20. [Broadcast... dream.]
Things are, in dreams, one might say... an empty void. A space not unlike Hueco Mungo - vast and without borders. You think this, when you arrive in the landscape of your own mind.
And in that mind, you carry these things: the spirits of your fallen and discarded and lost. The specter of your old faces - the glasses in your pocket, the garb of a captain, the fresh scent of bamboo, of incense, the scrape of pen and ink against paper, old copies of The Seireitei Communication, the faint memory of the last idea you bothered to think of for The Yin of the Pine Needle. Unfinished, unneeded, discarded. The things you've left behind.
Below, there looms the gaping void. Behind you, the toys another age; before you, the endless, gaping space of endless possibility. And above--
(You knew before you closed your eyes that they might see this. These broadcasts are an affliction that have not yet affected you... and yet, you've always known they might. So yes, look away. Keep some things from prying eyes, if only because you can.
Remember--)
--It is only a dream.
(And you are, as always, alone.)
And in that mind, you carry these things: the spirits of your fallen and discarded and lost. The specter of your old faces - the glasses in your pocket, the garb of a captain, the fresh scent of bamboo, of incense, the scrape of pen and ink against paper, old copies of The Seireitei Communication, the faint memory of the last idea you bothered to think of for The Yin of the Pine Needle. Unfinished, unneeded, discarded. The things you've left behind.
Below, there looms the gaping void. Behind you, the toys another age; before you, the endless, gaping space of endless possibility. And above--
(You knew before you closed your eyes that they might see this. These broadcasts are an affliction that have not yet affected you... and yet, you've always known they might. So yes, look away. Keep some things from prying eyes, if only because you can.
Remember--)
--It is only a dream.
(And you are, as always, alone.)