Roland has gone through the corridors of dreams and memories, once before.
It was a strange affair, with an entity wearing a suit and a rabbit's head leading them into an amalgamation of the real world and the emotions the dreamer once held in their heart. And perhaps, because of such a timely experience, Roland is aware of the tugging and twisting that eventually forms the landscape of his mind, tonight of all nights. It was only mildly pleasant at the beginning, watching apparitions play out words perversely, like a voyeur. But it turned for the worse when his own shadows were laid out to dry, the skeletons in his closet forced out of hiding. When Evan and Leander question the little boy with dark hair and pajamas, the one who no longer recognized him as father. The one who has seen the end, but waits still for his dad who failed to save their country.
The nightmares have come and go since facing the darkness of his soulmate, but from time to time, he still dreams. He is pulled back like waves crashing into a shore; into the narrow lanes of two lifetimes now - one, a world he helped create with the king he will serve for the rest of his life; the other, his birth home, the house he built for the nation he heralded into a golden age before the missiles flew straight into the air, cutting through clouds, toppling towers, skyscrapers, buildings as high as Babylon.
As Roland stirs and wakes into a new land of the dreaming, he knows. He knows that he is lost and he is uncertain of where his feet are taking him. He does not know why his hands are smaller, why his voice doesn't seem like it's his own. But all at once he recognizes it, somehow, in some way. The words are lost on him, but the fringes of his consciousness are pulling at him, begging him to open his eyes. The connection he has to his other self plays its part, shoving at him to return. But magic is not his to command, and moreso now in the magic of a dream, so it fails the task. Instead, Roland is stuck in a body that he knows and doesn't know, and the woman he sees, so lifeless and waning, strikes at him deep. It is the vision that sends an arrow so sharp, it nicks a wound that refuses to close.
No, this is...
When he blinks away tears he can't remember shedding, when his body pounds at the sheets of an empty space next to the bed of his mother - his Mother? - when he ruins suits and clothes and shoes and scarves out of spite, all he can hear is a voice that alienates him; that loves him; that is begging for him to come home.
Dad never came to visit me in the hospital. It was the same when Mom...
He chokes. The feeling is overwhelming. His chest feels like it's too small for its own beating heart. No, no this isn't real. None of it is real. Not with my own two eyes, not while I'm still alive...! He feels his body move sluggishly, weakly into place next to the woman with hair the color of warmth. He tucks his short legs into the sheets and he sits up against the headboard like he's been there from the start. The wall in front of them morphs into the sea, as he watches television. A speech was being played; it's an older man. Or is it a ball game that he's watching? His limbs are heavy, he feels sick. He's ill. He's angry. He's -
WOW SORRY FOR THE NOVEL
Roland has gone through the corridors of dreams and memories, once before.
It was a strange affair, with an entity wearing a suit and a rabbit's head leading them into an amalgamation of the real world and the emotions the dreamer once held in their heart. And perhaps, because of such a timely experience, Roland is aware of the tugging and twisting that eventually forms the landscape of his mind, tonight of all nights. It was only mildly pleasant at the beginning, watching apparitions play out words perversely, like a voyeur. But it turned for the worse when his own shadows were laid out to dry, the skeletons in his closet forced out of hiding. When Evan and Leander question the little boy with dark hair and pajamas, the one who no longer recognized him as father. The one who has seen the end, but waits still for his dad who failed to save their country.
The nightmares have come and go since facing the darkness of his soulmate, but from time to time, he still dreams. He is pulled back like waves crashing into a shore; into the narrow lanes of two lifetimes now - one, a world he helped create with the king he will serve for the rest of his life; the other, his birth home, the house he built for the nation he heralded into a golden age before the missiles flew straight into the air, cutting through clouds, toppling towers, skyscrapers, buildings as high as Babylon.
As Roland stirs and wakes into a new land of the dreaming, he knows. He knows that he is lost and he is uncertain of where his feet are taking him. He does not know why his hands are smaller, why his voice doesn't seem like it's his own. But all at once he recognizes it, somehow, in some way. The words are lost on him, but the fringes of his consciousness are pulling at him, begging him to open his eyes. The connection he has to his other self plays its part, shoving at him to return. But magic is not his to command, and moreso now in the magic of a dream, so it fails the task. Instead, Roland is stuck in a body that he knows and doesn't know, and the woman he sees, so lifeless and waning, strikes at him deep. It is the vision that sends an arrow so sharp, it nicks a wound that refuses to close.
No, this is...
When he blinks away tears he can't remember shedding, when his body pounds at the sheets of an empty space next to the bed of his mother - his Mother? - when he ruins suits and clothes and shoes and scarves out of spite, all he can hear is a voice that alienates him; that loves him; that is begging for him to come home.
Dad never came to visit me in the hospital. It was the same when Mom...
He chokes. The feeling is overwhelming. His chest feels like it's too small for its own beating heart. No, no this isn't real. None of it is real. Not with my own two eyes, not while I'm still alive...! He feels his body move sluggishly, weakly into place next to the woman with hair the color of warmth. He tucks his short legs into the sheets and he sits up against the headboard like he's been there from the start. The wall in front of them morphs into the sea, as he watches television. A speech was being played; it's an older man. Or is it a ball game that he's watching? His limbs are heavy, he feels sick. He's ill. He's angry. He's -
- What's happening to me...?