His Hooded Dreamworld Hero

Chapter 3

     Immersed in hysteria and desperate for food, water and rest, Yvain stayed on the mountaintop for what must've been an hour or more. His rest couldn't last forever, though, and eventually, he started slowly making his way back down the slopes. The going was rough. His legs wobbled even worse than before. His pants were caked in mud from the dozens of times he'd fallen over. His water ran out entirely not even an hour in. And still, somehow, he made his descent with unwavering ecstasy.

     All the way down, the world waved and wobbled, hellbent on never staying in the same shape for more than a moment before morphing into something else. Titan trees stood still. He blinked. They transformed into outstretched rows of waving many-armed shamans in full ceremonial garb. A lone bird soared above. He glanced up, and down, and up again. A hundred thousand winged dragons overshadowed the entire sky. He was well aware that all these lovely visions were mere delirium, but he reveled in them nonetheless. The little birds, squirrels, chipmunks and rabbits he passed were real, at least, he thought, and their cheerful chirps and squeaks were what kept him going most.

     More than once, he sat on a boulder and played whatever songs came to mind for the wild to enjoy. Sometimes, he was pretty sure, hikers passed him by and gave their good regards while he played away. Other times, he played in only quiet's company, but even then, he played on a world stage, with a mother and a father and an ever-present eye of their eternal union to listen. That made for plenty company for him. The going was slow, but being a downhill climb on a calm and breezy day, he ran into no problems other than impending death impeding progress. The whole day whipped past, of course, before he'd even reached level ground, but he could barely care less. Nothing but serene completeness ever entered his head. His mission, dare he think, was over. Against all odds, it had ended in resounding success.

     His car emerged from the distance like his personal holy grail. With strength he was surprised he still possessed, he ran the rest of the way. He knew he was in no sort of shape to drive, though, and so, he crawled inside, put the seat back, and immediately fell into a deep and dreamless asleep.

***

     It took him another couple of weeks to part with a range newly holy to him. Eventually, though, just as he'd begrudgingly acknowledged the need to return down the mountain, he acknowledged the need to return home. Revelation without work was just delusion, after all.

     No matter his million playlists and the small museum's worth of CDs laying around his car, he hardly made it through an album on a week's journey east. It wasn't, obviously, that he'd just suddenly fallen out of love with the manifold joys of listening to all his favorite songs. This time, simply put, he didn't need it. The scenery, in the great rolling plains just as much as in the mighty mountains, kept his heart aflame. The thoughts, in the dull and uninspired just as much as in the novel and profound, kept his mind alive and awake. Music, beforehand, had been a concrete wall as much as a time killer, keeping him from confronting whatever frightful feelings may otherwise arise. Now, the feelings came in excess, good and bad hand-in-hand, and he didn't even consider having them suppressed anymore.

     In those long car rides, then, without the presence of his muting music, he had time to think; maybe, he thought, for the first real time in his life. He'd been given the world, by virtue merely of being born. For that, as he saw, he had two people, as absent or estranged as they may have been, to appreciate; and ideally, to forgive, and just maybe, to love. And there was the world itself – that planetary family hiding in plain sight – made up of the eternal couple and their endless descendants, forever in a joyous spinning dance of life and death. Man had left the ballroom millennia ago. Yvain had only just turned his back on that original sin. Unconditional love, proven every time he closed his eyes, awaited his arrival. He couldn't help but follow the path and fling the unlocked door back open.

     What would've seemed a monumental task just a couple weeks before now came naturally, every time he pulled over for a scenic forest vista and every time he pulled into a random gas station alike. The smile on his face and the serenity he wore on his sleeve were inerasable, for the eye in the sky was with him at all times, and with it, a reminder of the union that made and that united all the cosmos.

***

     A temporary bed in the back seat of a car maybe didn't make for the most dramatic locale. Being situated in the back of a gas station parking lot didn't improve matters much. But it was sunrise, and red rays on a cloudy sky raced to replace his indifference with wonder. He had just one more day's drive to Iowa. That alone should've been throwing him into an existential tizzy for an uncertain fate. On that morning, though, he had something much more pressing to ponder.

     Fumbling for whatever notebook he found first, he sat up in the back seat and began to frantically write. He'd been here before; merely weeks ago, however much it felt like years. It was a struggle to remember all the details. They'd be gone before he knew, though, so he wrote like the wind against the grain of time.

     He remembered an eye. A chalice. A young girl with sun-dipped golden hair who'd held them. A girl who's face he glimpsed, if only briefly, and immediately recognized. A girl who he'd known – who he'd done his best to love before he'd ever even seen love himself – until he'd let her go. And a man, too, a hood over his face, gracefully receiving the chalice and holding up the eye within it to the sky. His voice, booming through infinity, soothing all the cosmos into knowing it'd be okay. And himself. Robes draped over his arms. Hood over his head. Chalice in his hands. An eye in the sky in front of him. And all around him. And within him.

     He dropped the pencil he'd been writing with. That was all he'd remembered seeing. That was all he'd needed to see.

     He was as directionless as ever. It was Iowa, initially, for at least one incandescent girl he used to know but never knew how to love, if not both her and his estranged parent. After that, and perhaps a gap year, it'd be college; to learn whatever discipline could aid the world the most, and to fall in love with places and people all new all over again. And after that, the future was just as much a mystery as it'd been when first he'd left. But, as much as his external conditions hadn't improved – if anything, with his having run away in the dead of night, they were worse – he felt in total internal control. It was new. It was exhilarating. And it left him feeling ready.