“Sir ghost!” the woman, who sat in a little bench peeling potatoes, greeted me with effusive mirth.

“Hello again, kind soul. I came to confirm I had caused you and your partner no further trouble.”

She stood, leaving the basked with tubers to a side. “None of that, you beat the dragon. My husband saw from the window. We now believe you to be… something else. A wizard, mayhap?”

“I am no more magical than my birth was, lady. As an aside, would you mind telling me your name? Mine can be Terus, if you would like to call me so.”

“Orphela at your service, our savior. My husband and I wanted to apologize for our behavior. If you wish, you can come dinner to our house tonight. We love to have guess guests.”

“I appreciate the invitation, yet I’ll let you know that my wants couldn’t be more frugal, and that I am not one for punctuality. My availability depends on powers outside my control.”

“Dragons? You roam the land hunting dragons?” She said, excited as the little girl had been.

I curled my fists but decided it would do no good to react to mere words like a wild animal would to a threatening gesture.

“No, please, never imply that again. I can speak with them, make deals. Sometimes, said deals work out and they leave people like you and your husband alone. But pray I never come across dragon hunters, because then I would be the villain of the story.”

“Why do you care for dragons, sir Terus?”

I sat in the middle of her little garden, looking at the potted plants, thinking about what I could tell her without betraying my true nature there, in public, for everyone to hear.

“I owe one my life,” I said the truth and nothing but the truth.

She looked perplexed. “How so?”

“That truth is not yours to know. Not today, not here, sweet Orphela. I will come back a night, even if I cannot guarantee any in particular. It will be as soon as I am able, if that is acceptable for your husband and you.” Then I decided it was high time to ask that question. “Husband means that man that lives with you, correct?”

She let out a hearty laughter and slapped my shoulder. I considered that couldn’t be interpreted as an aggression, and was probably some sort of play or social cue. “Don’t people marry where you are from?”

“My people do way less things that yours.”

“My dear husband would call you savages. No offense meant on my part, Terus. Do you like cakes? Cookies? I am pretty good at baking and—“

“Extremely frugal, I said. I only need your disposition to receive me, and willingness to hear what I have to say. Die of hunger or thirst, those are two of the things my people don’t do.”

She went pale and swallowed. “Fine. Are you undead?”

“No. What would that be?”

“Never mind. Come whenever you can, Terus, we will be waiting.”

I nodded and slapped her in the shoulder. “I shall.”

Then, I allowed my self to become undone.

----------------------------------------

It took Cirruin several days to dream me back into the world. I woke up in my quarters, a bland and miserable room not very different from any other that conformed the sad interiors of the houses of Ludlun. A silly chair or night table, dreamt all wrong and bent out of shape to the point of nigh inutility, sometimes was put inside these near-empty spaces. The truth is, as far as furnishing went, even carcasses are a luxury, down in Ludlun.

I peered out the approximately squared window of my room, and looked for our lady moon. Her phase would tell me how many days had passed since the moment I disappeared.

It suffices to say that me being late when I arrived to the house of Orphela and her husband was an understatement.

By the height of the lady on the sky, midnight had already gone by. In this the death of night, they were probably asleep. Yet I had no guarantee I would experience the coming dawn.

The closed door, I found it puzzling. Back in Ludlun, most of us didn’t use doors. I knew people had some sort of elaborate ritual about getting the doors opened for them, a sort of mutually understood call that they used when faced with a similar situation. Yet the custom escaped my memory.

I could shout Orphela’s name, but I reckoned that was likely to disturb the neighbors.

After a while trying to remember, and considering so many options I don’t remember them all, I looked for the nearest window and willed myself to the other side of it. The worst that could happen was getting murdered for trespassing, after all.

The lounge whose image moonlight gifted me appeared cluttered, extremely so. I have already explained how rooms in Ludlun normally are. We wake from inexistence and rise from the floor, we stand for hours doing nothing on a corner.

The wooden chairs in multiples of two, the table with a patterned cloth over it. Strings of garlic hanging from one of the walls. Pieces of furniture whose function was unclear to me back then—a pantry, to put an example. I felt inevitably overwhelmed by that home. Despite being probably needed, to me these additions to what should be a mostly empty space with four walls and a couple windows and exits seemed like despicable lushness.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

I focused my attention on the grapes that occupied a bow over the table. An orphan sprig there, an oval fruit there. Some smaller, some bigger, none equal to the other. Unique, imperfect, and, as a whole, making the bunch more beautiful because of it. I like grapes, friend, even If I have never tasted them. I like grapes like you may like a rose.

I was so engrossed in the grape-gazing that I didn’t notice Orphela’s husband coming out of the room, leaving the door open ajar to not make further sounds.

“Ah, it’s you, wizard or spirit. I feared it could be a burglar or wild animal,” he said. He was holding a knife and a candle, he watched me from across the door, in front of the doorframe of the room he shared with Orphela.

“This welcome is decidedly warmer than the one you gave me some days ago,” I addressed him briefly and returned to my contemplation of fruit.

“You drove a vile dragon away. I suspect you are no man, but I am not sure about you not being a benevolent spirit, a sort of guardian angel.”

“I am not of divine nature. Yet your suspicions are correct: I am technically not a man. I need to have a word with you and your female husband—”

“Wife,” he corrected me, flatly.

“A word with you and lady Orphela. I’d also appreciate a name to call you for. Mine’s Terus, but spare no effort remembering it tomorrow.”

