First Dream in a New Land [P]

Thu Nov 07, 2019 10:43 pm

[Satoru is drifting into and out of a lucid dream]

Pipes snake about each other intimately. They extend in either direction to a destination not known. The small tunnels of dark steel bend and rise upward along the sides of buildings and structures. A grand number of these buildings litter the area, forming a city of interwoven pipes. The rain falling from the sky makes a perpetual sound of pittering and pattering. To the left and to the right, pittering and pattering upon the pipes that lay parallel to the ground. The drops slide downward from the vertical pipes that scale the buildings. Up into the sky, these tall pipes reach. Clouds cover them before they reach the top of the highest skyscraper near the center of the city. The clouds whisper to me.

[----------]

Satoru’s awakening is abrupt. He sits up in his bed, his eyes open but seeing nothing. The room is almost pitch black, with all windows shut and the door closed. Although Konoha is new to him, he has already made it a point to know the room like the back of his hand. He discerns through the size of visible shadows that he is the room’s only inhabitant.

A shiver runs down his spine as he recalls the images that awoke him earlier. Yet, through morbid curiosity, he lays back down in order to somehow continue his dream. The covers are drawn back over his body and his pillow is positioned for comfort. Sleep, like a gentle wave, comes over him and engulfs him...

[----------]

… just as the clouds do the top of the highest skyscraper, the clouds that whisper to me. They tell me of a time when the rain had a different meaning. It was not long ago and it did not last long for itself. For only a few minutes, the rain was once as furious as the coming calamity. Because the precipitation always had the best interest of the people of the city in mind, it told of danger and of prosperity. It told of the coming aggression from Kumogakure, a betrayal of the rain by the cloud.

I don’t believe what the clouds tell me about this rain. But the clouds are ancient so I listen to their anecdotes. They whisper cryptic truths of the hole within my soul, things that I already know yet still seem foreign. It has been a while since I have seen their faces. Usually, I look at their shadows, and even then I only see them for a short time before I look ahead. Running requires one to see what is ahead of them, lest they trip and be caught by the very foreign things pursuing them.

What this has to do with their next whispers, I do not know but there must be some correlation because they change topic so easily. They tell about a time even farther back, an ancient time. When the man of six reigned. He was tasked with protecting his village, stood at the pinnacle of strength. A man caused him to fall and his guard over the fragile village was dismantled.

I am beginning to find the clouds malicious in their intentions. Do they seek my destruction or my prosperity? If the latter, to what end? And if the former, why? This is the first dilemma: deciding which idea to believe and which to throw away. The second dilemma comes when I look into what each possibility entails. For example, say the clouds do seek my prosperity. Are they so omnipotent that my course will certainly not result in my death? Or are they mere masses of loose water bearing rain for a future time that may never truly come? To believe one or another, the second dilemma.

But I need not choose now. If strength is what I seek, then it would be reasonable to wait. The sum of the energy in this universe is constant and so is the sum of the mass of power available in this world. One cannot expect to gather much of it so quickly. In the same way, I do not need to make sense of all of this now. I bid the clouds farewell and fall backward into…

[----------]

… reality once again. This time, the room is dimly lit by the orange sun rise. Rays of golden light peek through the window to his left across the room. He rises and begins his day.

(733/733)

[Exit]
[Claims: 3 stats, 500 words to complete earth release (other 1,500 from here (re-purposed words noted here), 233 words towards genjutsu specialty)

Thu Nov 07, 2019 10:58 pm

Approved

First Dream in a New Land [P]

First Dream in a New Land [P]

Re: First Dream in a New Land [P]