Snippets and Stories: (WtI) Z's Logs - Dream Walkers

Neiro had smiled, eyes bright and carefree when Silas announced that he would be heading off first, weary from the day's ventures. The albino had waved goodnight to his flatmate, gaze trailing after his retreating back as he retired for the night.

With a sigh, he turned impassive eyes back to the screen, its glow casting shadows across his soft features in the dim evening light.

Unsheathing a spindly bound journal, he gingerly peeled back the thick covering. It was well taken care of with hardly a crinkled corner or sign of wear on the binding.

There was nothing special about it. A typical journal that could be found in any corner bookstore. The real worth of it lay in the pieces within, and it was to one such entry that he flipped to.

Drawing from his own aether, in neat wavy letters, he scrawled out the following in an utterance long forgotten by man and heard not in eons:

Dream Walkers

"When one dreams, it is not a figment of the mind, but the momentary transcendence of this plane of reality."

Dream walking is, first and foremost, an innate trait of all Life, be they those of quintessential existence or those not strictly bound by the aether. This capability to, though present equally in all, is not always breached. Whether one ever reaches the threshold to cross over, or perhaps whether one becomes lucid of it or not, is an entirely different matter.

Such transcendence, however, is in its inherent nature, often perceived on a subconscious level, if not instinctively. A latent awareness that is often hinted at in the culture of those creatures possessed with the blessing and curse of intelligence. By mere coincidence or the aforementioned latent awareness, such has often been noted in the scripted and verbal forms by which sentient beings use to communicate.

Noted that the progression from the conscious world to that of dreams is described as "falling" into slumber, though one does not, in the literal sense, fall. The sensation of being dragged under, attributed to the body slipping as one dozes off has long been used to describe such a process.

There is no doubt that the sensation of falling is in part, due to gravitational pull as one literally falls, but a secondary trait as well persists in the passing and temporal release of oneself into the aether. For one is genuinely falling, or better termed pulled, into another point of existence.

In short, the temporary release of the mind to the aether.

Herein lies the truth behind slumber, for even those who would bring about the cessation to their aetheric bond must return and replenish that which they cursed.

But though astral projection grants one sight, control is a separate matter. And that brings us to the last subject, lucidity.

For most, sleep is, as stated before, a temporal release of oneself into the aether unto which one draws in more of the essence of life to replenish mind and body.

Dream Walkers are likewise drawn into the aether, but continue to drift. They drift, and be it by chance or design, collide with another Timeline.

The result is, as is defined by Dream Walking.

A brief and temporary union and anchorage of the selfsame "you" of another Time, another place.

Yet in the sheer enormity of Time, never have I, a Numen, met one such as the case I study now.

Silas N. Curse

A curious creature, though not unlike some anomalies before him, he nigh swims in a world of aether, the stars littering the night are to him as bright as any sun. It is little wonder that he believes his eyes hypersensitive and thus reluctant to forego the obsidian shades he nigh constantly wears.

The ease and commonality with which he crosses, though lucidity still seems a touch strange to him and he struggles for control (not surprising, for his plunge into such concentrated aether can be likened to a fish swimming upstream, trying to change the river's course), is both horrifying and fascinating. That such abilities were born without instigation belies a tremendous and potent innate talent--a power made terrifying by his unsteady hand and volatile with ignorance.

Stranger still is that though he is doubtlessly of mortal flesh and blood, this specimen is an anomaly among anomalies. Bereft of the one thing that ties his kind to the aether. The accumulation of the essence of life, a collective seed of aether that grows throughout one's life.

A soul.

Despite the scornful remarks of one being soulless, such is simply not possible. Having encountered with the soulless, it would suffice to say Silas is not such a case. Those who have been truly sundered are left but shells of their former self, not unlike one in a comatose state. Unresponsive, lacking all that makes up an individual. No application of stimuli will derive a response. Yet even the Severed are not empty of Aether. It flows, albeit weakly, for Life can not physically manifest without it.

Many a Times I believed it a fluke, but peering through the aether I see--nothing. The more I look the less I see.

Almost as if peering into a void.

But such isn't possible.

Is it?

Further study is needed.

N.Z.