The Chained Watcher

To Dream of Ages Long Past

~~~

Yawning, Grian laid down on his lounge room's mattress, arranging his wings into a comfortable arrangement. Despite being alone, he mutters, "This is stupid..."

Honestly now. A Watcher? Dreaming? It's absurd. All he's doing is compromising the quality of his sleep.

He closes his eyes, setting his mind into the cadence of sleep. But not the usual type of sleep. No, this sleep is the less restful, dream-filled sleep that afflicts most normal sapients after a couple hours of decent rest. He probably won't even get a dream. Just a memory. And the chances of that memory containing something of interest to him? Nearly nothing. He's forgotten thousands of lifetimes' worth of things, and most of those are just routine days with nothing of interest.

Immediately, the difference between this kind of sleep and his normal sleep shows itself. A blank visualization forms, full of... potential, it feels, but lacking any direction. This would be where a normal person's mind would automatically pull up a memory, right? A memory, so tangled in layers of fantasy and imagination as to be unrecognizable.

He could probably recreate that kind of thing himself, but the point of this is to see what happens naturally. And if he's doing this manually, then what's even the point of it? Visualizations are something he can create and maintain with ease, even without the isolation brought about by sleeping.

So... he waits. He waits, letting his mind wander over all the other things he could be spending his time doing, not the least of which being letting himself actually get some rest. The only reason he enjoys sleeping is because it allows his mind to still, his thoughts quieting into the most bare of observations, akin to meditation. All this type of sleep does is rest his body, which needs this type of rest even less than his mind does.

Maybe he should mess around with Doc in the Perimeter a bit. With Doc having declared himself a sovereign nation with a population of one following Ren's crowning as king, it might be fun to check it out a bit and see if he can stir up conflict between Doc and Ren.

Getting that much area cleared to bedrock is honestly really impressive. He got everything, from the trees, to the lava, even the water, and everyone knows how annoying draining fluids can-

...hard to drain this much water...

His attention snaps onto the rogue line of thought. That thought did not belong to his conscious mind.

Reaching out, he pulls on the rogue thought, trying to unearth more of it. And it disappears. He stares at his mental hands, where the rogue line of thought, the old fragment of a memory, should have been trapped. There's nothing.

Not only is there nothing, the feeling of potential the blank visualization held is gone, telling him that he's not getting another chance to observe this strange phenomenon tonight. All because he, like an idiot, thought he could grab something as ethereal as that faint wisp of a memory using his full mental strength without doing something to it.

What even happened to it? Hopefully he didn't erase it. That would be exceedingly frustrating. Oh, but maybe it's more like how mortal minds dream, where conscious acknowledgement of the dream banishes it from one's mind.

He nods to himself, affirming his decision. Next time he gets a memory wisp like that, he'll quiet his conscious thoughts down to mere observations, and see if that can coax more of it out.

Wait, nods?

Looking down, he sees that his visualization is no longer blank, starting to morph into what looks like outer space. His dream self is also of a lower Tier than he is, meaning that this ought to be a memory. Okay, let's see what shows up.