(A CCWC Short Story Entry PROJECT:) Dreams
#Dreams
One dark and cold morning a man lost everything, his home, his family, his village. He was thrown down onto a blurry mix of mud and dirt, too weak to even move his eyelids. A warrior stood over him. With a looming darkness and a steady hand on his hilt, the warrior walked ever so slightly toward the downed man. The warrior put one leg onto the dying man's body and drew his sword. The dying man reached out toward his burning village, to see his past memories one last time; he looked back up toward the warrior with disgust and a terrible sense of un-accomplishment. After a quick strike nothing but darkness surrounded me, and I awoke from my dream.
Day after day, I wake from a different dream, with each having its own characters and its own story. I see their entire lives, from the moment they are born to when they die, every single detail; I can smell their hair, embrace their feelings, project their actions, and every night it's always new. All of them were so different from each other, but they had one thing in common: they had a reason to come back. How can they? I do not know, but whatever it is, their memories, their life force, the reason for their existence through me gives me a strong yearning of indescribable wonder. I want to learn more about these people, but I don't know if they're alive, or if they're even real...
I can't help but ask myself if I'm like these people I see in my dreams? All of them have something they needed to finish, but they died before they had a chance to do anything about it. And when someone does come back, they're in new bodies but the last remaining traces of their past selves are their memories. At first glance they seem like mindless walking beings, but because they have these memories, they are human. They say that siblings have a special connection between each other, to the point where they can feel if the other is nearby. I haven't felt that emotion in a long time, but ever since those dreams, I faintly feel it's dismal presence. It's a nostalgic feeling, one that surprised me one morning as I frantically looked for him in the darkness of my room...
My computer screen rings back to life from the sleeping grave, showing a notification of an update. I cover my eyes trying to hide the shimmering luminous death rays entering my eyes. I find a small pool of drool next to me, wiping the last thing human about me with a tissue, I hear soft mumbles from my headphones. I listen to hear what it is and it was just the stupid news talking about things they think are interesting. " ... corp are upgrading the current models to Version IV ... augmentation now infused with ... this is a breaking point ... technology!" Already board 3 seconds in, I fling my headphones off taking a long stretch. As they float in mid air twirling around, they manage to pick up a few things with them, one of them being my brother's picture...
I lost my brother years back to a beast, a savage one at that. It dug its tusks deep into my brother's stomach. I did all I could to get the beast off of him, but nothing worked against it. Cold blood spewed onto the ground like a waterfall. Within minutes it was over; I slowly watched my brother take in his last breath, and with an exhale of blood, his last light... I do not know what my brother wanted to do, but I get this feeling every time I enter those dreams, I swear this has to do something with my brother. No other emotion can break the system within me like this, it just feels like he's still alive somewhere, out there...
"I know you're out there, Caleb. The memories make me, they make us, feel human again..."
#A few words: Hello!, this is my entry short story for the CCWC contest. If you haven't already guessed it, my story is set in the alternate universe (main character being Quinn) where we see the PROJECT: skins and I try to explain (in a way) how it "work's" in futuristic Runeterra. Yes it's kinda of hard to mix Myth and Legend with the PROJECT: series but my mind just went off when I thought of the idea. When I saw the "leak" from Reddit about the next upcoming skins (one of them being PROJECT: Quinn) and just recently falling in love with Riot making alternate universe's like the Starguardian event (with their own lore!), I came up with the idea of at least trying to make a Myth/Legend about the PROJECT: skins. This is my 2nd "official" post ever on boards so please forgive me if I do anything wrong/weird. Thanks for reading!
#My critique for Community Outreach: