"Suddenly I have life. It's strange to have a past, a future... and yet be born in the present. I could say that I always think deep thoughts like this... but I don't know if that would be the truth. But I'd like to believe it's true. A new voice... pounding in my head. An echo shadowing my every word. A second, uninvited person. I should be confused... I should be questioning why this is. Who is it? Where do they come from? What do they want? ... Those are the questions I'd ask if I didn't already know the answers. They can read me like an open book. Literally. And I can hear them... feel them... their eyes running over the words I speak. I'm a character. A work of fiction? No... I'm more than that. I'm not a shadow..."
Lazarus stands solemnly, arms at his sides... head down. It was raining; a symphony of pitter-patters amongst the contours of his body and the gloomy landscape. It was as if the focus of a camera was being adjusted. The horizon slowly melts into view as if it was being painted by an unseen hand. A city. A city breaking the binds of normalcy and logic. One comprised of dreams, desires, and nightmares long reserved. A utopia that could only come to fruition should someone... imagine it.
Buildings. Canyons. Forests. Desolate plains. Ruins. All of these melded together to form one surreal echelon of inhabitable land. Lazarus gazes upward as futuristic architecture sprouts at his feet and towers over him, conjoining with anything in its vicinity. A mesh of time and space.
Silhouettes of people flicker all around him, ghostly, faceless, outlines, quickly replaced with living, breathing, human beings. This world was being built from the ground up... and Lazarus was in the midst of it all in a slumber like state.
In time, everything is as it should be. Everything is normal. People rushing off to work, vehicles rushing by. Laz simply looks over his shoulder, taking in the scenery like he had not previously seen it; like it was something brand new to him. Which would not be too far out of the question.
"... So this is home," he mutters under his breath. He looks to the sky... the sun bleeding its red-orange amidst clusters of clouds, from behind various structures. "... This is your doing..."
He pockets his hands and starts walking, brushing shoulders with passersby. Each step he takes sends ripples through his surroundings as if he was treading atop a surface of water; the frailty of the newly created city still on the line of existence and non-existence.
Several moments pass, and the ripples die out. The city was whole... solid. Lazarus keeps his pace, walking a street gutter to the more rural edge of this utopia, wherein a large cape overlooks nothingness. It is there that he joins up with another individual. A girl sitting at the edge of the promontory with her right knee drawn to her chest. Like Lazarus, this girl bears dark, almost black hair and piercing green eyes.
He saunters up next to her, overlooking the abyss of which the cape towers over. Oblivion in every sense of the word.
"Someone's doing this," she says, looking up at him.
He nods in response and lifts his chin to what he thought was a presence beyond his own.
"It's someone out there, sis," he says.
"Someone out there. Someone watching us. Our every move. Right?"
"...You can feel them, Adonica?"
"A little. When I speak... there's an echo. When I move... a ghost follows. That's them. Isn't it?"
Lazarus crosses his arms as his hair flutters in the breeze. He was not the only one who could feel this Presence.
"I see words," he begins, sitting down next to her. "And when I see the words... our world changes. It's what we say. What we do. What we see. Like a book."
Adonica looks over at him, trying her best to hold stray strands of hair that waft before her eyes at bay.
"Then we're characters," she asks curiously. "Character's in a book?"
"... Characters...," ponders Lazarus. "... I don't know."
Adonica looks back out to the oblivion around them. It slowly manifests into an ocean... static and inanimate. Violent waves cover the surface, frozen not with low temperature... but by the absence of true subsistence. With it, arrives the horizon and a deep orange sky.
"... Where are we," she asks with a frustrated tone. "This is our home. But I... I don't know where it is."
Lazarus reacts to the situation coolly considering his thoughts were similar to Adonica's own.
"Words make pictures. This is our home. But we've never seen it. Think about it, sis. Can you remember anything before now? This point in time," he asks.
It was obvious that Adonica was truly trying to think of something. Anything.
"... I can't. Why can't I," she yells.
"Because our world wasn't here. Like that ocean, it all just appeared. The words that I see... the echoes that you hear... that's someone or something reading what should be. Our world... our home... it's in Them. In Their head. It can be explained in a million different ways but in the end it's what they get out of it, how they see it, that makes this world how it is," says Lazarus.
"Why are you so calm? How do you know all of this," asks Adonica.
"I don't know," says Laz. "We're connected. The Reader and I. They're just as confused as we are. Watching... Reading. Wondering where all of this is going to lead."