I dreamt about a Narnia-like faerie land that grew parallel to our own, and which was slowly succumbing to the corruption of a sinister outside force.
Within the dream, I was a girl of about 13 or 14, and had a brother a few years older than me. My mother had brought us back to live in Ohio after my father’s death. Our memories of the other world faded until we forgot it completely, and had no idea that our parents had been the first king and queen as appointed by the gods or spirits or whatever.
Little men and strange creatures began appearing around my home, half-disguised as mundane things, and would attempt to startle me and jog my memory. I was terrified of them until finally one got fed up and decided to just kidnap me to faerieland and then explain things. I still remembered nothing, to his disappointment and frustration—but I was still willing to help in whatever way I could.
They revealed that without a king or queen, there had been no one to use the Macguffin that kept their world safe, so they needed me or my mother to return and unlock the magical self-defense program that would ward off the demonic encroachment. I told them that this was a problem to take up with their gods, not me, because I was fundamentally opposed to monarchy and inherited governance, and that any divine power forcing them to recognize made-up royal bloodlines in order to survive was not worth worshipping and should be overthrown.
Their counterpoint to my blasphemy was that, whatever my own attitudes towards monarchy, surely it was Also Bad to simply allow the Forces of Evil to invade and impose their own tyrannical rule.
I then asked them why they didn’t turn to my mother or brother instead. My mother, they informed me, was so crushed and embittered that she wanted nothing to do with their entire world anymore. My brother was an unsuitable ruler because he was gay and therefore would unlikely to secure a royal bloodline.
“Um,” I said. “I’m also gay? My parents had two gay kids. It’s the only thing he and I have in common.”
This shocked and stunned them. I explained that I also had no desire for children and would never be pregnant.
“You’ll change your mind,” they insisted. “For duty. Right? I mean, you’re just a kid... you couldn’t know that yet...”
“I’m not really a child,” I said, suddenly careening towards lucidity. “It’s just for the dream.”
I did eventually meet the gods, who were annoying but patient with me. They wanted me to witness the Evil Forces for myself. There were laser-shooting flying drones that forced us to wear light-bending cloaking camouflage devices to take on the color and texture of trees, slimy tendriled monsters that came up out of the pipes, and cackling chubracabra things that leapt from roof to roof.
Eventually I agreed to step in as their temporary ruler. They had a brief, practical coronation and then showed me how to use the world-saving macguffin. I was immediately horrified—it worked but seeking out Evil everywhere in the world and destroying it.
“But what is ‘evil’?” I wanted to know. No one could give me a definitive answer. The idea of Evil as some kind of substance or objective truth disturbed me. I imagined incinerating people a thousand miles away in the middle of their daily lives for no other reason than my Cleansing Machine detected too much sin in their hearts and exploded them from the inside.
Ultimately I realized how the machine worked. The gods had created it not to eliminate some objective substance of Evil, because they could not find or detect such a substance themselves—instead, it was programmed to respond to the subjective moral standards of an individual, and had appointed my family as the sole caretakers of this horrible machine in the hopes that this would ensure consistency and harmony and keep the entire realm on the same ethical page.
I also realized what had happened to my father. He had recognized moral impurities inside himself, no greater or lesser than those of his enemies, and had attempted to turn the device inward to purify himself rather than murder hordes of people for committing thoughtcrime.
I don’t know if the dream had a real ending or resolution but I do know that I eventually found my brother and we both broke down crying. He was played by a younger Daniel Levy and I told him that was cool.
gummygunk
2087
dailybridgerton
blakekathryn
germansingergirl
tangentwithtanner
