the zeppelin of burning dreams

Perhaps the most enigmatic figure aboard the zeppelin is the tiger behind the wheel. What mold created him, stuffing into his now-brittle bones the power to pacify the almighty dreams of kings?

Old daydreams say that he, himself, was once a dream during the days before the zeppelin plied the skies. In fact, he was an escaped nightmare. His roar could have flattened cities in a matter of seconds, and his daggerlike claws could butcher thirteen cows before the sun changed position in the heavens. And he hungered for the blood of dreams.

During the daytime, the tiger would sleep on the branches of high, bigwood trees. He did not waste his energies on meaningless daydreams that frolicked under the light of the sun. His prowess was for the blissful delirium and monstrous nightmares that prowled the corners of the mind at the cusp of night and morning.

A segment of the higher dreams - Bliss, who dwelled in the brightest of dreams and could deny you her gift, should she wish it; Lucid, who could remember everything from since man began to dream; Desire, who was as beautiful as she was deceitful, and could grant you one wish then choose to destroy you; and the chieftain of the Higher Order of Dreams' delirium elite, Linnaeus, who was power himself, and was eternally in homeostasis as a shimmering elara of light - collaborated to destroy the tiger. There was no masking the threat of a mad dream on the loose. There were some things a mind cannot take, and broken dreams was one of them.

"Why do you destroy dreams?" asked Desire. The tiger was sleeping in a cypress, playing lazily with two squirrels. The four other dreams were underneath the tree.

The tiger did not chase dreams when the sun was out. And after all, this dream looked a bit too frail to be one of his prey. "Have you heard of the tale every old dream is wont to tell every so often? About the manifestation of a dream so vivid, so real, that it could control every other dream, tether it and destroy it, if it need be?"

"You talk in riddles. What does this old wives' tale have to do with the massacre of dreams?"

"I once dreamt myself." When a dream dreams, the dreams are never just neural impulses, release from the system of the world. Their dreams are often messages, insights into the world of dreams and reality. Dreams do not often dream.

"In that dream, there were hordes of creatures - hordes of dreams - before me, and I was set upon the task of destroying them all. These dreams were violent dreams, dreams that killed the dreamer."

"I was told, in this dream of dream, that in such a manner would the eternal dream come to life. That somewhere, a dream held the key to the eternal dream. And that I were to obtain it by destroying the wilder, stronger of dreams."

Linnaeus, now shaped as a gladiator, appeared from behind Desire. "That may be, but you must still suffer the consequences of your previous actions. No matter how noble your motives are, there are some lines that should not be crossed."

No matter how powerful the tiger was, Linnaeus was energy pure and true. His claws could not get to him. And he was still in the daytime, where the power of nightmares was quite lessened.

Then Linnaeus had the tiger pinned to the ground. Bliss struck out with a dagger, intent on destroying the tiger; however, before the blow was dealt, the tiger let out a howl, wishing, with all his might, that the sun would come down.

Desire was a deceitful creature; the tiger's cause had caught her attention, and now, in the heat of the battle, she had granted the tiger's one wish.

As the sun sank below the horizon, the tiger's deafening roar carried throughout the hills, louder than it had ever been heard before. Two neighboring towns that were in the path of the roar's energy were razed to the ground; Linnaeus, being pure energy, could only be destroyed by another source of pure energy. The roar had disintegrated him in seconds, along with an arm of Lucid.

The dagger of Bliss and the fangs of Desire hit the tiger simultaneously. As all of his happiness drained with the poisonous bite of Bliss, he took comfort in knowing that upon destroying the creature Linnaeus and destroying a part of Lucid he could now bask in the dream chieftain's full power as well as share in the full memory of the long-lived dream.

Even as the fangs of Desire sank deeper into the nape of his neck and his eyesight failed him as he lost consciousness, his face was in an ironic grin. With Lucid’s memory, he now knew where the eternal dream could be found.