Waking dream

Darkness so all-encompassing that I think I can touch it. A moment ago the city was brightly lit, but now I can't see my own hand in front of my eyes. A power outage? How blind I stumble through the street. I'm on my way home because now I have my own home again. I just don't find it. Am i drunk And where the hell is the moon when you need it?
As if on cue, children's laughter from school around the corner. Now? At this time?

There's no moonlight in the window
The moon's gray clouded face
Every night an O speaks

Because it's terrible what he sees here
That he screwed up his mouth in shock
How is the world full of fear and fire
To kill what is dear to him.

You find yourself on the edge of the night
You who made up yourself.

They sing and laugh and don't seem to know any fear, despite the bizarre nursery rhyme that sounds out of their mouths.
I keep walkingI'm slowly making out shadows in the dark. Houses. Street lights. The bench on the edge of the tiny little park, right across from my front door. My front door! At last! I dig for the key in my pocket, feel for the lock, but my fingers are touching concrete where the door should have been. Where the fuck is my home?
Suddenly there are steps in the darkness that come closer and yet seem far less threatening to me than the singing children. Light. Light that lives. A little living flame

(... full of fear and fire
to kill what is dear to him.)

who seems to be drinking water from the hand of the slender, almost thin figure to which the steps belong. I can hear the steady drop of water as it escapes through the leaky vessel in the palm of my hand and slaps onto the floor. "Your home is here, but you are still a little blind," I hear the suntanned boy say.He has my brother's voice, but it lacks the soft, thoughtful undertone that always crept into his every comment.
"Marco?" I ask anyway.
"Not quite. Try again. Blue eyes, not green." He holds the fire between our faces.
Lavandes candle, it shoots through my head. I remember her face, which is far too close, and I shudder. Does she still have to persecute me after her death, even though she no longer has access to my physical being?
His eyes are blue, just like hers, but they are not unfathomable like hers and not ice cold like hers. Rather, they make me think of the pleasantly cool sea water in summer. His features

(shouldn't he be paler?)

don't belong to the boy I grew up with. How then? He's finally dead. However, I know him, I just can't remember where from.
"I can't figure it out," I say resignedly.
"What voice did you give me?""What ...? Sorry, I can't follow you ..."
He puts a stone in my hand. Bottle green. Theeye ​​of Orion, but it looks different. The free, round shape has given way to a cut stone, round in the base, but sanded at an angle towards the edges, so that a hexagon has been created around the circle. On the smooth, round surface there are letters that look like an alphabet made of snakes. I can't read it. "You read from my lips. It just feels like I'm talking. Mute as a fish. Do you remember now?"
I have to grin and at the same time am a little ashamed of having forgotten someone who stood by me in such a pleasant, unobtrusive way when I urgently needed the presence of a sincere person. I make two awkward gestures with my hands, surprised that I can still do them. "Water" and "rat".
“Exactly, the Chinese water rat.” He grins in turn, waves the flame towards the house and the door is back.“Welcome home.” The light disappears, but the water in his hand does not run away, but continues to run as if it came from himself. He raises both hands in front of his face, as if he wanted to drink it. "Now make sure you wake up before this turns into a nightmare, too. Oh, and by the way ... You have sweet blood, but it's toxic."
He blows across the open palms of his hands so that the water splashes on my face. One of the drops runs down my neck where it feels kind of wrong. Too ... thin, too warm, too ... pulsating? My throat is as if constricted when the single drop of water becomes a small trickle. I know that the liquid is no longer clear, but red. Blood red. The night and the house silhouettes give way to my ceiling, the almost palpable darkness turns out to be my bedding and something crouches above me that clearly has the back of a human head, in whose hair I have clawed my fingers, in a desperate attempt to pull it away and with it my neck to get free, because this something, this someone, bites me.My uninvited guest drinks my blood as the living flame has drunk the water. And suddenly begins to tremble terribly, as if shaken by violent convulsions. The grip on the foreign jaw loosens. All that remains is a weak, throbbing pain and a slight nausea, which is probably due to the loss of blood. My attacker seems to be pulling himself away by force, while I still don't quite know what is happening to me. "Damn it, a ... dragon ..." it penetrates my ear. "Yes, a dragon. Well, I'll do it," I reply nastily, too dazed to understand what I'm saying.