When you step back outside, the wind has finally begun to slacken. The sky has turned that clear and vivid blue peculiar to autumn. The breeze carries a clean scent; the air is full of voices. [[You return to work, down paths slicked in golden leaves.|End]]

"That was, uh, very nice," you say. "Was that all?"\n\n"Finish it," says the toad. "I can't think of two more lines."\n\n"I'm not really sure --," you begin.\n\n"//Just finish it!//" squeals the moth-headed toad. Its proboscis extends; its throat inflates to tremendous size.\n\n"Okay!" you say. "Okay. Um ... what rhymes with wings? King? Ring? Fling?"\n\nYou watch as the toad swells ever larger and larger. Your mind races as you piece words into phrases and phrases into couplets.\n\n[["Here," you say at last. "How about this?"|Sing]]\n

You follow the dirt trail beyond the boundary of the ruins. As you walk, the moon develops a violet aura as brilliant as the rays of a sun. The slabs of stone transition into flats of rich magenta soil, then into fertile, rolling hills. Purple bees nuzzle into sprigs of lavender and dangle from the blossoms of eggplants.<<if not visited("Bartender")>>\n\nA wooden post, freshly painted with stripes of gold and lavender, protrudes from the base of a [[nearby hill|Bartender]]. From the post hangs a sign engraved with strange symbols. In the intuitive way of dreams, you understand the symbols to mean "welcome" in a long-forgotten language.<<endif>>\n\nIn the distance, you see <<if visited("Secret Party")>>the silhouettes of [[pines|Field2]]<<else>>a [[blue town|Town]] ringed by a wall of glass<<endif>>.

<center>-- 56 --</center>\nGood. Any reasonable person should be able to sympathize.\n\nYou hear the faint hum of conversation even now -- the voices of an unseen crowd, bright and bubbling. The sound seems to emanate from the Old Lab around the corner.\n\nWhat do you do?\n\nEavesdrop on the voices -- Turn to Page 62\nIgnore them -- Turn to Page 52\n\n<<display "CYOA Shell">>

<center>-- 62 --</center>\nAs you listen, the low chatter from the Old Lab begins to louden and unify into song. In imperfect but eager harmony, the crowd belts out a tune:\n\n"Happy birthday, colleague dear.\nYou've lived through -- ONE HUNDRED! -- years.\nMay you live -- ONE MILLION! -- more.\nEach one better than before!"\n\nFor an moment, the voices fall silent; you hear -- or perhaps imagine -- a soft puff of breath. Then all the unseen people clap and whoop and cheer.\n\n"Doughnut cake, my one weakness!" exclaims the birthday-boy, who, you note, sounds more like a twenty-something than a centenarian. "You guys are the best!"\n\nWait. How would that birthday song even work if the person's age took more than three syllables to say? \n\n... You wonder to yourself, among many other questions.\n\nYou continue to listen in on the voices -- Turn to Page 53\nYou ignore them -- Turn to Page 61\n\n<<display "CYOA Shell">>

<center>-- 51 --\n<b>Voices from Beyond\nAnother Tale from the Graveyard Shift</b></center>\nIt is late at night, and you sit alone in your office. Once again, they've tricked you into working the graveyard shift. You pick at the edge of your desk, seething.\n\nUp on the roof, the astrology students are taking some sort of group exam. It's your responsibility to collect their papers, lock the doors behind them when they leave, make sure none of them fall and break their necks, etc., etc.\n\nYou spin idly around in your chair. Unfortunately, you are very good at your job and have already completed all of your weekly filing, labeling, letter-writing, supply-ordering, and routine enchanting/disenchanting. You have nothing to do and no one to talk to. The thaumatobotanists, who arrive at work early and leave early -- with the sun --, have all long since gone home. The astrology faculty appear at the office only rarely: you have not seen them in months, though they regularly wire you instructions. The Nine Miraculous Gardens are closed at this hour, so you can expect no visitors. Only the crickets and water-bugs remain to keep you company.\n\nYou would be perfectly content on your own, if it weren't for the voices. At night, you often hear strange chatter in the hall or nearby rooms: unfamiliar, laughing voices; the stomping of footsteps; the clatter of laboratory equipment. Yet, if you ever try to approach the voices, you find no one. The sound lapses into silence as you draw near, or else shifts to some other, more distant location. You walk into an empty hall, an empty room, devoid of all signs of life -- except, occasionally, a dropped pencil; a single stray, luminous hair; a half-empty bottle of soda.\n\nYou've come to suspect that this building is either haunted, cursed, or convergent with some alternate reality. You wish that it weren't. You can't help but feel lonely when you hear those far-off voices talking and giggling and reveling in one another's company, more lonely than if you were the only one here.\n\n//You've// felt that way before, haven't you?\n\nYes -- Turn to Page 56\nNo -- Turn to Page 58\n\n<<display "CYOA Shell">>

The person in the owl shirt (you're not sure if they're female, male, or otherwise -- probably the latter) waves as you come over. "So how'd you end up here?" they ask, swallowing one last bite of purple custard.\n\n"I wrote the secret password in the guestbook," you say, "and this whole place appeared around me. Did you not ... ?"\n\nThe owl-shirted person shakes their head. "I came in through the door, after hiking through that tundra outside."\n\nYou stare through the arched doorway, at the candle-lit lawn and distant purple hills. "The, um, tundra?" you ask.\n\n"Right," they say. "Maybe tundra isn't the word for it? But that big snowy plain on the other side of the door, with all the tiny blue ice-houses on it." The owl-shirted person sees your bewildered expression and frowns. "Wait. Don't tell me it's something different for you? How confusing."\n\n"It's really not a lawn for you?" you ask. "Then what about the party? Are we seeing the same party?"\n\n"Maybe?" they say. "I see a room with rainbow tile walls -- "\n\n"That's the same for me!" you say.\n\n"And there are tables with all sorts of drinks and sauces and puddings on them," they continue. "There are moths everywhere, most of them disguised as not-moths. You're not a moth, though: you're human. Hopefully, I'm also human?"\n\n"You are," you say. "I guess the inside's the same but the outside's different?"\n\n"This whole place has been very disorienting," says the owl-shirted person. "I was thinking of exploring, but to be honest, I might just hang out here until my alarm goes off. How about you?"\n\n"It's a little noisy here," you admit, as a gaggle of moths in ball dresses press around you, reaching for saucers of honey and mousse. "I probably won't stay much longer."\n\n"Well, safe wanderings," says the owl-shirted person. "It's always nice to meet another traveler."\n\n"You too," you say. "I mean, n-nice to meet you!" [[Slipping through the throng of moths, you wonder if you should have at least asked their name.|Secret Party]]

<center>-- 53 --</center>\nYou yawn, prop your chin in your hands, and continue to eavesdrop on the mysterious party. You hear the clink of cutlery; the sloshing of liquid in cups; the hiss of carbonation.\n\n"No, really!" exclaims a voice, hearty and feminine. "I'm a big fan of //Girl Scientist Unicornelia//. That episode where she duplicates herself and has to help each copy find a job? It's great."\n\n"The animation looks so cheap, though," comments a second, nasal voice.\n\n"It's fine," says the first voice. "It's an important show, right? Girls need more characters they can relate to."\n\nYou sigh and stretch. Clearly, being a ghost (or magical construct, or trans-dimensional entity) doesn't automatically make one an interesting conversationalist. You scribble flowers along the margins of your log-book, half-listening, until a certain speaker catches your attention.\n\n"I'm thinking of taking that water purification job," says a high, willowy voice. "But I'm still not sure. The pay's a little more, but I'm worried it might just push me into a higher tax bracket so I end up with less."\n\nYou sit bolt upright; you clench the arms of your chair. That is //not// how progressive taxation works! You resist the overwhelming urge to barge out of your office and set the willowy-voiced fool straight.\n\n"See these bites on my arm?" says the birthday-boy, in another conversation. "I think spiders have been sneaking into my bed at night."\n\n"Gross," says yet another voice. "You know, I've heard all spiders are really super venomous -- it's just most, their fangs are too short to penetrate to the bloodstream, so the venom can't hurt you."\n\nYour face reddens. You can't take this anymore.\n\nYou leave your office and crash their lousy party -- Turn to Page 63\nYou breathe deeply and suppress your righteous fury -- Turn to Page 57\n\n<<display "CYOA Shell">>\n

<center>-- 63 --</center>\nYou dart from your desk, lock your office door behind you (as per security protocol), and race around the corner to the Old Lab. The noise of the party wanes as you draw near. You burst through the lab doors, into a deserted room. The unseen people have fled, but on the counter sits a strange confection -- a veritable monument of doughnuts and varicolored sponge cake all scaffold together by bands of meringue, marzipan, fruit suspended in cream, nuts suspended in syrup, flowers suspended in honey, and shimmering rainbow jelly. Rings of extinguished candles encircle the tiers of the doughnut cake, alternating with rings of sculpted sugar unicorns, miniature macarons, mint sprigs, hulled strawberries, and opalescent sprinkles. At the summit of the sugary tower, a single marzipan unicorn rears from a cotton-candy cloud. \n\nA tall, impossibly thin slice of the confection teeters atop a silver plate; silver forks lay scattered among cups of fizzing sapphire soda. Your mouth waters at the smell of freshly-baked pastry, but you know better than to eat a magical (or spectral, or inter-dimensional) apparition. You hear laughter in the distance, and the tip-tap of sprightly feet. The sound emanates at once from the left and right, from the front of building and the back. \n\nYou run toward the back of the building, in pursuit of the invisible people -- Turn to Page 64\nYou run toward the the front of the building -- Turn to Page 55\nYou give up, and return to your office -- Turn to Page 60\n\n<<display "CYOA Shell">>

<<if visited() gte 2>>Outside, Cephiros still perches atop the roof of the West Wind Shrine, staring at the clouds. <<if visited("Wind")>>You wonder if you should tell him about the moth in your apartment.<<elseif visited("Radio")>>You wonder if you should tell him about the Utopian broadcast.<<else>>You wonder if he knows the words to your forgotten lullaby.<<endif>><<else>>You would expect Cephiros to be asleep at this hour, or at the very least safe within the upper sanctum. His grey feathers quiver in the breeze; the small birds shiver against his sides. You wonder if he feels the cold.\n\n<<if visited("Wind")>>Cephiros knows of many supernatural things: you wonder if you should tell him about the moth in your apartment.<<elseif visited("Radio")>>Cephiros shares a personal connection with the Utopians, or at the very least Anem. You wonder if you should tell him about the Utopian broadcast.<<else>>The old lullaby still rings in your head, the first few half-remembered notes jangling over and over. "Beautiful dreamer ... beautiful dreamer ..." You wonder if Cephiros knows the words.<<endif>> If you keep watching him, he'll probably notice: he always notices. He'll probably even come over.<<endif>>\n\n[[You stare at him through the blinds, hoping he'll turn your way.|Cep1]]\n\n[[You don't want to bother him, though. You step away from the windowsill.|Room]]\n

"Beautiful dreamer surely you see:\nI am as happy as I'll ever be.\nWe braved the storm, but ultimately\nDrowned in the bay of the grey lorelei."\n\n[[No, no, no -- that's not it at all.|Bookcase]]

The door opens to the lobby of an abandoned mall. Vast, desolate corridors span out in all directions, expanses of sea-green tile broken only by the occasional tangled oasis of calla lilies and palms. The fronds of the palm trees are as delicate and glossy-white as subterranean fish. The lilies, long overgrown, erupt from the cushions of broken chairs; cascade from the shelves of dusty kiosks; rise to the ceiling and intertwine with pale blue rafters. Ragged banners hang from the rafters and the stems of lilies, displaying illegible words and dingy, indeterminate shapes.\n\nHigh above the lobby, a white, swollen moon shines through a domed skylight. A sea-green spigot protrudes from the central pane of the skylight, and from its mouth a steam of water flows down into the broad, hexagonal basins of a fountain. A chlorine-scented mist lingers in the air.\n\n<<if not visited("Shadow")>>In one of the lower basins, [[your shadow|Shadow]] treads water. She observes you with expressionless eyes. She calls out no word of greeting.<<endif>>\n\n[[You leave the empty mall and return to the surface.|Stairs Back]]

Following the sounds of its frantic shaking, you locate the noisy shelf. It's one of the old, heavy wooden shelves mounted high on your wall; one that came with the apartment; one that you never even use, because you can barely even reach it. Standing on your tiptoes, you lay both hands on the shelf and press it flush against the wall with all of your strength. For a moment, its terrible noise falls quiet; you feel a pang of hope. Yet as soon as you let go of it, it begins rattling again just as loudly as ever.\n\n[[You try hitting the shelf, but you only hurt your hand.|Room]]

<center>[[51|CYOA 1]] &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; [[52|End 2]] &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; [[53|CYOA 4]] &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; [[54|Secret 1]] &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; [[55|Branch 2 Start]]\n[[56|CYOA 2]] &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; [[57|End 4]] &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; [[58|End 1]] &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; [[59|Branch 2 End]] &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; [[60|End 5]]\n[[61|End 3]] &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; [[62|CYOA 3]] &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; [[63|CYOA 5]] &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; [[64|Branch 1 End]] &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; [[65|Secret 2]]\n\n[[You switch off your lantern and set the book aside.|Bah]]</center>\n

You follow the trail of candles across the lawn and through the pines. The sky brightens; purple flowers sprout through the carpet of needles. You break through the trees, into hills crowned with lavender and eggplant.<<if not visited("Bartender")>>\n\nA wooden post, freshly painted with stripes of gold and lavender, protrudes from the base of a [[nearby hill|Bartender]]. From the post hangs a sign engraved with strange symbols. In the intuitive way of dreams, you understand the symbols to mean "welcome" in a long-forgotten language.<<endif>>\n\nIn the distance, you see red columns. [[You trek through the hills, and return to the ruined plaza where your dream first began.|Plaza2]]\n

"It doesn't bother you, does it?" you ask. "Thinking about the old world?"\n\n"Not at all," says Cephiros. "That place is in the past, gone and never to return again. Feel free to ask me what you will."<<if not visited("Cep9")>> \n\n[["Then is it alright," you ask, "if I keep talking about Anem?"|Cep9]]<<endif>><<if not visited("Cep10")>>\n\n[["Well, if it's okay," you say. "There was something else I was wondering. How many worlds do you think are out there?"|Cep10]]<<endif>>\n\n[["I don't really have anything else to ask," you say. "I'm just restless."|CepPreEnd]]\n\n

Just as you rise to your feet, a wave of wind crashes against the walls of your apartment. You freeze as the whole building shudders; as pencils leap from your desk; as stacks of books collapse. Shelves clatter. The floor sways. Some unseen object thuds against the door of your clothes closet.\n\nThen, the wind slackens and the floor steadies. All becomes still again.\n\nYou take a deep breath and, slowly, gather your pencils from the floor. You right the fallen stacks of books. [[Your heart buzzes in your chest as you stand.|Room]]\n

<<if not visited("Cep5")>>[["Listen," you say. "There's this song I can't remember."|Cep5]]\n\n<<endif>><<if not visited("Cep3")>>[["Um, hey," you say, "Do you hear that shelf rattling? The one that keeps rattling over and over?"|Cep3]]\n\n<<endif>>[["Well," you say. "I guess I ought to try to go to bed. Somehow."|CepPreEnd]]

