Lucidity

Blackout Days

I'm afraid.

I thought I'd never be able to fall asleep tonight. Too many emotions twisted and tangled together, tormenting me for hours. Dread, disbelief, confusion, and betrayal battled for dominance, leaving me as a wartorn victim. Throughout all of it, fear has remained the overpowering constant. Whatever my mother has to tell me, I don't want to hear it. I know I need to, but it will hurt regardless, and I think she's broken my heart enough in the past sixteen years.

I was once enamored by the luminosity of the Great Orion Nebula, but I hardly notice it anymore. I'm too focused on the woman in front of me. She turns to me with the same pleasant smile she wears every night, but this time, I don't return it. "Welcome back, darling," she greets me sweetly.

"Why didn't you tell me?" I say instantly, my voice gruff. I don't have the patience for pleasantries.

The smile falls. Her eyes flicker between mine, searching for an explanation. "You'll have to be more specific."

"You died." Realization crosses her face, but her expression stays steady. "You're dead, and you never told me. Why?"

Maybe I'm imagining it, but for the first time ever, she seems to falter. "I didn't see the point. I didn't think it would change anything between us," she explains, choosing each word with care. "I'm still here. And we still love each other, don't we?"

    It's my turn to falter, but I will myself to become cold and expressionless. However she answers this question will hurt me, and I can't help but brace myself. "Right. You're still here, but my mother is dead. So you're either dead but existing here somehow, or you're not my mother. Which is it?"

She pauses, and once again, I can't read her at all. Then something shifts. The change is so subtle I can't identify it, but it's as if she becomes a different person in the blink of an eye. Her face is so... empty. Not just unreadable, but completely void of feeling and thought. "It's more complicated than that, but you're on the right track," she begins, watching me with emotionless eyes. The glimmer of life is still there, but it seems artificial now. "I suppose it's time I ought to tell you. You've learned everything else you need to know."

    Leo appears at my side silently, apparently summoned by the woman. He clutches one of his constellion cubs close to his chest, and the other perches on his shoulder. Although he glances between the woman and me to decipher the situation, he doesn't interrupt.

The woman snaps her fingers so loudly the sound reverberates in my ears. All the lights in the galaxy flick off on command, leaving us submerged in total darkness. Then a small glowing orb begins to form before us, swirling with strands of white light.

"I have told you about the history of dreams," the woman's disembodied voice says, echoing around the emptiness. I can't tell if it's coming from everywhere at once or emanating from somewhere inside my own head. "Before Sleep Entities, before dreamers, before dreams, there was only one thing in the Subconscious. It did not have a name. It did not have a body. It did not have a purpose. Now, it is called the Sleep Deity.

"The Deity did not know what it was capable of, so it observed." Thousands of faint images flicker around the spinning, glowing orb. People, families, civilizations. "The Deity became very fond of humans. They exhibited a kind of magic like nothing else did, and they called that magic 'imagination.' And so the Deity watched, and it imagined, and it loved.

"But soon, the humans were overtaken by the plague they call depression and anxiety and countless other names. The magic was stolen from them, and so too was the life. The Deity knew this was not meant to be. Thus, it intervened."

The flickering images fade, and instead, nondescript humanoid forms approach the ball of light. In comparison, they are tiny and insignificant, but the orb blesses them with light of their own. "When the humans slept, the Deity invited them into the Subconscious and shared its imagination. It did not always cure the plague, but it helped. And for a time, the Deity was glad.