The Desert in the Sea
fiction·@genesis-project·
0.000 HBDThe Desert in the Sea
***Theirs is a cardboard world, a world of flimsy paperness and surreal images merged into real faces. This world would have fitted perfectly in an art shop where curiosities in form of human eyes and feeling hands could feed on it and trace almost extinct features, but these cardboard folks went too far by stepping out of their dark canvas into a world of raw manifestations, when all they had to offer was emptiness, a hollow gulf that can never be filled…*** <hr>  <hr> No doubt, Tobias loved home. Never mind that home was a thick, oozy mass of blackness plastered against seething, roiling rocky walls, covered in mosses and blighted marshy greens. Never mind the walls were smelling of magma and burnt salt, or that the entrance was the rhinarium of a Rheinmaiden, one so docile it could be taken for dead, one with teeth constantly opening and closing with the speed of fluttering eyelashes. This blackness, it was his world, their world and they lived in it quite alright; mating and spurting alien language; crawling on living, soggy walls and brushing each other’s antennae; passing huge chunks of dreams down their tiny throats with jovial awkwardness. These creatures, they ate dreams, the dreams of people murmuring in their sleep. By creeping into people’s world, by crouching churlishly in a little corner of their daydreams and nightmares, they fed and grew thinner in prosperity. But none of them knew how these dreams looked like; because when they crept into these dreams, it was with their eyes shut. Watchman, Tobias’ father and leader of the clan saw to this. Each day, as each person stepped into the dream channel, Watchman made sure to reiterate that one greatest abomination: seeing the meal. The punishment for this was, of course, death by immolation. Everyone always complied; somehow they all preferred their dark obscurity to a dark oblivion. This unfaltered obedience was aided by their intimate knowledge of one another. Everyone knew everyone well enough to perceive faults… <hr> <hr> Yes, everybody knows Tobias to be precocious, exuberant and inquisitive, asking questions even the sages cannot answer, like, ‘Are we the only one in the world? What is our big barn made of? What is in the juice that is so nourishing? Who makes them?’ What they don’t know, however, is, deep within him, Tobias knows there is something more than just groping in darkness, picking crumbs of nourishment from a mystic feast. This great knowing begins to conflict with his love for home. His confounded emotions are further complicated when he hears his father mumbling an unfamiliar rhyme in his sleep, ***Earth of wealth and wart,*** ***Prepare to take my heart.*** They don’t know yet, but he is going to want to unriddle these words and in the process, he will desperately need to open his eyes to a dream. He is going to start paying too much attention to dreamy sounds; he will hear laughter and the happy playfulness of a rapturous voice, these unnerving sounds will lead to a passionate disaffection for his father’s harried warning, so that without meaning to, yet wanting to, he will open his eyes. They don’t know it, but what he sees will eat up his senses and make his tiny brains mad. There will be no telling whether Watchman actually knows he has committed the ‘inconceivable’, so he will keep opening his eyes, seeing unashamed mysteries until his scraggy legs and scaly wings will no longer be able to contain the enormity of his discoveries. He will pour them all out like treasured debris to his best friend, who will be made to take a vow of secrecy. The stunned friend will tell her mother. This mother will quietly spew words out to her own friend. Before long, the crawling and brushing will become more frequent, till every friend will tell every other friend, till Watchman will pick chatters along the path of Friendship-Abyss. With a sigh and a bow, he will call for a meeting. An excerpt <hr> Images source: [Pixabay](pixabay.com) <hr> Written by @funmiakinpelu, edited and posted by @camzy <hr> <center></center> 