Beautiful Dreamer\n@@font-size:14px; by S. Woodson

That's wrong. That's completely wrong. The words were different, and maybe the tune was too?\n\n"Beautiful dreamer, la la la lee ..."\n\n[[And then something to do with dewdrops?|Dewdrops]]\n

You flee through the glass gates and trek across the dismal lowlands. Soon, the clouds disperse; the road shrinks to a dusty, unpaved trail. The land swells into hills crowned with purple blossoms. Bees drone in the light of a brilliant violet moon.<<if not visited("Bartender")>>\n\nA wooden post, freshly painted with stripes of gold and lavender, protrudes from the base of a [[nearby hill|Bartender]]. From the post hangs a sign engraved with strange symbols. In the intuitive way of dreams, you understand the symbols to mean "welcome" in a long-forgotten language.<<endif>>\n\nIn the distance, you see the silhouettes of columns. [[You follow the trail back to the ruined plaza where your dream first began.|Plaza2]]\n

If you examine the bookcase before you talk with Cephiros, the two of you will have a conversation about Lune.\n\nIf you //don't// examine the bookcase but do listen to the radio before you talk with Cephiros, you'll have a conversation about Anem and alternate dimensions.\n\nOtherwise, you and Cephiros will talk about the lullaby, the rattling shelf, and the wind.\n\n[[Back|About]]

The lunar moth and your empty glass have both disappeared. The moth-eaten textbook sits on your bedside table. Flipping through, you discover all of the book's once-blank pages filled with unreal art and unreal literature. You skim the first section, which is entitled //The Waking and Unwaking Worlds//. \n\nThe section consists of a series of black and white illustrations, each depicting a fantastical landscape -- impossible buildings, sprawling gardens, and monumental sculpture, all of exquisite and inspiring beauty. A few people wander the landscapes, faces blank, each seemingly unaware of the others or, indeed, even their own surroundings. Two people share an umbrella, both gazing off in opposite directions. One person idly holds open a door while another steps through: neither meets the other's eyes. A ring of people encircle an enormous tree, staring up at the featureless sky.\n\nInside the book's front cover, there is a message: a cursive "Thank You" punctuated with a heart. [[You would read more, but unfortunately, you have to get to work.|Get Ready]]

Outside, the chill wind wails. Sunlight streams through the window. You roll onto your side and open your eyes. [[The clock reads 8:00am.|Unreal Art]]

You listen as the centipede begins to sing:\n\n"Beautiful dreamer, I'll be there soon,\nSafe by your side in the dark of the moon.\nWe'll see the bone-white lilies in bloom,\nThe waterless marshes awash in perfume."\n\nThe centipede sees you and falls silent. Its eyes flush pink; it buries its face in a multitude of arms. "I'm still practicing!" it chirps. "Still practicing!"\n\n"I'm sorry," you say. You notice the centipede's feathered antenna, and its fluttering vestigial wings. "Um, hey," you ask, "are you actually a moth?"\n\nA luminous eye peaks from beneath the mass of arms. "No," says the centipede. "Maybe. Don't tell anyone." It reaches down a tiny, pincered claw and hands you an equally tiny plastic [[figurine|Arch-Magus M]], you can only assume as a bribe.\n\n

You can have one of three different conversations with Cephiros depending on what you've done before you talk to him.\n\n[["Be more specific."|Hint1b]]\n\n[[Back|About]]

<<if visited("Wind")>>[[The writing was a lot more coherent than you expected, but you're tired: you return the book and lantern to their respective shelves.|Room]]<<else>>[[The writing was a lot more coherent than you expected, but you're tired: you return the book and lantern to their respective shelves.|Wind]]<<endif>>

<<set $figcount += 1>>Outside, you study the figurine -- a tiny winged woman molded of translucent yellow plastic and perched atop a circular base. Etched plumage covers the woman's whole body save for her face, which is flat as an owl's, with imperious golden eyes. Her wings arch above her head: between her pinion feathers, she holds aloft a golden crown. In one of her hands, she clutches a peach branch laden with flowers and fruit; in the other, she grips a long staff topped with a crescent moon. There is a ragged hollow in her chest, and within the hollow, a transparent bird roosts on a blood-red dias.\n\nThe words "Origin of the Winds" are engraved on the figurine's stand. [[You place her in your pocket, and she burns against your chest with a strange unfading warmth.|Hills2]]

<<set $figcount to 0>>

[[You decide you're going to do something rash.|Sleep]]

Dense clouds loom above the town and surrounding lowlands, obscuring the stars and moon. As you approach, the air grows chill; a damp, luminous mist creeps along the ground. The purple flowers vanish, replaced by spongy moss as thick as carpet; trees dripping with black water; thorny shrubs with twinkling berries. The path widens into a paved road veined with moss. Blue lanterns glimmer atop glass posts. The glass gates of the town hang open, unguarded.\n\nWithin the town there is no one, and all is silent. You pass rows of near-identical buildings -- houses built of pale blue brick the color of a robin's egg; blue offices with narrow, lightless windows. The road ends at the doors of a [[hotel|Hotel]].

Embodiment of the West Wind. Second-eldest child of Anem. [[One of the monstrous immortals.|Window]]

''The End''\n\n[[Thank you for reading!|About]]\n

"Beautiful dreamer, oceans may sing,\nBut fear lest the tide wash the scales from your wings.\nWhatever secrets water may bring,\nDiving too deeply's a dangerous thing.\n\n"Is that alright?" you ask.\n\nThe toad shrinks to its original size. It scratches its head in consideration. "That's decent," it says. "Not the best, but decent." <<if visited("Field")>>[[Without another word, it plucks its tulip from the ground and hops away, leaving you alone.|Field3]]<<else>>[[Without another word, it plucks its tulip from the ground and hops away, leaving you alone.|Hotel2]]<<endif>>

In the hotel lobby, there is nothing -- only bare walls, a floor of packed earth, and single round pool encircled by tulips. Though the lobby is closed to the sky, moonlight shines on the surface of the water. An open [[guestbook|Guestbook]] sits atop a pedestal of soil. <<if not visited("Familiar")>>A tiny [[figurine|Familiar]] gleams within the petals of a tulip.<<endif>>\n\nYou hear the sounds of a party all around you: laughter and footsteps and the tinkling of cutlery. Yet you see no one.\n\n[[You leave the hotel and the eerie blue town, and return to the flowering hills.|Hill3]]

It's hopeless: you're never going to fall asleep. The chill wind wails. [[The loose shelf rattles in inscrutable, ever-changing patterns.|Beautiful Dreamer]]

Before you, a flight of [[stairs|Stairs]] -- water-stained and perilously steep -- descend into the depths of the ground. Enormous, neon-hued centipedes coil along the walls and ceiling, faint light pulsing from their eyes.\n\n[[You return to the ruined plaza.|Plaza]]

"The Utopians -- if they're real -- seem to think Anem created their world //and// our world," you explain. "But could she have, really?"\n\n"She's powerful enough to have done so," says Cephiros. "As for whether she did --" He shrugs his downy shoulders. "That's another matter. She may have, or she may have not."\n\n"But weren't you around when this world began?" you ask.\n\n"I witnessed the end of the old world," says Cephiros, "but I remember nothing after that moment -- not until I awoke here, in the field behind your building. How this present world arose, or why, I couldn't say. I hate to give you such an unhelpful answer, but as far as I know, all of us -- I, my siblings, and the rest of the immortal race -- were asleep during the formation of this world."\n\n"I see," you say. "And if Anem was there, it's not like she's around anymore to ask."\n\n"No," says Cephiros. "But I wouldn't trouble yourself over the origins of the world, or the words of beings who may or may not be real. Does this world really seem like a world of shadow?" he asks, voicing your unspoken worry. "Does it really seem so bad, like a world forsaken?"\n\nYou stare into his double-pupiled eyes. He blinks, but his face remains, as always, mask-like. "Well," you say. "It could be a lot better. Right?"\n\n"Perhaps," says Cephiros, "but personally I find this world a great improvement over is predecessor. The sun is much brighter, for one thing. Even here in the city, a great many plants and insects flourish, in an range of variety unknown to the previous world. And despite the occasional bout of ill weather, the transitions between seasons are very regular and beautiful. Wouldn't you agree?"\n\n"I guess," you say. "Was something wrong with the seasons in the old world?"\n\n"They tended to fluctuate at random," replies Cephiros. "Particularly towards the end."\n\n"And the, um, variety of plants and animals?"\n\n"The diversity of life was limited at best," says Cephiros. "Perhaps it wasn't always so, but by the time I was created, the old world was -- by the standards of this one -- quite barren."\n\nYou try to imagine the previous world: a desert beneath a swollen red sun; pillars of stone eroded to bizarre shapes; the gutted shells of buildings, alien in design, with too few windows and blackened, peeling paint; sickly strands of grass dying in the long shadow of an obelisk.\n\nCephiros stares past you, seemingly at nothing. "That's close," he says. "To the final days, at least. But it wasn't as dry as that. There was almost always water seeping through the ground. A thin layer of water covered everything."\n\nYou revise your mental image to include a silvery sheen of water; hills of barren mud; runnels of water oozing from the blackened windows; the strands of grass submerged.\n\nCephiros nods. [["Not quite like that, but the atmosphere was much the same. You have a good imagination."|Listen8]]\n\n

"I'm sorry I keep bringing her up," you say. "But what //is// Anem, exactly? The Utopians treat her like a god, but is there even such a thing? As a god, I mean. Or is she just some sort of super-immortal?"\n\n"That's a difficult question," says Cephiros. "The people of the old world also referred to Anem and her ilk as gods. But if she was a god, she was surely a very distant one, rarely witnessed."\n\n"So the people of the old world worshipped Anem?” you ask. "Is that what the Shrine is for? Or was the Shrine built to worship you?"\n\n"Oh no," says Cephiros. "The people of the previous world regarded immortals as harbingers of bad fortune. They would not have worshipped us. Nor did they worship their so-called gods. They believed the gods despised human attention and would retaliate against any who prayed to them. Whether this belief was true or not, the people of the old world built very little in the way of religious architecture."\n\n“Then why did they build the shrine at all?” you ask.\n\n“They didn't,” replies Cephiros. “Which is to say that the Shrine was never really 'built' by anyone. It simply appeared. My emissaries and I fell asleep on the desolate plains one night, and awoke to find the Shrine standing around us, small but fully formed. Over the centuries, it's grown larger and larger, and continues growing still, more like an organism than a thing of stone.”\n\nYou imagine the walls of the Shrine unfurling like some enormous stone flower; amber minarets extending towards the sky like towering stamens. "So it just sprouted out of the ground one day? Was that sort of thing normal in the old world?”\n\n“Not at all,” says Cephiros. “Even in the old world, such a thing was miraculous.”\n\n“Because it must have come from something,” you say, “or someone. Did Anem create it -- so you'd have a place to live?”\n\n"Possibly," says Cephiros. “I've asked my emissaries about the origins of the Shrine, for they often know secrets I do not. But the only answer they've given me is ... suspect.”\n\nYou wonder what Cephiros means. He shifts his wings and sighs. “They claim I was the one who created it,” he says, “which is plainly impossible.”\n\n“But that would make sense,” you say. “More sense than Anem making it. Maybe you have powers you don't know about?”\n\n“Maybe,” says Cephiros. “But it strikes me as a dangerous power -- to be able to create something as vast and uncontrollable as the Shrine in my sleep, by utter accident. I would prefer to believe my emissaries simply lied to me.”\n\n“//Would// they lie to you?” you ask.\n\n“Oh, certainly,” says Cephiros. [[“They have their own wills, and as much a right to lie as any other creature.”|Listen9]]

I'm pretty sure I'm not in my own dream anymore," you say. "Did I walk in on someone else's?"\n\n"This is Lune's dream," says the bartender. "All dreams are Lune's dream."\n\n"I don't really understand," you say.\n\n"I'm just a moth," says the bartender with a shrug. "I don't know how to explain it."\n\nYou decide not to press the issue any further. "Well, anyway," you say, changing the subject.<<if not visited("Bar2")>>\n\n[["I'm not really a courier, you know."|Bar2]]<<endif>>\n\n[["What drinks do you have back there?"|Bar4]]

"I guess I'm only ever at the Library to deliver something," you explain, "but I'm actually an administrative assistant. For human resources. So I have other job duties besides carrying things."\n\n"Huh," says the bartender. "Like what?"\n\nYou pick at the edge of the amethyst slab. "Well, not really anything worth talking about," you admit. "So, um..."<<if not visited("Bar3")>>\n\n[["Whose dream is this, anyway?"|Bar3]]<<endif>>\n\n[["What drinks do you have back there?"|Bar4]]

The bartender's face brightens. "Oh!," she says. "Any drink you'd want and then some. There's locally-sourced eggplant and lavender vodka, of course. Then there's purple mead, luminescent sherry, electro-static numbing cider, gelatinized ghostflower, pickled ginger cherry cordial -- but I know what you ought to try! I just got in another shipment of pumpkin mustard stout." She opens a bottle of thick, pulpy yellow liquid and pours it into a glass. "It's seasonal, so it's not every day you get to taste it. Go ahead -- try."\n\n"You know what I just realized," you interrupt, climbing down from your stool. "I probably shouldn't even be drinking now. Because it's technically the A.M., right? And I have work in a few hours. I wouldn't want to get in trouble."\n\n"Well, at least take something before you go," says the bartender. "Here." She removes a tiny figurine from a vial beneath the counter. "Take this thing. It has magical powers."\n\nYou accept the figurine. "Um, thanks," you say. "What sort of powers?"\n\nThe bartender raises a violet eyebrow. "What would be the fun if I told you? Say hi next time you're at the Library, okay?" [[She waves farewell as you leave through the pebbled tunnel.|Origin]]

You gaze out at the shrine, the stone circles, the stooped trees of the field and the ageless trees of the sanctum. You gaze out at Cephiros and his birds. At last, Cephiros gives a twitch of his wings; he turns to face you, yellow eyes gleaming in the low light. His emissaries scatter as he clambers down from the roof: they dart into the upper sanctum; they dart to the ground.\n\nCephiros trudges across the field, head bowed against the wind. His feathers whip in all directions. Windborne leaves splatter against his back. You wonder if he's cold; you wonder if he's mad at you for bothering him.\n\nCephiros pauses; glances up and shakes his head. He does not smile -- never smiles -- but his eyes are kindly. Reassured, you raise up the blinds.\n\nNearly twice the size of a human being and long-legged, Cephiros crosses the field in moments. He scales the side of your building, gripping the uneven brick with his sharp, vaguely reptilian wing-claws. You unlatch the window, but before you can open it, he once again shakes his head. He points into your room, at the coat rack by your closet. \n\n"Oh," you mutter. You throw your blue jacket over your pajamas, then lift up the window. Cephiros tents his wings over the opening, but the wind still seeps inside, chill and damp.\n\n"Thanks," you say, as you bundle the jacket around your chest. "I didn't think."\n\n"This is unwholesome weather," says Cephiros. "They say strong winds can shift the world out of phase, engendering discord."\n\n"Oh," you say again. You wonder who he means by "they."\n\nCephiros frowns apologetically. "I'm afraid I don't remember. <<if visited("Wind")>>[[I heard it a long time ago, in the world before this one."|Cep11]]<<elseif visited("Radio")>>[[I heard it a long time ago, in the world before this one."|Cep6]]<<else>>[[I heard it a long time ago, in the world before this one."|Cep2]]<<endif>>

