To Me Who Is Useless

By Ithaka O.

A life of purpose, a life of use. It's a blissful state of certainty.
But even that magic can't last forever.

In Seoul, the never-sleeping metropolis of blinding lights, a figurine awaits the sorceress's calling. It is an other-self figurine, meaning, it exists for a single purpose: to become the sorceress herself when she wants it so.

But one night, the figurine finds itself stuck in its mundane shape. The magic died. And with it, the figurine's use died. So did its purpose.

Or does uselessness have a purpose, after all?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Imaginarium Kim
• Release date: Jun 13, 2022
• ISBN: 9781637930731

Ithaka O.

https://ithakaonmymind.com/

Book preview

1

I am the sorceress’s other-self. One of her many. Or, at least, that’s what I call myself, still, even though she’d say, "You were one of my other-selves."

For, I have lost my ability to channel her through me. To her, I have become a mere figurine.

A palm-length ornament made of special clay, prayed upon for three full moons. Smooth-surfaced, for the most part, but scarred here and there from decades of usage. Detailed, to reflect the sorceress’s every visual feature—her deep purple eyes, her magnificent black cape, her lustrous long gray hair—and especially, her never-aging, tranquil face.

Like her, I was supposed to never age. I was supposed to forever function as her other-self, as the channel that could be placed anywhere, awaken and enlarge at her calling, and become the sorceress in human form whenever she pleased.

Any of us could become her at any given moment. She left us in the corners of stinking sewers, squeezed us into rough wall cracks, or attached us to the backs of black ravens just to see where those birds would take us, and thereby take her.

Using me, as well as many other figurines, the sorceress safely traveled across the world of reason believers and science worshippers. Never once had she been detected by the border patrol or governments despite her conspicuous appearance. She owned no passport, belonged to no country, and answered to no one.

Even if someone were to come after her, they’d never manage to catch her. She’d disappear into thin air, quite literally. All that she’d leave behind would be a mere clay figurine. And since the mundanes lacked sufficient imagination to believe that they’d actually witnessed a person turn into a figurine, they’d simply throw away the figurine or even better, leave it where it was. If, because