When her voice disrupted the silence that hung between his last breath and her first, the weight in the pit of his stomach dissolved like snow in the water. He was in disbelief again—did he imagine it? Was he so lucid and was his loneliness so deep-seated that he would imagine a companion in which to converse with at this impossible hour? And then she spoke again—this time, his name. Zahhāk.
Yes, she was real. He could never dream of his name pronounced in such a way—so deliberately annunciated, tested out like a new flavor on her tongue. It gave him chills. The short, thin hairs on his haunches prickled with anticipation of the unknown. Eden.
He stepped towards her too, almost automatically. It was as though his legs were not a part of his body, like he was watching all this from the bottom of a pool with the water rippling above, distorting his perspective. Zahhāk took a deep breath, distancing himself from the tumultuousness of his thoughts and focused fully on her. Her voice. Her question.
He didn’t know why he was up. Not truly. He admitted it without hesitation. “I don’t know. I don’t sleep much.”
Or perhaps he wasn’t awake much. He didn’t actually know the difference anymore. Maybe there wasn’t a difference. Maybe it didn’t matter.
Maybe he was still dreaming.
Zahhāk
There was madness in any direction, at any hour.
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