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

One (Draft 3) "Ordinary World"

Morpheus nodded, but even as he did, the words and images surfaced again in his mind. "Mirrors...."

"Can you focus on my eyes?" Mother reached for Morpheus and touched her fingers to his face. "Don't worry about anything else. Just focus on this for now."

Morpheus looked into Mother's dark eyes, and then he looked past them to her soul. There was a sense of connection and Morpheus saw in his mind what Mother meant him to see.

He saw himself. Not the external form he knew he had. His self.

Blinking, Morpheus withdrew from the revelation. He was new, but he had been created with inherited memory. He possessed information that lacked all sense of personal context. There were words not associated with concepts and images disconnected from labels. The memories could be assimilated, but they were not, yet.

"Better?" Mother asked.

"Some," Morpheus said, "I know where I end and the rest begins." Morpheus looked down at his left hand and turned it over back and forth at the wrist. He could see his skin had the pallor of cave flora, though he'd not yet seen the inside of a cave, but he also sensed his complexion was cyanotic in the way that he knew he had his mother's eyes or that the wings on his back were black from tips to stems. The flesh beneath his fingernails was as blue as his lips.

"Do you feel able to go inside? They'll be a lot of family at the Introduction, and a few other officials, but that's just to be polite. You and Maya won't be receiving Orders."

Morpheus hesitated a moment and then nodded. "Introduction is an event to formally announce those newly made."

"Yeah, usually," Mother said. "It gets delayed for those born as infants." She gestured toward the mountain now a darkly purple mass looming behind her.

Morpheus squinted at the mountain trying to connect the image with a name. "Nightfall?"

Mother stepped to one side and turned to point to the top of the mountain with her right hand. "The peak," she said, "Only it and the castle are properly Nightfall, the mountain itself is—"

"The Cimmerian Mountain," Morpheus finished. "My father lives here."

Mother's dark lips smiled when Morpheus glanced to her face, but she didn't say anything. Maybe she waited to see if Morpheus knew.

"In Sleep. We're in Sleep."

"We are." Mother smiled brightly.

They walked to the small façade carved in the foot of the mountain. As they approached the entrance, Morpheus sensed the presence of many souls inside. He reached toward the door but stopped short of touching it.

"It'll be OK," Mother said, "No one expects you to keep all their names straight, not right away."

Morpheus touched the stone and it rolled away, unblocking the entrance to the carved-out space beyond so much larger than its façade suggested.

Inside, Morpheus beheld what must ordinarily be a dim chamber, but which was now aglow with the presence of so many of his father's kin. The amount of memory and association triggered was near a hundredfold what it had been looking on his parents, enough that Morpheus doubled over.

The proximity of so many powerful spirits was overwhelming atop the load on his lesser senses. The room was crowded with Angels from the highest Order to the lowest. Tall Angels with elaborate wings and radiant skin. Colorful medium-sized Angels. Small-statured Angels with stark coloring and little wings.

Morpheus felt that someone—fiery, red, feminine—bodily lifted him and carried him a short distance to set him down in a soft place. The presences gradually began to recede and the overlapping voices to quiet.