The wind sang between the pillars of stone, all surrounding. Shadows stretched to their very limits before my feet. I smiled and breathed in the warm evening air. The sky danced with a dizzying swirl of violent fiery shades as the sun slowly retreated behind the horizon.
"Wow," I gasped. "I never knew how beautiful it was at this time of day."
"You don't have such colorful sunsets in your world?"
"Heehee! No, we do! I just usually sleep through it..." I ducked my head bashfully. That's the kind of thing that a child would say.
"Really? You have never stayed awake through the dusk? Never once?"
"I am sorry, but of the many things I am impeccable at, exhaustion is not one that I was designed for!" I blustered, flapping my wings excitably.
The wind scattered much of the fog surrounding his features, but not enough to expose that blinding expanse of flawless skin; the precise machinery of his jawline. Again, I was denied its witness.
"It's alright. I don't feel like I'm missing much. The sunrise is just as breathtaking, anyhow." I took off in a lazy spiral around the closest sky-rending tower of stone.
The wind aided me as I climbed to the very precipice, but not by much. I was thoroughly exhausted by the time I reached the very tip.
I alighted on the narrow circle of earth that jutted impudently; as if just large enough to accommodate my slender frame, for my convenience. The sun seemed higher from this vantage point, casting ripples of heat and stark contrasts upon the gleaming tips of the earth before my gaze. It appeared almost as a limitless field of stars, the closer you peered into the horizon.
"You know, you could go blind if you keep that up." came a voice directly behind me. I nearly jumped right off the edge in surprise!
"Goddess above!" I screamed, flapping my arms to re-center myself on my slender perch. "You almost frightened the breath of Gaea out of me!"
I looked back to view my compatriot emerging from the same pillar that I was hanging from, albeit the opposite side. It looked like his torso was simply halved, or forced through some hole behind it.
A dizzying illusion, for sure. The pillar at this height was no wider than a wicker basket! There was no space for his abdomen to fit, let alone his lower body!
"H-how did you do that? I was not even able to hear you approach me from below!"
"Oh, this? Hah, I must apologize. I'm sure it must appear quite strange from your perspective." I nodded exaggeratedly; enough that my entire torso rocked to keep me stable. Strange was an understatement if there ever was one. "Haha! Will you cut that out?"
"No." I continued bobbing my head wildly since I knew it amused him so. He reached over and placed a hand on the crest of my head, stilling my motion.
Little did he know that this was my plan, all along! I trilled brightly, and waited for him to continue his explanation.
"My powers are limited in this place, but I still am able to travel freely within the shadows of the pillars you have so generously imagined for me."
"Me?!" I cried aloud. My voice echoed hauntingly amongst the unrelenting cavalcade of towers surrounding us. He flinched like he was expecting something to fly out of the distance and consume us both whole with the attention. How horrible a place his home must be, to instill such pointless reflexes!
"How can you be so sure that this is my dream?! For all I know, you are the one who has trapped me here!"
"If it were mine, then I would be able to control the state of the world. Have you ever heard of lucidity?"
"I-I am... afraid not."
"I would imagine so. It is the practice of executing conscious control on your unconscious abstractions. It is a technique invented much later than your culture reached its peak within."
"I'm sorry?" I do not know why I felt the need to keep saying this thing. I was not very sorry at all!
"What do you mean, 'cultural peak?'"
"Yes, I was getting to that. You had asked me earlier how I happened to know so much more than you, about our respective worlds. This is because my paradigm is much older than yours. Many believe it is the eldest perspective of all. My history goes back to the very moment of creation!"
"Wh- But that doesn't mean anything at all. I also know how the world was formed. Khaos herself—"
"Spit up Gaea, and her light gave birth to Uranus and the Primordials," he completed for me, impatiently. "Yes, yes, you all have your creation myths. It is by design, that you were made so. They all have a few similarities, and they follow a basic formula.—My formula. Because they were based on us! Humans wouldn't be able to believe it, otherwise."
This was NOT the kind of revelations that I was expecting him to give me, after all this. I could not believe the audacity of his statements! My entire world, my philosophy of thought and order; but a pale imitation of someone else's?
"Um, but—" Yet, there was nothing I could say in my defense. He compared my whole world like the fable of Gilgamesh, before. If I were but a story told frequently in his world, then it explained how he knew so much about me, before I even introduced myself! "I don't... Wait,"
"Don't worry about that too much. You exist because the men of my world believe in you; same as me. Without the faith of humankind, we would cease to exist!"
"What do you mean?" I pressed carefully, not wanting to exacerbate the headache that I had already begun fostering.
"We are all just figments of the human's imagination; always have been, and ever will."