A Rain of Dreams – Part 1

Hopefully, I shall reach a point where things calm down a little bit, and I can get into a routine where everything goes smoothly and I can get some serious work done.

Updates: I didn’t get the job I was so certain I had obtained.  I guess because I suck?  No idea the why’s behind the situation, and honestly I probably never will.  Maybe I reminded them of a cousin they hated?  Or I wasn’t fourth for the interview?  No way to tell, and honestly it’s just another situation that has blown up in my face.  I’m getting pretty used to personal hand-grenades on a regular basis, sad as that is.

In addition to embarking on my journey to authorship, I’ve also started down the road towards becoming a streaming / podcasting personality.  I’ve obtained a rather magnificent microphone, with a setup that is appropriate for having a tiny human running around.  He is destruction in potentia, so appropriate cautions must be taken.  I look forward to these journeys, as they shall do nothing but serve as more practice for my writing ability.  Especially when it comes to dialog and character development.

I’ve also got to share.  Since I have joined the writing community, I have met some of the most incredible people.  It’s been awe inspiring just how hard many of these authors hit the keys, and I cannot wait to fully join this fellowship.  I am writing as much as I can, with as much thought and effort as I can muster.  I know it won’t be perfect, but it’ll be present.  And honestly?  That’s far more important.

So.  Yeah.  Stuff is on the horizon.  This month will see part four of Temple, most of, if not all of, a novella completed, and generally speaking a bunch of awesome.  Hopefully, if Trump doesn’t kill us all, I can get something good going for a change.  Silver lining on my mushroom cloud, if you will.

I was eleven when the Somnomancers went public.  My parents laughed at the television programs at first.  They found it ridiculous that in an age of satellites, cellphones, and the Internet, that people would still be willing to believe in magic.  Or worse, to give such magic credence by posting stories in major news sources.  

Yet the Somnomancers wouldn’t go away, and what they were doing was nothing short of miraculous.  They alighted upon the perch of the overstrained and underserviced world of mental health patients.  And from their vantage, they offered their arts, free of charge.  Those whose minds were beyond the help of medicine were their clients, and the results were a wonder.  Alzheimer’s, bipolar, schizophrenia, and major depressive disorders; the worst of the horrible afflictions of the minds stood no chance against them. 

They would spend a week, never more, never less, working with these patients.  Day and night, they would never sleep.  They stood sentinel over their dreams, and during the day helped them readjust to the radical changes that came daily.  Families were reunited, facilities were relieved of over-booked stress, prisons were emptied of those who should never have been confined, and nursing homes no longer had to medicate their charges insensate.

For five years, all was bliss.  The Somnomancers never charged for their service, and never refused a patient.  They were in all cities, setting up shop in older buildings they purchased with government assistance.  They accumulated no wealth, and sought no worldly possessions.  They lived only to serve, only to save, and only to reunite loved ones.

Those affected not only regained their faculties, but it was rumored they gained more than they had lost.  Men and women of all ages rejoined the world with vigor and purpose.  They never went to the same area, most often wading back into the frays that their infirmity had taken them from.  Business, food service, government service, arts, music.  They would not be denied, and they were driven by an inner fire not to waste the gift that this second chance represented.

They became captains of their field.  With a renewed purpose and an unflappable nature, all of these rekindled members of society laid down the foundations of monumental achievements.  In a scant two years, so much of our technology had improved.  Our governmental functions begun to function flawlessly, and astounding advances in reclaiming and recycling waste had begun to flourish.  Trash became a hot commodity, and was no longer dumped into oceans or churned into the earth. 

We should have known then that nothing good comes without price.  The adults, reveling in a time of plenty, must have known deep down that something was wrong.  The Somnomancers had asked for nothing; not power, not wealth, not even status.  They lived and slept in the most humble of circumstances, and worked ceaselessly day and night.

Five years to the day from their first miracle, Hell came to visit.