Chapter One-Point-Five (1.5): The Awakening - Part Two (2)
1119 Words
Its final words hit me like a cold shower “A dream is but a shadow of reality, Sun. Remember this. Farewell for now, breath of my body. And remember… YOU are always with you.”
Again I am thoroughly puzzled while trying to make sense of these unending riddles but I blink and just like that, the cold weight of a ceramic mug returns to my hand. The familiar warmth of the sun is on my skin. The scent of salt and hibiscus fills my nostrils.
I’m back? Was I really gone? My mind is telling me no but deep in my bones, this unsettling feeling remains, strong, ardent, it feels like nothing could convince me that what I just experienced was false. I just know it was all real, I’m adamantly, possibly delusionally positive that it all really happened. It had to!
I’m sitting at my table on the verandah, my cuppa halfway to my lips. The hummingbird is still there, a frozen tableau of motion. For a second, while my heart soars. “Nahhh, i just drifted off too deep into my thoughts again”. Just a crazy, vivid, super hyper-realistic daydream. I let out a shaky breath, a laugh bubbling up in my chest.
“Wait…” I whisper, the word feeling heavy in my mouth. My gaze darts around. Everything is exactly as it was. Too exactly. It’s as if I never left. As if time itself paused and just now decided to press play again.
“Did all that… really just happen?”
My fingers tremble as I pull my phone from my pocket. My hands are slick with cold sweat. I open the group chat. ‘The Chosen Ten,’ we call ourselves - Ironic. A stupid inside joke from orientation week.
Me: Ayo, the maddest thing just happened to me. You guys feel anything just now? Anything weird? Like completely unexplainable?
I wait, my heart pounding. The three little dots appear under Kenji’s name.
Kenji: Bro, you good? What do you mean?
Me: I mean like no existential awakening of sorts? I asked with a strew of embarrassed emojis.
Tamathia: Sçoryn, what are you on about now? Don’t tell me you’re tryna get out of studying for the Comm Studies midterm tomorrow. I better see you later for the group study sesh.
Aurick: lol this man lives in his own world rent free, I swear.
Their replies roll in, one after the other, a cacophony of teasing and confusion. No one knows what I’m talking about. They tease me about being lost in a world of my own, oblivious to the line between fantasy and reality. It’s a familiar joke. I’ve always had what some might call an overly active imagination. But this… this wasn’t imagination. This was real. I felt it, I know it!
But with a heavy heart, I lock my phone. Maybe they’re right. Maybe I was so deep in a daydream I lost track. Maybe I hadn’t had enough sleep, plus I'm really not a morning person by nature. I try to write the whole thing off, to stuff it into a box and label it ‘weird dream number … well I don’t even know at this point.’ But the feeling, the memory of that endless white and the star-faced being, it clings to me far more than the humid morning air.
I finish my tea, the ritual now feeling hollow, and head inside. The house is quiet. A cold shower, that’s what I need. Something to shock my system back to normal. I strip off my clothes, the temeperate air of the bathroom a welcome touch on my skin. As I turn to step into the stall, a glint of light in the mirror catches my eye.
I freeze.
Around my neck, resting against my collarbone, is a chain.
It’s made of a metal that, best I can describe it, looks like solidified shadows, links of polished darkness that don’t seem to reflect any light at all. And at its center, resting on my sternum, is a pendant. It’s a perfect sphere, no bigger than a marble, but it seems to contain an apparent miniature galaxy, vast and unbound. It's emanating this warm, gentle, intoxicating glow, swirling with colours I’ve never seen before. And it’s moving! The tiny galaxy within is rotating at an impossible speed, yet the motion is graceful, silent, solemn. It radiates this gentle hum, a high and low intermingling frequency vibrations that I feel more in my bones than hear with my ears.
My first instinct is to grab it. My fingers reach for the cold metal, but they close on empty air. I try again, my hand passing right through the chain, through the pendant, through to my own skin. There’s no resistance. Like an illusion or a hologram.
But it can’t be.
I can feel it. I can feel the cool, distinct weight of the chain resting on my chest. I can feel the gentle, persistent warmth of the pendant against my skin. It is both real and unreal, tangible and untouchable. A conundrum live and present, hanging around my neck.
Helpless to investigate it further, I hold my head in frustration and fear that I really might be going off the deep end but what can I really do about it. I go about my day. I try to be normal. I do the dishes, I watch some TV, I even open my textbook. But all the while, I feel it. The hum. The warmth. And something else… a weird, gentle pull. A faint, magnetic tug in my soul, drawing me towards something I can’t see, something I can’t explain, but I just ignore hoping it will go away on its own eventually.
Much later, when the sun has set and the moon has risen, I crawl into bed. The house is finally still. The questions I’ve been suppressing all day come bubbling from my subconscious to the surface of my mind. The void. The voice. The star-faced man. The chain. Maybe this entire day has just been a really, really vivid dream? I close my eyes, praying for the simple, dreamless sleep of yesterday.
I drift off, the hum of the pendant a strange, cosmic lullaby.
And to my amazement, I am back. The expansive, sterile whiteness greets me like an old enemy.
But this time, I’m not alone. Standing directly in front of me, so close I could reach out and touch him, is a kid. He looks about my age, with wild, untamed hair and eyes that burn with a fierce, unsettling intelligence.
And he’s grinning at me as if he’s been waiting all day.
- Writer
