He looked across the sky, across the bloodied boiling soil of abandoned love and hate, across the tattered and shining devastation, to the souls torn from human skulls. He retreated into the rolling, stormy terrain of whispering sonnets. The gargantuan senescent oaks awaited – thoughts, bright dreams, a fallen moon, a comforting kitchen, hearts mingling with old leaves, corpses struggling, the sunset flayed into a multitude of vermilion sinews, and snatched away, conquered by indigo phantasms.

Continued from First Part

The distant horizon disappeared – he had arrived. Here in this enchanted village, where memories wandered in confusion and delight, through the tangled rough gardens, down past the terraces’ screams, the Dreamer sought out a wondrous device of old. Stepping on ginger weed and parsnip phantasia, his feet takes lengths, like the moon’s shadow, which he had hoped to seal upon the path. Ahead, very ancient calcified chittering clung to the cracked stone of garden ornaments.

In the abyss of the overgrown, fear froze the heart of the ebony draped scholar. He commenced along a white road of wavering moonlight, and he lived with the stolen fragrant summer night that had been caught by the withering ivy of Ying’Tsai’u, where The Thirteen had hoped to die.

For more years than the stars can count he, remained in the village, always watching for the device of old, but never was it seen or heard along the many crumbled lanes and twisted gardens of the village. So long did he reside there, that even the humble folk along The River Skai knew of him and his endless search for that legendary device of old. Finally, he felt the tug of the sliver thread at the base of his skull. He was drawn back over the Walls of Sleep, and returned to the mundane lands of the waking day. A piece of The Dreamer remained behind, as can be the case with such deep wanderings. It is said that a broken brightly coloured music box in the shape of a carousel rests upon a shelf in his bedroom. A child’s favourite tune is locked within.

eaten memories –
his ancestors once lived in a village,
on the shelf – childhood gathers dust