"Is the wind keeping you awake too?" you ask. You catch yourself staring down at the carpet. You look up and meet Cephiros' eyes, which are vivid yellow, double-pupiled. You've been trying to get better at eye contact.\n\n"Yes," says Cephiros. "But please don't worry about me. I'm ... aware of the cold, but I don't feel it the same way a mortal does."\n\n"I see," you say. You notice the dark tinge of his fingertips and the silvery-grey pallor of his face. It occurs to you that he may be lying to make you feel better.\n\n"Please believe me," says Cephiros. "I'm fine."\n\n"You look cold," you insist.\n\n"It's a vestigial response," he says. "An immortal may shiver or grow pale, but we feel nothing, and neither heat nor cold may harm us." You're not entirely convinced, but suppose you have little choice but to take him at his word.\n\n"Was there something you wanted to talk about?" Cephiros adds, changing the subject.\n\n"Nothing important," you say. "I was just, um, wondering ..."\n\n[["Do you know the words to this song?"|Cep5]]\n\n[["Is there something you can do about the wind?"|Cep4]]\n\n[["Can you stop that shelf from rattling? Can you tear it off the wall?"|Cep3]]

"Do you think -- if you folded your wings tight -- you could fit through the window?" you ask Cephiros. "Then you could tear that shelf down from the wall, couldn't you?"\n\n"I don't think that would be a very good idea," says Cephiros. "Nor could I fit through the window without breaking it."\n\nYou glance around the room, trying to remember where you keep your hammer. "Maybe //I// could ..." you mutter. "If I ..." You contemplate the logistics of stripping the noisy shelf from its mounting.\n\n"What if you need the shelf someday?" argues Cephiros.\n\n"I won't," you say. "I've never needed it before."\n\n"What if it leaves a mark on the wall?" he continues. "Will your landlord allow it?"\n\nYou stare at Cephiros, your frantic train of thought diverted. "Oh," you say. "They probably wouldn't. But wait. [[These apartments are built on the shrine grounds, right?|Local History]]"\n\n"Indeed," says Cephiros.\n\n"That sort of makes you the real landlord, doesn't it?"\n\n"Ah," says Cephiros. "Then I also forbid you from taking down the shelf."\n\n"Not that it matters," you say. "I can't remember where the hammer is. Maybe I never took it with me when I moved?"\n\n[[The shelf squeals, as though laughing.|Listen3]]

"You can't calm the wind somehow, can you?" you ask. "I mean, I guess you probably would have already, if you could. It's just -- "\n\n"It's just that I'm the Embodiment of the West Wind," says Cephiros, finishing your thought. "And one might assume that I have some dominion over the weather."\n\n"Right," you say. "But you don't?"\n\n"I do not," says Cephiros. "I'm afraid I have no ability to change the winds. What few powers I have are based in the intangible."\n\nThe wind shrieks; cold air streams through the gaps of the window. Cephiros draws closer to the building, his face ghostly pale. You wonder, once again, why he would choose to be outside on such an ugly night. "Wouldn't it be warmer inside the Shrine?" you ask.\n\n"It would," says Cephiros. "But I've lain asleep beneath the ground for a long, long time already. I would rather be in the open air, out in the true night."\n\n[[You nod, supposing that you understand.|Listen4]]

"You can see it, right? The song that's stuck in my head? Have you heard it before?" you ask. "Do you know the rest of the words?"\n\nCephiros stares over your shoulder for a moment, seemingly at nothing. "I can see that you've been thinking of a song," he says, "but I can't hear it unless you sing it out loud."\n\nYou hesitate, then hum a fragment of the lullaby. Your voice quavers.\n\n"It doesn't sound familiar to me," says Cephiros. He shifts one of his wings, revealing a mass of black feathers -- a single stubborn crow clinging to his shoulder blade. "Have we ever heard this song before?" he asks the bird.\n\nThe crow tilts its head, as though contemplating. "No," it answers at last. "We haven't."\n\n"Thank you," says Cephiros, and once more tucks the bird beneath his wing. "It would seem that neither my emissaries nor I have encountered it. None of the lyrics you've brainstormed strike me as familiar either."\n\nYou feel your cheeks grow hot. "Wait -- you can see that too?"\n\nCephiros nods. "Of course, I may not be the best one to ask. I'm tone-deaf and tend to pay little attention to music."\n\n"Then why'd you just ask me to sing!" you say.\n\n"Well, my emissaries aren't tone-deaf," explains Cephiros. "Or at least, not all of them are." The crow beneath his wing gives an affirmative, somewhat muffled croak.\n\nYou stare down at the floor, wondering if Cephiros is teasing you. "Oh no, no," he says. "I would never tease you or anyone. In fact, I can assure you that I have no sense of humor whatsoever."\n\n"I'm pretty sure that's a lie," you say.\n\n"It's not," he says. "Have you ever heard me tell a joke?"\n\nYou glance up at his grey, mask-like face. "Maybe?" you answer, thinking back. "There are times when I've felt like you //might be//. It's hard to tell."\n\n"All of those cases were certainly misunderstandings," says Cephiros. "The very concept of humor exceeds my understanding."\n\n"Why?" you counter. Your cheeks begin to cool; your earlier embarrassment dissipates. "Is humor another thing that immortals can't feel? Like the cold?"\n\n"Oh, no," says Cephiros. "Many immortals have senses of humor -- just not I." [[You let out a little huff of exasperation -- not quite a laugh -- despite yourself.|Listen5]]\n

"Listen," you blurt. "I just picked up another weird broadcast on the radio. A Utopian broadcast. Do you think it has something to do with the wind -- with the world being out of phase, like you said?"\n\nCephiros narrows his eyes. "That's entirely possible," he says. "Of course, even when the wind is lax, the Shrine attracts strange phenomena. I'm afraid you and your neighbors live in a less than stable band of reality."\n\nYou nod, well aware of the Shrine's disruptive influence. "They were talking about your mom," you say. "About, Anem, I mean."\n\n"I see," says Cephiros. His expression does not change. \n\nIn your eagerness to discuss the Utopian broadcast, you didn't quite consider Cephiros' feelings: it occurs to you that Anem may be something of a sore subject for him. After all, if Anem left him and his siblings behind in //this// world, the so-called world of shadow, perhaps he would rather not speak of her -- particularly with someone like you, whom he's only known for so many months. "Sorry," you say. "I shouldn't have brought it up."\n\n"Oh, no," says Cephiros. "There's no need to apologize. I'm comfortable speaking about Anem, it's just ... How should I put it? She's a stranger to me, and I harbor no strong feelings towards her, good or ill. In my entire life, I've seen her only once."\n\n"When she first made you?" you ask.\n\n"Much later than that," says Cephiros. "At the end of the previous world, I saw her circling the sky in the aspect of an enormous bird. Within the bird's heart, I glimpsed a crystal dais, and on the dais stood a human woman of statue-like and preternaturally symmetrical appearance. Then the woman, dais, and bird alike vanished beneath the horizon. It's one of my final memories of that world."\n\nYou imagine the bird with the queenly woman embedded in its breast. "She -- um, she wasn't the one who //ended// the old world, was she?"\n\n"She was not," says Cephiros. "The original world was very old at that point, and had simply run its natural course. Any being who claims to have ended it themselves is assuredly lying."\n\n"And a being who says they've created a world?"\n\n"May well be telling the truth," says Cephiros. [["It's much easier to create a world than to end one, particularly one so long-developed."|Cep7]]

"But enough of the old world," he says. "You're worried about the broadcast you heard, and the world it may have come from."\n\n"Well, not exactly worried," you say. "I was just wondering.\n\n[["Do you think Anem really created this world?"|Cep8]]\n\n[["What is Anem?"|Cep9]]\n\n[["How many worlds do you think are out there?"|Cep10]]\n

Two weeks ago, you delivered paperwork to the Library of Unreal Literature -- Lune's domain and the breeding ground of her emissaries, where the lunar caterpillars grow fat on discarded paperbacks, notebooks, newspapers, diaries, grocery lists, greeting cards -- any writing the university or general citizenry may choose to donate. The Library of Unreal Literature, where the lunar caterpillars secrete their nonsense literature; spin their papery cocoons; emerge as moths and haunt the world of dreams.\n\nLune manages the library of course, but the university supplies its stockers and desk clerks. You think that's what you were carrying over -- HR forms for a new hire, or for student employee who had graduated. Maybe they were tax papers? It doesn't matter. You were in a hurry and you didn't check your bag in the lobby like you were supposed to. You snuck around the desk on your way out; didn't walk through the moth-deterrent ultrasonic barrier, because you had only been inside for a minute, and what were the odds that anything would have snuck into your bag in such little time?\n\nLune's emissaries can flatten themselves thinner than paper. They make no noise whatsoever. They devour words as greedily as a mundane caterpillar devours leaves.\n\nYou can only hope that the emissary hasn't ruined more of your books; that it hasn't matured to its dream-eating adult phase; that it hasn't escaped to another apartment. [[If your neighbors' books are eaten, if their dreams are tresspassed and they find out that you're the cause -- well, they'll probably hate you forever.|Book4]]\n\n

You venture down the perilous stairs, clinging to the walls for support, sometimes grasping the legs of a centipede to keep from falling. You climb down and farther down into the rainbow-tinged shadows, into the quiet earth. [[Finally, you reach the bottom of the stairwell and an automatic door that hisses open at your approach.|Dead Mall]]

The dragon averts its head, closes its many eyes, and ignores you as you approach. There are three small, circular indentations atop the box: its surface is otherwise featureless. When you shake it, an object rattles inside.\n\n<<if $figcount is 0>>You press three of your fingers into the indentations, but nothing happens. [[You leave the dragon and the hill of rubble alone.|Plaza]]<<elseif $figcount is 1>>You try placing your figurine of <<if visited("Arch-Magus M")>>Arch-Magus M.<<elseif visited("Origin")>>the winged woman<<else>>the Familiar<<endif>> into one of the indentations. The base of the figurine fits, but nothing happens. [[You return her to your pocket, assuming you'll need three such figures to unlock the box's contents.|Plaza]]<<elseif $figcount is 2>>You place your pair of figurines into two of the three indentations. The bases fit, but nothing happens. [[You return the figurines to your pocket, assuming you'll need one more to unlock the box.|Plaza]]<<elseif $figcount is 3>>You insert the three plastic figurines -- Arch-Magus M., the Origin of the Winds, and the Familiar -- into the indentations. As soon as you've set the last of the three in place, a seam appears along the sides of the box and the silver lid springs open.\n\nInside the box, you find a telephone handset nestled in a bed of velvet. You study the handset; turn it around in your hands. A short length of cable dangles from its base. It emits a low, continuous stream of static, like the sound of gurgling water.\n\n"Um, hello?" you speak into the receiver.\n\nA familiar, languid voice answers from the other end. "Hello, little courier. Is that my emissary beside you?"\n\n"Lune?" you squeak.\n\n"This is she," replies Lune. "Wait for me just a moment, dear, and I'll retrieve my wayward moth. I can only hope he hasn't bothered you too badly."\n\nThe phone seeps through your fingers as a glittering mist; the box and three figurines vanish. High above, the ruby stars extinguish. "No, no, no!" cries the dragon, [[as the stone columns topple and the moon splits open like an egg.|Wake Up]]<<endif>>

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The light is usually much brighter -- [[but then, you've never visited the Other Bathroom so late at night before.|Other Shower]]

<<if visited() is 1>>You stand in a ruined plaza, atop uneven slabs of red stone.<<endif>> All around you loom broken columns and fragments of colossal sculpture. The columns are furred in red moss; rust-water trickles through the ground. An enormous marble torso slouches in the distance, and along its back grows a long-neglected garden. In the base of a nearby column, you see a [[black door|Stairwell]] engraved with a hexagon.\n\nA full moon hangs in the sky, surrounded by pulsing ruby stars. Ahead of you, in the direction of the moon, a [[dirt path|Hills]] leads away from the ruins. Behind you, a dragon sprawls along a hill of rubble.\n\nAt the foot of the hill of rubble sits a [[silver box|Box]].

[[You begin to dream|Dream]]

"My thoughts keep spinning around and around," you explain. "Does that make sense? I know I need to stop thinking, to sleep, but I can't. I start worrying about one thing, then another -- like the wind and the shelf and how late it is and how tired I'll be when I wake up and work and, and ..." you trail off. "I don't know how to calm down."\n\nCephiros rests a cool hand on your forehead. "It's alright," he says. "Think of it this way. In time, the wind will exhaust itself. In time, morning will inevitably come. Your worries will probably seem less dire in the light of day, so until then, please try to be patient."\n\n"I know," you say. "I know I shouldn't get so worked up, but it's hard."\n\n"I wish I could offer you more useful advice," says Cephiros, "but I'm in much the same situation myself. These winds make me restless."\n\n<<if visited("Cep3")>><<if visited("Cep4")>>"You could sleep in my apartment, where it's quieter,"<<else>>"Would you maybe have an easier time sleeping inside the Shrine?" you ask. "Where it's warmer?"\n\n"I don't think I would," says Cephiros. "I feel more at ease outside, near the light of other minds."\n\n"You could sleep in my apartment,"<<endif>> you say. "Oh -- but I guess you can't fit through the window."\n\n"No," says Cephiros. "But it's kind of you to offer. [[Though if I might impose in another way?"|CepEnd]]<<else>><<if visited("Cep4")>>"You could sleep in my apartment, where its quieter," you say. "On the floor or sofa or something. It's not in the open air, but you might have an easier time sleeping, and I have room."<<else>>"Would you maybe have an easier time sleeping inside the Shrine?" you ask. "Where it's warmer?"\n\n"I don't think I would," says Cephiros. "I feel more at ease outside, near the light of other minds."\n\n"You could sleep in my apartment," you say. "On the floor or sofa or something. I have room."<<endif>>\n\n"That's kind of you to offer," says Cephiros. "But I doubt I could fit through your window without breaking it. [[Though if I might impose in another way?"|CepEnd]]<<endif>>

<<if visited("CepEnd")>>Before you get dressed, you take a quick glance out the window. Cephiros still clings to the side of the building, fast asleep. Crows and ravens, pigeons and doves flock atop the roof, their squawking and chatter barely audible over the noise of the wind. In the lot below, a group of neighbors stand and point.\n\n<<endif>>Throwing on a set of clothes, you hurry to the office. Shortly after you arrive, your supervisor asks you to hand-carry another set of hiring papers to the Library of Unreal Literature. The original set was no good, signed in black rather than blue ink. [[You tuck the papers in your bag and venture back out into the windy morning.|Library]]

The dragon has not yet noticed your return. You watch as it picks up a hunk of stone, spits a gout of black flame, and melts the stone to a steaming puddle. It laps up the molten rock with a proboscis-like tongue, then snuggles back into its bed of rubble.\n\n[[You feel as though you've seen something you shouldn't have.|Plaza2]]

You step closer to the doll. Really, it's not so much a doll as an articulated figurine of a Utopian -- or rather, what you imagine a Utopian would look like, if Utopians were real, which they might or might not be. You sculpted each of the figurine's component parts from stone clay: the round head with its beak-like nose; the short but humanoid torso; the scaly arms; the attenuated legs; the wings with their etched plumage and fringe of delicate claws. You never got around to painting the figurine's body, but you finished its head with glossy blue and purple paint. Its enormous eyes glisten indigo.\n\nYou strung together the doll -- the figurine -- a bit too loosely and it slouches in its stand. Behind it sit an abstract paper sculpture, a painting of an orange, a tiny ceramic woman -- [[old projects from your student days.|Room]]\n\n

It's no good. You can't remember the lyrics. You can't even remember where you heard the song in the first place. The shelf clatters and creaks; the floor trembles. Your thoughts are looping around in circles. Even if you were to fall asleep this very instant, you would still wake up exhausted.\n\nSweat prickles along your back. You don't know why, but all night, your heart has been pounding. It's no good. [[You creep from beneath the sheets and stand.|Room]]

The mysterious growth is membrane-thin; its color is identical to the surrounding walls. If not for its mossy -- in places, almost hairy -- texture, it would be nearly invisible. You examine it, perplexed, for you always assumed that nothing in the Other Bathroom could be soiled or damaged.\n\nThen, as you stare, you recognize the contour of a wing; the outline of six wide, flattened legs; the curve of a oval abdomen. You choke back a cry of surprise and dash into your bedroom. You snatch your bedside glass of water. You tear a sheet of paper from your sketchbook. Scrambling back into the shower, you dump the water down the drain, and aim your empty glass at the [[camouflaged moth|Moth2]].

