A Breeding Darkness (Complete)

(2)

Entering Zerkalo was like diving through an icy lake. Her mind plunged from the real world through the barrier into a dream one, chilling her bones until tears gathered in her eyes. But this was what she was used to every time she fell asleep with the aid of Sleep Briar. While normal sleeping did nothing but refresh her body, a deep, almost death-like, sleep sent her to Zerkalo. But it was a crash landing sort of entrance. She plummeted into sleep, and thus she plummeted into Zerkalo like a frozen shooting star.

As she waited for the cold to dissipate, Lucy pushed herself off the smooth cobblestones and onto her knees. She wrapped her arms around her middle and scanned the area. As always, she had woken up in the village just outside of her territory. No one had bothered to name the village anything, as it was neutral territory that all the Dreamwalkers must arrive in. It was just like any quaint country village, filled with thatched homes with mud walls and arched doors. However, though the windows were not shuttered, it was impossible to look through them. The doors were also impossible to open, even though she had tried many times over the years to force them open or break them down. She'd only exhausted and frustrated herself. Nothing about the houses allowed her to see what it was like within. Instead, they sat like shallow props on a stage, only there to vaguely mimic something she knew from the real world.

She exhaled and closed her eyes for a moment. It had been weeks since she'd last been in Zerkalo, and, even though she was still anxious about the darkness, she felt a calm wash over her. This was her world, a place that only she and a few others could access. It was special to her. She had been traipsing through its fields and streams and forest since she was eight, and she had missed it terribly. She opened her eyes again as she walked the village streets, secretly glad that she'd been forced to come back after all.

Not much had changed in the village physically, but the longer Lucy walked its streets the more she realized there was something missing. The Denizens were not there to greet her. The people of the dream world normally dissolved from the walls to gather around her and make their pleasant humming noises. They'd once offered her the items she was here to collect, but that had changed once the village had been officially declared a neutral zone amongst all the Dreamwalkers. But the Denizens still never missed a chance to welcome whichever Dreamwalker had arrived. To not have them floating across the lumpy cobblestones was odd.

The frigid cold of crossing worlds finally faded from Lucy's bones, and she shook her limbs to loosen them as she walked toward the south end of the village. Everything was quiet as she walked, and each fall of her boots echoed strangely around her. Noise didn't work the same in Zerkalo, and it never had. But normally the close feeling of the echoes was disguised by the Denizen's cheerful humming and the sound of any other Dreamwalkers who happened to be around. Now, each crunch of grit under her heel and each swish of her dress reverberated through the air until she felt stifled and trapped.

When she reached the edge of town she saw that the darkness had creeped even closer than she remembered from the last time she had been in Zerkalo. Her palms went damp as she stared at the pitch black that ran across the grass only a few hundred feet from the village. Her territory, a field, was out there in the darkness somewhere. Abandoned by her once the blackness had swallowed her working space and brought with it the feeling of dread and drowning.

Lifting her lantern off her belt, she opened the compartment where her matches were stored and lit the wick. The lantern flared into life, but even its light did little to calm her trembling heart as she looked out at the blackness lurking just a few steps away. She wanted to stay in the village, one of the last places in Zerkalo that still had natural light, but she would collect no Findings there. And she needed Findings to earn enough coins to send home.

She stepped off the cobblestone road and into the grass. Even here, the difference between Zerkalo and the real world was ever present. The grass brushed against her ankles as she made her way toward the clean line of shadows, yet she felt nothing but whispers and cold against her skin. Almost everything in Zerkalo was a ghost of the reality Lucy knew. Merely echoes.