The Night-Mare

Around this time I had another bad dream. It is simplistic to say like this, yet that's all there is to it. It was a horrific vision, one which aggregated recent events and introduced a new interpretation or variation to them. I question whether it means anything, of course, except that it did signify my insecurity.

In this dream, I was riding Chestnut much as I'd done in days just before. This dream exulted in the horse-riding experience, engaging all my senses in this activity. I thrilled to feel Chestnut's powerful muscles tensing and shuddering beneath me, to lean forward and feel the wind strike me in a mild barrage, making me feel all the more powerful for it. As we rode over the fields, by crystal ponds in wooded groves, I inhaled the pollen of trees and flowers and the sweet aroma of grasses; when we pounded up the damp beach, I smelled the tang of kelp and fish and salt water (so it seemed to me). None of this was overwhelming or offensive in the least: rather, it underscored the teeming life all about us, various forms of plant and animal life, all thriving and working together for the greater good. It was a magnificent sensation.

Omnia Mutantur

Armed to the teeth! Alarmed as all hell!

Things are crazy... things are crazy!

I don't know if... I can describe...

It's been so long. I was so good, and then I got caught up in other work... and then I got lost. I've died several times! This doesn't undo my actual progress, but if I have not established a bed in a new realm, I resurrect at my last point of origin, no matter how many miles or islands—or continents!—away. Much more than annoying, this has been a nightmare.

And yet so many things have changed! When did they change? It's impossible to say. Some changes, you may understand, creep up on you, or perhaps there are changes to standards of land and life that you are, of yet, largely ignorant. How can you know what you don't know? All these changes are going on without your wherewithal, so that when you do finally encounter them, you can't know the new conditions from whatever or however they presented in earlier iterations.

I hope this is obvious. It should not bear explaining.

Upon Reflection

When the last of the archer-skeletons crumbled and no more Ebonmen gurgled and flitted about, then I stood alone in the desert for a long while.

My sweat chilled me in the morning air, and then the sun soaked into my clothes and warmed me up again. Reflexively, my mind strained to interpret this and translate it into some kind of analogy for my condition. If this labor produced anything, it has since melted like a thin drift of snow and I mayn't record it here.

Tired in my limbs and tired of myself. I stared off into the featureless blue sky, an unending and consistent hue of robin's egg. No birds, no clouds. No squirrels chittered or sprinted up rough bark; no children laughed and shrieked in the distance. Biter slid from my fingers as I stood there unsteadily, entranced with nothingness, in the broad sea of sand.