You seal the glass with your sheet of paper and hold your captive to the light. The moth's wings darken, forming a crude image: a pair of disembodied human ears, one on either side of its body. You realize what it's trying to say.\n\nLunar moths eat dreams, and one of their favorite ways to enter a dream is through the ear. According to the people at the Library of Unreal Literature, a moth can insert its proboscis into the ear canal and inject //something// -- you're not sure of the particulars -- that induces intense, instantaneous REM sleep. As a preventative measure, most of the Library staff wear earplugs, and caution visitors to do the same.\n\nThe image on the moth's wings dissolves to formless, mottled brown. There are no dreams in the Other Bathroom: the moth must have trapped itself inside and gradually weakened from starvation, to the point where it could barely even hide or fly. You feel a little sorry for it, but it will have to wait until tomorrow for its next meal -- until you return it to the Library of Unreal Literature where, presumably, it can feed on Lune's dreams, or the dreams of some unfortunate clerk.\n\nYou're certainly not going to let the moth into your own dreams. No one would knowingly allow one of Lune's emissaries into their own mind, even if it would bring them instant sleep; even if it would bring them a respite from the wind and noise and their own anxious thoughts. No one would be so foolish.\n\n[[You stare at the moth for a long time.|Desperate]]

The moth dodges your glass and drops to the ground, its wings a frenzy of shifting patterns and color. It lands on the mat, belly up and legs wriggling. In rapid sequence, it flips from back to stomach, from stomach to back, hovering from one end of the shower to the other, crashing drunkenly against the walls and curtain. It flies to knee height, only to tumble downward. It twists and cartwheels and finally falls still. Its wings quiver -- now the color of eggshell; now the color of dirty socks.\n\nOn your second attempt at capture, the moth barely resists. [[It flaps, and turns another somersault, and falls backward into the glass.|Moth3]]

<<if visited() is 1>>The ceiling bursts apart, revealing a black, endless expanse of sky. A moon emerges from the empty pool and rises to the heavens. The tulips explode into stars. On the moon's face, you can see the towers of far-away cities. The stars twirl through the air like fireflies.\n\nThe pen falls from your hand and vanishes; the guestbook disappears. The bare soil transforms into carpet. Tables appear, laden with food and drink. You see bowls of rich purple mead garnished with lavender and eggplant; mugs of sky-blue jelly topped with phosphorescent foam; glass teapots full of petals, stones, and bubbling amber liquid. You see pâté wrapped in white palm leaves; mousse drizzled in metallic syrup; custard afloat in saucers of honey; black gazpacho in cups of sculpted ice.\n\nPeople materialize around you -- lunar moths in all manner of guises. Some take the form of human beings, outlandishly costumed, with pupiless eyes and feathery antenna braided into their hair. Some take the form of winged lions; of horses with six legs and the tails of lobsters; of translucent specters and ambulatory trees and reptiles in blinking spacesuits. The moths laugh and joke and sip at their meals. Some call out greetings: "Hey -- I've seen you at the Library! How's it going?" and "You're late! Try the pickled ginger cordial before it's gone!"\n\nYou push your way through the teeming crowd and retreat to the walls, which have transformed into panels of glittering rainbow tile. You observe the party from the outskirts, noticing a single fellow human among Lune's emissaries: a [[short-haired person|Erskine]] in a owl-pattern shirt standing beside a table of jellies and puddings.<<else>>You back against a wall and observe the party from its outskirts. The lunar moths, in their many strange disguises, talk and laugh and reminisce about dreams long past. Colorful drinks, soups, and syrups crowd the tabletops. <<if not visited("Erskine")>>You notice a single fellow human among Lune's emissaries: a short-haired, [[owl-shirted person|Erskine]] standing beside a table of jellies and puddings.<<else>>The short-haired person in the owl shirt, the only other human among Lune's emissaries, leans against a dessert table and writes in a little notebook.<<endif>><<endif>>\n\nAn [[arched doorway|Field]] leads outside, to <<if visited("Field")>>the<<else>>a<<endif>> grassy lawn lit by floating candles.

"Beautiful dreamer, come back to me.\nMy heart's a pebble as small as a pea,\nCold as the wind, and bleak as the sea,\nGnawed by these centuries of grey apathy."\n\n[[Wait.|Wait]]\n

You sniff at the bottles of soap. [[One smells like grapefruit and muddled tomato leaves; one smells like clay and richly-perfumed flowers; one smells like rain.|Other Shower]]

"Beautiful dreamer, up in a tree.\nWhen the bough shatters, you'll fall and be free.\nChild without cradle, my hope for thee\nIs that you wake amongst kind company."\n\n[[Wait.|Wait]]

Outside, the chill wind wails and tears the leaves from their branches. Gusts of wind scour the muddy sidewalks; gusts of wind roar through the alleys between buildings. Before one gust can fade, another swells behind it, and another behind that, flowing in an endless torrent. All the world is awash in wind. The walls of your room groan like the hull of a sinking vessel.\n\nSomewhere in your room, in the darkness, a shelf has come loose and begun to vibrate incessantly. The floor shifts; your bed sways. You roll onto your side and gather the courage to open your eyes. [[The clock reads 3:00am.|3:00am]]

"I don't mean to stifle your curiosity," says Cephiros, "but I would be careful around the Shrine's spacial anomalies."\n\n"I will," you say.\n\n"In particular, I would avoid venturing into the anomaly in your apartment -- this Other Bathroom -- alone."\n\n"I won't," you say, though you both know you don't mean it. Cephiros frowns, but says nothing.\n\n"Um, anyway," you continue.<<if not visited("Cep8")>>\n\n[["Do you think Anem was the one who made //this// world?"|Cep8]]<<endif>><<if not visited("Cep9")>>\n\n[["Is it okay if I ask something else about Anem? What is she, really?"|Cep9]]<<endif>>\n\n[["Do you think I'll ever be able to get to sleep?"|CepPreEnd]]

Clinging to the neon centipedes as though they were living railings, you ascend the stairs and cross through the black door, into the [[ruined plaza|Plaza]].

<<if visited() gte 2>>You open the door and step into the Other Bathroom. The night-light, a glowing orb, floats beside the spotless mirror. Water fizzes in the tubules beneath the sink. Transparent tiles reveal glimpses of fish, coral, and -- far below -- some dark, undulating body.\n\nSmells of fragrant soaps and lotions waft from behind the curtains of the Other Shower. You've always enjoyed showering in here: perhaps the warmth and steam would help you fall asleep tonight.<<else>>You open the bathroom door and step inside. A night-light hovers by the wall, disconnected from any visible mounting or source of power. You see a spotless mirror; white walls and creamy tile; a sparkling glass sink with a glass spigot and boxy white handles. An array of tubules trail beneath the sink basin, some empty and some filled with bubbling water. Warmth radiates through the tiles of the floor. A few of the tiles are transparent, and through them you can see tiny, darting fish; fans of lacy coral; the occasional glimpse of some vast, dark, undulating body.\n\nThis is the Other Bathroom. Unlike your real bathroom, it doesn't contain a toilet, which can be inconvenient. It does however feature a large, beautiful shower; plush white towels; soap that leaves your skin smelling of unfamiliar herbs and citrus. The Other Bathroom remains perpetually clean without maintenance. It's always the perfect temperature, and never stinks of mildew. The titanic creature beneath the floor, though strange, has never bothered you. \n\nYou've come to prefer the Other Bathroom over your actual bathroom, but the door only opens here so often. You consider taking advantage of this rare opportunity and rinsing off in the shower: maybe the steam and soap and gentle blue light will distract you from your various worries. Maybe it will even lull you to sleep.<<endif>>\n\n[[You climb into the shower.|Other Shower]]\n\n[[You return to your room.|Room]]\n

You try to distract yourself by thinking back to an old lullaby.\n\n"Beautiful dreamer ...\n\n[["up in a tree?"|Up In a Tree]]\n[["lovely to see?"|Lovely to See]]\n[["come back to me?"|Come Back to Me]]

A toad with the face of a moth waddles from beneath the leaves of the tulip. "That's mine!" it wails. Thief! Cheater!"\n\n"Sorry!" you say. "I'm sorry. I'll give it back."\n\n"No," says the toad. "I don't want it back. Pay me for it."\n\n"But I don't have any money," you say. "Why don't I just give it -- "\n\n"Pay me back by listening to my song," interrupts the toad. "You were supposed to listen to my song first, //then// take the present. But you cheated. You stole it. Why did you do that?"\n\nYou're not entirely sure what to say. "I'm sorry?"\n\n"Listen," says the toad.\n\n"Beautiful dreamer, oceans may sing,\nBut fear lest the tide wash the scales from your wings."\n\n[[It stares up at you expectantly.|Oceans]]

<<set $figcount += 1>>As the centipede retreats into the dark depths, you examine the figurine, which is molded in the shape of a woman. Painted black hair tangles down the woman's back; a pearlescent black horn protrudes from her forehead. She wears thick spectacles and a billowing lab coat adorned with stars. Her spectacles are finely detailed, with transparent lenses and spiral-grooved frames. The unbuttoned lab coat is lined with blue ruffles. In one hand, she holds a broomstick; in the other, a wand tipped with a sable crescent moon.\n\nThe figurine stands on a circular base engraved with the words "Arch-Magus M." [[You place her in your pocket, where she settles with an uncanny weight.|Stairwell2]]

A small battery-powered lantern sits at the bottom of the case, functioning as a makeshift bookend for your collection of comics, craft books, and bizarre student-published zines. You switch on the lantern; you crouch inside the bubble of light. The lantern flickers. The bulb hums like an insect. You open //A Survey of Folk Lore and Literature//.\n\nUnfortunately, you don't find your mystery lullaby inside the book. You don't find much of anything -- only a mass of blank pages, the ink siphoned away, the paper glossy and featureless. Your hands shake. [[You realize, with a shudder of dread, that the book has been eaten.|Book2]]

Somehow, you've let an emissary moth -- one of [[Lune's|Lune]] emissaries -- into your apartment. Your mind races back: you remember when, how, why it happened. [[It's all your fault.|Book3]] \n\n

You survey the contents of your bookcase, which darkness has reduced to a mere grid of black and grey. The books' titles are illegible, the illustrations along their spines faded to formless wisps. Yet you know your collection well enough by memory to visualize each text in its proper place. Along one shelf sit your childhood favorites. There's //The Echo of the Unicorn//, its binding cobwebbed with lines of wear. There's //The Orange Tree Planet// with the lenticular chameleon sticker stuck to its inside cover; there's //Zylus and the Orphans// with its scribbled-over bookmark. Along another shelf sit your various novels: romantic fantasies featuring witches and moon-priestesses, tales of alternate worlds, short horror stories in which stones cry tears of blood and doppelgangers emerge from shower drains.\n\nBelow the novels, you've shelved your assortment of non-fiction, which mostly consists of old college texts you liked enough to keep or never got around to selling back to the bookstore. There are your three volumes of //Art History//, along with the special supplemental volume //Art of the Precursor World//. There's //Introduction to Astronomy// and //Advanced Algorithmic Math for the Visual Artist//. There's //A Survey of Folk Lore and Literature//, dog-eared and scented faintly of cheap ink.\n\nYou rest a hand on this last text.<<if visited("Radio")>> For a moment, you forget all about Utopians or inter-dimensional broadcasts or sleep.<<endif>> Once again, the half-forgotten [[lullaby|Surely You See]] surfaces in your mind: "Beautiful dreamer ... beautiful dreamer ..." You remember now where you first heard it; where you first read the lyrics. [[It was in your Folklore class, in this book.|Book1]]

You try to swallow back your rising anxiety. As much as you'd like to tear through your bookcase in search of Lune's emissary -- as much as you'd like to scour every corner of your apartment -- you know it wouldn't do any good. Lune's moths can hide too well, especially in the darkness of night. You'll have to wait until tomorrow. On your lunch break, you'll have to make the long walk to the Library of Unreal Literature and confess your sins to Lune. If rumors are true, she'll give you a mesh trap as fine as moonlight and a wedge of black, gelatinous moth-bait -- a special bait she brews herself in the library attic, a concoction of ink, cough syrup, and her own powdered scales.\n\nYou'll have to wait, and hope that you catch the moth before it consumes too much. You'll have to, somehow, sleep.\n\n[[You switch off the lantern, and set the ruined book aside.|Wind]]\n\n[[You examine the ruined book more closely.|Unreal Literature]]

You stand in the acres-wide lawn that was once a lonely town. Fallen stars sparkle in the rafters of gazebos; moths lounge on benches piled high with tasseled blankets. Farther away, pine groves tower over islands of golden needles.\n\nA trail of hovering candles winds along the turf, towards distant [[purple hills|Hills4]].

You stand amid hills of lavender and eggplant, in the violet light of the moon. A dirt path winds through the flowers. In one direction, the path leads to <<if visited("Secret Party")>>groves of pines with fallen stars in their branches, and beyond, the moths' [[secret party|Field2]]<<else>>a [[blue town|Town]] ringed in a wall of glass<<endif>>. In the other, it leads to the [[ruined plaza|Plaza2]] where your dream first began.

