The Dreamfarer

Epilogue

It had been almost a month, and still, no solution to their predicament had presented itself.

It was something that was unheard of, something that would be deemed impossible by anybody with even a pinch of brainpower to reason with. Besides, there had never been more than one Dreamfarer alive at once until Mae and Vivienne were born, according to any record that any warlock had ever been able to find. Nobody but the three of them could hope to discover how to untangle this knot that had unintentionally formed in their lives, and though they had made little progress, they refused to give up hope. 

Mae landed in Galatea and immediately walked over to the hot air balloon. It was something that she had taken to doing lately, floating up into the clear sky of her favorite place, feeling the touch of Folco's subconsciousness even though he could not travel here himself. As she soared into the air, she felt as if her heart got a little bit lighter, and somehow, the higher she climbed, the easier it became for her to breathe.

She had really needed this form of escape throughout the past three and a half weeks. Updating Hune on Folco's status had been difficult enough, but getting through each day was harder than she ever dreamed it would be. It felt as though she was constantly dragging her feet behind her. She did not want to move, she did not want to speak to anybody, she did not want anything but to crawl into her bed and take one of Folco's sleeping pills - which she had asked the medics to produce more of for her - so that she could go and wander the castle - which her sister had named Effugium years ago, when she had first begun to play around with the limits of her powers -  with her friends, so that she could explore and dance and run and laugh with the people that she actually cared about.

Around the warlock camp, she just felt as if she was simply there. Hune had been assigned the reigning leader, having been the commander, a member of the council, and Folco's most trusted advisor and friend. Mae had put forth no argument on the matter; if she had to choose somebody other than Folco to lead the people that she had been forced to live amongst, it would be Hune. The older warlock had never been anything but kind to her, and she felt like she could be honest with him regarding her powers and her feelings more than anyone but the two people that were more often than not the subjects of her tales of woe.

Hune had placed her on the council, claiming that it was because he trusted her wit and clever judgment, but since she could not think of a single instance in which she had exemplified those traits, she knew that it was really just because he wanted to keep an odd number of council members. He probably wanted to keep her close in order to keep an eye on her as well, as some sort of favor to Folco, to show the real leader that his commander was still loyal to him even though he was not present in any way that Hune himself would ever fully understand.

She was gradually sinking into a state of depression, and she was as aware of it as anybody watching over her. However, nobody gave her a true intervention, nobody told her to snap out of it. She would not have been able to even if they did. Whereas before, the magic and wonder of the warlock camp and the future that it might have provided her with had been bright and full of color, it was all now bland and gray, and she felt nothing but numbness to the world around her.

Mae only came back to life in her dreams; so much so, in fact, that Folco and Vivienne had not even noticed that she was so empty on the surface and deeply distraught to her core.

She had known that she would suffer without them in her everyday life, but she had not been able to grasp or wholly imagine just how devastating of a loss it would be. Her life was now filled with a void that would only fade once her friends found an escape from their own minds, and so every minute of every day, she racked her brain for ideas on how to get them out; but she either always came up empty or the plans proved entirely unsuccessful when put into action the next night.