Dreams weren't much of an auditory experience to Valo. Truly if sound registered, than it was just the very basic sound of human speech. Many words, some which were not said but somehow he knew they existed. Somehow, as an old woman brushed past him in the wide halls of the Wright Memorial Library, he knew what she spoke, despite the lack of animation to those carved lips. Not a twitch to their corroded fragility. Yet the words were clear. Clearer perhaps than anything he had ever lay witness to. "Stop you'r drinking boy." A voice which was not a voice. Wisdom which was simpler than one might think. A face which was no longer a face, dissolved into nothingness the moment her feet crossed the threshold of his position as is she was but a mere dream. And despite the tiring need for recollection, that face did not exist within the archive of his memory, alas causing the question; was this really a woman who crossed him so? Or was it a ghost? Did ghosts speak to him now?
The threads of sleep, though perhaps week, they were numerous. Each thread tied the concious artist to his bed. Each thread elevated his concious body from his material one, carried him though the realms of what was perhaps little more than his subconscious. A suspension of the axis of eternity, there what he saw was far from reality but somehow he failed to come to the recognition that indeed he had fallen though the sands of sleep, down the rabbit hole, into his own peculiar wonderland.
The artist walked in an array of wings. Tiny butterflies, each tied to his hair, lassoed by scarlet threads, somehow levitating without the flapping of wings. Each of that same iridescent blue hue, a royal blue, gliding merrily upon the stillness of air. Dusty air, smog, for clouds of grey tint hung in the distance where a single light source was suspended from the ceiling and the shelves of books seemed to cave in towards it as if a prominent hunger lingered between the pages of parchment. The hunger for that light which spread from the lamp, so far that he could not see the flame, but a singular, yellowing halo around it, swinging back and forth, parted into individual tones as it spread though the smog, as if drawn by the hands of child Valo. Painted by underdeveloped skill. Around it, darkness. A profound chiaroscuro. Motion languishing, claustrophobia.
The artist looked about himself and what he momentarily thought to be butterflies was gone now, as if burst into yet more smog the moment his eyes drifted from the phenomena. Perhaps their fragile being could not take this over pouring loneliness which lingered in these corridors, framed by shelves upon which books hungered to be read. Their little paper voices screaming silently. But all this was not for him. A childish dream, as distant as that single light source in the smog. Alas, he turned from it, expression profoundly blank, eyes that seemed almost completely muted, empty. No wish to linger in this haunted place. For haunted it was. haunted by the memories which were to be made, but existed only in the parallel dimensions of his dreams. Memories which he hoped so dearly to exist, yet ceased their existence as a prerequisite to their creation, therefore not existing at all. Not even for a moment. The existence which did not exist.
Indeed, to Valo, the experience of dreams was very much visual. but even then, the eyes saw less than in reality, as if his field of sight had been reduced. A single point on which he could focus, as if the focal point of a painting. A little canvas, framed before him and all the rest was blurred. Too he had not the liberty to simply look at anything he wanted. Though perhaps once or twice he could gaze at his feet, only to make sure that they were still there, yet more often than not he would not see them, only the panelled floor beneath them. As if his feet had eyes too and it was those eyes he looked though. And too, only one wooden panel would come into sharp focus, allowing the rest to become little more than a blurred tunnel. So strange was his dream vision, yet so very natural it seemed. So many times he had dreamt like this that his condition became unrecognisable. Unquestioned.
He had never been the master of his dreams. Not even a slave. Merely a witness in a borrowed body that only had the appearance of it's own feature. The body however decided where he would look and what he would see. Thus Valo drifted in silence. Real silence, not the silent hum of silent streets or the silent buzz of the silent interior of his home. No silent noise of the inside of his ears which often sounded when reality's silence was upon him. This was a world on mute, truly silent for not a word was spoken. Not a word apart from perhaps the warning of his drinking. Then again, the woman might as well have been little less than his conscious.
In his silence, too in his dreamt corrosion the red haired artist was stripped of his title. Stripped of his identity. Stripped of his race. Now he was simply Valo, masked by a featureless clay mask with nothing but two slits though which his eyes gazed upon the world around him. And he held this mask to his face, without the remembering of how exactly it was that it came into existence. Eyes pinned on the one thing which seemed mobile in this strange dimension. The feature of a ghostly maiden of black hair, in perfect monochrome, drifting past the book shelves with such whimsy that her feet might as well have not touched the floor. And he, the masked gentleman of hair as red as the blood from a freshly severed archery, stood in immobility as simply watched. The gaze so romanced with her grace. And everything around her seemed to subside, the books the shelves, even that grey smog. It all descended into decay and dissolved before his eyes. She, the angelic one, remained.