You stand in the barren hotel lobby, at the banks of a round pool encircled by tulips. Though the lobby is closed to the sky, moonlight shines on the surface of the water. Nearby, an open [[guestbook|Guestbook]] sits atop a pedestal of soil.\n\nYou hear the sounds of a party all around you: laughter and footsteps and the tinkling of cutlery. Yet you see no one.\n\n[[You leave the hotel and the eerie blue town, and return to the flowering hills.|Hill3]]

You can't help but wonder if Cephiros -- if he is the Shrine's creator -- has ever tried to stop the Shrine from growing, or keep it from encroaching on the buildings nearby. \n\n“I have,” says Cephiros, “but nothing I say or do or think has ever slowed its inevitable, random expansion. I'm sorry it's caused so much trouble for you and the others who live here.”\n\n“N-no!” you stutter, wishing he hadn't spotted that particular thought. “It's fine. I'm sorry I keep asking you about, um, uncomfortable topics.”\n\n“Please don't be,” says Cephiros. “I've lived a long time, and reached the point where very little upsets me. It's good that you're curious about the world around you.”\n\n“Or //worlds// around me,” you say.\n\n"Are you still concerned about all the worlds that may or may not lie beyond our own?" asks Cephiros. Rhetorically, you suppose, since if anyone knows what's on your mind, it's him.<<if not visited("Cep8")>>\n\n[[“Not really,” you say. “It's just -- do you think Anem was really the one who created our world?”|Cep8]]<<endif>><<if not visited("Cep10")>>\n\n[[“Sort of,” you say. “How many worlds do you think are out there?”|Cep10]]<<endif>>\n\n[[“No,” you say. “I'm just generically anxious.|CepPreEnd]]

''The Monstrous Immortals''\n\nCephiros -- wishes everyone would stop feeding his emissaries bread, but tries not to be uptight about it\n\nLune -- uses her mastery of dreams to blackmail the university administration\n\n''The Emissaries''\n\nThe Crow -- is terrified of owls, even after Cephiros scared away all the owls within a mile radius\n\nThe Dragon-Moth -- won't bother telling you his name: it wouldn't translate into your simplistic human language\n\nThe Centipede-Moth -- thought your dream was nice and quiet: that other guy doesn't know what he's talking about\n\nThe Toad-Moth -- added an extra syllable in that one line, but figures it's okay\n\nThe Bartender -- is going to keep doing this job until she gets bored of it\n\n''The Witches''\n\nMelanie -- has always been weirdly territorial about the bench outside her office\n\nMarigold -- comes in at midnight every Thursday to feed and measure the "classified project" in the basement\n\n''The Mock-Unicorns''\n\nArabella -- thinks it would be cool if quantum mechanics worked the way they did in science fiction\n\nAurora -- once trained a geranium to play chess\n\nLuster -- once ate one of the carp, even though it was Forbidden\n\nArcelius -- wishes everyone would just take a two-, three-year break from pranks\n\n''The Utopians''\n\nPomona Zero-Loveborn -- really has it together for someone on her first life\n\nMillefleur Seven-Peachwell -- plays up her combativeness for the radio, but not as much as you might think\n\nSandhi Twelve-Amberwell -- hopes thirteen will be her lucky number\n\n''The Ordinary Human Beings''\n\nYou -- one day, you'll make a friend who isn't a mind-reader\n\nErskine -- didn't need a <small>❤</small>makeover<small>❤</small> to crash this party\n\n''The ???''\n\nAnem -- will witness every end and every beginning\n\n[[Back|About]]

A clamorous melody plays from the radio. Whether it originates from a Utopian station, the real 108.1, or some other place entirely, you can't say. The loose shelf clatters in the darkness. The wind howls. You feel the floor sway beneath your chair. You feel the room shuddering all around you.\n\nNo one has ever determined the source of the Utopian broadcasts. They may be real, or they may be an elaborate hoax. You've always liked to believe they're real, but of course there's no certain way of knowing. [[You switch off the radio and stand.|Room]]\n\n

Pushing aside stalks of lavender and eggplant, you uncover a tunnel in the side of the hill, a few feet from the signpost. The tunnel is lined with smooth pebbles; it leads you into the hill's hollow interior, to a room with a stone floor and polished earthen walls. Wooden chairs with gold and purple cushions encircle rough-hewn tables. Candles flicker in granite bowls.\n\nAt the far end of the room, you see shelves crowded with bottles; a bar topped with an enormous, asymmetrical sheet of amethyst; stools upholstered in purple velvet with yellow spots. A woman with scaly wings, the lounge's only occupant, stands behind the bar. Fine violet hair covers her arms and face; her eyes are golden. She sings to herself quietly:\n\n"Beautiful dreamer, names are but names.\nSubstance and shadow are one and the same.\nNo matter what waking dreamers may claim,\nAll moths exist on a singular plane."\n\nThe bartender sees you and her eyes widen. "A customer!" she exclaims. [["Come in! Come in!"|Bar1]]

"Do you think your neighbors would mind if I stayed here, on the wall of your building?" asks Cephiros.\n\n"Stayed to talk more?" you ask.\n\n"Stayed to sleep," says Cephiros. "I feel more comfortable at higher elevations than I do close to the ground."\n\nYou imagine Cephiros asleep against the sheer face of the building, dangling perilously from his wing-claws. "But you'll fall," you say. \n\n"Oh, no," says Cephiros. "In the old world, in my years of wandering, I often slept on the sides of high cliffs or abandoned buildings. My claws lock in place, so I'll be safe."\n\n<<if visited("Cep2")>>You're not sure you believe him, but at the same time, have no idea why he would lie about such a thing.<<else>>You're not entirely convinced, but at the same time, have no idea why Cephiros would lie about such a thing.<<endif>> "Well," you say, "everyone here is used to you now, so they shouldn't mind. Or if they do mind, they at least shouldn't be scared. But are you sure that's comfortable?" \n\nCephiros nods. "Very sure."\n\n"Even the roof would be better, right?"\n\n"There's standing water on the roof," says Cephiros, "which I would rather avoid. I know it sounds strange, but I sleep well when I'm aloft. I could probably fall asleep quite easily on that wide space beneath the eaves. Unless you'd like to talk with me longer?"\n\n"No," you say. "I mean -- no, thank you. I guess I need to try to sleep myself."\n\n"Then I'll wish you goodnight," says Cephiros. "And please remember: whether you sleep well or not -- whether you fall asleep at all -- there will be many calmer nights in the future. In the scheme of things, one restless night isn't so bad, so try not to worry."\n\n"I'll try," you say. "Goodnight."\n\nYou close the window and watch as Cephiros climbs to a bare expanse of brick just below the roof of the building. He tucks his legs beneath his body and clings there like some enormous feathered cicada. A few pigeons dart through the air, and roost on the eaves above him.\n\nWith the window shut, the room grows warmer. You close the blinds and return your jacket to its hanger. [[With a sigh, you stand in the darkness.|Room]]

"Listen," snarls the dragon. "Really listen." Its seven eyes stare deeply into your own. You feel a brief, sickening sensation of double-consciousness. Half of you lies in the dark, motionless and unable to move. Half of you stands at the foot of a mound of rubble, caught in a dragon's fiery gaze. You gasp as you realize you're dreaming.\n\n"I-I," you stammer. "Wh-why did you -- ?"\n\n"Why is your dream so boring?" the dragon interrupts. "This is my very first dream, but there's nothing here. There's nothing to do. There's nothing to eat but rocks. I wish I had never followed you. I wish I had stayed in the Library forever."\n\nThe dream world grows ever more vivid around you. You feel stone beneath your feet. You smell dust and distant flowers. "Weren't you starving?" you ask.\n\nThe dragon tucks its head beneath its many wings. "Hmpth," it says. "I wish I had never even spun a cocoon. Books were better than this. Even the books with charts and numbers were better than this. I hate you. Don't talk to me."\n\n"Fine!" you say. "I won't." [[You turn your back to the dragon and take in your strange surroundings.|Plaza]]

Page 54 contains a scene from Marigold's perspective.\n\nPage 65 contains a scene from the mock-unicorns' perspective, along with the password.\n\n[[Back|About]]

There are two pages in the choose-your-own-adventure story that are never referenced by the main narrative. You have to click on their page numbers unprompted to find them.\n\n[["Which page numbers?"|Hint2d]]\n\n[[Back|About]]

You'll find the password somewhere inside the //Tale from the Graveyard Shift// choose-your-own-adventure story.\n\n[["Be more specific than that."|Hint2c]]\n\n[[Back|About]]

Locating the moths' secret password and writing it in the guestbook will unlock an extra area in the dream-world and a cast page at the end of the story.\n\n[["Be more specific."|Hint2b]]\n\n[[Back|About]]

Cephiros, of course, neither laughs nor smiles. He blinks his golden eyes benignly. "There's still something on your mind, isn't there," he says. It's an observation, not a question.<<if not visited("Cep4")>>\n\n[["It's a dumb thing to ask," you say, "but is there something you can do about the wind?"|Cep4]]<<endif>><<if not visited("Cep3")>>\n\n[["It's that shelf," you say. "You hear it, right? Do you hear it rattling?"|Cep3]]<<endif>>\n\n[["It's nothing," you say. "I'm just wondering how I'll ever get to sleep."|CepPreEnd]]

You prop open the door with a shoe -- just to be safe --, cross the heated tiles, and draw aside the voluminous white curtains of the shower. A spongy mat pads the basin. Bottles of <<if visited("Soaps")>>colorful liquid<<else>>[[colorful liquid|Soaps]]<<endif>>, chromatically organized, line the tops of spiral shelves. Soft <<if visited("Light")>>light<<else>>[[light|Light]]<<endif>> radiates through a panel of frosted glass: it may be the light of a moon, or moons; it may be the light of stars or a distant city. A <<if visited("Shower-Head")>>shower-head<<else>>[[shower-head|Shower-Head]]<<endif>>, ringed with an elaborate array of buttons and dials, attaches to the glass.\n\nYou notice a rough patch on the walls of the shower -- a velvety white [[growth|Moth1]] that was never there before.\n

Here's what you learned during the big uproar. Your apartment building was constructed several decades ago, during a period of infamously corrupt re-zoning legislation. At the time, Cephiros still slumbered underground and very little of the shrine proper had surfaced from the earth. Countless residents carried on their lives in the apartments -- in the neighboring houses, shops, and offices -- without ever realizing anything was in the least amiss. They ignored the stone circles; the uncanny dreams; the strangely intelligent pigeons.\n\nThen, last May, Cephiros awoke; the local birds began to speak in human language; the shrine began to emerge ever more swiftly from the depths of the ground. It came to light that your apartment and surrounding developments were built atop an ancient, enormous, and rapidly-rising subterranean complex and would -- inevitably, within the next half-century -- be ousted from their foundations like so many baby-teeth forced aside by an erupting molar.\n\nLegal turmoil ensued, but fortunately, you and neighbors weren't forced to evict. You'll want to leave sometime in the next fifty years, of course, but for now your life has more or less returned to normal. [[Your rent has gone down, too, which you consider a plus.|Cep3]]

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You make sure to pass through the ultrasonic barriers on your way into and out of the Library. You wave to the violet moth at the front desk. With one of her six furry legs, the moth waves back.\n\n"Are you two friends?" asks the desk clerk.\n\n"We're, um, acquaintances," you say. [[The clerk does not appear to find this strange.|Blue]]

If Lune's supposed to control her own emissaries," you ask, "then why does she act like //we're// the ones responsible for keeping her moths in the Library, or catching them when they escape?"\n\n"We immortals suffer an unfortunate tendency to laziness," replies Cephiros. "I suppose it comes from living too long. Lune, probably, would rather not leave the confines of her Library if she can avoid it. Just as I prefer not to leave the Shrine."\n\n"But you don't have to leave the Shrine," you say, "because you don't let your emissaries run rampant over town. Your birds stay on the Shrine grounds, mostly. They don't bother anyone, or -- or eat anyone's books, or wander in and out of people's dreams."\n\n"True," says Cephiros. "In Lune's defense, her emissaries are far more willful than my own, and far more prone to wander."\n\n"Because Lune lets them wander, right? They wouldn't sneak out of the Library so often if she bothered to watch them."\n\n"It's not quite so simple," says Cephiros. "Lune is much older than I, and over time, her emissaries have grown ever more and more independent. My birds may be content to remain at my side, but Lune's moths are both curious and intelligent. I don't think they would be happy living their whole lives within the Library of Unreal Literature, any more than a human being would be happy living all their life within a single space. And so they wander."\n\nThe wind howls; Cephiros draws closer to the window, his face ghostly pale. "Unfortunately," he continues, "the lunar moths' curiosity often leads them to, ah, clash with their human neighbors. I just wouldn't assume that Lune is merely negligent. Even with human aid -- even if she wanted to -- I doubt she could keep all of her moths within the Library walls forever."\n\nYou pause and consider.<<if not visited("Cep13")>>\n\n[["So what did you mean before," you ask, "about your emissaries working up a territorial frenzy?|Cep13]]<<endif>>\n\n[["So, you and Lune know each other?" you ask.|Cep14]]

"Your birds aren't going to do anything dangerous if they find out there's a moth in my apartment, are they?"\n\n"Oh, no, no," Cephiros assures you. "They just make a nuisance of themselves. They think anything having to do with another immortal is a threat, you see, and try to protect me by swooping around and making as much noise as possible." \n\nAs he speaks, a lump of black feathers -- a groggy, bedraggled crow -- detaches itself from his shoulder and flutters to the windowsill. "Someone was talking about a moth," says the crow. "Someone was talking about Lune."\n\n"We were not," says Cephiros. "Go back to sleep, little one."\n\nThe crow's bright eye roves about your bedroom. "If you let me in, I'll find it," it says. "I'll find Lune's emissary and catch it. That's my special power."\n\n"Special power?" you ask.\n\n"The power to catch intruders," says the crow. "The power to catch a moth."\n\n"My emissaries have a special skill for finding that which is hidden," says Cephiros. "But in the process of searching, I'm afraid they can become over-excited -- to they point where they disregard other people's property."\n\nYou suppose Cephiros means his emissary would trash your apartment if you let it inside. "That's exactly what I mean," says Cephiros. He picks up the bird and returns it to his shoulder. "Here, little one. Night-time is for sleeping, so forget Lune and moths and hidden things." The crow gives a few inarticulate grumbles and settles beneath Cephiros' wing.<<if not visited("Cep12")>>\n\n[["You take good care of your emissaries," you say. "What's Lune's problem?"|Cep12]]<<endif>>\n\n[["Um, so," you say. "Do you and Lune know each other?"|Cep14]]

"If a world's so easy to create, there are probably all sorts of other worlds out there, right? Not just Utopia," you say, "since that might be a hoax, but other real worlds with other real people living in them. Maybe even an infinite number, all stacked on top of each other, and none of them realizing the others are there."\n\n"An infinite number strikes me as excessive," says Cephiros. "But I agree there are likely other worlds besides our own. If two worlds can exist consecutively, I don't see why two -- or more -- couldn't exist simultaneously.”\n\n“Right,” you say. “And what about the weird places around the Shrine? The spacial anomalies. Like the pavilion between the light pole and the cafe. Or the brick hallway at the bottom of that one ditch." You glance over your shoulder, at the door smudged in shadow. "Or the Other Bathroom in my apartment. Couldn't they be pieces of some whole other world -- or worlds -- that have leaked into our own somehow?"\n\n"They could be part of some larger world," says Cephiros. "By the same token, they may be very small worlds in and of themselves. Or perhaps they're simply offshoots of our own world. I suppose, to certain degree, it depends on your definition of boundaries."\n\n"Sometimes I wonder what would happen if you tried to break through one of those places," you say. "Like if you tried to break through the walls of the Other Bathroom. Would you find the rest of the world it's attached to? Or would there just be nothing?"\n\n"I'm not sure," replies Cephiros, "but I would caution you against ever trying such an experiment. What if you found your way somewhere inescapable?”\n\nYou stare down at the carpet. “Well, it's not like I'd actually do it,” you say. [[“I'm probably not strong enough to break through a wall in the first place. Even with tools."|Listen10]]

