A dream

Afterword

To those who have lost their way and wandered into this corner of the deep web (in case you should be reading this on my website), thank you very much for reading this little story of mine! You are free to imagine as many endings to this story as possible, especially for all the points at which things could have gone horribly south or simply come to a halt. Please consider this version with its three endings as the one I deemed worth telling, the ones in which they came so far. Because they made it so far, there now are stories to be told.

This story is a very detailed retelling of a dream I had last Saturday (the 14th of January, 2023). One that wouldn't release its hold on me even after waking from my dream, so I decided to write it down. Neeve (or Nii as she is called here) and her brother Cyan belong to a story cycle (Neeve's rise and fall) I am currently working on, though, to be exact, it's more of a life project. This includes short stories, picture books, a visual novel (Bawaajigan), and most digital drawings I make that include characters. 

These characters all have their own stories and are all somehow connected, mainly through their relationship with Neeve. That's why she's featured in the title of my story cycle. These stories and characters have been accompanying me for almost 15 years now (approximately since 2009 or 2010, okay, not 15 years just yet). Over the years, this fictional universe (or not so fictional) has seen many changes and additions. I fear that one lifetime wouldn't be enough to tell all there is to tell, especially since it is continuously growing. 

I've always had a knack for inventing my own worlds. One of my first memories as a very young child consists of this very first universe I have ever created. I must have been four at best. Back then, my stories centred around the creation of the universe, by three sisters, by the way, who would continue to hop from one planet to the next, terraforming the planets into inhabitable ones, creating civilisations and cultures. At some point during grade school, these characters and the universe they lived in had become too grand, and I began to recreate the world over and over in the hope of forming an emphatic bond, something you can't really do with god-like beings. The funny thing is, Neeve ended up inhabiting both aspects: That which one could only consider as 'other' as well as something everyone should be able to relate to (or maybe not). 

But enough about that, the last thing I still want to mention is how pleased I am with the creation of Kazuya, something I absolutely did not expect to happen and a character I never even considered creating. He has fascinating parallels with the main character of my game, Bawaajigan, which made his existence and inclusion in my story cycle all the more interesting (for me, that is)!

And last but not least, or perhaps the most important thing, the song that Neeve is singing in the later part of the story (after her sudden change, which fits so wonderfully into her character development in my overall story) is amazarashi's Cassiopeia mooring, as YouTube tells me it is supposedly written in English... カシオピア係留所 in Japanese or Cassiopeia keiryuujou for the romaji transliteration. It's what she was singing in my dream. Interestingly enough, I'd been just hyping their newest song, Antinomy. Well, the brain's a truly marvellous place. And I also quite clearly remember that the song Kazuya had been playing on his guitar when he mingled amongst their fellow companion was, as a matter of fact, not his nor my creation. My brain sometimes also does that in dreams, but not this time. It had been one of Kitani Tatsuya's. One of his from the cutely called Leaks from his computer, but I can't quite remember which one.

For those few people who should ever find this story, please check out what stimulated my brain during that wild dream (these two artists above, namely) and look forward to more, for more will follow!