HYPNAGORA

II.

Traveling is like freefalling. You lose your sight and for a moment you struggle to catch your breath, but eventually you arrive. You are lying prone on grey cobblestones. You try to move but a terrible vertigo is still pulling you back to the ground. You just surrender and lay on the ground for a few seconds. Slowly you manage to see what is surrounding you: human- and dog legs, buildings that were once colourful but now are grey and black – maybe it was just time that did this, maybe the mould or a war, because you see some holes in the walls of these buildings. You are holding onto this sight and finally, you can stand up. You find yourself on a square. Strangely familiar… especially the fountain. You walk towards it. You see that it’s out of order, the water in it probably dried out years ago. Yet there is something: a strange paper butterfly circling around it. You read the text inscribed on its stone pedestal: HYPNAGORA 

Okay,  you’ve been here before, you know this place. Except for the fact that it’s rather different now. That’s fine, let’s look around.
The first thing you notice is the skeleton building behind the fountain… It’s the Library of Future Memories. The institution is completely open in a sense; only the building’s outline remains. You can see inside the room with the  books all around and stairs going up to a catwalk corridor… No walls, no ceiling, yet none of the passersby bats an eye on the physical paradox that is before you. 

There is a bus station on the eastern side of the square… There are a lot of people are there and everybody seems to be panicing:

– Where is my bag? Have you seen a green bag?
– shitshitshit I’m not  going to  catch the bus!

– Help, someone tried to attack me in the  bathroom! 

– This is not even the place where I supposed to be! Damn it!

And somehow all of those angry and anxious people look a bit like you. 

If you turn 180 degrees you see a building partly ruined, but you can still see some letters on its triangular facade ‘NATIO…L TH...A………..RETS’

On the southern part of the square in front of the fountain is a temple. Small and cosy, with an unusually welcoming energy vibe surrounding it. It seems to be an old, old catholic church with a wooden door, and a circle-shaped tin window that once might have been rose window.¹⁵

On each side of this small church is a narrow street; the one on the left even has a sign with an arrow pointing toward the end of the street: Fortress of Reflections.

But still, the other street to the west of the little temple still seems much more familiar… From where you are standing you see a huge wall painting with two dancing cranes on it… You know that you’ve seen that a hundred times, and some weird temptation calls you to that building but can’t recall why you have been there…