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MaeB𝚊 𝚌𝚘𝚕𝚕𝚎𝚌𝚝𝚒𝚘𝚗 𝚘𝚏 𝚍𝚛𝚎𝚊𝚖𝚜
The sea was a beautiful thing. This, Joko decided for the umpteenth time as he sat by its shore, a long stretch of unruffled sand between poisonous black waters and the thick trees gently swaying behind him.
It could absolutely kill him. They all knew the stories of drowned forest fellows. How the water carried voices that pulled in anyone who waded in; how the darkness festering in its murky belly took hold of weak minds with vivid ferocity; how their people, who had not known better then, had lost themselves to confusion in unforgiving currents. Treading water was no less than seeking death.
That did not take away its beauty. His fingers, coated in dark violet dye, swept gently across the broad leaf spread flat against his knees. His work swirled and shifted before him as it took shape. So did the flowers pushing through the sand. The canopy above cast shadows on the lit, moonless landscape. On a nearby stone sat a hare, its coat an impractical shade of yellow.
The sea could kill him, if he tempted it so. So could the forests, or the animals, or the wandering travellers that made passage through their humble community. (They were lucky, so they had been told, for there were places that were beset with rampant fire and wanton culling. This did not distract Joko from noticing the greed glimmering in the travellers’ eyes, hunger that was borne of shrivelled hearts instead of shrunken stomachs. Most travellers left without trouble. The rest were best left undiscussed, as Joko had not been raised to speak ill of the dead.) But here he sat, untouched and unwavering, drinking in the calmness that came with freedom and time. His strokes of paint steady. His need to capture the bewitching unknown sated. Joko was content.
Then the world broke.
~
Oyuna was drowning.
There was no explanation for the why of it, no series of events leading up to this that came to mind. It just was. The more she struggled, the deeper the currents dragged her, snaring her like prey caught in thornsteel vines. The ocean spilled into her open mouth, crammed itself down her flexing throat. She could not draw breath. A creature drifted by as her struggles slowed, small and squishy and luminescent.
For a time, her mind wandered. She should be dead. She was not. She was unsure how long had passed by the time she thought to clench and unclench her fist. A smooth, white pearl came to be in the palm of her hand.
I see, she thought, and landed on her feet on the floor of the Corrupt Sea. Her lungs filled themselves with impossible air. A nightmare.
An irrational one, at that, but she supposed that fears would not be fears if they could be rationalised away. She blinked once, twice. The darkness of the corrupt water remained. Too much to hope that it would be that simple, eh? She flexed her fist again and when her fingers re-opened, her pearl shone, a light strong enough to illuminate a few meters of distance before her. Black sand swirled idly beneath her bare feet. Massive oblong silhouettes stood still in the dark. Something darted past her, an animal that should not leap as quickly as it did in water, in these depths. It did not glow, but it glimmered, and that was enough for Oyuna to follow.
They neared one of the silhouettes and did not stop until Oyuna found herself standing before the base of a stone golem, craning her neck up in awe as she stared up its skin of weathered rock. It never got any less impressive to see one of these up close; shards of stone conjoined in impossible ways, marked with engravings that her commune had yet to make sense of.
‘If only you could speak,’ murmured Oyuna. She lifted her pearl, traced her free hand against the sharp, precise markings in the stone.
It flashed. Not fleetingly, as they were wont to do, but a prolonged, sustained light that swirled and filled those engravings like oil in water. The depths lit up, as if the sky itself had broken open underwater somehow, and Oyuna gazed in awe at the hundreds of golems that littered the sea bottom. There were so many of them. She had only ever seen two, and the second had been far away from the first. To see all these golems in one place brought a buzz of excitement to her chest.
There had been rumours of a smaller tablet, a simple slab of stone that outweighed all these golems’ worth of knowledge, claimed to drift within the sea’s domain alongside these treasures. Oyuna had often dreamed of finding it washed ashore, as unlikely as the thought was.
But then the world had broken.
~
Giddiness. It swept over Adi head to toe, threatened to consume him entirely. To giggle was not befitting of a shaman, however, and so Adi did not. He allowed himself a small smile, however.
Before him stood a mass of clouds. They did not drift. Did not move, did not rain, did not hail. They were not white, and they were not grey. Instead, they were swirls of light blue and pink, colours that made him think of syrupy sap and sweet berries for some bizarre reason. They shaped a structure with a permanently billowing roof and soft, round arches supporting puffy walls. He did not touch them as he entered the open, door-less entrance, but the clouds he walked on felt simultaneously solid and malleable, like he might fall through at any time. He did not.
Inside was a room that was much larger than the outside, barren of furnishings, with walls the colour of violet midnight and a carpet of stars. He strode no further than ten steps from the entrance. Posture perfect. Breaths even.
‘I am Śramaṇa Adi,’ he said, quietly. ‘I seek an audience with you, our Grand Gifter of Guidance.’
