Vhalar 53, Arc 720
In the twilight of the world of dreams, the Mortalborn’s eyes opened. For a moment, he simply stood there in order to orient himself and adjust, in order to enjoy his new environment, as he always did, when he transitioned from Idalos to Emea, when he awoke. He had begun to feel more awake there, in a world that he could shape and that was governed by his own laws, a world of peace where all the things that plagued his home seemed nothing but a distant memory, where all it took was a thought, or the wave of a hand.
It had hardly ever been so dark in his dreams before. Recently, there had always been light, but the darkness didn’t bother him. It didn’t bother him that the landscape around him seemed to be painted in different shades of grey. On the contrary, he found comfort in it. There was something almost magical in the moments before the sun finally disappeared from behind the horizon. Everything seemed clearer then, when the stars were still visible in the sky, but there was already the promise of a new trial. Time seemed to move more slowly then.
There was always darkness before dawn.
He could hear water move in gentle waves, moving towards the shore and then back again, and the air smelled salty. He frequently dreamed of the beach, and the ocean, but this time, something was different. The ground beneath his feet was covered with small stones instead of sand, and it was a hint cool, perhaps because winter had finally arrived in the waking world (a part of him wondered if he should stop trying to figure out why his dreamscape shifted the way it did and why it presented himself with a certain scenario; sometimes, he had the feeling that doing so took away some of the magic of this place).
He made a step forward, towards the water, and then another one and another one, slowly, because he still couldn’t see his surroundings clearly, and inhaled deeply. The air was absolutely clean here. There were none of those smells that were present in Viden, the smell of mortality, of a thousand chimneys, of food and drinks, of happiness and despair.
Stopping momentarily, he Governed a coat of fur, to keep him warm in his cold dream, and put it on. Making such small changes to his dream was something that was easy for him now, although he still struggled with reshaping it on a larger scale, perhaps, because the logical part of his mind, the scientist, was still getting in the way. He reached the water just as the first hints of pink, orange and red appeared on the sky above him, and he could finally see the vast mountain range, on the other side of what seemed to be some sort of narrow strait.
He had been wrong, he suddenly realized. When he had awoken in his dreamscape, he had assumed that it was winter, because it was a hint cool, although still a little above the freezing point, by his estimates. It was not winter though. This was spring, or early summer, in the far north where hardly any trees grew, and near him, on the meadow that bordered the rocky beach he could see cotton grass, small plants whose heads were covered in a multitude of white cotton-like fibers.
In the twilight of the world of dreams, the Mortalborn’s eyes opened. For a moment, he simply stood there in order to orient himself and adjust, in order to enjoy his new environment, as he always did, when he transitioned from Idalos to Emea, when he awoke. He had begun to feel more awake there, in a world that he could shape and that was governed by his own laws, a world of peace where all the things that plagued his home seemed nothing but a distant memory, where all it took was a thought, or the wave of a hand.
It had hardly ever been so dark in his dreams before. Recently, there had always been light, but the darkness didn’t bother him. It didn’t bother him that the landscape around him seemed to be painted in different shades of grey. On the contrary, he found comfort in it. There was something almost magical in the moments before the sun finally disappeared from behind the horizon. Everything seemed clearer then, when the stars were still visible in the sky, but there was already the promise of a new trial. Time seemed to move more slowly then.
There was always darkness before dawn.
He could hear water move in gentle waves, moving towards the shore and then back again, and the air smelled salty. He frequently dreamed of the beach, and the ocean, but this time, something was different. The ground beneath his feet was covered with small stones instead of sand, and it was a hint cool, perhaps because winter had finally arrived in the waking world (a part of him wondered if he should stop trying to figure out why his dreamscape shifted the way it did and why it presented himself with a certain scenario; sometimes, he had the feeling that doing so took away some of the magic of this place).
He made a step forward, towards the water, and then another one and another one, slowly, because he still couldn’t see his surroundings clearly, and inhaled deeply. The air was absolutely clean here. There were none of those smells that were present in Viden, the smell of mortality, of a thousand chimneys, of food and drinks, of happiness and despair.
Stopping momentarily, he Governed a coat of fur, to keep him warm in his cold dream, and put it on. Making such small changes to his dream was something that was easy for him now, although he still struggled with reshaping it on a larger scale, perhaps, because the logical part of his mind, the scientist, was still getting in the way. He reached the water just as the first hints of pink, orange and red appeared on the sky above him, and he could finally see the vast mountain range, on the other side of what seemed to be some sort of narrow strait.
He had been wrong, he suddenly realized. When he had awoken in his dreamscape, he had assumed that it was winter, because it was a hint cool, although still a little above the freezing point, by his estimates. It was not winter though. This was spring, or early summer, in the far north where hardly any trees grew, and near him, on the meadow that bordered the rocky beach he could see cotton grass, small plants whose heads were covered in a multitude of white cotton-like fibers.
