Reality And Dreams, Which Is Which?

I don’t know how I did it.

I don’t know how we did it.

But here in my (his? my?) hand laid the amulet I’d worked so hard to create.

The air felt thick and dusty around me. It was hard to breathe (it shouldn’t have been, it was a normal day) yet I continued onwards into the palace. It gleamed pink from the similarly patterned stained glass that made up its structure, along with the gentle drapery that hung close to the windows and caught the sunlight to spread mirages of light in the air. Rainbows shrank and grew around me, and the Dustrins that I passed by offered me polite waves (no, those were people, people!).

Normal people.

A world of glass. A world of stone.

A world so fragile. A mind that was so, so tired, yet managed to accomplish so much. I’d broken through the need for sleep, and now I intended to present my accomplishment to the king himself.

I made my way to the throne room posthaste. It was perhaps the most glorious room of all, and I had express permission from the guards to visit whenever I wished. The doors were adorned with images of the current royal family, and inside the walls were seared with pictures of the kingdom’s history. At the very end were two large thrones remade with every new generation, meant to be covered with images representing each ruler’s legacy. Once they passed, the chairs would be taken to the museum to be remembered as the history they were (I’m barely learning history in the class I’m in now, so why am I thinking this…).

The king and queen were sat, yet their expressions were different than I expected. Normally they were friendly, jovial, even to a being like me made of horrid hard flesh (foreign yet normal, fine yet not fine) but this time they glared at me as though my existence was a mistake.

A blight.

A—

I stumbled. My footfall was enough to kick a large crack into the beautiful floor.

The glares deepened. No words were exchanged.

“I have—“ I began, but my words left me, as if some instinctive disapproval of everything I was about to say kicked in. Was I being lectured without words? It must’ve been a teacher—

Hah? A teacher? I don’t know. What that is.

“L’vanquiet, are you going to get on with it?” The Queen snapped.

“He’s far too privileged with our time,” The King said. “We should work on revoking those.”

“Wait!” I said, finally finding my voice again. Did something change? The scenery was oddly transient (fake fake fake fake fake fake) and hard to focus on. I could barely see the King and Queen, as if they were being obscured by the light of the sun behind them. To stop myself from growing dizzy, I closed my eyes and fished around in my pocket until I pulled the magic amulet out.

“Here! As you’ve requested, I’ve finished a magical jewel that will allow your daughter to move around and repair what she breaks around her!”

They both gasped in horror. I opened my eyes, and saw clutched in my hand was the blood-covered crown of the princess.

“…What? No, no, I—“

I barely spat out half a justification before two guards grabbed my arms and pinned me to the ground. I choked and sputtered as the sand that swirled around them invaded my nostrils and mouth. Harder and harder to breathe, it felt as though I was plunged underwater. I heard the rulers screaming at me, I felt blood trickle down my sleeves.

I was framed, surely!? Or everyone was under some kind of spell—why was I being treated with such disdain? Distrust? Why do people intend to tear me down so?

What happened to the princess?

“Stop, please, LET ME—“ I said, but coughed my lungs out before I could finish a sentence. When breathing failed me, I thrashed and screamed, yelled, coughed, screamed again.

Futile.

(I failed.)

I failed.

(Surely, I deserve this.)

Surely, I wasn’t good enough.

I can’t do anything right—even when I…

I’m tired.

Am I just tired?

My eyes opened to a white ceiling.

Reality was much more vivid than it had been all day. I coughed and looked down at my hands to see they was empty—my robes were removed, because they were never there. I finally realized: I was in a waking dream as L’vanquiet, based off of a monologue I’d written about a nightmare he had when trying to design his amulet. I had written it only last night, as a stress reliever.

Augustín Castro. You dumb ass, that’s who you are.

I slapped my face a few times and tried to sit up, but a dizzying wave of exhaustion knocked me back down with a groan. A glance around the room told me all I needed to know. I was at school, likely sleepwalking with a heavy dose of rest-deprived hallucinations. it all mixed together, and the shock of the nightmare taking a turn for the worse knocked me out for good.

My mind barely had any recollection of what my actual day was like, but the clock read that it was after school, so it didn’t look good for me.

The nurse’s office was small, with only two beds set aside and pushed to be nearly touching. To the side was a cabinet and desk with some first aid materials, along with a white phone mounted to the wall. Otherwise, there wasn’t much in the way of care here. My one relief was that my condition wasn’t bad enough to need the ambulance called.

Unless they were on their way here now. I didn’t want to think about that.

In the middle of my musing, the door opened. The nurse, who looked perpetually grumpy allowed my parents to enter before she propped the door opened and walked off. I couldn’t utter a word before both my mother and father swept me into a hug.

“Don’t you dare worry me like that again!” my mother cried. Tears pricked her eyes as she held on tighter. “I should’ve realized something was wrong this morning—why didn’t I say anything? Oh, I’m so, so sorry…we’re taking you out to eat, and then it’ll be right to bed for you. No computer, just rest.”

“You look half-dead,” my father said, and then said something to my mother in Spanish. She snapped back at him, and the two continued to talk as they helped me walk back to the car. Something something—about our house? An illness, something—nope, even if I tried, my exhausted brain couldn’t even pick out half the words, so I let my frustration at being left out be for once.

My parents weren’t kidding. Their smothering brought into perspective how serious this was for them. They took me out to a pricey restaurant and allowed me to order a big steak, and the second we made it back home, I was strong armed into bed. I wanted to resist, or at least send my finished work over to my friends, but my limbs felt so heavy, and my brain was far too numb to even go through the motions.

Man, they’ll be pissed at me for missing the deadline, won’t they?

…

No, no they won’t be. This wasn’t a nightmare anymore. I could rest easy.