Just what did he mean by that? What will he do? The answer was obvious. I’d … The dream frowned. It was on the tip of his tongue. It was right there. Nothing. “I– I would,” Silence. It was pointless. “I would …” Dead ideas. Sleeping thoughts. An unfortunate reunion between twins who no longer knew themselves, nor remembered who they were to each other. Traum kept his mouth shut. The misty dream of seeing the color the sleeping secret’s eyes faded. How would he even start?
That’s not what I meant .. He moves on. At least he knows he’s no longer the only one who asks those questions. At least now he knows that this situation is far from natural. At the least, at the very least, the secret was going to wake, wasn’t he? As Oz tried various different ways to wake up, all too foreign for the dream who never slept, the little hope began to die down. Isn’t he? No, he wasn’t.
Something else popped up. He gaze turned towards the secret’s hand. “Yeah,” He whispers as his hands hold the soft, warm skin of the sleeping boy. “He does.” Traum felt as if he were intruding. He didn’t know this boy. All he did was talk to him. One-sided conversation everyday. But still, he couldn’t stop. The curious dream gently opened the secret’s fingers. No signs of waking up. He picked up the tiny object.
Time seemed to move too slow. Traum peered at the shard, then to the secret, then to Oz. Why would he be holding this? “I don’t know what this–” And suddenly, everything around him disappeared. Everything changed. Where was he? No, honestly, where was he? He wasn’t there. Not the him now. There was just another him .. A smaller him. Then another one. The twins named Träumen and Zeit.
The world around them was nothing like Dreamworld. There were so many people. So much noise. So many colors. Someone else was almost always with Traum and Zeit as well. Their mother. A word he never understood now made sense. The concept of family finally made sense. The feeling called love made sense. After all, that’s all he was surrounded by.
But something didn’t make sense. Something was off. Eerie. His mother dressed in odd outfits. Far different than the crowds of people he would see every once in a while. His mother always told him that she had to go to work. She had ‘practice.’ Every time she would come back with cuts and bruises. Magic didn’t exist to heal those wounds. He was too young to pay too much attention to it. It was just a little dream with slow moving time.
Time passed. Traum couldn’t shake off the feeling that the mother his condition was in wasn’t right. He asked Zeit. He knew as much as Traum did. ‘I don’t know’ was the first answer. So tell the little boy why it changed to ‘I can’t tell you.’ ? Why did his mother cry and beg for them to get away from this circus one day? Why did the man with the stars in his eyes tell Traum that it was a secret? Even though he was surrounded by people, there were no answers.
The dream blinked. He was back in Dreamworld with his twin and Oz. What did he see? It was something he lacked: Memories. If that’s true, then how did he get here? How did Zeit get here? Where was their mother? What was this world? It wasn’t the place he was in before. How did he get from there to here? He yearned for answers.
He looked at Oz. The air around him felt as if it was trying to choke him. His eyesight became blurry. There was a twisting feeling in his gut. His throat felt tight. He crouched, head in knees, hands dropping the shard to the ground and then to clench his hair. It ate him away. He woke with this knowledge that something was missing. Something had been taken away from him. Something so precious. And yet, even now, he could only recall what a crystal shard had given him.
“Where did everyone go?” He couldn’t help but sob.
