Just what did he mean by that? What will he do? The answer was obvious. Iād ā¦ The dream frowned. It was on the tip of his tongue. It was right there. Nothing. āIā I would,ā Silence. It was pointless. āI would ā¦ā Dead ideas. Sleeping thoughts. An unfortunate reunion between twins who no longer knew themselves, nor remembered who they were to each other. Traum kept his mouth shut. The misty dream of seeing the color the sleeping secretās eyes faded. How would he even start?
Thatās not what I meant .. He moves on. At least he knows heās no longer the only one who asks those questions. At least now he knows that this situation is far from natural. At the least, at the very least, the secret was going to wake, wasnāt he? As Oz tried various different ways to wake up, all too foreign for the dream who never slept, the little hope began to die down. Isnāt he? No, he wasnāt.
Something else popped up. He gaze turned towards the secretās hand. āYeah,ā He whispers as his hands hold the soft, warm skin of the sleeping boy. āHe does.ā Traum felt as if he were intruding. He didnāt know this boy. All he did was talk to him. One-sided conversation everyday. But still, he couldnāt stop. The curious dream gently opened the secretās fingers. No signs of waking up. He picked up the tiny object.
Time seemed to move too slow. Traum peered at the shard, then to the secret, then to Oz. Why would he be holding this? āI donāt know what thisāā And suddenly, everything around him disappeared. Everything changed. Where was he? No, honestly, where was he? He wasnāt there. Not the him now. There was just another him .. A smaller him. Then another one. The twins named TrƤumen and Zeit.
The world around them was nothing like Dreamworld. There were so many people. So much noise. So many colors. Someone else was almost always with Traum and Zeit as well. Their mother. A word he never understood now made sense. The concept of family finally made sense. The feeling called love made sense. After all, thatās all he was surrounded by.
But something didnāt make sense. Something was off. Eerie. His mother dressed in odd outfits. Far different than the crowds of people he would see every once in a while. His mother always told him that she had to go to work. She had āpractice.ā Every time she would come back with cuts and bruises. Magic didnāt exist to heal those wounds. He was too young to pay too much attention to it. It was just a little dream with slow moving time.
Time passed. Traum couldnāt shake off the feeling that the mother his condition was in wasnāt right. He asked Zeit. He knew as much as Traum did. āI donāt knowā was the first answer. So tell the little boy why it changed to āI canāt tell you.ā ? Ā Why did his mother cry and beg for them to get away from this circus one day? Why did the man with the stars in his eyes tell Traum that it was a secret? Even though he was surrounded by people, there were no answers.
The dream blinked. He was back in Dreamworld with his twin and Oz. What did he see? It was something he lacked: Memories. Ā If thatās true, then how did he get here? How did Zeit get here? Where was their mother? What was this world? It wasnāt the place he was in before. How did he get from there to here? He yearned for answers.
He looked at Oz. The air around him felt as if it was trying to choke him. His eyesight became blurry. There was a twisting feeling in his gut. His throat felt tight. He crouched, head in knees, hands dropping the shard to the ground and then to clench his hair. It ate him away. He woke with this knowledge that something was missing. Something had been taken away from him. Something so precious. And yet, even now, he could only recall what a crystal shard had given him.
āWhere did everyone go?ā He couldnāt help but sob.
