Escape From Separation

A Short Serial Fiction by S Lynn Knight

The girls were never apart. Even in sleep they rendezvoused in common dreams of great adventure. One dream bound them to a single destiny.

Titus had known the twins since the day before forever. A time long preempting their first breath drawn on the measured account of the World of Others. A world where air is necessary for the survival of such creatures unlucky enough to be born with the red blood of corporeal beings.

In Titus’s domain no such boundaries existed. Potentially, nothing and everything was real all at once.

The probability of all possibilities existed within the substance of dreams. Titus called this the Law of Limitlessness and he taught the twins everything he knew of it.

Sharing a small wooden stool, Katia and Aidia watched the sun slide from the sky to dip its golden toes into the horizon with great anticipation. The grimy window through which they peered did little to dissuade the anticipation they felt when night came and the dreaming resumed.

The orphanage was a cacophony of hurried footfalls and acrid smells at this hour. After a dinner of indecipherable meat and weak porridge, all the activity was aimed towards herding the children to bed. Most feared the night and resisted sleep. Some wailed while others whimpered softly. Poor dears, they knew nothing of the secret passage into Titus’s world.

Once, the girls had fervently tried to explain to a few of the younger children they were not trapped, but were, in fact, free to leave the orphanage every night in their dreams if they wished.

One of the boys, wearing dirty high-water jeans and a mullet haircut laughed in their earnest faces then darted at Katia and pinched her hard on the arm. The angry red welt was caution enough to keep such secrets to themselves henceforth.

Besides, they could not take any of the other children with them. The other orphans were bound to the challenge of finding their own way through the Land of Nod. This meant those who desired passage had to locate their own dreaming partner in order to pass back and forth from the World of Others into Titus’ realm. No piggybacking allowed. Titus was quite strict about this requirement.

Each of the two dreamers held a magical rem-key, when joined together in sleep it unlocked within them the fantastical realm of collective imagining. Dreamers need not be related but it never hurt to be living in the same hemisphere, or even the same womb as your potential rem-key companion.

Katia and Aidia were born with fully functional rem-keys after having gestated together, side by side for nine and half months. Both girls were naturally humble and grateful for the gift of proximity which they understood was not bestowed on everyone.

Some children never found their match and grew into fearful adults who threw their keys away only to plod through life in search of a safe, predictable existence.

By Katia’s estimates, the carriers of the keys at the orphanage had rejected their rem-keys, or never found courage enough to go in search of their own keys, eventually sacrificing a treasured birthright on the Altar of Fears.

The key carriers scowled often, and discouraged spontaneity of expression, or any sort of curious investigation at every turn, and turn they did until the orphanage felt more like a corkscrew inside a prison. Their keys wound the mantle clocks and locked every door and window like clockwork, night after night.

Their suspicions of the children in their charge, warranted or not, were palpable and they did their best to quash budding intuition and precocious innocence when it came to preparing the children for inevitable entry into the World of Others. Standing out was frowned upon; thus, the twins did their best to perfect the mask of sullen refugee despite the curious attention drawn to them by the subtle glow they emitted when together, which was always.

Every night, like clockwork, the twins quietly slipped from the noose of their present circumstances into the care and tutelage of Titus, the great and regal gatekeeper of Unlimited Substance. He would purr gallantly and point an enormous paw between himself and the girls and say,“We are US. You and I are unlimited beings of creation and we are made from the very same creative substance.

“Our limitation lies solely in our inability to conceive, engage and create reality through this abundant and ever present Substance which fills every atom and molecule in the universe and stands ready to be commanded by you.”

“But, Mr Titus, you are the great and noble lion who reigns over the sacred Land of Limitless Potential, and we…we are but two cast-offs orphaned without explanation or apology. Even our dresses are made of hand-me-down sack cloth. How can we possibly be worthy of the inheritance you claim we share?”

Aidia spoke in a mild tone and halting cadence which Titus readily took as the hallmarks of her genuine and meek nature. Although he knew children from the Land of Others often came into the world carrying the undeserved burden of shame, he felt Aidia’s nature had somehow overcome this handicap.

Aidia was pleased by the softening of Titus’s expression and she attributed it to the great lion’s compassionate, if not misplaced, trust for her and her sister. Oh, Katia, dear, sweet Katia could well be trusted with anything, including the keys to Nirvenia’s backdoor. Titus was correct in assuming such virtuosity in her sister, but he had dangerously underestimated her, and one day she would show him how far his pride had led him astray.

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