The Oneironautic Journeys
Dream #1 - Tillie
A bright blue jigsaw moon was shining high up in the night sky, puzzle pieces drifting off and blending with the transparent clouds that failed to conceal the whole. Down below stood the slumbering city of flooded Lajathal. Moonlight did little to illuminate the various spires and towers proudly poking out of the skyline, but it was neatly reflected in the shallow waters on top of the city's streets.
But Riley Baster found herself beneath the surface of the mighty city, in a prison complex built on top of an ancient cistern. The moisture from deep within the building had long since turned the stone walls a mossy green, and echoing dripping sounds were heard at regular intervals. The slippery floor made it almost dangerous to walk around. Running in these conditions was out of the question anyway. On route to her cell she had been outfitted with a comically large ball and chain.
A hulking brute of a guard pushed Riley through a door into a cell and locked it. The space was surprisingly large and private for what was supposed to be a prison cell, but it didn’t matter much. The prison was underground and the only way topside was heavily guarded and the way there to Riley's mind might as well have been the Escher lithograph Relativity. It was barely worth it to even lock the cell with odds this long.
'I suppose you too got captured trying to steal the Ball of Many,' spoke Riley’s cellmate, a woman in an outfit that meshed the prisoner's uniform with a suit, with horizontal stripes alternating between white and burgundy.
Riley shook her head. 'No, I have no idea what the Ball of Many even is.'
'Ah, so you’re an upsider. That’s even more interesting,' the girl stroked her chin. 'My name is Tillie.'
'Riley Baster,' said Riley, and the two shook hands.
'Listen, Riley. They have you working in the library, right? I need you to do something for me. Bring me all the books that you can manage. Put them in your lunch, put them up your butt, I don’t care. Just get them here.'
Tillie was always reading. Hardly ever left the cell, rarely even left at lunchtime. She was about a head shorter than Riley, but Riley always felt small in her presence. She exuded confidence, like she had been stepped on for too long and decided she wasn’t going to take it anymore. Riley had blue-green eyes, Tillie’s were brown, and they both had the same chestnut brown hair color, but Riley’s was shoulder length, Tillie’s cut off below her ears. Their faces were likewise similar, but comparatively Riley betrayed an Asian ancestry. Riley had caught their resemblance, and briefly played with the possibility of reenacting a Prince and the Pauper scenario, but abandoned the idea when she couldn’t figure out a use for a prisoner pretending to be another prisoner from the exact same cell.
As Riley liked books, Riley liked working in the library. However she hadn’t managed to read much since the text on the pages kept shifting. Not to mention that the books that caught her fancy tended to disappear when she reached for them. Whenever she did manage to read, much of it was straight-up nonsense. Looking away also had the annoying tendency to completely alter the subject of the pages in front of her. It seemed to bother Tillie none as she devoured every book Riley brought her. Pretty soon their cell had piles of them.
'Okay, I know you aren’t just reading all of these for the fun of it. Care to explain why I have to keep smuggling these in here?' Riley asked.
'It is considered wise to get to know as much about the world around one as possible,' Tillie said.
'Why would they put books about the prison inside it for its prisoners to read?'
'Oh these books aren’t about the cistern. They’re about you.'
'About me? How can that possibly be?'
Tillie chuckled. 'I’m sure you know the truth about this place already. Your rational mind just chooses to ignore it.'
Riley accepted this answer as plausible and moved on. Tillie just smiled at being validated, wondering how much Riley would remember in the morning.
'In any case, we should be fine on the books. I have a new request. In the lunch hall there are eight pillars holding the roof up. Correct?'
'Yeah, I think so,' Riley said as she tried to picture the room.
'At the base of each are two bricks on every side. They should be loose and easy to remove, provided they aren't all yanked out at once. At lunchtime take as many books as you can carry, remove those bricks and put books roughly their size in their place. We shall do this until we've replaced them all.'
Riley carried out the plan as instructed. Eight pillars, four sides each. Riley could replace the bricks with books roughly at a rate of three sides per meal. None of the other inmates or even the guards were bothered by this behavior. As long as Riley made no attempt to flee, she was left alone. Starting from the third period, Tillie also helped. The bricks were replaced in no time.
Riley went to stand next to Tillie, who was staring confidently at the skylights above.
'So what do we do next? And I suppose asking why is a futile exercise.'
Tillie did not move her gaze. 'Any second now. You'll see.'
The pillars trembled under their own weight. The books proved incapable of holding them up. Riley moved to the edge of the room as she realised what was about to happen. Not a moment too soon, since the pillars collapsed to the ground. Several people screamed in terror.
The sudden drop of the pillars yanked the windows out of the skylight, causing them to shatter all around the inmates. Everyone in the room was startled but nobody suffered any injuries. Tillie was the sole person who had not ducked for cover and stood proud in the middle of the hall.
‘Not so bad now, is it?’ She said to a middle-aged lady in the corner who was crawling from under a table.
‘Put the shards into the microwave before they melt!’ one inmate yelled as he started gathering broken glass.
The collapsed pillars had formed a makeshift ramp that allowed Riley and Tillie to climb onto the roof, and out of the prison. Tillie waved her companion over, who followed her up, and out. They were free.
'Okay, that was all very strange,' Riley said.
'Indeed it was. It is rather amazing what the mind constructs when we simply push through,' Tillie added.
Riley shrugged. 'I don't know what that means.'
Morning fast approached. The twilight sunrise painted the city of Lajathal into a Vista of beautiful yellow, pink and orange. The spires and towers looked straight out of a master impressionist's dream. The two women took in the scene in silence.
'So where do we go from here? I'm not exactly sure where we even are,' Riley said.
Tillie turned to her with a smile. 'That's for you to decide, isn't it?'
‘We will meet again, Riley Baster. You have a long, strange journey ahead of you. Just remember that you are not who you were and that the you who you are will never be again, and never owe a debt to Murenath.’
Sunlight hit Riley's face and Lajathal faded.