"Listen," you blurt. "There's one of Lune's moths in my apartment<<if visited("Radio")>> and my radio's picking up weird signals<<endif>> and I can't sleep and -- and there's this stupid song stuck in my head and I don't know what to do. Maybe the world //is// out of phase because the whole night's just been really strange. And that shelf keeps rattling and the wind is //so loud// and, and --"\n\nCephiros rests a cool hand on your forehead. "It's alright," he says. "In time, the wind will exhaust itself. In time, morning will inevitably come. I think your worries will seem less dire in the light of day, so until then, please try to be patient."\n\n"I know," you say. "I know I shouldn't get so worked up, but it's hard."\n\n"Would it help if I spoke to Lune on your behalf?" asks Cephiros.\n\n"I'm not sure what good it would do," you say. "No matter what you tell her, I'm the one who let the moth out of the Library and I'm the one who's going to have to catch it."\n\n"Not necessarily," says Cephiros. "It's Lune's responsibility to retrieve her own wayward emissaries, and more importantly, to ensure that none of her emissaries wander near the dwelling of another immortal. If my birds realize that a lunar moth is nearby, I'm afraid they'll work themselves into a territorial frenzy."\n\n"Wait," you say.\n\n[["Lune's been passing off her own work to humans?|Cep12]]\n\n[["What sort of territorial frenzy?"|Cep13]]

Embodiment of the Moon. Proprietor of the Library of Unreal Literature. [[One of the monstrous immortals.|Book2]]

You try to force the howling wind and the clattering shelf from your mind, wishing you had the sort of brain that could filter out noise.<<if not visited("Cep5")>>\n\n[["Could you maybe help me with something else?" you ask. "There's this song I can't remember ..."|Cep5]]<<endif>><<if not visited("Cep4")>>\n\n[["This is, um, a dumb thing to ask," you say, "but is there anything you could do about the weather itself?"|Cep4]]<<endif>>\n\n[["I guess I should try to get to sleep," you say, though you doubt you'll be able.|CepPreEnd]]

<<if visited() gte 2>>You open the door and step inside, into your green-on-green-on-green bathroom. The night-light shines; the shower curtain billows beneath a dingy vent. [[You have no particular reason to be here, so you return to your bedroom.|Room]] <<else>>You open the bathroom door and step inside. A night-light shines from a dusty socket, revealing apple-green walls; a speckled mirror; the filmy basin of a sink, pale green and grooved like a seashell. A worn mat buckles against the base of a chartreuse toilet. A shower curtain sways beneath a mildewed vent. The curtain is patterned with enormous blades of grass; the cover of the toilet seat is patterned with apples.\n\nIn the mirror, you see your shadow loom behind you, her arms spanning the wall, her head bowed against the ceiling. In the heart of the shadow, a single souvenir postcard hangs in a leaf-green frame. The card depicts the exterior of the former Museum of Ancient Art, now abandoned due to supernatural encroachment. A perfect grid of trees surrounds the museum building, and between the trees flash glimpses of old-world sculpture, the heads of gods and broken torsos of presidents.\n\nThis is your real bathroom, and with the exception of the postcard or your personal toiletries, it looks much as it did when you first moved in. You don't know if anyone else in the building has a green bathroom, or just you. To be honest, you prefer the Other Bathroom, but if the door isn't routing there at the moment, there's not much you can do.\n\nThe bathroom's walls muffle the howling of the wind and the rattling of the loose shelf. Inside, it is almost quiet. You consider trying to fall asleep in the tub, but decide you would only give yourself a cramp. [[You return to your bedroom.|Room]]<<endif>>

You cross the pines, to a black lawn beneath an vast black sky. Mirage-like cities shimmer on the surface of the moon; hovering candles shed ribbons of smoke. Inside a roofless building with walls of rainbow tile, the moths carry on their [[secret party|Secret Party]].

<center>-- 59 --</center>\nYou pluck a single hair from your eyebrow and weave it into a glossy black dragon of moderate size -- more than large enough to defeat Marigold's counter-spell, but not so small as to appear condescending. The dragon emits a cry like a broken harp, ramping upright onto the hindmost pair of its sixteen legs. Poison foams from its jaws. A fiery eye glares from each of its eight razor-plumed wings.\n\nMarigold takes a step back from the dragon, but does not yield. She adjusts the dials of her pocket-summoner. An orb of light manifests atop the floor tiles, and within the orb a tiny creature solidifies into being. The creature has a large head; a beak-like nose; a songbird's wings; a body covered in vivid blue and purple feathers. It sings a haunting melody, each note resonant with magic, the very air distorted by its power. You can feel the song seeping into your brain like venom, urging sleep, stillness, docility. The air shimmers. Rainbows warp along the edges of your vision. \n\nYou recite a spell of sobriety under your breath, shielding your mind against the musical assault. The dragon, which has no mind, scuttles across the tile unaffected. It opens its slathering jaws, extends a scaly prehensile tongue, and with an awful snap of its blood-red fangs, gulps down the singing creature. The melody falls silent. The dragon, its purpose fulfilled, unravels into nothing. \n\n"My win," you announce. Yet Marigold remains silent. She stares into space as though ensorcelled, the pocket-summoner dangling from her fingers. "Marigold!" you yell, clapping your hands and jangling your keys. "Ma - ri - gold! Did you just succumb to the spell of your own creature?"\n\nMarigold lurches awake. She blinks at the floor, at the place where the dragon and the bird-like imp moments before had stood. "N-no," she stutters. "I mean ... you won?"\n\n"Correct," you say. "But my department currently has no need for your help. Please just carry on with what you were doing before."\n\n"I see," says Marigold. She crouches down among the books, sniffing back tears. "Okay," she says thickly.\n\nNever, before this moment, have you hated her more. "Listen," you say. You dig your fingernails into your wrist. "Don't. I suppose I can help you anyway. Since I have the time." Marigold gives a faint smile and one last, grateful sniffle.\n\nYou spend the rest of the evening with Marigold, swapping out the contents of the publication case and disposing of the old books in the appropriate manner -- by inscribing their bindings with the ninety-nine runes of magical cancellation, sealing them in kelpie bladder, and burying them in the moonlit soil beneath a plate of silver. Once you've completed this task, Marigold, in true gratitude, offers to bake you a pumpkin tart next week. You are forced to accept. You wave goodbye to her in the lobby. When the astronomy students finally complete their exam, you snatch your bag and your broomstick from your office and fly back home, defeated.\n\nTHE END\n\n<<display "CYOA Shell">>

"Go ahead: pretend you don't like my theories," says Pomona. "But I know better." With another parroty laugh, she explains.\n\n"In the First Dialogues, Anem tells how our current world arose from a dying precursor world, right? When the original world ended, Anem split its remains in half, forming the world of substance -- our real world -- and the world of shadow -- the world without Anem. Like object and shadow, the two worlds are separate but ever adjacent -- one might say //parallel// to one another. What if these radio broadcasts are somehow seeping in from our world's shadow, this place, this //parallel dimension// cast aside at the dawn of creation?"\n\n"That's ridiculous," snaps Millefleur. "To start with, the world of shadow isn't some alternate dimension. That passage of the Dialogues refers to the planetary surface, the uninhabited lower //world// beneath the //shadow// of civilization."\n\n"That's one interpretation," says Sandy, "but not everyone agrees."\n\n"Right," says Pomona. "Here's the big flaw in that reading. As you said yourself, the planetary surface is uninhabited. But the world of shadow is, and I quote, 'peopled by a melancholy race, the four-limbed folk never perfected by My' -- Anem's -- 'hand, who creep along the barren soil, in the lowest depths of atmosphere, living singular lives of toil and ignorance,' end quote."\n\n"There are ruins on the surface," counters Millefleur. "Presumably these unfortunate four-limbed people lived there in ancient times, when the First Dialogues were recorded, then reached the ends of their singular lives and died out before the first expeditions to the surface could encounter them."\n\n"We can't be sure the structures atop the planetary surface are actually ruins," says Sandy. "Some researchers think they're part of the world's internal apparatus, and were never inhabited or meant to be inhabited. Because no one's ever found any remains of people there, or the remains of any other living creatures."\n\n"Fine," says Millefleur. "Maybe the surface was never populated. Maybe there's some second shadow-dimension floating out there in the aether. You know what? You still don't have any tangible proof that these broadcasts originate from that other world. They could still just as easily be a hoax: perhaps the creators of the hoax were even inspired by the same section of the Dialogues that you've cited in your theory."\n\n[["Fair enough," says Pomona.|Utopian5]]

"'Fair enough'?" squawks Millefleur. "That's all you have to say? Are you the same double-down Pomona I know and love? Have I finally caught you without a counter-argument?" \n\n"I know when to concede a point," says Pomona. "You're right: we can't prove that these broadcasts really originate from another dimension, or that other dimensions even exist. After all, there's really only one way to know for sure. <<if visited("Sandhi")>>Sandy<<else>>[[Sandy|Sandhi]]<<endif>>?"\n\n"Right!" says Sandy.<<if visited("Sandhi")>> (Sandhi?)<<endif>> "Um, right. You see, our club is starting a petition -- a petition to ask Anem about these mystery broadcasts and request that she clarify certain matters of cosmology, namely whether our dimension is alone, one of a pair, or one among many. If we get enough signatures, we can get the following questions added to the lineup for next year's Q&A session." Paper rustles; Sandy<<if visited("Sandhi")>>/Sandhi<<endif>> clears her throat. "Okay. So, Question 1: have intrusive broadcasts from another world aired on local radio, and if so, what is the nature of this other world? Then, Question 2 ..."\n\nAs she speaks, the music grows progressively louder and louder. It has shifted now to a cacophonous arrangement of trumpets, bells, and cymbals. "If by 'dimension,' we mean --" The cymbals clash; the trumpets blare. " -- then how many dimensions are there?" The bells ring in complex sequence.\n\n"Questions 4 and 5: is it, or will it ever be, possible to reach -- ?\n\n"-- And why --\n\n"-- if our world alone is perfect? --"\n\nA wave of sound floods through the speakers: metal clashes against metal; trumpets wail; a thousand bells resound. [[Her voice drowns in the music.|Radio End]]

A second woman's voice crackles over the speakers. "//Purported// inter-dimensional broadcasts, you mean."\n\n"I take it you're not convinced, Millefleur?" says Pomona Zero-Loveborn. "How do you account for the hours of recorded evidence, then?"\n\n"It's a hoax, obviously," says Millefleur. "Take the excerpt from the so-called cooking show just now -- the gleeful nonchalance at butchering and eating birds, the gratuitous detail of carving out the spine and breaking the bones. It's all so blatantly calculated to shock and disgust. It's the sort of 'edgy' content a newly-fledged teen would invent."\n\n"Ageist," says Pomona, with a throaty chuckle reminiscent of a parrot's cry.\n\n"I'm not making any judgments," says Millefleur. "I've got a stack of embarrassing, blasphemous teen fiction in my own bottom desk drawer, right? Consider me the voice of experience: some kids are playing around and they've got you all convinced of parallel dimensions or //whatever// else."\n\n"Um," says a third, faint voice -- or perhaps it's simply part of the music, which has transitioned into a chorus of breathy sighs and bright electronic bass.\n\n"So let me get this straight," says Pomona. "Teenage you would have spent hours -- and I mean, literally dozens of hours -- broadcasting gross, shocking, but internally-consistent nonsense over pirate radio, all for what? Just to upset and mislead the public?"\n\n"Absolutely," says Millefleur. "I wasted as much time on my terrible writing. I wasted as much time cutting class, playing all sorts of stupid pranks: interrupting the noon meditation; feeding shrimp to the holy-birds until they turned pink; flying up into the regeneration wells and vandalizing souls."\n\n"Whoa, whoa -- what?" says Pomona, laughing.\n\n"It got me a long stint of community service tending the peach groves, too," adds Millefleur. "Ever wondered why I know so much about stone fruit?"\n\n"You're an idiot," says Pomona. "Why were you such a bad kid?"\n\n"Um," says the faint voice again. "Could I, um ... ?"\n\n"Oh! Sorry," says Pomona. [["Enough about your turbulent childhood, Millefleur. We're embarrassing ourselves in front of this afternoon's guest!"|Utopian3]]

"For those of you who have just tuned in," Pomona continues, "our guest this afternoon is Sandy Twelve-Amberwell, a Peach Islet University senior and member of the University Urban Folklore Society. Sandy, you believe these mysterious broadcasts really originate from a world beyond our own. How were you convinced?"\n\n"How was I convinced?" echoes Sandy. "Well, um, it was a lot of things at first, but before that I sort of wanted to respond to Ms. Seven-Peachwell's comment. About the content of the broadcasts being -- I guess -- um, inflammatory. Most of them aren't like that. I mean, most of them are pretty boring."\n\n"I may have picked out an especially lurid, and not entirely representative, example for our listener's entertainment," admits Pomona. "But please, Sandy, go on."\n\n"Um, yes," says Sandy. "It's just -- a good percentage of our recordings are infomercials, DJs talking about nothing, people arguing about zoning laws. If it were a hoax -- I don't know -- I'd think most of the content would be more interesting. Most of the broadcasters sound like adults, anyway, not kids."\n\n"Good point," says Pomona. "The announcer in the clip didn't sound like an newly-fledged teen to me. Eh, Millefleur?"\n\n"Maybe we're just dealing with a team of dedicated, adult pranksters," says Millefleur Seven-Peachwell. "There are immature adults out there. People spend their free time in all sorts of ways."\n\n"There's music, too," says Sandy, whose voice has grown louder and higher now, either from excitement or sheer verbal momentum. "We've recorded several hours of music, and none of them are pre-existing songs from this world, at least as far as we can tell. A hoaxer would have to go to a lot of effort to produce so many new songs, and why would they, just to waste them on a prank only a handful of people will hear?"\n\n"Maybe mischief-making is more important to them than artistic fulfillment," says Millefleur. "Anyway, I listened to some of this music before the show. They're new songs, but they don't sound //alien//. They don't sound otherworldly. Wouldn't music from some completely different dimension be unrecognizable as music? More importantly, why do the people of this supposed other dimension speak //our// language?"\n\n"I don't think they do," says Sandy. "Speak our language, I mean. I think everything they say is translated through Anem's Register. Like when you receive an ancient memory, you know? It's all filtered through Anem, so you can understand."\n\n"Besides," interjects Pomona. "The existence of a second world is theologically consistent. Do you want to hear my theory?"\n\n"Do we have a choice?" asks Millefleur. A melody of flutes and airy, wordless vocals plays in the background. [[You get the feeling that the music isn't part of the program, but bleeding in from somewhere else.|Utopian4]]

The static resolves into a woman's voice, backgrounded by ambient harps and woodwinds. "And we're back!" the woman announces, as the harps strum and flutes twitter. "I'm Pomona Zero-Loveborn and what you just heard was a cooking program from another world: one of the famous inter-dimensional broadcasts recorded by our own Peach Islet University Urban Folklore Society!"\n\nYour heart leaps; you turn up the volume. It hasn't happened it months, but it's finally happening again: you're picking up a Utopian broadcast. [[You sit upright and listen.|Utopian2]]\n\n

You venture out into the acres-wides lawn that was once a lonely town. Soft grass, black as night, smears ink along your ankles. Fallen stars sparkle in the rafters of gazebos; moths lounge on benches piled high with tasseled blankets. Farther away, pine groves tower over islands of golden needles.\n\nA trail of hovering candles winds along the turf, towards distant [[purple hills|Hills4]].\n\n<<if not visited("Familiar")>>Nearby, a plastic [[figurine|Familiar]] glimmers within the petals of a lone pink tulip.<<endif>>

You peek through the blinds, out into the night. The moon, a yellowed crescent, shines beneath strands of cloud. An aura of lamp light hangs over the distant buildings. You gaze down at the windswept world below, as the cold glass stings your fingers.\n\nBehind your apartment lies an enormous undeveloped lot -- more a field than anything -- several blocks wide but bound on all sides by the city. From your sixth-story window, you can see it well: the tussocks of crabgrass pressed flat by the wind; the mouldering stone circles; the small, stooped trees with branches weighed low by huddling pigeons. At the center of the field rise the uppermost tiers of the West Wind Shrine, that ancient and subterranean structure.\n\nThe West Wind Shrine is older than the world itself and every day, a little more of it surfaces from the ground. Its walls are riddled through with holes, eroded to an uncanny sheen and smoothness. The holes reveal glimpses of the luminous upper sanctum; the amber statues; the lanes of magnolia trees in eternal flower. \n\nAtop the shrine's low roof, you are surprised to see [[Cephiros]]. He crouches on a platform of glistening amber tile, staring up at the cloud-streaked sky. [[Several of his emissaries -- pigeons and doves; ravens and crows -- hunch beneath his large but flightless wings|Shrine]].

