Roger didn't really eat his breakfast that morning. He broke the egg yolks with his fork and traced idle designs of yellow over the rough surface of the toast.
"Do you not feel well this morning, Master Roger?" Norman asked, his voice calm and slightly soothing as usual.
"No, I'm just not hungry. It's not that the food is bad… you always cook well… I just don't think I can eat right now."
There were a couple moments of silence at the table as Roger continued drawing on the toast and Dorothy chewed her own softly.
"What day is it, Norman?"
"Why, I believe it is Sunday. Why, Master Roger?"
"No particular reason. Just like to keep up with the rest of the world, even if there are no such things as fairy tales."
With this, he left the table and went to his bedroom to change. Normally he ate breakfast in his warm, freshly pressed suit, but this morning he had been far too lazy to do much more than haul himself off the floor. In truth, he wasn't feeling too well, but this was no time at all to come down with some type of sickness. He laced up his shiny dress shoes and closed the door behind him.
He could have easily made the trip in half the time by driving the Griffon, but this morning the car seemed large and awkward, and out of place in the snow covered world. So instead he allowed the cold to embrace him, allowed his face and eyes to be stung by the wind and to let the powdery snow cling to his boots as he made his way to the inner part of town.
You could still see the single tree from far away. Trees were becoming a rarity in the world these days… there was less and less green and more and more grey. There seemed to be a sort of light coming from it… an odd, warm type of light that seemed to remind him of something people had lost.
No one really came outside these days, he observed, and he doubted it was solely because of the winter chill. There was something hanging from the roof of the dome that protected the city – the dome that kept them all "safe." Or, anyway, they people that they thought counted.
Roger found himself recalling the saxophone player and his blind girlfriend that he'd met not too long ago… in a course of events that seemed to lead up to…
To what?
They had both been very nice people, he remembered… but something had cast them aside and they had nothing. How could they have been so happy with what little they had?
He envied them and their happiness. Everything he could ever need was inside the stately mansion, he had a well-paying job and a decently respectable position in society… so why was he so discontent?
What had he lost?
What had humanity lost?
Corners and cobwebs of his odd dream haunted him as he crossed the deserted streets. He stopped occasionally to read the lipstick-smeared messages all over cars… houses… people who had been killed in the recent crime spree. Sometimes they more of vanished than died… but everyone, even Dastun, seemed to have given up finding the culprit. Things seemed unnaturally like a television with bad reception… the people who were actually out on such a cold day seemed to be speaking a foreign language as he made his way toward his destination.
What had humanity lost? There had certainly been something before… but…
Now, there were no dreams come true, no fairy-tale endings. There was only life and what you made of it. Or what it made of you.
He snow littered the streets, blowing and mixing with itself, coating the greyish slush that had been there before. Eventually it was gone, and the world was coated in an unbroken blanket that seemed to tuck it in, nurture it like a mother, and keep it safe. The snow stuck in the branches and the needles of the tree, frosting it like a candy in a shop.
…candy?
What's that?
Where do I know that from…?
The old building was almost unrecognizable underneath all the snow on the roof. It seemed to cover the holes in the tiles rather than fall through them, and he could see a warm glow coming through the window.
He opened the large, carved doors to join the people inside… only to find there were none.
I heard them, though!
…they were singing!
There was a lone, shadowed figure standing by the altar. It raised a delicate hand and made an annoyed gesture.
"I was wondering when you'd get here, Roger. You sure took long enough."