The Ravenblack Grimoire

The woman that I love isn’t the one I thought. Or she isn’t anymore. Something has changed in her behaviour. For example, she enjoys doing crosswords. I don’t. I find it extremely vulgar when words cross this way. Well, she likes it. It seems to me that she’s showing a certain lack of elegance of heart in being happy without me.

Unfortunately, I had confirmation of her selfishness, not later than yesterday. We went to bed late. She is fast asleep. Around four in the afternoon, I feel gripped by a dull anguish. Sweat at the temples. Dry throat. I open the bedroom door and find myself in a sea of sand, in a burning country. Near a dead cactus, I see a man wearing a crown, in a military parade suit, sinking into the quicksands. And from this man, only the crowned head and the striped arms are still emerging from this dry mouth.

I recognize him. I remember this silhouette, which used to be taller than anyone’s at the stairs of the kings of the world palaces where we listened to his enlightened words. I try to call his name, in vain: I stand silent. Worse: he is sinking three feet away from me and I don’t help him. As if some invisible chains were riveting my arms to my body.

What am I doing in this nightmare? I try to move my numb fingers. What they touch is joyous; it is the satin sheet of the conjugal bed. I had dreamt. The moment after, sitting on the bed, head in hands, I try to interpret this strange dream, while the anguish is still there, despite the reassuring certainty of the cupboard’s mirror reflecting my alarmed looks under my shaggy mop. Didn’t those quicksands symbolize oblivion? This man, that every newspaper used to exhibit on their front page not so long ago, wasn’t he sinking into the unfathomable depths of oblivion, sucked into the black no man’s land of dead memories where the crowd’s ingratitude buries the heroes of yesterday while other heroes rise up and hide them in the formidable shade of their new glories?

This was my explanation of this heavy dream. That was it. I was sure. But Damari, who was sleeping there, next to me, Damari with whom, for so long, I had shared without counting, my smallest emotions, Damari, who knew every little bit of me that I didn’t hide from her, Damari, whose cheeks were swelling when I had a toothache, Damari, who was, in short, so close to me, how would she interpret my dream?

For now, she was still sleeping next to me soundly, so I woke her up lovingly with a slight knee hit in the breasts, and spoke to her as she grumbled awake: “Don’t you think." I said, "that it’s been awhile since people have stopped referring to Capadocious as the Prince of Ravenblack?”

I didn’t like her answer.

“I don’t care, I was asleep!” and promptly rolled over.

She is such a selfish creature. There are people like that, people you’ve always loved and you think know them well, and one fine day, one sad night, it’s the disappointment. Brutally, in the light of a drama not necessarily connected to the couple, like this strange silence that weighs about Capadocious’ missing crown, you realize that you’ve lived all this time with a stranger…

~Lucius
The Chaosophist