<center>-- 55 --</center>\n"Did you know?" the voices sing. "Did you know?"\n\n"I've heard a goldfish will grow as big as a shark, if you keep it in a shark-sized tank!"\n\n"I've heard it's legal to fistfight if you're an organ donor!"\n\n"Isn't that interesting!" they cry. "Isn't that interesting!" You realize they're teasing you, and you won't stand for it. You chase them down the halls, past the double lines of doors; past the laminated research summaries, the graduate photos, the recruitment posters, the newsletters all fluttering in an uncanny indoor breeze. The air smells of pollen. Lights flicker among the potted plants. Light strobes beneath the cracks of the floor tiles. The invisible people urge you ever onward. “Almost, almost,” they whisper. “Almost, almost!” they squeal.\n\nYou turn the corner to the front lobby. “Wrong way!” the specters jeer. Their voices fade to silence; the lights extinguish. Yet the smell of pollen still clings to your skin. In the lobby, you find no one, save one person: Marigold.\n\nYou feel your cheeks redden. What the hell is //she// doing here, at this hour? You take a step back, contemplating retreat.\n\nMarigold observes you from the corners of her eyes, staring while pretending not to stare. She crouches beside the faculty/student publication showcase, a stack of crisp new books gleaming at her left, a stack of old books moldering at her right. In her hand, she clutches a spoilt grimoire, its greenish pages oozing down her wrist.\n\n"Um, hi," she says at last, more to the floor than to you. "Were you chasing them?"\n\n"I don't know what you mean," you lie. "I was just on my way to the bathroom. The -- the one at my end of the building is out of order."\n\n"Oh," says Marigold. "I, um, don't guess -- once you're done -- that you could help me swap out the case?" She sets down the overripe grimoire; peers up at you through her long, stringy bangs.\n\n"The publication case is the responsibility of the thaumatobotany department," you snap. "Unless you overpower me in a duel, I'm under no obligation to help you."\n\n"Oh," Marigold says again. You turn towards the hall, but before you can flee, she jolts to her feet. "Fine!" she squeaks. "I challenge you to a duel, Melanie! Loser helps out the victor's department!"\n\nYou grit your teeth, for no coworker can rightfully refuse another's challenge. “I accept,” you say, “but watch yourself. I won't go easy on you just because you're a GA!”\n\nMarigold stands ready. You hear a trill of distant laughter; a voice crying "fight!" -- or perhaps it's merely the wind. Magical energies crackle around your fingertips as you prepare your spell.\n\nTurn to Page 59\n\n<<display "CYOA Shell">>

<center>-- 52 --</center>\nYou distract yourself from the voices with a bit of light whittling. With your letter opener, you carve a single pencil into a set of a extremely tiny but exquisitely detailed elves. Each elf has a different face; each wears an elaborate costume visible only under heavy magnification. Their eyes are graphite. Whimsical, eraser-pink bonnets perch atop their heads. You hide each elf in the potted plant by the window, beneath the yellow-spotted fronds.\n\nBy the time you're finished, the voices have fallen silent: you hear only the chirping of crickets, the scrabbling of the water-bugs, the hiss of the ventilation system. You lean back in your chair, satisfied. You carve more pencil-elves in contented solitude, until the astrology students descend from the roof and you can once more venture home.\n\nTHE END\n\n<<display "CYOA Shell">>\n

<center>-- 61 --</center>\nYou decide not to waste any further mental effort pondering the birthday customs of phantoms. Ignoring the voices, you break a stenography pad from its binding, tear it into strips, and divert yourself with some simple paper-crafts. You weave the strips of paper into a palm-sized dirigible. You outfit the dirigible with spinning cardboard propellers, a bell-shaped gondola, and a host of tiny, formally-attired passengers, each no larger than a grain of rice. You string together chains of paper stars and fasten them to the base of the gondola, where they trail like the tendrils of a jellyfish.\n\nYou open the window, wait for the breeze to swell, and toss the dirigible outside. It goes sailing into the night, its starry tail billowing behind it, the paper passengers dancing in their cabins. You watch as it vanishes.\n\nBy the time you close the window, the unseen voices have fallen silent; the astrology students are knocking at your office door. You gather your bag and your broomstick and fly home, musing over the transient nature of life and art.\n\nTHE END\n\n<<display "CYOA Shell">>

<center>-- 58 --</center>\nThen it's pointless: you'll never understand.\n\nTHE END\n\n<<display "CYOA Shell">>

<center>-- 57 --</center>\nYou realize there's no point in getting angry at specters: let them stew in their own ignorance for all that you care. You inhale deeply and focus on your breathing -- only on your breathing. Lungs fill; lungs empty. Your temper cools. The voices fade to silence. You hear the doors of the Old Lab open and close; you hear footsteps recede into the distance. The invisible people depart, and you are once again alone.\n\nYou pass the remainder of your shift with some easy handicrafts, nothing too exciting or strenuous. Unraveling a few boxes' worth of paper clips for materials, you sculpt a wire swan. You fashion a rudimentary nervous system from thumb tacks and a rudimentary muscular system from double-sized tape. You train the swan to fly in a circle; to strut; to transform into a winged princess and back.\n\nYou've just begun teaching the swan the fundamentals of ballet when the astrology students knock on your door. You tuck the swan into the light fixture above your desk. "Practice," you instruct it. "We'll get back to this tomorrow."\n\nOnce you've collected the students' exams, you retrieve your broomstick from its cubby and fly home, humming a bittersweet tune.\n\nTHE END\n\n<<display "CYOA Shell">>\n

<center>-- 60 --</center>\nYou switch off the lights of the Old Lab and return to your office, ignoring the fey laughter echoing through the halls; ignoring the prancing footsteps. You sit back in your chair and suppress your disappointment. What would you have done, even if you had found them? Yelled at them and left? You've let boredom spur you to foolishness: you have too much sense to go chasing spirits. \n\nYou drum your fingers against your desk as the laughter recedes into silence. You draw patterns of interlocking spirals all along the inner cover of your log-book. After several minutes, curiosity gets the better of you. You creep down the hallway and peek into the Old Lab. The cups and forks and extravagant cake have all vanished: only a single globule of sky-blue jelly remains. With a sigh, you shuffle back to your office. You spend the rest of your shift constructing little buildings out of stationery and rubber bands, until the astrology students finish their exam and you can once more venture home.\n\nTHE END\n\n<<display "CYOA Shell">>

You open the door and step onto a narrow concrete landing. Before you, a flight of [[stairs|Stairs]] -- water-stained and perilously steep -- descend into the depths of the ground. Enormous, neon-hued centipedes coil along the walls and ceiling, faint light pulsing from their eyes. <<if not visited("Centipede")>>One of the centipedes hums a familiar [[lullaby|Centipede]].<<endif>>

You return to your room and place the moth on your bedside table. You remove the sheet of paper from the glass.\n\nSlipping beneath the covers, you close your eyes. The wind wails; the loose shelf rattles. Something tickles against your neck.\n\n[[Then, at last, everything falls silent.|At Last]]

As you approach, your shadow climbs onto the rim of the basin. "Will you go swimming with me?" she asks.\n\n"I can't," you say. "My clothes will get wet."\n\n"But you're already wearing a swimsuit," replies your shadow. You glance down at yourself and see that you are, indeed, wearing a swimsuit -- a ruffled black top and board shorts patterned with constellations.\n\n"Listen," says your shadow in her quiet voice. "Each basin of the fountain leads to a different universe. All you do is dive into the water, swim through the drain, and surface on the other side. Will you go with me?"\n\n"How long is the drain?" you ask.\n\n"It depends," says your shadow, "but most take only a few minutes to cross. We could start with the shortest. That one there --" She points to one of the middle tiers of the fountain. " -- you can probably pass through in ninety seconds. Do you want to try?"\n\n"I can't hold my breath that long," you protest.\n\n"You haven't learned to breathe water?" asks your shadow with an unpleasant chuckle. "Of course not. I shouldn't have expected you to."\n\n"Most people can't," you say.\n\n"I can," says your shadow. "And I've explored every world connected to the fountain. At the end of this basin -- for example -- there lies a great lake dotted with islands. On the islands, there are nothing but abandoned buildings, but in the lake, there are people with the tails of shrimp and acres of coral-walled gardens, each one different from the next. Isn't that interesting?" She does not wait for you to answer.\n\n"Through //this// basin," your shadow continues, "You'll find a teapot as large as a castle, where a there lives a witch who can tell your future. In that basin, you'll find a silent cavern beneath a roof of ice, and at the center of the cavern, a single book bound in dove feathers, that contains every story that ever was or will be written. Through the highest basin, you'll find a world of airborne continents, full of bird-like people who have learned to fly, to cheat death, and to hear all the secrets of the cosmos."\n\n"Oh!" you say.\n\n"Will you go swimming with me?" your shadow asks again.\n\n"I can't," you say. "I can't."\n\n"Then why," your shadow demands, "did you even come over?" She dives beneath the water, leaving you alone.\n\n[[With one last glance at the fountain, the moon, and the endless, empty corridors, you make your way back to the surface.|Stairs Back]]

<<if $password is "Mare Marginis" or $password is "Mare marginis" or $password is "mare Marginis" or $password is "mare marginis">>[[You write the mock-unicorn's secret words, "Mare Marginis," and the pool erupts like a geyser, engulfing you in sparkling spray.|Secret Party]]<<elseif $password is "Titania" or $password is "titania">>A brief fanfare plays from nowhere and a small, glittering fairy emerges from the book. The fairy floats up high, phases through the ceiling, and disappears. [[Otherwise, nothing happens.|Guestbook]]<<else>>[[The ink vanishes; nothing happens.|Guestbook]]<<endif>>

The guestbook contains a single line of print: "What's the password?" A silver pen lies at its side.\n\nYou take up the pen and write: <<textinput $password [[Go|Password]]>>\n\n[[You ignore the empty guestbook.|Hotel]]

You linger in the mouth of the tunnel. "I can't," you say. "I'm not dressed."\n\n"Sure you are," says the bartender. "What's wrong with the dress you've got on now?"\n\nYou look down at yourself and see that you are, in fact, wearing a perfectly serviceable yellow sweater-dress. "Oh," you say. "But I don't have any money."\n\n"No problem," replies the bartender. "I just made the sale of a lifetime to that party down the road. Everything's on the house until dawn. So come in; come in!"\n\nYou hesitate, slink from the tunnel, and sit down on one of the cushioned stools. The bartender smiles.\n\n"I know you," she says. "You're that courier from the university, right?" She sweeps up her bangs, exposing a hole in her forehead, and inside the hole, a violet moth. "This is me in the waking world," she says, pointing to the moth. "You've seen me before, haven't you? I'm usually at the front of the Library, by that lamp at the check-in desk."\n\n"Maybe?" you say. "I'm not really sure." The bartender lowers her bangs, looking genuinely hurt.\n\n"I-I mean --" you stammer. "I mean, I probably have. I'm just not that good at recognizing people. Or moths. Sometimes I think I might have that face blindness thing. So I've probably seen you."\n\nThe bartender waves away your excuses. "Don't worry about it," she says. "It's not that big a deal. I just thought ..." She sighs, and runs a finger along a purple wineglass.\n\nFor a moment, you stare at the bar in awkward silence. "Um, anyway," you say, hoping to re-rail the conversation.\n\n[["I'm not really a courier, you know."|Bar2]]\n\n[["Whose dream is this?"|Bar3]]

This game originated as an attempt to create an exploration-style Twine: there is only one ending, but the player can choose the order in which they proceed through sections of the narrative.\n\nOnly one section of the game varies based on what you have or haven't visited before. The rest remain more or less the same regardless of when you visit them.\n[["Tell me what the conditional section is."|Hint1a]]\n\nThe game contains one secret.\n<<if visited("Secret Party")>>[["I've already found it. Show me the Cast Page."|Cast]]<<else>>[["Tell me what the secret is."|Hint2a]]<<endif>>

Grey light filters <<if visited("CepEnd")>>through the blinds of your bedroom window<<elseif visited("Shrine")>>[[through the blinds of your bedroom window|Shrine]]<<else>>[[though the blinds of your bedroom window|Window]]<<endif>>, illuminating the room in fragments. The light catches on the contour of a mirror, the edge of a drawer, <<if visited("Bookcase")>>[[an old book's|Unreal Literature]]<<else>>[[an old book's|Bookcase]]<<endif>> pockmarked binding. The dials of <<if visited("Radio")>>your radio<<else>>[[your radio|Radio]]<<endif>> glisten atop the black silhouette of a desk. A single <<if visited("Doll")>>doll's eye<<else>>[[doll's eye|Doll]]<<endif>> floats disembodied within a formless mass of shelving. Smudges of light daub the walls and <<if not visited("Wind")>>smear the [[bathroom door|Bathroom]].<<else>>ceiling.<<endif>>\n\nOn the far side of your room, the door to the hall yawns open to a dense and textureless expanse of darkness. In a shadowy corner, <<if visited("Shelf")>>a lone shelf<<else>>[[a lone shelf|Shelf]]<<endif>> rattles from the force of the torrential winds outside.\n\n<<if visited("Wind")>>A strange symbol flickers on your [[bathroom door|Other Bathroom]].<<endif>>

