𝓢𝓪𝓷𝓭𝓶𝓪𝓷'𝓼 𝓓𝓻𝓮𝓪𝓶

𝑽𝒊𝒔𝒊𝒕𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝑨𝒏 𝑶𝒍𝒅 𝑭𝒓𝒊𝒆𝒏𝒅

Two

Twenty four hours turned to days. Days turned to weeks. Weeks turned to months. And months... turned to years.

Lord Morpheus did not come back.

And The Dreaming began to fall apart without him.

The different corners of the realm began to crumble, places vanished, fields withered, lands decayed, trees were no longer growing and people started leaving. Eventually, humans stopped dreaming.

I didn't know how that was possible, for them to sleep without dreams. Perhaps they had found a way to dream on their own, or worse, they stopped dreaming for good. I didn't want to think about that further. It's too dreadful.

Nobody thought this would happen, especially me. I thought this realm, my home, is as endless as our ruler. We were all proven wrong.

It does not stop my heart from breaking, though. I was still holding on to the promise that he uttered before he left, the one which he said he would return.

Everyone thought Lord Morpheus abandoned us, so they no longer see a reason to stay anymore. He is Endless, therefore he can't have died in his absence so there was only the reason that he abandoned his people and home that remains rational to them all.

That is why they left, one by one, for good.

But not me. I stayed.

I was not alone, fortunately. Lucienne stayed with me.

"Thanks for not leaving." I told her.

"Like you, I have faith that Lord Morpheus will return. We must stay here and wait for him."

I nodded. "No matter how long it takes."

Lucienne approached the problem strategically. She focused on preserving establishments and salvaging what's left of the realm, starting with the castle and that haven of hers: the library. From time to time, I lend her a helping hand.

Meanwhile, I took it upon myself to travel back and forth to the waking world and the Dreaming.

"Why do you do it, Katrien?" Lucienne questioned one day right after I returned, empty-handed and miserable. "Why do you search for him still, after all these years, thinking that he wants to be found?"

I sighed. "The night he left, I felt something horrible. There was this tug in my chest that was telling me in the back of my head that something bad is going to happen to Lord Morpheus right after he set foot in the waking world. I can't shake it off, Lucienne, even after all these years."

"You think he is in danger, our Lord the Endless?"

"It's not impossible, is it? Honestly, who knows what is happening to him?"

"But he cannot die."

"That's not an excuse to give up on him. I've made up my mind, Lucienne. I am going to figure out where he went, search for him far and wide, and bring him back home."

"All right. What can I do to help, then, to make up for disheartening you earlier?"

"Can I cave in the library for a few hours?"

She smiled. "There's really no need to ask for that, you know. It's a part of your home too."

It was a fruitful time, those that I spent at the library, because at one of the shelves where I used to stack my hidden things, I found something. It was a letter from The Corinthian.

Suddenly, the missing piece of the invisible puzzle inside of me was found. It was him, the last person who Lord Morpheus probably interacted with before he vanished. And so, he might be the one to give me the answers I need.