So.

I know that at some point, she began going by ‘Even’.  I still don’t know why.

I know that ‘Even’ is in the Well, and that she does not have her pen; whatever happened down here, she is confined with no means of exit.

I know that someone must have her pen. I don’t know their name, their face, or a precise enough location for an address; only that they are upstairs. With the pen, they possess the same access which Even had, from floor to ceiling; whoever they are, Misea is presently in their hands.

I’ve now made more than a few attempts at contact with Even in the Well. I know that she must have ‘received’ the ‘calls’ but there hasn’t been so much as a flinch in response. Two possible reasons for this:

a. she is somehow rendered unable to respond;
b. she is deliberately not responding.

If a., I don’t know how that could be accomplished so thoroughly, and for such a protracted period. She would need to be totally incapacitated, such that she can’t so much as half-bat an eyelash. Half a bat; and I could catch less than that. Alas, nanti.

If it’s b., then her motive may remain a mystery; if she is hiding from me, I may never see her again. She couldn’t have truly, totally forgotten me, but it’s possible that she is so completely consumed — with what? — and that her knowledge of who I am and why we’re here, is so compartmentalized and buried that, if I were to make contact, it may be essentially meaningless to her.

There is a c., the possibility that I am missing something. And there is only one hint which could indicate that a. or b. can’t be the full story — still, not zero.

The sole legitimate outlier is the three words she scrawled on the floor at the corner; it must have been written after she was trapped here, after she lost her pen, and it doesn’t fit with the theory that she’s in some kind of absolute stasis.

In truth, I had been holding out for c. even while there was no evidence whatsoever to indicate there should be a c. But while it isn’t explicitly addressed to anyone, only two of the words indirectly reference me; the other indicates something — someone other than me.

She must be alone. But she has company.

The bottom of the Well has fallen down itself and there is nowhere for it to go but down.

Nothing for it but to go.

headlong

bottoms up