[Music: Edge Hill by Groove Armada]
You awaken, a child, as though for the first time, and wonder at the infinite living rainbow dancing overhead.
Curious to engage, you reach out to touch the rainbow, which shatters into a kaleidoscope of possibilities, each shard a glimpse into parallel worlds.
You feel yourself falling into one particular shard, like a whirlpool pulling you down into a portal to another realm, another self, and yet somehow familiar. A long lost memory whispers in the distance just beyond awareness. You’ve been here before…
You find yourself on a small wooden sailboat, floating on an ocean of undreamt dreams. A clockwork owl perches on the mast, it’s gears ticking this universe forward click by clock as it looks ever forward toward the horizon ahead.
The crew, a motley collection of poets, philosophers, and wanderers, carry on merrily in their seemingly aimless squabbles. Yet somehow their abstract incantations charting a course through the foggy crags that lie ahead.
Many tumultuous days and nights pass among the foggy crags. Frequent storms thrash and tear the sails. Pelted by rain, the poets and philosophers desperately try to reweave the fraying sails to hold a steady course, while the wanderers study the dreamsea. Your arms and back grow weary bailing the rainwater out of the boat.
A fox made of fire and shadow backstrokes most casually through the choppy waters. It’s eyes gleam with the fractal shards of many worlds. It seems to know and anticipate each passing wave, at one in the chaos hinting at an underlying pattern.
The water level in the boat rises, outpacing your bailing. No longer a child, your soul grows weary and hopeless. Perhaps you’ve all lost the way after all. Would it be so bad if the sea swallowed your ship and crew? Click, Clock the owls gears churned.
Finally, a city emerges in the distance. Towers of old books growing out of a vast desert. The scent of their ancient transporting words carried on the wind, beckons you onward. The rain lightens while you find some hidden well of strength within to empty the soggy hull once more.
Pulling up on the sandy shores, pages of books lay scattered about the ground. Each page tugs gently at your heart, like a distant memory of the shattered rainbow shards that transported you here. You bid a fond, tearful farewell to your trusty crew as you each continue in your own directions.
You come upon a librarian with the mind of a forest who sings a melody to guide you. As you make your way into the library-city, the ghosts of forgotten gods walk alongside you, their quiet murmurs carrying on the same guiding melody.
As you ascend a spiral staircase of knowledge, your own mind begins to harmonize with the tune. You no longer feel lost. Each step more sure and effortless. At the top of the stairs you discover a room of maps; a cartographers study. It’s new to your senses, and yet feels in your heart like returning home after several lifetimes away.
Glancing at a parchment of a half-sketched globe, you recognize the handwriting as your own. You can’t yet read the symbols, but the smell of the dusty reading chair is unmistakably familiar. As you settle into the chair, it yields to your form like a hug from an old friend.
Humming a familiar tune, you pickup the quill and get back to your joyful work.
