Bizarre Delusions pt. 2

In the very back of his heart, Mond knew something was different. Like returning back to a childhood home, a little too big to fit into those favorite hiding places. But he didn’t care, in the same vein of defiance to common sense as this place existed, he would exist within it. Just for tonight, for his birthday.

Mond brushed his hand through the indigo haze that managed to make even a parking lot seem like a dreamscape. He spun and laughed to himself till he fell flat on his back again, the asphalt now a black sheet of fresh sprung grass, moistened by the violet dew. For what felt like the first time in forever, he let himself breath deeply and full, and stretched his arms up to paint through the sky, just as his Dad had all those years ago.

“They’re right, the colors really were brighter back then…” squinting at the moon now, Mond turned his outstretched hand to a right angle, with the object of his focus wedged in the corner. “What happened to you anyway, I remember now, that night we met but, why did I ever let myself forget?”

Right as his thoughts began to cloud like the purple haze around him, a quick shot of noise jolted Mond up to attention. Springing up in what felt to him like an impressive show of reaction time given his inebriated state, he inspected the origin of the noise. Just ahead of him, streaks of rainbow neon light melted down the side of an endlessly high wall that loomed over further than any of the other buildings had.

Mond immediately recognized it as the sign that had kept him company while he counted down the minutes till midnight, its humble job as corporate advertisement now promoted to the greatest source of Incandescence he had ever seen. Gentle pops of spark sizzled across its surface as it condensed and took form, stripping from the wall into a three dimensional shape of its own. Clamoring to his feet, Mond looked in awe at the sight, having to turn his head slightly from the immense light of the spectacle.

He had to admit to himself, as it became more and more evident that this mesmerizing spectrum of radicalized gas took form, an aura of intimidation began to cut through the bliss, but he pushed his instincts out of this way. After all, he didn’t care, right? That's why he was here, just for tonight, he wouldn’t care.

Fantastic light became smoldering particles of solid gas as the neon rainbow pushed itself into existence above Mond, its now physical material shaping itself into something he knew very well, and couldn’t help but beam wildly at its sight. “You’re… you’re a dragon”. He nearly fell backwards taking in its immense size , the blazing rainbow of burning radiation that seemed to twist itself into the sparkling heavens above.

Unable to contain himself now, Mond jumped wildly into the air, his hair flying over his forehead and into his eyes. “A dragon! A freaking dragon, it doesn't get more magical than that!“, but as much as he wished, he longed to be ecstatic beyond that moment, as much as Mond forced a beaming smile up at the looming blaze of color, his iris cracked just the slightest bit more. Mond didn’t only feel wonder, not only joy or bravery, he felt fear, and that broke his heart.

______________________________________________________________________________

“Okay then Biblio, I’ll help you down!”The nebulous white dwarf eyes of the bear lit up with surprise at the boy's immediate response. “Just like that? But how could you? You are all the way down there and I'm way up here”, for a second, Mond thought he felt a hinge of what he could only place as frustration in his new friend's voice. It was an emotion in his young life he had not yet felt.

“Im not sure, but I’ll just have to figure it out!” The child’s gaze was completely transfixed now on Biblio, not like a trance, but from eager focus on the exciting dilemma that had greeted him. Dedicated focus, innocent recklessness, or perhaps interference from another force of power, whatever was driving Mond’s keen lust for adventure in this moment completely whipped away his attention to anything else. As if he had always been there, Mond no longer lay drowsely in his warm car behind his Father, rather he stood in the clearing of a snow battered pinewood forest, reaching up to help the Bear on the Moon.

Around Biblio, the stars began to mix and swirl, like paint that an artist decided to trace his brush in with lazy abandon. It stared, seeming to have momentarily forgotten about its stardust body slipping ever more from its grip around the orb. “ Biblio? Hey Biblio, can you hear me? I said I'm gonna get you down ok? I promise!” The Bear watched the boy jump up and down, waving to him way down, and up above, it was all the same to Biblio.

“Can… can you.. really help me?” it had asked that question so many times, to so many different children. Sometimes it was ignored outright, sometimes the notion was entertained but quickly abandoned as sleep took hold. Sometimes it would be met with hopeless , confused cries and again be forgotten for the caring hold of a mothers “shh It’s ok , it was only a dream”. Wise words, for maybe that was all he really was, the drifting dust of what can't be, stuck in a world of only what is.

But Biblio saw everything that Mond's distorted sense of time and space didn't, and for the first time, he felt his grip tighten ever so slightly. In the instant his plea for help was heard by those little ears, the boy had flung open the door of the speeding vehicle and leaped into a snowbank with reckless, determined abandon.

Mond's Father barely had time to register the act, but the acoustic mix of tire screech and his own that pierced through the torrential snow fell on deaf ears, aside from the unseen ursine observer who was duly in shock. The boy's body bounced hard off the snowy mound and slid across a thickly fallen patch of fresh snow, trailing skidmarks across its surface.

But nearly before the car had the time to begin slowing itself down, he had gotten up, and began making his way into the forest’s windbreak where he could better view the Moon. Blood dripped down his torn knees and onto the snow, painting the pure white with bold, crimson red.

Though miraculously, his leg bones remained together, Biblio wondered if it would have made the boy's advancements any slower. Through the frozen pale blaze Mond marched, his Fathers shouts echoing in the storm behind him, till he came upon a clearing, with one large pine at its center granded than all the others. He looked up its length to the observing bear above, and Mond began to climb.

Mond’s breath reminded him of a dragon’s, the puff of smoke that came from his mouth with each breath must have been why his lungs burnt so much. Up towards the moon he ascended, each reach for the next branch making him ever so slightly more aware of the pain in his limbs, but that just made him feel more like an adventurer. “Hey Biblio! Don’t worry, okay? Im..” He paused for just a moment, a wheezing noise came from his lips like his lungs had begun to shrink themselves from the cold. “Im almost… almost there!”

In only what had been a few moments, the concept who called himself Biblio felt something it never had before, something that was paradoxical to its nature. If it could measure its travel along a chronological axis, it would have only been moments before that it could have sworn it’s being was just pure instinct, like a beam of light that reached an eye simply for the right to exist in some form. But now, as this boy’s broken body reached the top of the pine, foolishly reaching up to its illusionary form at an impossible distance, Biblio felt like it… he, was worthy of existence in this realm of that very thing. And as the one who gave him that moment of infinite conception fell in both consciousness and height, he gave it all up for him, and Mond began to soar.