"I know you're wrong for me,
gonna wish we never met on the day I leave."
In August of 2022, Astrid Boutella must reconcile with a three hundred year old relationship that's fractured in more ways than one when her former lover breaks out of mystic...
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"There is so much hurt in this game of searching for a mate, of testing, of trying. And you realize suddenly that you forgot it was a game, and turn away in tears." — The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath
ISSUE #3. WEAVING THE BURIAL SHROUD.
♰
August of 2022.
In her dream, she stood in the middle of an endless flatland, the yellowish straw-like grass swaying to the weak gale in the air and tickling her ankles, with two gates embedded into the ground on either side of her, one made of ivory and the other crafted from horn.
Astrid knew when she was dreaming. Be the lover of the King of Dreams long enough and the signs become more apparent, less disorienting. Furthermore, it's not like she hadn't learned her own tricks over the years. When her relationship with Morpheus solidified after turning romantic, her curiosity for the Dreaming grew by tenfold, and she began developing some mastery over lucid dreaming. She explored, and lived, and loved the Dreaming, and as centuries passed, her lover's realm became just as real to her as the Waking World, though it never lost its unique atmosphere of magic and possibility.
Admittedly, since Dream's disappearance in 1916, Astrid had cut herself off from the Dreaming. It's not like she never had dreams or nightmares anymore — she wasn't that powerful, most likely no one was — but she did not meander or traverse the fantastical kingdom like she used to. She stayed within the boundaries of the dream or nightmare her subconscious created. She avoided the desolate plane that used to be where Fiddler's Green resided, and the royal library where her once trusted confidant Lucienne mandated the books, and the twisting, relentlessly changing chambers of her boyfriend's castle. Initially, her actions weren't segregationist; for nearly fifty years after his vanishing act, Astrid searched tirelessly for Dream, researching various rituals that could have potentially arrested him, consulting with witches around the world for tracking spells, theorizing with Lucienne and the rest of the subjects about his possible whereabouts. There were moments scattered across that era that breathed hope, where it might have seemed like Morpheus' return was inevitable or an explanation might come to fruition. Every single time, those hopes died off quicker than a field of crops during a drought, and after five decades, Astrid stopped clinging to meaningless faith.
