Don't Forget to Dream

If you forget to dream in limbo, you'll never escape. It doesn't matter so much what your dream is or who it involves. You have to keep longing for something different, for escape. If you ever dare breathe the air here and forget to choke, if you stop noticing the explosions in the sky, if you begin to think the oily, gnarled heads of vultures are as it's always been, then you're lost.

Atreyu knew. He trudged through the swamp and refused to rest, to forget his mission for a moment. He tried to keep Artax moving, but limbo is simply too much for a horse not born here. The horses born here have a fine mesh over their nostrils and black eyes. Some of them lack faces altogether. Artax was doomed from the moment he placed hoof in wet sand.

Most come here and die slow deaths. Their souls mildew in the humidity. Their brains atrophy in the relentless sun. They lose all sense of linear motion. They develop orbits. Point A no longer has any possibility of leading to Point B. Point A leads to Point A leads to Point A in a constricting cocentric circles.