-20th Rest-

Maybe hallucinations are part of the graying? When I awoke, the lake had vanished—gone as if it had never existed. I hadn’t moved. I was still in the same place, yet there was no trace of water, no shoreline, nothing but the endless expanse of gray hills stretching out before me. Lakes don’t just disappear.

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The rational part of my mind screamed that it must have been an illusion, a hallucination conjured up by the graying. That’s the only explanation that made sense. But then, I looked down at my canteen, which was filled to the brim with water. And my pockets—bulging with the gray flowers I had carefully gathered by the lake’s edge.

Those things were real. I collected them with my own hands. So if the lake wasn’t real, how did I get this water? How did I pluck those flowers? Where did the lake go? If it was all in my head, then what parts of my reality can I even trust anymore?