kpwu
long
tale
Finally, Devan and ANGEL-1-1-0-1-0 arrived in a hospital lobby. They left behind the liminal and stretched out threshold of the hallway, and arrived in a real place. "The memorabilia you're looking for is an offering. A bundle of golden wheat, to be precise."
Devan immediately started walking in a direction, as though they hadn't heard the dreambeast. ANGEL followed.
Down a staircase, continue in a hallway, turn left... Devan seemed to know their way. ANGEL noticed as well that the layout of the hospital... made sense. It wasn't the jumbled and nonsensical tangle of halls that you could find anywhere else. This was a real hospital, that had been transported nearly unscathed here. Only the people were missing.
This hospital didn't feel like a place of death and healing, unlike most hospitals. It felt as if it was just a place, a normal one, like everywhere. The desertion of movement from the hospital gave it a somber stillness, but it wasn't one of death. The hospital, instead, was still as if it was waiting. It was still as if something in it had started, and had been paused, waiting eternally to resume.
Devan had stopped. In front of them, a door. The name next to it was blurred, but it was here. They entered. In hand, Devan held a writing tablet with a sheet of paper on it. They were used to this. The approached the bed.
If the hospital felt like it was immobile in time, this room felt even more so. The whole room was awaiting in bated breath. Diagonal rays of sunlight drew stripes of gold on the floor, dust not even daring to dance in it, instead frozen in a shimmering constellation. The sheets on the empty bed were crumpled and tossed aside, like someone had pulled them out to stand. The sheets themselves were stark white, with not a stain, holding that unwilling shaped born of a few unthinking motions. On the nightstand, flowers held their form, unwilting, eternal, like beacons of light in this world of stopped time.
Devan's breathing was rhaspy. They walked up to the bed, and stopped at its end. ANGEL had not dared to even enter the room, afraid of getting stuck in the building as well, as an outsider of the representation.
Devan held a pen, and looked at the sheet of paper closer. With a trembling hand, they raised the pen. Then, shakily, they wrote a few words in red.
At once, the whole room seemed to exhale a breath held for years. The dust resumed its unseen dance, the sheets softened from their weight, and a flower let a petal fall.
On the bed, a gleaming bunch was catching the light.