Hiding
I feel safe in the Dreaming Room, and spend most of my time here.
I sleep too much, even during the day.
Shazira says I’m still healing.
It may be true, but I feel I’m hiding from the rest of the Watchtower and the world beyond it.
This room is a private space for Shazira and me, the guardians of the Watchtower.
The room opens only for us, our daughter, and our guests.
I chased after my daughter yesterday to meet her, and found her with her mother.
Tzina smiled at me, but I was sent away, so Shazira could explain about travelers and Embu.
Now, Tzina won’t look me in the eyes, or speak more than a few words in my presence.
Shazira told Tzina that I’m still her father, but the smiles are gone.
A Canopy of Color and Energy
The Dreaming Room is more than a place to sleep.
The dreams that give this room its name aren’t the ordinary dreams that fill the night.
A large, round bed rises in the center of the room, surrounded by 8 stone spotlights resting on the floor.
Spaced evenly around the circle, the spotlights are wide cylinders that narrow slightly to a flat top and bottom.
The outside of each cylinder is covered with bark.
The inside lined with colored crystal, and polished like a geode.
When activated, the cylinders surround the bed with light and energy.
Each cylinder resonates, and connects with the cylinder opposite it, on the other side of the ring.
The energy and light from one spotlight is drawn toward the energy and light of its pair.
Two rays of light rise and bend toward each other, joining over the bed, to form an arch of light and color.
The four arches cross each other, and form a canopy for the bed.
A Dream Net.
The cylinders are configured using the symbols I saw on the harbor wall.
Set the cylinders with the right symbols, and the Dream Net opens our sleeping minds to another world.
A Dream School.
A powerful learning environment designed to take over our dreams, and give us years of training in a single night.
Shazira tells me that Yagrin never used the Dream Net, but I feel something pulling at me, when I look at the cylinders.
I need Yagrin’s skills to find my place here, and I don’t have time for years of training.
Shazira shakes her head when I suggest using the Dream Net.
“Too dangerous,” she says.
“Find another way.”
Memories
I examine every detail of the room, trying to awaken more memories.
The bed has a round frame decorated with silver metal grillwork.
There are wooden squares, with Celtic designs, scattered through the frame.
Carved out of a black hardwood, and inlaid with gold.
The wooden panels are centered vertically and appear every two to three feet along the grill.
Completely surrounding the bed.
Small rugs cling to the floor.
The walls are slightly curved, like all the outer rooms.
On the left wall are bookcases made from a familiar black wood, and a round table/desk.
Many of the books are leather-bound.
They are all ancient, but none seem brittle.
Why do they still keep books, when they have the multi-sensory recordings, called memcubes?
I pick up one of the books.
As I start to open it I hear an unpleasant high frequency sound, and I’m overcome with nausea.
The sound and nausea disappear when I close the book.
A voice within me whispers that the book is locked, and hides the settings for the Dream Net.
On the left wall, there’s a cabinet with drawers and shelves.
It’s full of papers and scrolls, maps and blueprints.
I remember a map of a distant land, and I think of the strange animal whose shape Tzina took.
“Bizra,” says a distant, inner voice.
A strange memory fills me.
Yagrin was afraid of them.
The right wall is dominated by a great wooden storage chest.
Dark brown with silver hinges, and carved with ornate designs.
Among other items, there’s a neatly folded robe inside, and a memory of Yagrin’s mother.
There are two dressers.
Each shaped like a curved V.
The bottom of the V is attached to a large round base.
The smallest of the drawers is two feet wide, and the dresser is six feet tall.
There’s a round mirror between the two dressers.
The mirror looks like glass, but it enhances the image of everything it reflects.
Objects look brighter and sharper than they appear in ordinary light.
I remember Shazira smiling at me, taking a dress out of one of the drawers.
She holds the dress in front of the mirror.
I hear a bird call in the distance, and my attention turns to the windows, and the two glass doors, that open onto the deck.
The doors meet in the center of the wall at the tip of the egg.
The left door forms the left half of a circle, and the right door completes the circle.
Each door is framed in brown wood, and looks vaguely like a French door.
There are several windows throughout the room, including two large round windows that lie seven feet from the tip of the egg on each side.
Each window is covered with a large piece of opaque white fabric with embroidered designs.
The curtains lay on the window, full of curves and twists.
I pull on the fabric, and it slips off the window, folds itself up, and lays flat on the floor.
Then I pick up the fabric and touch it to the window.
It opens up, floats across the window, and adjusts itself into its prior beautiful shape.
Drawings of mountains and waves hang on the wall between the doors and the windows.
Five small sculptures, shaped of dark blue stone, are scattered through the room, each one on its own white table.
I focus on one of the beautiful sculptures, and it glows and changes shape.
They are called moving sculptures, and I find them hypnotic.
My mind fills with an image of the table and sculpture standing quietly on a slab of ice within a hot alien landscape, surrounded by pools of molten metal.
This is not one of Yagrin’s memories.
This world was created and shaped by the sculptor’s mind, and the sculpture projects these images.
The scenes are beautiful, but somehow troubling, as if they could swallow me up.
There’s something odd about the mind that made these.
I remember.
The sculptures, and the worlds within, rise from Tzina’s mind.