Short Chapter TW 25

The world had turned to meadowland; the grassy earth slopping slowly upward. There was a scent in the air Chance had smelt once before when he’d been a child, when his father had sent him to live with his aunt for the summer near potter's bay.

The sound of waves lapping at an unseen shoreline was muffled and slightly off kilter, as if whoever or whatever was shaping this landscape had forgotten the smaller details, causing the world to have a flattish feel to it.

“It this one broken, this memory I mean?” Higgins boot nearly tripped on a clump of weeping vine that grew from the clay ridden earth. That wasn't right, weeper weeds didn’t grow by the coast line, at least he’d been told that once. Chance reached down and removed the vine’s grip on his foot, small blue flowers tipped with white fell onto his hands.

“Yours was like this too, you just think your memory is sharper than everyone else's when it’s not.”
Westgate stuck his hands into his pocket, flourishing a small gray stone and tossing it ahead of them, the stone bounced up hill till it fell into a small rolling movement, climbing up the grassy slope as if up had become down.
“There is no up nor down, no side to side, not inside a mirror, which is what this place is Duck of the grassy low hilled valleys.One giant mirror holding an ancient memory of a forgotten past”
“But your version was clear, mine seemed real enough, why is this one so peculiar?”
“It’s not, your dreams are seen through your eyes so appear more real than they are, my dreams, well-I have a keener memory than people of your sort.”

Higgins seeing a sort of gray color reminiscent of regret spread to the corners of Westgate’s face, asked no more questions. He did try and think of more pleasant things than what awaited them when they found the Bandit Princling; he wanted to sit in a soft bed, craved the taste of smooth red wine quince his frightening thrust.
“No use daydreaming inside a dream” a smooth speaking voice spoke from close behind.
Westgate and Higgins turned.
Valentine was ahead of them, he had a bruise down his right eye and a nasty scar over his smooth forehead, he’d just taken a bad beating.

“Westgate pardon a stupid question from myself, but how long have we been down here, since we fell?”
“Two dreams” Westgate walked to the boy who had set himself down on the grass, and stared longingly at the weeping vine; as if the small sticky plants held the answer to ever self doubt he’d ever had or ever would have.

“Please Westgate let us leave, I hate the ocean, can’t stand this place” Valentine’s sharp green eyes caught the wavering bits of light, making their glint as sharp as knives.
“I tried to get out but kept landing in the same cursed place and time.”
“You’re hear now Val-”
“No I’m over there” Valentine motioned a green shirted sleeve towards a place of burning smoke and sizzling fire.
“The screams of the wicked are so sweet” Valentine tilted his head back and laughed, all melancholy gone from his small voice.
Westgate took a hand over Valentine’s shoulder “let’s go”.
“No that’s the way back, to go where the loot is we have to move ahead.”
Ahead of course meant towards the flames and billowing fire.