Tonight, a Prologue...

Tonight: Prologue

In a faraway world, there is a grand city, and in that grand city, there is a series of rooms. The walls of the rooms are pale as frost and just as cold; the floors of the rooms are made of gleaming stone and, like the moon, glow where the sunlight hits them. The rooms contain a bathroom, a bedroom, a library, and a garden, and a large, empty room, cut in half by a row of curtains. Everything a person would need. This is good.

The person who lives in these rooms has never left them. The person who lives in these rooms has never dared. The person who lives in these rooms is forbidden to ever see walls that aren't of white stone.

Besides the garden, there is only one place where the floor glows from the light of the sun. It is a little window, by the side of the bed. The person who lives in these rooms loves that window, more than anything else in the world. Through that window, this person can see the movements of people, people who will never see him -- through that window, he can see the flight of birds, and hear the sounds of that grand city -- the children, sometimes laughing, sometimes crying; the old women, haggling out the price of turnips, too high this year; the vendors, singing out songs about how lovely coal is; the carts and the animals being led to slaughter and the loving and the fighting, the crimes and the small street-side miracles of ordinary lives.

Lives that this person will never touch. He raises a covered hand to touch the window. There is nothing about this person that isn't covered by layers of fabric. Only his eyes, blue like the sky he can see from his window, are unblocked.

His guardian, behind him, coughs gently, and the dream of the window fade away. He turns and does not smile. His guardian cannot bear to look at him too long. Not in the eyes. But still, the guardian gestures to a tray of food.

Today, this person will eat his meals, read his books. Today, this person will take his stroll in his little garden, seeing the same flowers he has seen every day of his life. Today, no one will touch him or look him in the eye. Today, he will curl up in his bed and go to sleep.

Today, it will be the sleep of the innocent, without dreams.

But tomorrow is another day... And sooner or later, his dreams will begin...

((For the record, this is actually TEF related.))