Archer

Dec 26, 2020 [design: Oct 09, 2017 | growth: Jan 12, 2018 | readopt] 

" It's hard to sleep, sometimes. There are many tips and suggestions and herbal remedies for this age-old malady, but Archer disregards all of it. He knows better. He knows himself.
When sleep does not come, he smiles, and creates.

A story. Or an animal. Or a large castle with many rooms, where wind echoes in the large dusty hallways and every room holds unknown mysteries. He doesn't know how many creations he has dreamt up, only to fall deep into hypnos' arms and forget it in tomorrows morn.
But more recently, there's been something else. Something much bigger. Every day he looks forward to the night, for then he can continue creating his masterpiece. His own world.

He began with a world as grey as his fur. The grass is soft, gentle against his paws, and is the colour of ash - and the world itself smells of ash, the wind carrying the fragrance of incense. Dark mountains rise against the horizon, harsh charcoal angles against a slate sky, outlined in silver snow. The only colour, he decided, was to be a burning umber sun. It would always be there, never moving, permanently on the cusp of setting. There would be no stars - even on the darkest side of the sky - because he loved the stars, and no place could be perfect. There was something sweet about the sensation of longing. Bittersweet.

He looked around, and he saw something shimmering on the ground. He walked to it slowly, no rush, and marvelled at the lush foliage between his toes. Even the stones felt like velvet. Closer to the shimmering, he saw it was little more than a puddle. Not of water - of something akin to liquid mercury. Beautiful colours, and high surface tension; it was so tempting to touch, to dive in, to see if he could touch the bottom - but he stopped, nose inches away.

And then he continued, nose first, then eyes and ears and paws. He stopped breathing, and this didn't cause him any harm; but then he became curious, and he opened his mouth, lacking all the fear and anxiety he holds in the waking world. It tasted of peppermint and smelt as fresh as snow. His eyes had instinctively closed, but once opened it reveals a creation long since forgotten. A large castle, of winding halls and floor to ceiling windows, in old chipped bricks crawling with poison ivy. He backs out of the puddle, suddenly unsure. In his original monochrome world, the burning sun stares down on him - and on the little mercury ponds that now dot the land, reflecting stars in the sky that aren't there when he looks to the heavens to check.

He walks to another, an unknown feeling bubbling in his chest. Is he scared? Is he delighted? He ducks his head into another puddle, to see a curious animal. It had four wings, and antlers that resembled trees. Hooves of stone made giant imprints into the trembling ground. It was familiar, and he remembered - it was another of his night-time creations.

He had once wondered, how much he had forgotten on the knife-edge between wakefulness and sleep. He retreated once more to his bittersweet world and looked upon the thousands of shimmering mercury cradles that dotted the landscape all the way to the distant and misty horizon. Not one single one reflected the burning sun above; instead, they held millions of stars that were not there. Sleep had taken his machinations away - and now, he realised, sleep had returned them. Somewhere along the line, he had stopped creating, and was simply, lucidly, dreaming. Perhaps these remembrance ponds were a gift, he wondered, from Hypnos himself. And then, he decided, this world would be called Hypnos.

His world, holding all his hearts. His escape.

Though he didn't realise it yet, it was a pivotal moment. Here, there suddenly was no difference to him in the world in which he was awake and the world in which he was asleep. In both, it is all in his head - his eyes take in light to create colours which aren't there; his brain creates movement from still images; everything is created and processed in his mind, no matter which world he resides in.

And when he wakes up, his mind becomes full of daydreams of Hypnos. His world, with the burning umber sun frozen in time and charcoal mountains with silver tips. With ash grey grass and incense winds and mercury ponds which he will one day merge into a river which will become a sea, which will reflect a star struck sky that isn't there, until he is full of vertigo and no longer knows which was is up. And he wouldn't change a single thing.