Guardian of the Dream
Prologue - The Flower Sprouts
In the square of a Rotan village to the west of New Yogo, an old singer lay collapsed on the ground. The man was a wandering singer named Rosetta. He’d been performing and waving to the crowd that had gathered for a festival just before his collapse.
Rosetta lay on his back in the dead of night. He heard anxious voices around him along with the crackling of a bonfire. These sounds reached him only distantly, like the murmur of a rising tide. The stars he saw glinting in the sky seemed close enough to touch.
Suddenly, Rosetta’s body felt light: lighter than air. It rose into the sky all by itself, encountering no resistance. He felt a little like he was swimming, buoyed up by some force.
Then Rosetta looked down and saw himself lying on the ground.
My spirit is moving away from my body…
Rosetta remained attached to his body by a pure white Soul Thread. As Rosetta drifted farther away into the sky, the Soul Thread stretched and thinned, but it didn’t break.
It would soon. It was nearly time for Rosetta to face his own death. If he were an ordinary person, his Soul Thread would snap when he got far enough away from his body, and his soul would be absorbed into the afterlife.
But Rosetta was not an ordinary person.
Rosetta’s soul flew through the dark like a comet with a shining white tail. He picked up speed, zooming away from his body so fast that he could no longer see it. Although he was just a spirit, he still felt a connection to his own body. He felt like he still had all his limbs and could get up and walk at any moment.
But he couldn’t do that from here. Rosetta manipulated the arms and legs of his spiritual body to pass through the air and enjoyed the sensation of flying.
There was a heat like fire in Rosetta’s chest. He tried to touch the source of the heat and felt something fall into his hands. He looked down at his cupped hands and smiled a little, though there was something sad in it. What he held was a small, slightly glowing flower seed.
I must be dying.
Rosetta’s life passed before his eyes like a long song. He was alone now, and he would never sing before a crowd again. There was only this flower seed.
“My life is over,” he whispered to the seed. “Yours is just beginning.”
The seed of the flower would sprout near a beautiful lake in the mountains of New Yogo, a foreign kingdom to the west of Rota. Rosetta knew the place, since he’d traveled to New Yogo before. He considered it a good place for the flower to grow.
I will dream of the wooden palace in the center of that lake. There was a song I used to sing about it, long ago. Let the seed sprout there.
Rosetta found himself instantly transported to the lake he'd just been thinking of. He floated above it, seeing the song-loving spirits that lived in the lake, just as they did in mountain lakes and forests in Rota. The spirits welcomed his dying soul with a mournful cry.
Rosetta’s spirit drifted into the lake and was sucked down. Rosetta didn’t feel cold. The water’s surface had a red-blue hue, shining with predawn light. A deep darkness lay below him like a void that led to the afterlife. He saw another spirit being drawn down into the darkness. That spirit would forget all memories of its current life and be reborn as a new being. A spirit couldn’t return to the land of the living until it had forgotten all of the memories of its past life.
The darkness remained below Rosetta: he was not drawn in. He floated in place right at the edge of the darkness.
The husk of the seed Rosetta held in his palm suddenly cracked open. Pale light burst forth from it, shining outwards to surround Rosetta in a bubble. The light shielded him from the darkness like a protective barrier.
Rosetta’s eyes slipped closed. He dreamed of a majestic, austere, beautiful wooden palace. Inside the palace, there was a garden. An overflowing spring gushed forth like a fountain right in the center of the garden.
When Rosetta opened his eyes, he was standing in the garden, directly in front of the spring. The flower seed fell from his hand into the garden’s soil. He felt a terrible weariness overcome him and sank down to his knees: standing had become too difficult.
I’ll sleep here.
Rosetta was about to fall asleep again when a shadow passed over his face. Rosetta opened his eyes wearily and saw a young man looking down at him. The young man closely resembled Rosetta in his youth.
“Thank you, Rosetta,” the young man said. “The old Flower has withered, and the new Flower was planted safely. You will be reborn as a new spirit and will hold the Flower within yourself. When it is time for the Flower to sprout again, this process will repeat, as it has since the beginning of time.”
The young man paused, then said, “With your last breath, sing a song to choose the spirit of your new mother. Her spirit will be bound to yours, and to mine."
A song?
Rosetta smiled, feeling the wrinkled lines caused by a long life around his mouth crinkle. Singing had always been a part of his life. It seemed that it would also be a part of his death.
It’s time for my swan song.
Rosetta opened his mouth, took a breath, and sang.
The world of the Flower trembled at the edges. Rosetta’s song was like a gentle breeze that attracted many spirits to the lake. They were the souls of dreaming people. People in the villages and towns nearby were all asleep, since it was the dead of night. The spirits of people close to death were particularly drawn to Rosetta’s lamenting, ethereal singing.
The young man sat down next to Rosetta, looking at each spirit that had come. "I think you should choose that girl,” he said. “She is hurt and near death, but her spirit still shines. She is so bright, so powerful! She can easily become the mother of the spirit that will contain the Flower. "
Rosetta said nothing. He was fading away, almost invisible.
The young man stood up and climbed into the pale blue darkness to welcome the girl.
***
That night, a poor, ugly girl had a beautiful dream. In this dream, she was sleeping by the shore of a lake surrounded by mountains. When she awoke, she fell in love with a young man living in a wooden palace. She remembered giving birth to a son.
The girl woke up from her dream the next morning, discarded her past and chased a brighter future. The girl’s name was Tomca, but she would come to be known as Torogai, the most powerful magic weaver of her lifetime.
Fifty-two years have passed since that night, and the Flower will soon sprout again…
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