The man crossed the room, arrived at the other end to the table, placed the candle next to the grape bowl, left the knife resting to a side, and sat down.

“You may call me Dariel, Terus. Have a seat.”

I obliged, shifting my body to a sitting position in a blink. Dariel tensed up, inching closer to the knife for a second.

“Do not do that again.”

“It startles you. That’s noted. Yet, I am afraid it will be impossible to acquiesce with such a petition: Moving like this is part of my nature. It takes great effort to not do so.”

“Would you be so kind to elaborate on this nature of yours?”

I took a grape and squished it between my fingers. I admired the seed that emerged of the pulp for a second or two.

“Of course, you have been naught but a marvelous host so far.” I left the seed beside the candle, and crossed the fingers of both my hands over the table. I inspired deeply and looked at him in the eyes. “I am a dream. In a cave somewhere, a dragon is dreaming about me having this conversation with you. And so long as he keeps doing so, I shall exist.”

“Now with the truth please, Terus. Do not take me for the idiot I am not.”

I tilted my head. Scratched behind my ear. Fixed my gaze on the flickering flame of the candle.

“That is it. The truth. That’s why I could save Zenvo from the dream of another dragon. Mardhaka, that’s the name of she who dreamed herself about to ransack or raze this place. I asked her to leave, as a favor for my dreamer. If mere word would not be enough, allow me to sleep and prove my claims: magic doesn’t discriminate between my dreams and those of the dragon. I can dream to life a whole other me, or, if you would allow, a whole other Dariel.”

With silent step, Orphela appeared from behind her husband and came to sit beside him. She seemed worried as her eyes inspected my face. “So you are not real, Terus?”

“I am as real as the dragons who with their fire scorch people to the very bone. As real as the ephemeral rains that come and vanish without apparent reason. As real as every other inhabitant of Ludlun, and the town itself.”

Dariel tapped his finger on his biceps. “Ludlun was destroyed by a dragon more than a century ago,” he commented, matter-of-factly.

“Now that’s a fact I was sorely unaware of. My Ludlun is nothing but a dream, a reflection of the original born out of the ancient Cirruin’s oneiric magic. He dreams of himself oppressing us, ruling over this little town. He kills us, ransacks the settlement purloining everything that may glitter.”

“That’s horrible!” Orphela explained, crumpling a handkerchief between both of her hands.

Raising my open hand, I attempted to brush off her concerns. “It sounds ugly, but we don’t care anymore. We feign to still suffer so Cirruin enjoys, but the reality is that we don’t, at all. The toad that makes a fly fear for its life is but a mere annoyance to you. The things you humans consider disgraces are day-to-day minutiae for us, dragon’s dreams. “

Dariel stood from his chair and began pacing around the room. His hands were behing his back, and he mumbled something as he went to and fro.

“There is a doubt I still need you to dispel if I am to believe your story, Terus. Why would a dragon dream men as anything but prey? Why would he know how people talk?”

“Cirruin made deals with kings, criminals, and nobles. It is not any dragon that dreams of me: he was the scourge of entire nations. I have had access to some of his memories, if you want to know how I know this. But he is a danger no more. His children, like Mardhaka, have inherited the world. But I digress: Cirruin knew enough about humans to make us somewhat believable mockeries. Enough to keep the illusion that he is still hunting the real thing.”

He sat back and held a stare. It wasn’t a friendly one.

“I believe him, he seems to have been passed down the lizard’s haughtiness and class, somehow,” said Orphela.

“Haughtiness? I hope I don’t appear to be contemptuous towards your people.

Ignoring me, Dariel spoke, “That’s precisely the problem, dear, I believe him too. Despite having saved us from Mardhaka, what are you doing in Zenvo, if your dreamer is so terrible?”

And so I told them the same story I wrote for you, friend, about the man that came to Ludlun and got killed for being a bit too noisy, about how he remained dead. After a while Dariel’s expression softened and we began talking about the customs and traditions of Zenvo. They told me I should strive to speak a bit more like a layman, but how to do it, if dragons learnt the tongues of men from their adversaries and associates? The gallant knights that perished under Cirruin’s claws, the corrupt power seekers that struck pacts with him, even when it meant bringing someone they held dear as a sacrifice.

“Listen, Terus, for most people of this city, you are the man who bravely fought and repelled a dragon. As long as you don’t cross the folk, minor annoyances and quirky speech will probably get overlooked. And if you want to learn about people, be our guest. We will try to repay your act of kindness, despite me having my doubts about your nature,” said Dariel.

“Yes, Terus, I agree with my darling. You are welcome to spend the night here today, and visit whenever we have a bit of free time.”

“It’s not like I can keep a man who comes back to life and appears out of thin air from entering the house, anyway!” Dariel joked, and we all laughed. “Do you know any card games, Terus?”

“Games? As in, playing?”

“Oh, I think he doesn’t know. Let us teach him.” Proposed Orphela, and so Dariel sat up to bring a deck of cards from the room.

That night, between good and bad hands and bursts of laughter, I learnt a lot of things about humans, and about the couple that became my friends. I learnt that the chair I was sitting in had been made by Dariel, whose profession was that of a carpenter. That Orphela and he married during the erstwhile winter, and that, in their words, they were “trying for a little miracle” still. That, unlike dragons, real people slept out of tiredness, but had beautiful dreams nonetheless.

I learnt a lot that night, and what I wouldn’t give to relive it once more, friend.