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

Fifteen

They left the theater then, and continued their tour the largest or most special rooms: the gym in the basement, the below ground Olympic-size swimming pool, the dining room like a medieval dining hall, the cozy living room with its neutral tone decor and silver-framed horror movie posters, Athen's art studio, a dance studio with huge mirrored wall, a large steamy room with bath and dolphin border on the walls, a library already stocked with old books and scrolls in glass cases, and finally to the ballroom at the back of the house that looked right out of a faerie tale movie.

When they met Shade in his suite of rooms, full of copies of ancient Roman and Egyptian furniture with plaster walls decorated with ink drawings, he was sitting on a backless wooden chair, with his feet pulled up in front of him, staring at a painting that hung on his wall. Its subject was a young boy sitting on the steps of a Greek temple. It looked like Shade.

He looked to Opium as they came into the room. "You received the invitation from Joy or Absinthe?"

"Yes. Morpheus and I would like to stay a while."

"The palace belongs to me, so Athen tells me. Tell him you want rooms, one each. Make him let you choose."

"Thanks Shade," Opium said.

"Let's go find Julien," said Joy. They found Julien on the second floor in the TV room, which had about seven monitors of different sizes. He was watching Bram Stoker's Dracula on two screens. Joy told him that Opium and Morpheus were going to stay. "Take care how you cut yourself," said Dracula.

Julien barely looked up, "I saw a suite of rooms with dark blue walls and black wood."

He looked back to the screens, as Dracula licked blood from Harker's razor.

Morpheus didn't want to leave the room. He wanted to mention the costumes, or how Absinthe liked the movie, or how he liked the shadow puppet soldiers. But, Mother called, and he left.

It was all right. Mother also spoke to Athen and made certain got that room with blue walls.

Morpheus felt, somehow, that he was being accepted by cool kids to move into the Palace. Joy had said that Opium and Morpheus were like family to her, which was probably because she remembered them being with her the later years in New York, or living in Nede; she didn't know how much like a sister to Opium she was, in some senses of the word. But, now, Shade also acknowledged them as friends or allies, realizing he had seen them in New York or elsewhen, that they had been allies to Steven and Joy, and that they were related to Absinthe and Laudanum.

Morpheus took time to bring his collections to his small suite, consisting of sitting room, bedroom,and washroom. When Spider showed up at the door the next week, he would take the suite with plastic and vinyl furniture beside Morpheus' rooms.

Mother made sure she and Morpheus went up to the tower room. They passed through the large kitchen, and found the door to the staircase. Morpheus followed Mother up the dizzying, stone-lined, spiral staircase. River said the staircase was creepy. After fifty feet, or more, of turning around and around, they reached another door. Morpheus opened it. "A sleeping beauty?" He asked. He has already started to suspect her capture could be related to the prophesy, but he saw they had switched caskets.

Mother rushed past. Angel was lain out in a glass coffin, wearing a red gown of artfully seamed velvet and chiffon, with fingered sleeves. The walls were covered in her newspaper or magazine clippings. The floor itself had both circle and pentagram inlaid in the tile. Five shuttered windows were bordered by five tall candle holders with lit red candles.