It took me a couple of seconds to understand what I was seeing.

I was welcomed by the blue and gray walls. The off-white ceiling of my bedroom, my computer, a big window with actual glass, instead of just some cloth used to cover it when it gets colder. The soft feeling of a duvet and a mattress with foam, instead of straw, pushing on my skin in a comforting manner, like a mother telling her child it was all just a bad dream.

I was home. Or maybe it was all a dream? I took a deep breath.

It felt real and perfect, the house was silent, most likely empty, and the annoying barking of dogs outside felt almost better than the roman sounds of quiet mornings. The air was pretty cold, which usually discouraged me, but after a month spent in Rome I welcomed that too. Actually, was that all just a dream? Or maybe I’ve learned my lesson and like in some movie, finally got back to the real world, to continue my life as a better man.

I pulled down the duvet and stepped out of the bed. “I miss the muscles,” I sighed. In my dream I was still considered a stick by Roman standards, but at least I gained a tiny bit of mass as compared to my real world persona. The almost white skin was also not something I was glad to have back, but the tears streaking down my cheeks meant that it didn’t matter.

The cold floor under my feet made me happy, no longer would I have to worry about where I step. But all of that was just details compared to the feeling of relief that filled me. The feeling that everything will be finally okay. I could see my family and friends once more.

I wiped my tears and stood up, realizing that I was dressed up in jeans and a shirt. “I must have fallen asleep in my clothes,” I figured, stretching a bit in accompaniment of a very loud cracking sound. I looked out the window.

The weather seemed perfect, with the golden glow of a morning sun peeking from behind a cover of clouds, like a giant spotlight pointed straight at my room. A perfect morning, the kind that makes you forget all the nightmares. “Nightmares?”

I looked at my hands, rubbing them together, to check how real they are. “Was that a nightmare?” I directed my steps towards the main door to the house while recalling the faces of who I considered a family for the past month. Rufus, that gentle giant who was always finding out ways to help someone, but who never let anyone step on him or anyone else. He knew exactly how to behave to gain friends, and he used that to his and our advantage. It was him who got me, a nobody without a past (that anyone would believe), a job.

Then there was Lucia, a quiet woman who I didn’t get to know that much because of her way of living. She spent her days working as a seamstress, while also tending to the house and a bunch of animals that they kept. Any spare time she had, she liked to spend in Rufus’s presence, smiling only when near him, and when she thought that no one was looking. She seemed to like me but I never could see through her, she didn’t let her true feelings show. Only one night I could see her crying, sitting in the window, looking out at the river, not even visible from our home.

I asked Caius about that. He also got sad but explained to me that he used to have a brother, who died in that very river when he was still just a child. She never got back to being her cheerful self.

“Caius” I whispered to myself, with my hand on the exit door handle.

That man taught me a lot of things. Even though we were the same age, he always seemed a bit more mature, and despite that, never distant. He treated me like a friend from the very beginning, always offering a helping hand. He seemed to like me and I… “I liked him too”. I felt myself blushing.

“I can’t believe that’s it.” I closed my eyes, feeling conflicting emotions.

On one hand, I was finally home, but on the other, Rome also felt somewhat.. right. Even though I spent barely any time there at all, I got used to it and that way of life. But what’s the lesson that this dream or magical experience was supposed to teach me? What was the point of me being there in the first place? “Maybe there was no point, just the universe playing a trick on me.

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

I opened the door and left the house.

Splash of cold water caused my eyes to open wide. I immediately looked down and realized that the grass of my front yard is covered in a couple of centimeters of water. I looked around surprised, noticing that I wasn’t where I thought I was.

The fields seemed endless, glistening in the sun, slowly moving along with the weak omnipresent wind. In the distance stood a giant building with a fire burning at the top, like some archaic lighthouse. I looked back at the house which now was nothing but a door frame and a bunch of bricks stacked on top of each other.

“What the fuck…” was all I could say in that moment. And the wind responded by causing ripples to spread across the surface of the water, reflecting something else than the clear blue skies.

There were silhouettes of people. Shadows, walking in one direction.

They seemed to be upside down, walking on the small surface where air meets the water, but as the sun got closer and closer to setting I could see that it was just a reflection of their true forms. Faded people walked all around me, invisible in the sun but appearing in the darkness. Long shadows of what I assumed to be once alive people.

“What the fuck…” I repeated like a scratched record, unsure what to do or what to think.

I was pretty sure I was dead or dreaming, but the pain I felt from pinching myself seemed far too real, causing my hands to shake and my head to frantically spin around from left to right, trying to find something which would explain what was happening. All while shadows past me and through me, more and more of them, faster and faster. As if running from something, or… towards it?

I looked to the north. The light of the lantern shined brightly like a falling star, leaving a winding streak of smoke on an otherwise clear firmament.

It seemed to be getting darker and thicker, looking almost like a snake crawling across the sky.

A quiet splash of water just behind me, distracted me from the lighthouse. I turned around to meet the closed eyes of another shadow, almost entirely pitch black, but despite that - seemingly transparent. It wasn’t walking like the others, it just stood there, ripples of water emanating from below its feet.

It must have been many minutes before it finally moved, reaching out its elongated and fading hand towards me. It held something in its grasp. I raised my eyebrows in question “Do you have something for me?”. The being didn’t move, but the wind changed its direction, flowing now from behind me and towards the shadow.

I could barely hold myself upright, terrified of what was happening, but I felt compelled to move. Step after step I got closer to the still statue. And the lesser the distance between us was, the more its claws opened, revealing a circular, silvery sundial, reflecting the lighthouse’s fire behind me.

I reached out my hand, eventually touching the sundial. It was extremely cold, making me feel as if the heat was being pulled away from my hand through the skin. At first my fingers recoiled from the ancient timepiece, but soon I mustered enough courage to grab the little device.

It was made out of silver, or something that looked like it, with a small figure of a snake functioning as the needle pointing to the correct time. There were a bunch of smaller reptile engravings circling the edge of the object, looking almost as if they were about to move and bite me, every time I blinked.

I looked up from the device, confused, but the shadowy figure disappeared, leaving nothing but a tree vaguely looking like a human behind. At the reached out branch of it sat a snake. Its scales were glistening, looking almost as if they were on fire, moving ever so slightly in a hypnotic dance. Despite my fear of any legless and slithering thing, I felt weirdly confronted by the two black eyes looking back at me.

No, not at me. Into me. The reptile had a weird presence to it, it felt important and imposing, but comforting and friendly. My body moved on its own and reached out towards the snake.

I felt fear, but it wasn’t the fear of the snake itself, I somehow knew it wouldn’t bite or hurt me. Even if - this must have been a dream, so whatever was about to happen, wasn’t real.

No, what I felt was dread. The feeling of looking into an abyss, you threw a rock into and didn’t hear any sound of it hitting the floor. The enticing thought of jumping from the cliff and the terrifying fear that you might actually do it, compelled by something.

I touched the snake, as I expected, it didn’t bite me, but rather, slowly raised its majestic head and crawled onto my hand, coiling on it like a bracelet. The entire time its gaze focused on my face, on the windows to my soul.

Finally, after securing itself on my forearm it hissed.

Or rather, it spoke to me.

At first I couldn’t understand its words, but it repeated itself. I heard my name.

“Nero.” The skin of its body seemingly changed color, no longer reflecting the lighthouse but the clear night sky, with a thousand stars and galaxies.

“Wake up”. It ordered, its eyes shining bright blue light. No, not shining, glowing its own light like flashlights.

“Nero, wake up.”