[[Wait: is it "Sandy" or "Sandhi"?|Utopian5]]

<center>-- 64 --</center>\n"Did you know that most people only use two percent of their brains?" the voices titter. "I've heard a pigeon will explode if it eats rice!" You realize that they're willfully provoking you, and you don't appreciate it. You chase after them, down the hall, out the back door.\n\nA burst of night air washes over you, and you shiver. A dense mist hangs over the gardens. Diamond-bright beads of water drip from leaves and gleam atop the nodding flower-buds. Water glazes the pebbled walkways. All around you loom the pale, domed sheds containing the growing vats; the splicing circles; the summoning machines. Each building shines with dampness, pearl grey in the glow of hovering witch-lanterns. Beyond the sheds rise the silhouettes of trees -- feathered weeping-wood and singing pine and ornamental healer's-broom -- the edge of the arboretum.\n\nAn eerie white light flickers among the trees. Leaves crunch beneath countless feet; song and laughter echo from the depths of the arboretum. You dash down the pebbled paths, and as you approach the fringe of trees you can -- for a moment -- discern the shapes of people: a crowd of youthful and nearly-human beings, some wearing lab coats, some wearing thick, round glasses. Their long, white hair tangles down their backs; white fur tufts the tips of their pointed ears; from each of their foreheads buds a single luminous horn.\n\nThen, the mock-unicorns disappear; the light extinguishes; the laughter and song fall silent. You stand alone in the mist, the only sound the rustling of the breeze; the only light the dim grey glow of the lanterns. You stare into the arboretum for a long time, until the chill of the night becomes too much to bear, and you turn back down the path, bewildered.\n\nTHE END\n\n<<display "CYOA Shell">>

In your dream, there is a dragon,\nOn whose wings gleam seven eyes.\nFrom its face's sightless sockets,\nFeathery antenna rise.\nYou recognize the lunar moth\nIn its fantastical disguise.\n\nScales as soft as dander flutter\nFrom its flanks and lofty head\nDown onto a cairn of rubble,\nBroken slabs of bloody red\nLaced with shards of glass and steel\nInscribed in languages long-dead.\n\nThe dragon shifts as though to lunge,\nBut settles down and speaks instead.\n\n"I hate this place!" the dragon rages.\n[[The tempo of your dreaming changes ...|Dragon]]

All around you loom broken columns and fragments of colossal sculpture. The columns are furred in red moss; rust-water trickles through the ground. An enormous marble torso slouches in the distance, and along its back grows a long-neglected garden. In the base of a nearby column, you see a [[black door|Stairwell]] engraved with a hexagon.\n\nA full moon hangs in the sky, surrounded by pulsing ruby stars. Ahead of you, a <<if visited("Eating")>>dragon<<else>>[[dragon|Eating]]<<endif>> sprawls along a hill of rubble. Behind you, a [[dirt path|Hills]] leads away from the ruins.\n\nAt the foot of the hill of rubble sits a [[silver box|Box]].

"If you're almost always here at the Shrine, and Lune is almost always at the Library," you ask, "how did you meet each other? And how would you meet now? I know you said you'd talk to her, but I don't want you to have to cross town just for m-- just for that."\n\n"Actually, Lune and I have never physically met," says Cephiros. "Not in this world or the previous one. But she often visits me in my dreams."\n\n"In your, um, dreams?" you ask.\n\n"Yes," says Cephiros. "Lune holds dominion over the world of dreams, and can travel between dreams at will. I see her fairly regularly -- at least once or twice a month."\n\n"Oh," you say, not sure how you would feel about Lune, or anyone, periodically invading your dreams. "And you're okay with that?"\n\n"I doesn't bother me," says Cephiros. "Lune and I only share so much in common, but it's nice to speak with another immortal from time to time. If I were asleep, I could call on her and ask her to retrieve her lost emissary. Of course, with this wind, that may take some time ..."\n\nLeaves whip through the air; cold wind seeps through the window. "Would you maybe have an easier time sleeping inside the Shrine?" you ask. "Where it's warmer?"\n\n"I don't think I would," says Cephiros. "It's not the cold that keeps me awake, but the restless energy of the wind. And I prefer to be outside, near the light of other minds."\n\n"You could sleep in my apartment," you say. "On the floor or sofa or something. I have room."\n\n"That's kind of you to offer," says Cephiros. "But I don't think I could fit through your window without breaking it. [[Though if I might impose in another way?"|CepEnd]]

<<if visited() gte 2>>Switching on your lantern, you open the ruined folklore textbook and riffle through its pages. The whole book is blank, save for the choose-your-own-adventure story Lune's emissary excreted between pages 51 and 66.\n\n[[You read through the story, hoping it might calm you down.|CYOA 1]]\n\n[[Really, you're in no state of mind to concentrate on reading: you set the book and lantern aside.|Room]]<<else>><<if visited("Wind")>>You switch on your battery-powered lantern and flip through the blank pages of what was once //A Survey of Folk Lore and Literature//. No trace of your forgotten lullaby, or of any of the book's original content, remains. You do, however, discover something interesting -- fifteen sequential pages, numbered 51 to 65, that still contain print.\n\n<<else>>Lunar caterpillars eat writing and excrete transmuted text: this is how Lune's precious unreal literature is formed. Leafing through the blank book, you discover the emissary's leavings -- a mere fifteen sequential pages, numbered 51 to 65, that still contain print. <<endif>>The pages, having passed through the caterpillar's digestive system, no longer resemble the contents of a textbook. They've transformed into some sort of choose-your-own-adventure story entitled "Voices from Beyond: Another Tale from the Graveyard Shift."\n\n[[You read through the story, hoping it might calm you down.|CYOA 1]]\n\n<<if visited("Wind")>>[[You switch off the lantern and set the book aside.|Room]]<<else>>[[You switch off the lantern and set the book aside.|Wind]]<<endif>><<endif>>\n\n\n

<center>-- 54 --</center>\nYou sit on the dirty tile like Cinderella, swapping out old books for new. Some of the old books rot at your touch: their pages flake; their bindings soften to the consistency of jelly and smear all over. They've only sat on the faculty/student showcase for a month or two, but the magical energies bound within their pages cause them to deteriorate quickly without proper care. No one at this office is paying a librarian to scrub and seal display copies, so here you are. Papery slime clings to your gloves. A few lines of arcane poetry have dribbled onto your work pants. With your luck, they'll probably stain.\n\nIn the distance, you hear the invisible people singing birthday songs and shrieking with laughter. The invisible people are always in the distance, always unreachable. Most of what they say doesn't make a lot of sense: in fact, you think one of their pastimes is inventing nonsense. Right now, it sounds like they're having some sort of ironic conversation about urban myths. They're competing to see who can say the silliest thing.\n\nYou like listening to the invisible people. They make you feel less alone. Even if you can't see them or touch them or talk back to them, it's nice to know that someone out there is happy.\n\nYou wonder sometimes if the invisible people are ghosts. Or maybe the people in your world -- even you -- are the ghosts and don't even realize it. Maybe their world is the real one, and you -- all of you -- are just spirits seeping through to where you shouldn't be. These are the things you wonder about when you're alone.\n\nYou straighten the new books on their starry-patterned displays. You stack the old books on the floor, in oozing, quivering columns. The clatter of footsteps wakes you from your daydream.\n\nMelanie -- know-it-all Melanie -- skids around the corner. She sees you; makes a face like a startled cat's.\n\n"Um, hi," you say, when Melanie remains silent. "Were you chasing them?"\n\n<<display "CYOA Shell">>\n

<center>-- 65 --</center>\nYou sit by the banks of a nameless stream. Night birds sing in the velvety dark of the forest. Fragrant, flawless white berries ripen in shafts of moonlight. You stare into the water, at the sleeping carp and beds of polished stone. There are only carp in the stream, for only carp are immune to the purifying toxin of a mock-unicorn's horn. You shift on your cushion of moss; white flowers twine around your ankles, drawn to the intangible warmth of your aura.\n\n"Did any of you ever want to visit the other world?" you ask.\n\nAurora laughs. "We just did, didn't we? We do all the time."\n\n"No," you say. "I mean, really visit the other world -- all of it. The parts where the forest can't reach. Not just that ..." You wave a hand in the air. "That witch laboratory or whatever it is."\n\n"I think it's a witch university," says Luster, weaving a garland of berries. "Or a witch satellite campus."\n\n"The other world's the same all over," says Aurora. "Full of witches, boring gardens."\n\n"You don't know that," you counter. The white flowers join in your defense. They arch their stems; snap their stamens. You and Aurora both giggle at the ridiculous display. \n\n"Seriously," you say, swallowing back your laughter. "You've never wanted to?"\n\n"I've thought about it," says Arcelius, from his ring of silver toadstools. "Even tried it once. A while back, a giant moth gave me this spell of inversion -- said it could flip a person from one world to another and back again. I couldn't get it to work, though."\n\n"Right," says Luster. "And I learned a spell of soldering from a twelve foot tall mantis with a blowtorch."\n\n"I'm not kidding," says Arcelius. He wraps a hand around his horn, so he can only speak the truth. "I met a giant moth, and it told me this so-called magical password: '<strong>Mare Marginis</strong>.' It said if I wrote that down in the right place, it would flip me over to the other world. But when I tried it, nothing happened. I wrote it in a least a hundred places, but nothing."\n\n"Sounds like that moth took you for a ride," says Luster.\n\n"I was thinking of something more scientific," you say. "Like with wormholes or cosmic strings. Who would trust a moth, anyway?"\n\n<<display "CYOA Shell">>

"Beautiful dreamer, lovely to see,\nNot even moonlight can compare to thee.\nStirred by your soundless, sweet melody,\nI'll chase the stars to the far sunless sea."\n\n[[Wait.|Wait]]\n

You turn the dials, but no matter how you adjust them, the shower-head produces no more than a dribble of lukewarm water. Glowing letters materialize on the glass: "Error -- Insufficient Light." You switch off the water and the message disappears.\n\n[[You suppose you'll have to go without a shower.|Other Shower]]

You pull out a chair and sit beside the radio, hoping a bit of low music might help you relax. You turn up the volume just loud enough to hear; you leave the station dial untouched, tuned, as it usually is, to 108.1 At The Top ("the best trip-hop, glitch-pop, and dance; home of the newest trance, EDM, D'n'B, hardcore, and more; fresh from downtown, the dopest sounds, etc., etc.," a relatively new station that you like, but figure might not be long for the airwaves).\n\nSound whispers from the speakers -- a man's voice, unaccompanied by music. "Okay," says the man. "We've laid the bird breast-side down, and now we're going to take our shears and cut along one side of the backbone, from the tail up to the neck." You hear a series of sharp pops, the snapping of delicate bones. "We'll want to cut through all the ribs," the man continues. "Then we'll start along the other side of the backbone ..."\n\nYou recognize the man as the host of Kitchen Lab and the Kitchen Lab Radio Program -- chef what's-his-name. You've listened to this episode before: it's a solstice feast edition, the one where he explains how to spatchcock a turkey. Of course, you originally heard it on 90.3 Public Access, which you thought was the only station that aired Kitchen Lab. You glance back down at the dial; confirm that it's tuned to 108.1.\n\nYou have no idea why an EDM station would broadcast re-runs of a cooking show at any hour, but listen all the same, as the chef drones on about butchery and the virtues of turkey-bone gravy. His bland voice has a quality not unlike that of a gently-humming fan or running showerhead: it lulls you to temporary calm. Your heartbeat slows; you take a deep and soothing breath. For a moment, you forget about <<if visited("Wind")>>lunar moths, rattling shelves, or sleep<<else>>the gale outside, the rattling shelf, sleep, or the wordless lullaby<<endif>>.\n\n"Good," says the chef. "We've removed the backbone and the fat cap. We've pressed our turkey down nice and flat. Now's our next step." You cup your face in your hands, waiting for him to continue on to roasting pans, oven temperatures, and the intricacies of carving. But the chef says no more. [[The broadcast cuts to static.|Utopian1]]

<<set $figcount += 1>>You kneel down to the flower and pluck out the figurine, which is molded in the shape of a four-armed woman. The woman's skin is grey as stone; her eyes are like an insect's. She wears a cap of feathers and a robe encrusted with the houses and civic halls and grand museums of a miniature city. A forest of orange trees lines the hem of her robe. A dove's face peers out from her cap. In one hand, she holds an amber circle; in another, a silver half-circle; in another, a transparent crescent. Her forth hand holds nothing, and hangs open in a gesture of welcome.\n\nThe woman stands on a round base etched with ocean waves and two words: "The Familiar." You place her in your pocket and feel her flutter against your chest, as though breathing.\n\n[[You rise to your feet, but before you can step away, a high voice calls out "Thief!"|Toad]]

A giant emerges from the rift in the moon -- a four-armed woman, silver-skinned and draped in iridescent robes. The giant unfurls wings of shifting color. As she drifts to the earth, she removes her painted mask, revealing eyes like shards of night, a smiling mouth, a pale and downy face. The mask shrinks as she touches it; transforms into a string of colorful stones. She loops the stones around her neck, atop her black scarves and beads of silver.\n\nAs Lune descends to the ruins, her emissary gives one last cry of dismay and sheds its disguise. The dragon shrivels to an empty skin. A tiny moth flutters out from the mass of dull scales and desiccated eyes, and lands in Lune's outstretched palm.\n\n"I'm sorry, Miss Courier," says Lune, as her feet touch the earth. "But you know how my emissaries are: always curious, always finding their way where they shouldn't be. How might I repay you, for returning my emissary?"\n\nYou take a step back as the ground shakes and the stone slabs crumble to dust. "Y-you don't have to," you say. "I didn't really do anything."\n\n"You did," says Lune. "You called me. I insist that you accept a reward."\n\nStars rain down like dying coals. The broken sculptures liquify. "Then could you wake me up?" you ask. "If that's okay?"\n\n"You can wake up on your own," says Lune. "You're waking up now. What's something //I// can do for you?"\n\nYou stare at the ground, avoiding Lune's dark eyes. As liquid marble pools around your feet, the forgotten lullaby -- absurdly, inexplicably -- surfaces in your mind: "Beautiful dreamer, la la la lee ..."\n\n"Maybe," you say, "you could tell me the words to the song in my head? The song I've been trying to remember?"\n\nLune tucks the moth into the shimmering folds of her robes. With another hand, she strokes her chin. "I can see you're going to be stubborn," she says. "Tell me: what's wrong with the words you came up with yourself, or the ones my emissaries gave you?"\n\n"N-nothing," you say. "Only, none of them were the real words. I was wondering what the real song was -- the one I forgot."\n\n"Ah," says Lune. "I'm afraid I can't give you anything 'real,' as my powers only extend to unreal things." She toys with her beads of silver. "How about this? Since you're having trouble thinking of a reward, I'll decide on one for you. Is that alright?"\n\nYou try to answer, but find you can no longer move or speak. The ground rolls like the surface of an ocean. The moon sinks toward the horizon. "I suppose it will have to be," says Lune, "since it seems you're on the verge of waking."\n\nYour vision begins to darken. "Farewell!" cries Lune, her voice rising above the clamor of rumbling stone and falling stars. "I'll see you in other dreams!"\n\nThe moon crashes to the earth. [[Everything vanishes.|Morning]]