Chapter 3: The Room of Glass
I look up at him unsure of an answer, "because... it's confusing to find your way back out?"
A slight smirk crosses his lips before it vanishes in our reflection. The stars in his dark wings fade out as they lure us away into blinding darkness. It's so dark I can't even see the glimmer in his eyes or any blue glow from the crystal lights.
His voice is the only sharp thing standing out in the dark now, "Little cub, do not walk in the room of glass. Reflections lie in silver tongues. Trust with eyes held tightly shut and fallow the heart with deafening ears. For when you hear it's raucous laughter, don't allow it to lead you astray."
I open my eyes to see a dimly lit room with gloomy stone walls enclosing me except for an open doorway. The light doesn't seem to be coming from anywhere, but there isn't anything in the room but myself and a shadow to see.
"Where am I?" I manage the courage to ask despite feeling extremely out of place and my voice, it sounds different.
"You are with me, " he speaks clearly in my ear as if standing close beside me, yet when I jerk around there's nothing but a shadow on the ground barley visible against the twilight atmosphere.
Before I can panic he catches my heartbeat in a soothing gesture, a shadowy arm phasing through my spirit rooting me back to my scenes. His voice is gentle and calm when he whispers to me again, "It's ok to be afraid, remember? We are together still and we are safe."
His shadow drifts away taking with him the feeling of my heartbeat being held so tenderly, "Think of it as you being a spirit and I being your shadow as we, two silhouettes fallow unseen through this place of wake and dreaming as if we were there ourselves. How does that sound?"
"Is this how you tell stories?" I glance down at myself after noticing how tall I've become seeing how his shadow is about my height now. Except im not standing on all fours, I'm standing upright like him, and I look like him...?
I can't find the words, "How..?"
He stops me, "In this place, it's like a dreamscape where we can create anything and everything to our own desire and will, and that includes changing our appearance to what we want to appear as. Though you still appear as your age being mortal, just not your birth form from this time. Your abilities are limited, while mine are limitless."
I can't stop staring at my hands, and although his eyes are nothing but blackness against shadow I can feel them watching me.
"I remember a hall to the left outside of this room filled with flowers and a sign above that read closed in December. She ran past that gate. Her footfall bare and echoing along the walls."
I hear it, the footsteps of someone running in the distance, progressing closer before a flash of white speeds by the door opening in the corner of my vision catching my full attention.
I hurry down the empty hall after them, not sure why or where im going until I see the room filled with flowers and the sign reading 'Closed in December'. I stop for a moment drawn in by the light. The lighting reminds me of something cold and foggy clinging to the air but it's familiar. The same white flash darts across my vision again snapping me out of my trance.
"I remember rooms filled with different objects and various themes clustered together in odd variations, but she never ran into any of those rooms. It was the very last room, a room with a crawlspace that lead to other rooms each leading to a different reality that she chose to enter."
I try to pay attention to his words while at the same time follow after the fleeing light without losing it completely. I pass rooms with few doors left cracked open with temptations of weirdness and otherworldly things peeking out, but I sprint past all of them desperate not to lose the light. I stumble slightly coming to the end of the hall as the white light disappears through a crawlspace underneath a blacked-out door missing a knob.
Sucking in a few long breaths I ask once im able to speak, "Where did she go?"
"Trust with eyes held tightly shut and fallow the heart with deafening ears, " he instructs but I still don't get what he means by that.
I shake my head, "I don't understand. If she went through the crawlspace how will I find her if I can't see where im going?"
His shadowy hand grasps my own like a whisper of warm air leading me closer to the crawlspace. My legs obey him, and as I begin to crawl through, his shadow spirals around me whispering for me to trust this feeling in my chest. I gulp, giving into his terms to shut my eyes and ignore every sound I hear.
I begin crawling through, eyes shut tight and my hands feeling my way forward. The surfaces around me feel smooth like cool polished stone. Every few feet I pass another gap leading another way, but something feels very wrong in each of those rooms. Like I shouldn't enter them. Their silence is deafening, enough to make me want to run away. His shadow is there to comfort me though, reminding me that we are concealed in this dream world and that this is only that, a dream. And nothing has ever hurt me in my dreams before. Maybe he's urging me to be brave.
At some point, I come to a dead-end and stop. Or at least I think it's a dead-end. I'm not brave enough to open my eyes, in remembrance of his warning and even so, if this is just a dream world, I can't help myself but keep my eyes closed. But there's a sound playing off in the distance that stumps me. It isn't a voice or an animalistic sound I recognize.
"Do you hear that?" I ask while turning my head towards the direction of the sound. "It's repeating. What is that?"
It takes a few moments for him to respond while his answer also confuses me, "It's a lullaby. You can hear it?"
"What's a lullaby?"
I feel him shrug over me, "It's something you sing to calm restless children. Mothers sing lullabies to lure their cubs to sleep."
I've never heard my mother sing, let alone sound a lullaby to me. It was usually her deep purring and body heat that comforted me long enough to sleep through even the most terrifying quakes... I remember those quakes. The soil would hum every time just before one struck. I miss her, my mother... The thought of her leaving without me leaves a weight in my chest too heavy to ignore. I can feel my eyes watering and I start blinking. A feral gaze, wide and mad, stares inches from my face, teeth sharp and long with a black and white twisted face.
I let out a horrid scream while scuttering backward to get away from it. Its laughter is constant as it keeps its distance from me the same, always in my face with that frightening smile. I keep screaming and yelling and crying out for it to go away until black wings engulf me, pulling me out of the crystal mirror. Even though I've been pulled out from the dreamscape I can't stop screaming. Through every crystal reflection, I see its face screaming back at me except it's clawing and thrashing at the crystal barrier leaving the glass close to shattering. Under its deafening cries and my own screaming, I can hear his voice sobbing back, repeating the same words over and over, I'm sorry until everything goes dark and quiet.
Weekly Power Status
-- Power
Ranking 
-- Power
stone