CHAPTER 5: Xeronis

He carried her wherever he went. She did not appear in the physical realm because she was not a physical being. Even so, Ben still carried her in his physical heart. She was a person that only he could see, and he was the only person on the physical plane who knew about her and who acknowledged her existence.

She was a person he spent the entire day thinking about and he could hardly wait to get back to her. He desired earnestly to rush back inside himself to a world where she too was waiting for him.

"I am back," he would say to her at night time when he closed his eyes in bed. Whenever he shut off the lights to sleep the lights inside him would turn on and he would visit his world.

"It's good to have you here. Tell me about your day," Nancy would say.

"My day sucked. I would rather hear about yours," he made her laugh.

Then they would continue expanding their world. They came up with a name for it.

They called this world Xeronis.

When Ben began building a city in Xeronis it was because he wanted Nancy to not be lonely. He wanted her to have many things to explore, stuff to do and to have people to talk to. Xeronis would not fall apart if Ben were to take his attention elsewhere, instead, it would hold and have continuity. The main reason for this would be because Nancy would remain in Xeronis. Nancy did not depend on Ben's focus to exist. Even without his focus, she always remained his partner… a partner he always consulted consciously or unconsciously.

During the day, Nancy walked with Ben on the physical plane, invisible to others. During the night, Ben walked with Nancy in Xeronis… a god amongst his innumerable creation.

But Ben never showed off his power to the Xeronians. When they were in the city amongst the people Ben just behaved like a regular young man.

He walked everywhere with Nancy, rode in carriages with her, paid for food at restaurants with regular Xeronian money, and sat with her at parks. He refrained from flying into the city, refrained from disappearing and teleporting, and he refrained from causing things to appear from nothing.

People who saw them assumed they were just a regular couple who were deeply in love. They concluded this because the two went everywhere together and were rarely two feet apart. Nancy had a habit of instinctively grabbing Ben's hand and hiding in his shoulder if anything startled her. Things that startled her were sudden loud noises, the occasional loud horns from carriages trying to get them off the road, and rude people you meet in cities.

Nancy was just starting to acquaint herself with speaking to others other than Ben and discovering that people were not always in sync with each other's thoughts and explaining things in a roundabout way was the norm rather than the exception. People rarely said what they meant. The words they used were often meant to mislead.

When something excited her, say an animal show in the park, she would grab Ben's hand and rush to the stalls with him. She didn't venture far from him nor did she want to. It was hard just getting her to sit still on a table while he went and got them refreshments.

It was actually the same for Ben too.

There were many attractions in Xeronis but to him, she was probably the biggest attraction of them all. The only reason for visiting was because he wanted to be with her.

Was this love? He had begun to ponder about this. Did he actually love Nancy? These thoughts had become more persistent when the stout lady in charge of Hilda Restaurant, Madam Brynhilda, called them her favorite couple. Since Hilda Restaurant was their favorite restaurant and the one they frequented most on Corner Aten, Madam Brynhilda had begun reserving a table for them. She saw that the two barely took eyes off each other so it was a natural conclusion that the two were deeply in love.

The chair set up on the tables was that they always faced each other across the table but Nancy would always drag her chair so that she should sit beside him… and occasionally she would offer him bits of food from her plate.

"We are your favorite couple?" Ben was actually taken by surprise.

"Indeed you are, and one of my top customers."

"Well, I am glad that we are," Ben said and saw Nancy quickly look away pretending that she had not overhead their conversation, but there was a smile on her face that was hard to miss.

Then a chauffeur operating one of the city carriages said to him, "Your girlfriend is very lovely."

Ben was unsure how to respond but he had managed a 'thank you' with a satisfied smile on his face.

It was indeed true. He loved Nancy very much. He would spend his day thinking about her and what he could do to make her happy. And if the time seemed to tarry and nighttime seemed like it would not come, and Xeronis seemed as if it was light-years away, then he would feel a certain discomfort in his stomach. These were classical signs of teenage infatuation.

Had he caused himself to be lovesick? Was this not inevitable because he was spending quality time with a beautiful girl by his side?

Nancy was not just any girl. Nancy was at the center of his being. She was not a foreign intelligence nor was she of external origin. She was born from his consciousness and she was the embodiment of the unseen Other. All those things he could ever desire, all those things he could admire in a woman, he found them reflected back to him in fullness in this person.

Ben had loved Nancy from the moment he first saw her form and from the moment he first called out her name. What was it that he was searching for when he turned his attention inward? Could there have been longing for the deep? And because he had found love in the deep that love could only have been the love of a deeper kind.

He was not going to give up that love for anything.

So Ben took Nancy to the site of a large waterfall one afternoon with the intention of confessing his love to her. He didn't know where to start and she could sense that something was on his mind or rather she already knew.

"Did I say or do anything to cause you to have doubts about me?" she had asked him.

"No silly. There is absolutely nothing you can say or do to cause that."

Nancy took his hand into hers and then said "Then know that I am always on your side. Whatever you want to do I will do it with you and I will do it for you. There is no Nancy without Ben. We are here together, are we not?"

"I suppose that we are."

"There is no place I'd rather be at than here, and there is no person I'd rather be with than with you."

"You are making me feel all warm inside," Ben teased. He took both her arms so they could face each other and see each other's eyes.

"What you desire, I desire it just as much," she told him.

He leaned in and embraced her, and he held her close to him and he kissed her neck. She kissed his neck too. He kissed her cheek. She kissed his cheek too. He kissed her forehead. She touched his face and gently pulled him lower so that her lips could reach his forehead as well. Then he slowly sought her lips and she let him kiss them.

He felt his physical body respond at the moment his lips had touched hers, and it had responded in real-time with no delay. This had never happened before, that even his physical body had acknowledged the events happening in Xeronis as real-life events to be taken note of. Their kisses had crossed worlds and built a bridge between the internal world and the external world.

"This is nice," he said, "I feel truly happy."

"So do I."