Your advice

Follow on from 'Desert'

Your Advice

I had yet to acclimatise to my new reality. It was unthinkable, to continue life as though nothing had changed. Truly, land had become sky, sea had become land, the cosmos had become the home of my innermost machinations and earthbound life had become irrelevant altogether.

The flesh and blood of life prior to this moment, had at once become a spectre. Whilst this language seems dramatic, that of an amateur poet, my being and senses had acclimatised to this role just as poorly.

It seemed that, overnight, without rhyme, reason or provocation, I’d entered into a state of being over which I’d previously held no dominion, as though a being from another dimension. Jeff, the great socialite, adviser to the king himself, had become...afflicted...overnight.

As I arose, every facet of the room I inhabited held a new, previously hidden element to it. The sheets, once ordinary and clean, became a mildly irritating mess, something to contort and awkwardly choke-hold my feet. My naked body, my legs felt like a scarcely tangible entity as I hoisted them off the edge of my bed and kicked my way into whatever clothes lay closest. 

Nothing sat right upon me. My own clothing, once a secondary skin, now felt like something to awkwardly wrestle upon myself in its own act of protest, a mask of suffocation and uncertainty to be pulled upon, eternally readjusted.

Every decision, every action, flooded into my mind at once in a tangled mass of panic, a hundred spirits grabbing and shaking me from every direction as they tied the strings of my brain together haphazardly. Each individual conversation and its possibilities, its ratio of risk and reward, played out before me and seemed tragically hopeless, useless, inefficient. I clutched at my brain with a wave of headache, once I had dressed myself and left my bedchamber it at least reduced itself to a series of beating drums, controlled explosions. I staggered from my bedchamber and across the nearest hallway, so distracted by something or nothing that I almost forgot where it led. A pattern on the walls of this corridor...I found myself dragging my hand across the wall, absorbed by the smooth marble texture of many blocks. There were...40 by....10. 400. 400 blocks on each side. Why hadn’t I noticed before, and why did I care now?

The corridor before me led straight to the throne room. A small crowd had gathered, the dark purple tapestries, the red carpets, brilliant white and grey columns, the sheer INTENSITY of the noise. One, two, 213 people. 110 dark haired, the rest blondes, all white faces for some reason. All talking incredibly loudly, about things that had once interested me. I recognised my sister, discussing her newborn child with two of her fellow soliders in the cities defence league, and realised I couldn’t possibly care less. What difference could that have possibly made? Yet, I found myself staring upon them, and eventually her cobalt eyes met mine in utter confusion, and my brain emitted a foul screech, materialising the Kings throne 

next to me.

“GEOFFREY! I asked you a question!”

The throne room fell into a minutiae of ricocheting nonsense questions, then quick and painless silence. The king was a blank slate to me. I’d been able to read that man since birth, and yet here he was, as alive as the columns of his castle.

“Jeoffrey. The people are waiting. We sensed the steel lizard from East city approach us, for the first time in over 1000 years. Now, it has vanished. What is your advice?”

For the first moment that day, my mind became a heavy ball of black steel. My world was silent.