Sleep,
Fall,
Rise.
You are at the edge of a silent world, stood on the border between fantasy and the dream-stuff which encloses it. A million unknowable colors gleam at your back: the soup of all thought and un-thought rippling with potentia, sparks of it, star-tinseled. That is where you came from.
Before you lie tall gates. Twin masterworks of silver and pearl which kiss the clouds. They glint at you dismissively, but perhaps you won't heed that.
For beyond them lay a road.
The moon's quiet milk pours over it, christens it, floods it lustrous. How glorious it would feel to walk! How the trees lining the path ( and hiding whatever it leads to ) seem as if they would bend their boughs to kiss your cheeks.
But to get there -- to walk that gleaming strip and find where it leads -- you have to conquer the gates. And the tall walls that stretch out on either side of these gates into forever. And some cruel fact of the world is apparent to you, that any path but through is a failed, nowhere path.
And a voice, too. A voice that may lift your spirit and push your heart to pound pound pound! between your teeth if you are feeble. This voice sets a hand on your shoulder:
"You,"
Speaker unseen, but you feel them somewhere close.
"New."
