>>6338197‘Armchair book.’ A terrible thought crosses your mind as you make the decision, but you discard it before it is fully contemplated. You sit down on the armchair facing the mountain range window view, and the beautiful looking sky, despite the toxic looking clouds covering the ranges just below its highest parts. You pick up the book beside you and set it on your lap, and as you’re about to read the first line, the world goes dark.
The great council of ancient elders gather around the burning bonfire, their faces ranging from despairing indifference to hopeful optimism, but altogether united in vision and purpose. The next day the great bonfire keeps, a raging inferno spewing endless smoke towards the infinite sky. None of the elders remain, their ceremonial tribal clothing scattered and abandoned surrounding a child. An infant, not brought by any of those that came before him and yet their sole inheritor.
Ages pass and children grow, raised by self, by blood or not. A lone wanderer climbs The Mountain, enlightening its peak with his brilliance. A hero conquers the known world and leaves it shattered. Progress comes and a fire, lit from the fall of a martyr, rages throughout the land, its embers burning still today. A horse unites all under the sky, his progeny left with scraps and obscurity. An explorer opens half the world, a puzzle finally complete. A scholar shatters the fire, his teachings echoing through history. A demagogue plagues the world, his words a pestilence incurable. A liar sunders the middle realm, toppling its last dynasty. The world bleeds, its wounds cauterized by nuclear fire.
Time passes and as the spark leaves its cradle, the child journeys, learns and waits for his own moment. At the onset of an age of wonders, comes a knight to fell a great and ancient beast. He fails but cages the beast in red, leaving it cursing its captor and plotting its escape. Later a traveler deals and bargains for gods’ survival, taking in 20 for his own ambitions. The eye opens and wonders fall, leaving nothing but darkness and strife.
Despite everything that’s happened, it’s 'no longer you.'
A voice startles you awake from your slumber. Looking around you see your golden companion ‘Constantin’, still on guard at the doorway waiting for his next duty to be given by you. But it wasn’t you that said his name, you look to where the voice came from and see him, a man the same height as you, same hair as you, same skin and muscles as you, and if he weren’t looking out the window towards the now night sky, you’d bet he has the same face as you do now as well.
>Do you see him too?>”who are you?”>’Mr E?’>write-in 