For a heart-stopping moment, silence. It stretched on long enough that Adi began to fidget, folded fingers rubbing the ruby ring on his left hand.
Then black mist seeped in from the walls. They gathered themselves in the centre of the room, a plume that rose high above him in a vortex of shadows. Water cascaded from its unseen peak in a neat roll, a waterfall that fell through the glimmering floor. Briefly, the water parted, allowing the moon – the moon! – to float out and up, settling on the lip of the waterfall.
‘I grant you audience, Śramaṇa Adi.’
The Gifter’s voice was soft. A hushed lullaby to the ears. He did not speak any further, his faceless moon expectant. Was it tinted pink?
‘I thank you for it.’ The giddiness surged again and Adi had to fight to wrestle it back under control. Too much excitement in a dream was never good, no matter the refinement of the lullaby shroom tea. ‘I have come to you in efforts to seek closeness with you, o wise Gifter. We walk your realm and find answers that would otherwise have been lost in the limits of the real. For your generosity, we are grateful.’
‘You seek answers,’ answered the Gifter. The pink deepened in intensity. ‘To explain the calamity that has shifted your community. To justify the suffering your people has withstood. What of the answers you claim you have found?’
‘We are grateful,’ repeated Adi. Breaths even. Panic would get him nowhere. ‘But for as much as possibility lives in the Dreamscape, it only teaches us that our world could be so much more. That we could do more, be more. You have shown us much, but this broken world limits us.’
The Gifter’s moon tilted on its axis. The pink had faded now, darkening to a dim blue. Adi swallowed.
‘“Dreamscape”.’ A fresh wave of water crashed over its waterfall, bluer than before. ‘Yes. I like that.’
Confusion took hold. ‘Pardon?’
‘Hm?’ The moon rolled again. Adi had the faintest feeling that the Gifter may not have been looking at him before. ‘Oh, yes. The answers lie within your reach, Śramaṇa Adi. Your only obstacle is to think what has not been thought before.’ The black mist from before wafted from the waterfall’s unseen bottom, reaching up to surround Adi’s shoulders. ‘You are a shaman, yes?’
‘Y-yes.’
‘Then you should be used to working for what you seek, instead of waiting for it to be handed to you. Ashuru is not broken, Śramaṇa Adi, or you would not be here.’ The moon flashed pink. ‘You have my answer.’
Adi blinked bleary eyes open to a room with wooden walls and musky incense. His spine ached for the period of time it had stayed upright for, however long it had been, and his crossed legs had long fallen asleep. The mug in front of him was cold, left with the dregs of his lullaby shroom tea. He lifted his gaze to the lit stick beside it, soaked in the perfumed flower oil that gave the room its aroma as the singular flame at its tip flickered and burned. He looked back at the mug.
Perhaps a different method of consumption was in order.
ᦓ꠸᥅ꪀꪖ
Sirna had heard every word from Sarhush, all those days and nights ago. They had not intended to cause offence, either by word or action, but it seemed Sarhush had taken it regardless, leaving without interest in a response.
‘Interesting,’ they had murmured. ‘So very, very interesting.’
Sarhush saw competition where Sirna saw complement. They were in no hurry to outdo the self-assured king. Civilisations would rise and fall; without dreams, they would not do either. What need did Sirna have to plant roots when the mortals did so themselves? Already, there were mortals aplenty wandering their realm of dreams. Already, there were those who dreamed not in sleep but in waking, as aspiring tribe leaders and knowledge-seekers. Sirna was content to watch from the sidelines as Ashuru flourished.
Except Ashuru did not flourish. Or, if it did, the gods who shaped it had a vastly different idea of what flourishing constituted of indeed. The world broke, the mortals died, and Sirna watched with avid fascination as the realm of dreams, previously a placid, gentle place, became home to an increasing number of rumbling spots of void. Dreams were abundant, but so were nightmares, and the mortals caught in between ranged from begging to a more sophisticated sort of begging. Prayer, the mortals called it. Dedicating themselves to Sirna, for the mere deed of existing within the realm they had created on a whim.
Truly, there was no need to rush in the way of Sarhush when this lovely planet and its inhabitants did so very much for Sirna, all on their own. In the wake of yet another shaman’s visit, Sirna stood in their temple, the foundations of which had been laid by nothing but the imagination of their frequent visitors. Their moon was colourless.
‘Hm.’ Their waterfall body had quieted to a dull trickle. ‘...Perhaps there is a little need.’
They had sensed a few other developments aside from Ashuru cracking open like an unruly egg. The mortals dreamt of a pocket dimension, a plane of existence similar to Sirna’s own that differed in purpose. There were those artifacts that were lost out there in Ashuru too, free for the taking. Perhaps a wander through reality was in order. Playing with these mortal fools did get bothersome after a while, especially when all of them seemed to adore their rituals and order so.
Sirna huffed and let their moon sink into the crest of their waterfall.
~