Genre: Fantasy Surrealism. Tales of the Realm Book 1. Two children share memories of their lives, and in doing so open the door to a dark but beautiful realm. In this land imagination becomes reality, dreams become possibilities, and the dark recess...
This chapter is part 1 of the draft rewrite of Memories' Prologue. I hope you enjoy 😊
I want to begin this tale with a 'once upon', but I can't. I can't remember where it started, how it started. I can barely remember who I am, sometimes wondering if I'm a whisper of another, a shadow of a real person. So many thoughts, so many half-baked images and memories swirling in my head, and no where to put them, nowhere to really start. I've written and re-written this story over in my head a thousand times. There is no beginning. Is there an end?
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
I place my quill down on the thick oak table, bolted to the floor. Gently, despite growing frustration at my poor attempts at writing of late. Taking a sip of warm coffee, I let out a long sigh, turning my attention to the small round window giving me a glimpse of the ocean outside the cabin.
Water runs the glass, a hundred little streams sliding whichever way they may. It's getting harder to put my words to paper with each passing day; my thoughts are a jumbled mess. Taking an hour or two of peace and quiet down here is some respite from what is happening outside the cabin.
This world is facing its end, in a way words can barely do justice. Beyond the chaos, the wars, the catastrophes its denizens are inflicting upon one another, there is something far deeper, darker. Things are just, falling apart, as if reality itself was just.. untangling. Where things should come together, they slip apart, where they should fall, they rise, where they should sink, they swim. Every piece of the world, from the flecks of sand to the mountains are just drifting apart from one another. Stretched to a breaking point.
I try to chronicle every important moment; every memory that moves us closer to the end of the Realm even as we try to find a way to save it. And just like the world around me, every time I try to write things drift apart, fracture, like memories of memories, pieces that never fit together. So lately, I've stopped trying to fit them together. My draft sentences spin into messy trails of thoughts that could drift off for thousands of words. Plot points become smudges of ink, patterns I aimlessly draw instead. The only way that worked lately was just to let go and go with the flow. The Realm stopped making sense a long time ago; a story rewritten a thousand times, a thousand drafts.
I wrinkle my nose at the fog in which I try to write, almost forgotten about while deep in thought. The air is thick with the smell of burning scented candles, contained in magic-woven baubles to prevent any fire outbreak on the ship. I find they help put my mind at ease. But that hour or two of peace is over. If the quill could chuckle at me, I'm sure it would. Not caring for my internal struggles, it just rolls along the table back and forth with the waves we ride, dribbling even more ink over the rough drafts of chapters written without structure or form. Over the past few days, the rise and fall of the ship grows increasingly noticeable, almost unbearable sometimes. Our journey has become treacherous, the ocean now rough; waves that grow higher by the hour test our vessel, our resolve, or both. Something tells me their rise heralds an important moment in time we're about to reach, a crescendo of sorts. They taunt, tease us of danger, heralding some dramatic ending.
