Your Plan, Your Gift
(A Dream)

Date unknown
The Realm of Wyn Avuqua

Loche Newirth is dreaming.

“Are we still the storytellers, Dad? Are we still writing the good stories?”

“Yes Edwin, we are still writing the good stories.”

Each heartbeat floods Loche’s left ear with the rush of an ocean spindrift, and every few minutes a sharp pain jabs inward.

A suffocating sleep.

Dreamscape.

Muted colors like underdeveloped film.

Edwin grins. He twists out of Loche’s embrace and runs to the opposite end of the tower office and pauses beside a bookshelf. Some of the titles glow from the spines of hammered gold leaf. A candle flickers on a nearby shelf. The door is open and the stairway down to the living room below is dark. Helen’s portrait catches Loche’s eye. A photograph taken shortly after Edwin was born—her eyes sparkle from behind the glass and her smile is adoring.

Loche sharpens a pencil and points his attention toward a journal entry. It reads:

“Was this your plan, Loche? Is this your gift?”

The gun laid heavy on the stage floor. I cowered and crawled backwards. I had killed my father’s son. I stood and backed away, crying, loathing the sight of these men huddled on the stage—blood stained swords upon the planks, a man cradling his dead son, his friend weeping beside him—all beneath a glaring spotlight.

“Dad?” Edwin calls from across the room. Loche raises his head from the page and cannot see his son. The room has suddenly transformed into the timbered walls of his log cabin at Priest Lake. Flat grey light dusts the air. The hearth is black and cold. All around him is a chain of yellow Post It notes—and scattered books—and half finished plates of food. A pen is jutting out from the cluster of his fist. Rushing surf deafens his left ear. Red smears and splashes on the window catch his eye. Edwin appears outside looking in through the pane. His little face and wide brown eyes stare at him below the slashes of a painted word: MURDER.

“Dad?” Edwin’s voice again. “Was this your plan? Is this your gift?” The little boy rotates away and runs. Loche rushes to the glass. Outside Edwin speeds across a wide lawn, hand in hand with a gaunt, spindly limbed man. The man cranes his head back. A smile cut across his face. It is Marcus Rearden.

“Was this your plan? Is this your gift?”