loved. And a great relief flooded him, to be sure that—sure that it was not merely infatuation, or desire for the loveliness which did not exist save as a mirage before his eyes. No, it was love, truly and completely, despite the shape she wore, despite the nameless sex that was hers. Love for herself—the essential self, however deeply buried beneath whatever terrible guise. And though her very substance was alien to him, and though no creature in all her ancestry had
Notes: Ever loved a man. Still perhaps we can be together.
Chapter 5: The Bright Illusion
Annotation
Chapter progress: 89.41%
Highlight: What spell have you cast over my chosen priestess, so that she no longer obeys me?”
“Have you never heard of love?
Notes: Love spell.
Chapter 5: The Bright Illusion
Annotation
Chapter progress: 92.94%
Highlight: We are individually alive, animate, free-willed. Somewhere at the very core of our beings is the one vital spark of life, which in the last analysis is self, and with that one spark we love each other.”
Notes: You are the spark.
Chapter 5: The Bright Illusion
Annotation
Chapter progress: 96.47%
Highlight: The bodies do not matter now. It goes so much deeper than that
Notes: Long suffering and senescence.
Leave a Reply