The Empty World | The Empty World Sequence [complete | rewriting]

Four (Draft 3) "Allies"

"Not since I came back."

"You don't like it?"

That wasn't it. "I like guitar better than lyre. I just don't feel like music right now."

"It helps me, sometimes, to put how I feel to words or music."

Morpheus shrugged.

"Sigh." Mother said the word. She stood beside his futon overlooking the clutter of his room. Mother bent and prodded one of the glass bottles lying atop the sheets so that it clinked against the one beside it. "How long have the Djinn been bottled?"

"They're safe."

Mother stepped over the corner of the futon to reach the shelves. Her hand clearly moved towards a purple flower. Morpheus winked across the room, teleporting from the floor, through the Void, and back into his room to stand near the shelves. He stayed his mother's hand.

She looked up at Morpheus. "Hyacinth looks a little glum. I'm worried about him."

Morpheus pressed his lips together in a frown. "I'll take them all out and feed them. Find some birds."

"My father has some in the Cave of Bird-Eating Spiders." Mother paused just a moment before adding, Maybe walk there."

Morpheus quizzed at his mother, brows raised.

"Laughter. I know. I know. But, it's good for the spirit to get out once in a while."

"Better to see the scenery."

Morpheus packed his bottled Djinn and potted plants in a spare box and set off to get some birds.

He went down the back stairs into the maze.

The front doors exited onto the crossroads of Limbo, where sky and ground faded into each other in an orangey haze. It was the edge of the Night Regions or the center, entrance and exit.

Beyond Limbo, the sky was twilight violet lit by the silvery radiance of the Forbidden City above. Shadows shifted as mountain, hills, rivers, lakes, and the lower City of the Angels rolled slowly against the horizon.

Morpheus followed the road of yellow brick into Sleep. The path passed through the quiet, grassy region where fluffy, white sheep grazed and the wind whispered lullabies.

Grasses gave way to flowers and souls strayed from the path to fall asleep among poppies.

The shadow of the Cimmerian mountain, Nightfall, came over Morpheus, now a long range encircling the regions.

In the depth of the mountain's shade, a small facade was carved in the rock: his father's house. The many eyes of his brothers watched from the windows. Morpheus passed by, knowing he would find no birds there, though their plumage provided many a decoration or pillow stuffing.

Morpheus listened; above the low churning of the ever-shifting terrain, a bubbling came from further along the path, in the direction of one of the low, rounded hills. Elsewhere was the edge of a field of amber grain partially obscured by the rocky foothills of Nightfall, and from another direction a warm breeze perfumed with roses.

He followed the sound of running water and soon came to the River Lethe, where clear water murmured over polished green stone.

Morpheus stopped before the river. If he drank of the Lethe's water, he could forget. He wouldn't want for someone he couldn't remember. He knelt along the bank, setting his box to one side.

A loud splash drew his attention. Morpheus noticed nothing out of place along the Lethe, neither upstream or downstream, but across the river, on higher ground, he could see the trumpet-shaped blooms of narcissi swaying on their stems, though he no longer felt a breeze. Something or someone had fallen into the pond over there.