I exist again, what a joy. The dragon has not grown tired of dreaming about me yet. I have already corrected, or I think I did, the parts that had vanished from the previous paragraphs. A third edition pass down the line should correct most issues. Because, friend, you write letter to letter, the words don’t appear on the page if you accidentally skip over them. That is not my case. A whole page may be written in the moment that should not exist between two instants, and I may not notice. My mind, just as those pages, is a dream, and it shares the same faults as any other.

Just to record it, I am now dressed as a dancer. I find it mildly pleasant.

Continuing with the story, I will tell you what happened after a week of the man’s body not disappearing from where it had been placed. For the first time ever, I set a foot outside Ludlun or the path that led from it to Cirruin’s cave. The same decayed road from which the mysterious man had come is the one I began to travel in search for answers.

At first, I found myself often blinking and being back by the cave, or somewhere on Ludlun. But after a day of doing nothing but trying, I managed to get some hundreds of steps away. Of course, it took me thousands. My steps are not like yours, friend. One may cover the span of a mountain, and a hundred may not move myself from the spot. I have a degree of control over it, but to fight against one’s nature constantly is difficult, more so when venturing into the unknown.

That’s when I met them, the wild wolves. It was a small pack, four individuals. And they didn’t have to try too hard to jump me and manage to pierce my flesh with their sharp fangs.

This violent situation was relatively calm and even less painful than some of my previous deaths. The teeth of the Dream-Cirruin were not as subtle as a wolf’s, they behaved not as kindly, didn’t abide by the rules that make things preserve their numbers and shapes. Teeth that multiply, teeth that cut deeper than they should, teeth that piece where they don’t bite: dreamed teeth are nasty weapons.

The wolves desperately mauled me as I let myself be killed. It was progress, for the wolves moved like the man, like you must move, like pebbles rolling down a hill.

I woke up back by the cave’s mouth, dressed differently, carrying a sword this time. I thought about dropping the weapon somewhere: I suspected death, for those animals, could be way more troublesome than it was for me. Sadly, getting rid of the blade would do no good: A dream sword can easily find the way back into its scabbard, and the scabbard to the waist of the wielder.

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I’d ignore the wolves, no matter how many times they killed me. My flesh would not sustain them if they were like the snakes, like the flies. They would eventually learn that killing me would do them no good.

The second time I passed them by they were still feasting on my previous body. For hours I walked with no goal, and as I pushed onwards down the road, every step took more effort than the last. The moon shone high in the sky when in the distance I spotted a settlement, a city unlike Ludlun, whose walls of gray stone and the spires and roofs of buildings beyond them remained unchanged after every blink.

Sitting atop a nearby stone set there by dragons or by glaciers of old, I beheld the city. Torchlights revealed themselves on the outer part of the walls, held aloft by dutiful guardsmen.

After a few minutes, while I engrossed myself on the sight before me, one of the guards took notice of my presence and approached the boulder.

“You, with the terribly designed leather armor, come down of there and state your business!” he barked, staring at me.

I willed myself down the stone, and in a blink I was there. The man was taken aback by my sudden movement, and retreated while pointing at me with a trembling finger.

“I am just watching the city, friend. I fear it will disappear or run away as soon as I stop paying attention to it.”

“I thought you were a ghost for a moment, but this madness can only mean you practice sorcery. Your kind is welcome in Zenvo, but you need documentation signed by a competing authority to be allowed to enter. Do you have any such papers.”

I shifted my position and he immediately went for his sword in a movement so deft, so fast one would almost think it was a dream too. “Do not do that, mage! Don’t use your spells in my presence.”

“I am no mage,” I said, slowly, trying to do every little motion of the lips to go along the words. I had to imitate this man and the dead one, because I had noticed the mouth changed shape with logical patterns when they spoke.

“Sorcerer. Witch. Conjurer. I care not about which branch of the arcane arts you practice. No magic in my presence. And present those papers before I call the other guards.”

I felt myself start to falter.

“I am going back to Ludlun for now. Take care, friend.”

And the man opened the eyes big as my form became transparent, and then let out a scream and ran away at full speed before I finished disappearing. Back then, I wondered what he could have seen beyond me. Now, I know he thought I was a ghost. I believe ghosts don’t exist, not in that sense. I’d like them to, because then I could meet the man whose face I bear as if it were mine. There’s a tombstone somewhere, and the man a loving mother called Terus rests in it. May it be in Ludlun; in the dead and ruined Ludlun, not in the ghost that lives inside the decrepit Cirruin’s mind and dreams.

I feel the dream weakening. My hand flickers and some of the words on the page do so too. I though writing about my… you could call it life, would be faster, a sure avenue to preserve myself. My little artificial soul of the soulless me. Yet the task is daunting, slow, and, if a joke is afforded to me, draconian.

I hope I exist again one of these days, friend. And, if I don’t, goodbye.