Somebody's taking the train to sleepytime junction

Despite your earlier intentions, the moment you experienced downstairs has ruined your appetite for carnal pleasures. Your body feels heavy and your mind is blank as Trannelis leads you to your room. She doesn't question you, or even speak that much for that matter, as you go through the motions of preparing for bed. Either she's not in the mood anymore either, or she's giving you a bit of space so you can deal with the strange feelings you're wrestling with. As you lay yourself down in bed, she excuses herself from the room, claiming to need a nighttime stroll, but you know she's just trying to give you some time alone. You lay in bed for a while, as the minutes stretch on, trying to make sense of it all.

You miss your mother. There's really no other way to explain it. Half formed memories keep pouring their way unbidden into your psyche, each one tinted with a melancholic nostalgia. You remember her smiling face, her long auburn hair, the familiar smell as she hugged you. At the time, you never really appreciated how much she gave away to you; few members of the nobility had such a connection to their own children, preferring to have them be raised by tutors and servants so they could focus on the endless task of being noble. But your mother wasn't like many nobles. You heard a bit of gossip once, from a couple of the chamber maids, that she wasn't even that noble; an insignificant daughter of a tertiary branch of a minor house, with barely any land to their name. Maybe that's why she was so loving; after being raised so close to the common people, she'd probably have a greater appreciation for the simpler things in life. Or maybe it was because out of decades of marriage, you were the only child of the house, and all the love she could have spread between a full home was spent on you. But in the end, it didn't really matter why she was the way she was. She was your mom. And you loved her.

You broke yourself free of the thoughts. Crofton loved her, you reminded yourself. And you were still yourself, right? You never knew this woman, you'd never felt her motherly care.

But it's with a heavy heart that you find yourself drifting into dreamland. Even if she wasn't your mom, you had to admit, you kind of missed her now too.

You open your eyes, and with a begrudging acceptance, you realize the world now makes even less sense than it has recently. You're standing in a vast expanse of blackness, punctuated occasionally by small beams of light, no larger than a quarter in width, shining through the darkness like holes in a bed sheet. And standing there, at an indeterminate distance in the expanse of nothing, was a man, or something approximating that shape. He's covered in... or perhaps, made of, a soft blue light. The light seems to permeate his being, so much so that you can't make out his features or what he's wearing, if anything; it's all just kind of fuzzy and blue, like an out-of-focus long exposure photograph.

"What the fuck?" you ask, quite reasonably.

"A fair question," the man responds, holding his arms out in a grandiose gesture. "I do apologize to bring you here, but the walls between realities are growing ever apart." He gestures with a fuzzy blue arm at the surrounding pinpricks of light barely shining through into the darkness. "We have much to speak of, and little time to do it I'm afraid. Not that time means much at the moment, but that's the nature of these things. Or will be, in any case."

"Okay, what the fuck though?" you insist.

He nods. "Yes, I suppose introductions are in order," he continues, barreling through your commentary. "It's a pleasure to make your acquaintance, even if we technically know one another already. I'm you, you're me, and we're both being each other for a while, in a manner of speaking."

"THAT DOESN'T HELP," you reply, frustrated.

He laughs, a deep but friendly chuckle. "No, it wouldn't, but I couldn't not say it regardless. Allow me to elucidate on the matter." He steps towards you, his boot heels (if he's wearing boots) clicking against the... floor? "The thoughts and memories you've been having that you believe are not yours, are not yours at all. Rather, they are me. But, then again, I'm you too, but only sometimes, and you're not me in return." You know there's a smug smile on his smug blue face, even if you can't make it out.

"Fuck, dude. Are you Crofton?" you ask, exasperated. You are starting to feel a little fatigued having to listen to this guy, even though you're pretty sure you're asleep right now.

He pauses for a moment to consider the question, then continues. "I suppose it would make more sense if I spoke as though I was in your perspective. You see, you were called here by someone I believe you would refer to as Crofton, were you aware of his existence at the time. When that entity brought you into this world, he left behind the essence of his wisdom and knowledge to guide you, lest you make a mess of the world he was leaving."

"And that's... you?"

"More or less," he replies, stopping only a few feet away from you.

"But you're me?"

"Well," he says, a little offended, "I suppose I was twisting the truth a bit there for poetic license. Sometimes I've taken over the processes of your body, you see, to avoid undue calamity and confusion on your part. But what's more interesting than that, and more pertinent at the moment, is your relationship with Crofton. You see, Crofton and you are one and the same, separated and divided by the dimensions of time and space. As you exist, so does Crofton, concurrently occupying the same metaphysical space, but physically somewhere else entirely." He held a fuzzy blue finger to his chin. "Or, to put it another way, you and Crofton are two versions of the same entity."

You shake your head, trying to ignore the fatigue in your body. The more he spoke, the more tired you felt. "So, we're like... magic twins?" you settle on, after some deliberation.

Somehow, you know he's sneering at you. "If you want to remove all the fun of it, yes. You're like magic twins."

"Oh. Cool, I guess."

"But if that was all I had to say, then I wouldn't need to do something as imprecise as appear in your dreamscape," he continues, the smile (or rather, smirk) coming back into his voice. "You see, our time here is about to come to a close, my friend."

"Like, I'm going to wake up?"

He shakes his fuzzy blue head. "No no, not our time here," he elaborates. "I don't even technically exist, you see. I'm simply a convenient metaphorical creation of psionic magics that the one you call Crofton created to allow you some wiggle room to adapt to your new environs. I am merely the tutorial guide to the wondrous world before you, and with the barrier between you and Crofton growing stronger, I won't be able to hold your hand as much from here on out."

"W-wait, I just fucking met you! I... I didn't even know anybody was helping me! I thought I was going crazy, or I was possessed or something! And now you're bailing on me? I still don't know dick about shit!"

He nods. "Be that as it may, I cannot extend our time together even if I wanted to. When the connection between you and Crofton closes, so too does the magic accompanying me."

You feel yourself growing heavier, as though you can barely keep standing in the dreamscape of darkness. The fatigue you felt before is now bordering on exhaustion. Looking around, you now realize that the holes the beams are shining through are shrinking, and the beams are getting thinner. "But... what am I even supposed to do here?" you ask, as you weakly struggle to keep your feet.

"Oh, that's simple!" he replies, the smile heavy in his voice. Or maybe it just seemed that way, what with how the words seemed to echo in your skull as you fell to the floor. "Make the world around you better, and the people around you happy. I thought that was obvious!" he continued, as your body slumped on the ground.

"You are a wizard now, after all."

You wake up the next morning with a moan, as a tiny beam from the morning sun hits your closed eyes through the curtains. You go to reach up with your hand to cover them, only to find that it was currently pinned to the bed by something heavy.

Cuddled up to you is Trannelis, her head resting on the crook of your armpit, her body nuzzled up against yours. She's wearing her chest wrap along with a pair of leggings, which probably was what underwear consisted of in this weird semi-medieval world. She smelled wonderful, like a field of flowers in an enchanted glade, her fragrant tresses of golden blond hair cascading all around her. As you look at her, her eyelids flutter open, and she looks up at you adorably, her eyes filled with that hint of confusion people have when they first wake up.

You've got a lot of bullshit you're currently trying to deal with, but this? This kind of makes it worth it.