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[lockless_key]

Fingers wrapped around a steaming mug of tea, I shivered despite the steam radiating from the liquid and the blanket I was wrapped in. It was quiet in my tiny apartment, since Tara found herself a little place and this place was too small for a roommate, anyway. But I'd never lived alone before. It was a little weird. Lonely-ish

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[jarethlaughs]

Hoggle had found me somewhere to live. Of course he had. It was nothing more than a room in one of these high towers; a skyscraper. The name pleases me. But of course, it is more than just a room now.

My kingdom travels with me, you see.

I sit on a chair that is, at once, both a plastic (strange word) seat and a throne, looking through a window that reflects both a dark city sky and a pale autumn horizon. All things and none. I can hear falling leaves, and I know she is near sleep. I close my eyes, and find her.

She is walking through my city. Abandoned in this dreamscape I have given her. I don't want her meeting goblins, not today. I want her to myself. I have made this place full of silence and still time. The clock is not moving; but then, it has not moved since it struck thirteen, long ago.

I watch her for a long time. The way she walks. Child-woman, is what she is. Why I have always loved girls about her age. They still have wonder, but there is a lovely madness in the tilt of their hips. Oh - I knew a woman

[lockless_key]

It seems like I've been walking for hours, but when I look up at the sky, it's still dusk and there's no sun by which I could mark the progress of time. It's just a dream, anyway, what does it matter how long I've been here? I'll wake up in the morning just the same

[jarethlaughs]

In the manner of dreams, of course, I can be both outside the door and within it. So I see her drumming her fingers and tossing her hair, and then I can be within the room when she opens the door, thinking of me.

It is not the ballroom. Not yet. The ballroom... Is special. Sacred. We are not yet ready for that... We have only just met, after all. The ballroom is too deep in the heart of things.

This is just a room. I am wearing my black mask with the great beak, and my clothes are black and spangled. I did not change, of course; I simply know that this is how I must look here, and so I do. I wonder if I seem forbidding or exotic. I hope for both. I sit on a stone room in a room lit only by the light from windows very high up, long slits in stone. There are dead leaves all over the floor.

"Ask one question. If I like it, I will give you an answer," I say. "If I do not... I will ask you a question. You may not have the answer."

[lockless_key]

When in dreams, you're supposed to go through doors that open in front of you. But for some reaosn, I hesitate. It's too much 'this is supposed to happen'. Too... planned, or something. But this isn't an ordinary dream. And I think if I turned around and tried to leave, all roads would lead back to this door. Or maybe they wouldn't, maybe I'd keep wandering without finding a way out so I'd have to find my way back here because we wouldn't want it to be easy, oh no.

So I go inside.

And he's there, of course, the Goblin King, with his throne and his mask. Dead leaves crunch under my feet as I walk, and I stop about halfway to where he's sitting. The room is dim, but not dark, airy, but not cavernous.

No ordinary dream, indeed.

"Ask one question..."

"Okay, I'll play. Why am I here?"