Silas had spent thirty years mapping the spaces between places—the voids where roads vanished and stars flickered out. His current task was the most elusive: a map of the city that existed only in the moments immediately before sleep. A difficult assignment, as memory of it faded with wakefulness.
He sat in his attic study, surrounded by inkwells and compasses that spun wildly when he got close to a breakthrough. Tonight, he felt a tremor in the air, a certain thinning of the veil between the waking world and the one he sought to chart. He sharpened his quill.
Closing his eyes, Silas let the familiar city architecture dissolve. The map in his mind unfurled: streets paved with forgotten promises, buildings constructed of old songs. He began to draw: a twisted spire there, a marketplace where you could trade a year of your life for a perfect memory there. The ink flowed with unusual speed and certainty.
Suddenly, a massive, yawning emptiness appeared on his mental landscape—a blank space that threatened to consume his entire map. It was the place where all his dreams of a finished life had gone unrealized. The void began to bleed onto the parchment.
Silas realized, with a jolt of panic and clarity, that he wasn't mapping a place before sleep. He was mapping his own mind just before death. The map was his legacy, yes, but it was also a farewell.
He dropped the quill, ink spotting his old fingers. He didn't finish the map. Instead, he simply added one final line of fine script at the bottom of the parchment, in the only clear space left: "Here be dragons, but also, here be peace."
Silas finally fell asleep, the half-finished map safe beside him.
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