Gallant

The master of the house stands at the garden wall.
It is a grim stretch of stone, an iron door locked and bolted at its center. There is a narrow gap between the door and the rock, and when the breeze is right, it carries the scent of summer, sweet as melon, and the distant warmth of sun.
There is no breeze tonight.
No moon, and yet he is bathed in moonlight. It catches the edges of his tattered coat. It shines on the bones where they show through his skin.
He trails his hand along the wall, searching for cracks. Stubborn strands of ivy follow in his wake, questing like fingers into every fissure, and nearby a bit of stone breaks free and tumbles to the ground, exposing a narrow slice of someone else’s night. The culprit, a field mouse, scrambles through, and then down the wall, over the master’s boot. He catches it in one hand, with all the grace of a snake.
He bends his head to the crack. Fastens his milk-white eyes on the other side. The other garden. The other house.
In his hand, the mouse squirms, and the master squeezes.
“Hush,” he says, in a voice like empty rooms. He is listening to the other side, to the soft chirp of birdsong, the wind through lush leaves, the distant pleading of someone in their sleep.
The master smiles and picks up the bit of broken rock and nestles it back into the wall, where it waits, like a secret.
The mouse has stopped squirming in the cage of his grip.
When he opens his hand, there is nothing left but a streak of ash and rot and a few white teeth, little bigger than seeds.
He tips them out onto the wasted soil and wonders what will grow.

“In my dreams, I am always losing you. In my waking, you are already lost.”

“When I am dreaming, I know that I must wake. But when I wake, all I think about is dreaming.”