Sleepwalkers || The Lost Boys - & The One Who Found Them [ Part II ]

Prologue - Sleepwalkers

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I said, 'they are neither dangerous, nor are they evil.'

I said, 'their hearts are not rotten, only misled.'

I said, 'they never actually mean to hurt people, let alone kill them. But oftentimes their instincts take the upper hand, cloud their minds until there is nothing left to see except their excruciating hunger for blood, & once that happens... you will find yourself face to face with a beast, clad in human skin yet no longer able to act human; a beast that can not be tamed.'

I said, 'their faces are fair, their eyes radiant, young as the morning; no words known to me do their beauty justice.
And while our kind slowly withers like flowers throughout the flow of seasons, time can not seem to touch them. At least not that which is visible to the eye. It's as though they are frozen in the moment, an eternal moment. And yet, they witness all the decades as they happen, drifting past them like clouds... '

I said, 'once you live so long & see tragedy, death, injustice, horror, betrayal, pain & all these burdens that weigh down our world in its many forms, something inside of you inevitably breaks. You begin to change, & not necessarily for the better. Most people grow cold & bitter, become lorn shadows of the people they used to be. They lose their sense of morality, their spirit, & eventually - they lose themselves.
In the end all that remains is a shell that carries a name & roams the world like a ghost, neither bound by responsibility nor attached to a place, a time. A person. An emotion. Sometimes they even forget their past entirely; where they were born, where they spent their mortal years, what happened before they gave up on their humanity. '

I said, 'I do not understand why they are the way they are & why they do what they do... How they are able to transform into raging beasts & end someone's life without feeling even an ounce of remorse.
How they can move so fast in the night, in flawless unison with the shadows. Like brothers in arms, at peace what they have grown into.
How they can live... without actually being alive.'

I said, 'it makes no sense to me how they thrive in the darkness; the same darkness that once took the sunlight from their hearts & turned them into slaves of the night. The same darkness that compelled them to free their minds of every precious little memory until all was empty, & empty was all...

The same darkness that forced them to abandon the sun...

I said, 'I do not possess any significant amount of power to lead them out of that unforgiving darkness they once so naively adopted; away from those burning bridges & slowly yet surely crumbling pillars of humanity, for my hands are tied by doubt & insecurity... & the realization that, no matter how hard I try & how much I devote myself to the belief that we can influence the currents of life...
... certain things are simply not meant to be.

And yet.... it appears to be my destiny.

To guide them.

To save them.

To find them.

My lost boys...'

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