Scars, Book One, Entry Three

A dreamer sits on a bench, a second leans on a bar wearily.

A third dreamer sits in a dark hallway, shedding a tear.

Curled on a couch in a dark room, a fourth dreamer falls into burning numbness as her mind is distorted and swallowed by an intense bright.

***

The first dreamer sits on a bench holding an unfolded and unread letter in their hands. They stare past the words, transported to a faraway valley that lies in one direction or the other.

It's hard to tell which way in a city surrounded by rolling plains of green and brown melting into the swirling horizon of twilight in all directions.

It is a land where if a dreamer walks long enough one way or the other, they will probably come to mountains or seas and know where they are.

Unless they come to something else.

Then, maybe not.

Or else you take a train that arrives and departs into the dingy city without a timetable.

It makes the city a place for dreamers who drift meaning most dreamers move through it quickly to somewhere else.

But some linger.

And a few settle.

Eventually, the dreamers in this tale will make that choice for themselves.

***

Something pulls the first dreamer's attention away from the valley on the unread page back to the dingy city, or the sky above the dingy city.

They see the moon cycle nearing the close of the lunar phase, what we may call a day.

It's easy to feel the pressures accompanying a new cycle of an old phase. The colors change—buzzing golden beams of one moon, known as the Thief, who steals away the gentle and violet hum the nocturne, also known as the Lady's blessing.

Throughout the final cycle, the city's Dreamers flock to storytellers and bards, poets and theatrical troupes, musicians and mimes. These performers gather around fires or find a stage to hold space during the Golden Hours.

They embrace the chaos and control with ritual release.

Some dreamers stay focused.

Others seek to escape into ink, bottles, or whatever else they can find.

***

Around the corner from the bench, dreamers stream into the entrance of the dingy bar and down the winding staircase into the dingy basement.

A band wraps their sound check on a stage near the winding stairs.

One member moves through the crowd, two others towards the stairs.

The final member, the vaocalist, stays on the stage seated with her eyes closed.

Playing with something in her fingers.

Across the room, is a bar tended by a weary keeper who greets the bassist.

He orders a bottle.

Before fetching it, the tender glances towards a door covered in graffiti.

Past the graffitied door is a shadowy hallway that goes down and around. Here, the third tear-streaked dreamer sits against the hallway wall, hugging her knees into her torso.

Right beside her, a heavy cloth hangs over a doorless doorframe. Beyond is a small room with a couch where the fourth dreamer lays with an ink-stained mind slipping between euphoria and nightmare

Bending and warping, the ink steals the dreamer's world as the Thief steals the Lady's nocturne somewhere beyond the darkened room with a couch and a heavy cloth for a door.

The dreamer in the hall hears her old friend groan; tearing up again, she helplessly slaps the wall.

Falling further behind with drink orders, the keeper drops the bottle.

Cursing, he grabs another.

With the second bottle, the bassist slips back into the crowd towards the stage where the vocalist sits, still silent with closed eyes, still playing with something in her hands.

Around the corner from the dingy bar with a dingy basement, the first dreamer stands up from the bench with a sign, looking worried.

They crumple their still unread letter into their shoulder bag.

In the distance, thunder cracks as they turn in the direction of the dingy basement, thinking maybe they can help Aldo and Evi tonight behind the bar. And they heard there is a new band playing the Golden Hours.

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