The Twelve Kingdoms

It’s an idea that’s been coming up for a very long time. It is the result of a dream. I am inside an icy little house, I open the door that goes onto a winter outside. A quiet early morning, a starry mist welcomes a sun that announces a cold day. There is a road in front of the house, which a hedge partially masks. An alley allows us to reach it. I walk to this road, open the gate surrounded by two wide and low columns. A soothing calm reigns. I turn to the house. I seem to be alone. No neighbors, a house lost on a road that doesn’t seem to have a direction, especially since it forks quickly, and on both sides, into the forest opposite.

As I close the door, I notice the two columns of ice. They are overly broad. And you can see through them. In each of these columns, a petrified body.

I had this dream 20 years ago. I saw it as the beginning of an adventure in a phantasmagorical universe. I imagine this universe composed of twelve kingdoms sharing a circular island, with an oblique horizon, as if it were sinking, like a beached ship, into the abyss of a stormy ocean.

I also imagined this island turning, from time to time, with a crash, as if it were driven by a faulty clockwork mechanism. The twelve worlds that occupy this island are in decline. They could each have the colors of a sign of the zodiac.

Last night, among the many windows of my dreams, I thought about these worlds. I don’t know what to do with it yet. What could be the adventure of it? However, I would like to write it down. I’m listening. You have to follow your dreams, they say. Mine are very talkative, and all speak at the same time. I’ll come to understand something of their gibberish.