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with only its wings and the open air, it yearns for more,
and so drowns itself in the night, every night, looking for
something. What it seeks no one knows, not even the moth.
It simply knows that what is, is all wrong—and there must
be something greater hiding behind the night’s darkness,
something more wonderful than even tireless wings and an
infinity of night could ever provide.
“It is as if the moth’s entire life were designed for a
singular purpose—escape. Or perhaps it was merely designed
to believe that it exists in a place that needs escaping from,
and that its nightly passions are somehow sufficient to
locate a way out. A dream, you understand, takes wing into
the unknown as well, traveling and never arriving, always
searching for an exit and rarely finding one.”
Obviously, I disagreed with his characterization of the
Deadworld, as it could never be decorated—it can only
ingest beauty, leaving behind the dry bones of devoured
dreams. Yet the man’s expertise lay in dreams and not
the waking world, so I forgave the mistake—although his
characterization of the butterfly was indeed correct.
He looked away from the whirling moths and stared
straight at me, smiling slightly. “But you did not come
here to talk about butterflies, did you? No, you want to
know about the moths—about those strange dreams you’re
having.” I nodded, and his eyes took on a strange energy,
as if they were aglow in some other spectrum of light, or
darkness. He directed his undetectably radiant gaze beyond
the gaping hole in his ceiling, freeing his vision into the wet
black sky. The rain was light, its soft patter blending easily
with the gentle breeze.
“This place,” he continued, “the entire city, has rested
upon the precipice of some hazy and forgotten dreamworld
ever since the daemon-sleep arrived from beyond our
furthest nightmares. I’ve been dreaming myself closer and
closer to that world every day and night, stealing into its
pallid, high-walled lanes, eating of its food, spending my
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