The Endless Dreaming

Realm of the dreaming

         A feeling of dread consumed me while traversing through our lands. I've never been this worried when Morpheus leaves the realm but something felt off this time. Suddenly I was draped in the vulnerability of a strange sickness that begins to quiver the very earth beneath me. In the silent corridors of telepathy I call out to my husband uncharacteristically he remains an echoing void, a symphony of unspoken troubles to start in our divine realm.

    "Lucienne! Help! Something is wrong." Running to my side feverishly with a bewildered and terrified look in her eyes. "Morpheus." I say weakly.  My eyes start to flicker like fading stars, whispering a feeble plea as I descend into the arms of slumber. A silent shadow grows haunting our shared realm. Without anyone to gain some control the realm begins to crumble.

In the cold, wet basement of a small subset of houses in London, I awoke within a glass cell, in the subterranean hold Roderick Burgess built to contain me, my tools stolen from me. Cut off from my realm.  I was powerless. Trapped by a spell cast by an amateur with no concern for the damage he had done to my realm and to his own. For the following morning, there were some sleepers who could not wake up. The sleepy sickness, as it was called, affected nearly one million men, women and children in every city, town and village in the world.         

     Day after day,he pleaded for gifts that are not mankind's to receive nor mine to give. So I remained silent. And ten years later though my presence there remained a secret, my ruby, sand and helm brought youth and prosperity to Roderick and his followers. The savagery of my captors bespoke a world
whose dreams in my absence turned darker still.
A world which would soon be at war again. A world still ravaged by the disease which doctors named encephalitis lethargica.

      Some begged for sleep that would not come.
Others lived as perpetual sleepwalkers. Most slept without waking. Through the passage of time, my captivity exchanged hands, and amidst the longing, the only desire that penned itself in my heart's narrative was the sweet release. A return to my kingdom beckoned, a yearning to restore order and the sweet embrace of Pasithea . In the confines of my latest captivity, Alex Burgess emerges. The youngest and unfavored son of Rodrick. Alex became a recurring presence draped in disdain and smoldering anger. He confronts the years of my stoic silence, the unspoken narrative etched in the lines of his furrowed brow. " I could have asked you for wealth or power, like my father did. But all I ever wanted was to be free of you. Surely you want that too."

   "Alex, darling, please." His lover pleaded to him.

    "Take me upstairs, Paul." Alex sharply responded as he relax back in his wheelchair escorted up to the bedroom he and Paul shared.  "I won't be coming down here again." That mixup anger and disappointment his voice. As Paul turn to leave, his foot glides across the protective warding on the ground
Breaking circle has kept me captive for the last century. 

    I biding my time until night falls, and I assure myself that Alex was asleep, I slithered my way into his dreams to deal out the punishment I had been longing for for over century.  "You're you're free." Alex says with  absolute terror in his eyes. " I am. And you have any idea what it was like? Confined in a cage for over a century? Do you understand the damage you've done to your world? " I'm sorry. I I didn't know. Please."Alex cries out in a pleading tone. Your punishment, then, shall be a gift. I give you this, the gift of eternal sleep.
      More than a century of tortured sleep, of  Dreams and Nightmares running riot was coming to an end.
"Sir. Sir! Oh, my goodness. Sir. It's me. It's Lucienne."
I gasps trying catch my breath and regain my consciousness. Weakly I groan "Lucienne."
"You're home, my Lord." "I am."

As I glance around the realm Lucienne sighs speaking in a somber tone "Forgive me, sir, but the realm, the palace they are not as you left them."
Grief struck I ask "What happened here?"
"Who did this? Where is Pasithea? How could she have let our realm fall to such disarray?"