Topic: Perchance to Wake

Adhamiel

Date: 2008-06-30 01:18 EST
Upon the porch of the Inn he stands, watching wistfully, yet without flinch as the incomprehensibly infuriated Melantha buries her fist against unyielding wood beside his shoulder. Eyes widen as she folds Dream and storms through into the unfamiliar swirl of energy. Black brightens with delighted comprehension, and, placing the silver acorn upon his tongue, he swallows. Head tilting back, eyes close, and reality folds around him as

There becomes here becomes there becomes...

Dream. The curl of a fern spirals down into ivory, deep ivory roots sprouting up in the sickle arch of a dragon's horn, blossoming with cottonwood sheep to drift off on a field of amber sunlight, where an ancient, trapped spider with a grandmother smile spins nets of web to catch silver smoking candle fish that taste of nursery tales and a child's sleeping sigh....Chill flesh wakes to gasping, breathless darkness, and turns, and sleeps, dreamless.

New. Different. Wondrous. A whisper drinks from the well of Dream.

Cat becomes rabbit becomes roast darting through shadows of the memory of grass and alleys of overwhelmingly rich scents. Claws flail against stone become smoke become air and the dog wakes, confused, to huddle beneath the shelter of a porch and wait, exhausted and unsleeping, for dawn and familiar hands to dispel the memory of darkness and nothing.

Drifting. Wandering. Watching. Sipping at the edges of phantasmal fragments of fleeting reality. A new scape to stir curiosity, to taste and to feel, to explore. So vivid.

Walls of halls and rooms, a house without windows that never ends, too real to be easily dismissed by the dreamer. Faces, hands, never twice the same of other wanderers, unliving figures recognized, but never met. Something to be found, sought, needed - but something unidentified. A familiar form, the well-known features of a never-seen stranger and the shock of wonder that he should have come to be among the unliving. A hope, anticipation, the dream-certainty that the object of weary searching is near. A breath of difference drawing at the edges of walls of halls and rooms, swallowing the endless house. A heart stutters as the woken sleeper jolts upright, panting with the premonition of insomnia and the need for bright lights to chase back the night.

Here becomes there becomes here becomes...

The reflections of Dream lingering in wide, wondering black eyes as he studies the reality about him. Rhy'din again, though nowhere he recognized. Rotten wood crumbling from a foundation of sturdy stone walls, tangled with the strangle-vines of ivy and moonflower. Stone cobbles thick with a carpeting of fallen leaves and needles, dropped within the building's frame through the roof that had fallen in at some point in the distant past. Decay had created a rich mulch, providing rooting for flecks of greenery. Gaze unfocused, Adam sinks down to a seat upon the still-sturdy stone hearth-bench, drawing his knees to his chest and wrapping both arms around them. Head falling back against the bare wall, he smiles to see the spangle of stars above.

Such a nice night.

Adhamiel

Date: 2008-07-02 00:33 EST
Evening glory and ivy weave about each other, cascading over stone and straining upward to touch a shattered starscape through the gaps of the ruined roof. Leaf mold swells the air with pungent scents of death, feeding the scions of the giants whose leaves had fallen there to rot, and night dances around Dusk as Adam stands among the ruins, black eyes reflecting no gleam from scalding pinpricks violating the pristine darkness of the sky. Unfamiliar chemicals leech through his reality, a velvet shroud to muffle starving senses, splintering without warning to reveal his surroundings with excruciating clarity. Desire. Curiosity. The scent of night-blooming vines coats empty air within the shattered house.

There becomes here becomes there becomes...

The lucid dreamer weaving dream within dream within dream, familiar paths, familiar fantasies. Wealth, sex and power, all within the reaches of the sleeping mind. A stir within sleep, and a frown folds the face of the somnolent body. Muscles spasm, hands grasp sharply to still a fall that the body doesn't feel. Fear scents the room, heavy on the warm night air, and for a moment dream tastes the scent of nothing. The body in the bed relaxes, muscles slacken, breathing continues slow and steady. Not lucid, nor dreaming, nor waking.

Confusion. Desire remains, curiosity grows. The dream had been stale, but something had been different. It had not simply vanished when he touched it, but had tried to change. Still, it had been deeper than the others he had seen, and the confusion fades into the chocolate velvet of distraction as he reaches, and tastes. Tastes, but doesn't touch, and satisfaction wells as the dream remains whole.

A forest path, the deck of a heaving ice-ship. The forested slopes of an inverted mountain, grasses, water that ripples beneath an unfelt wind yet remains solid to the step.

Clumsily he walks the scenes of Dream, a skipping stone across the surface of sleeping minds as he passes, soaking in the taste of his surroundings. He pauses, and stares down into a pool of liquid darkness, where sleeps a dream undreamed. Scales slide across sinewy muscle, a sleek head lifts, another, another. Webbed claws churn viscous tar, serpentine jaws strike at the nothing. He reaches, and touches, and the dream is gone.

Bewildered, he turns to regard the mercurial landscape, spiraling in emptiness. 'Before', Dream stretches on, above, below. 'Behind', healing holes gape within the fabric of the Dreamscape, wounds that were the presence of now-dreamless dreamers.

Inquiry' Contemplation. Solution.

He coalesces, condenses. A dry rustle, the crunch of weight upon airy gravel. Black hair, black eyes, smoky skin, he walks on within Dream, part-apart of the reality around him. A though forms within hollowness, and Adam tilts back his head, staring up at the impossible sky. Others, an other, visit or live within this place. Perhaps eventually he will meet them.

Stars wander across the sky above the shattered house, and it waits with architectural patience. As dawn breathes morning to drown the starlight

Here becomes there becomes here becomes...

An interruption in the flow of the wind through crumbling walls. Mulch clings to boots that sink into it as he crosses to the weathered stone of the hearth-bench, slouching down onto it where the rising sun will soak deep into coffee skin as he whiles away the day in memories of Dream.

Adhamiel

Date: 2008-07-07 21:09 EST
Clarity. Dusk holds a lungless breath as nothing churns within healing walls. Dust sifts, unfalling, to cling to growing sapwood paneling that forms a scabrous patchwork against weathered stone. Confusion permeates starcast shadows, and night-blooming vines echo back the resonance of a singular question. Inquiry. Darkness simmers.

A splintered pane tings, the sharp protest of a crystal chime, and another strand glimmers in the glass spider web filling the eyeless socket of a window frame. Sound shivers through abandoned halls, and Dusk breathes as

There becomes here becomes there becomes...

Light. Sourceless, blinding luminescence, searing away the shadows behind eyelids, eating through flesh to bones to scour away marrow and leave them pristinely clean. Light, terror of the dungeon dweller awaiting the next visit, balm to the priest avowing preeminence of Sun and Star. She huddles, whimpering amidst inviolate Light, blinded by Dream and fear. She cringes at the growl of stalking Fire, awaiting the lick of its tongue to sear flesh and sizzle blood. The dreamers mind tortures the dreamer with dreams. Blind eyes stare sightless into

Darkness. The dank stench of blood, excrement, pain and fear. She gibbers tongueless, celebrating the death of Light, the death of her Dream, and waits. When Light returns, when the Jailor returns, she knows what to do. Darkness swallows Light. She just has to swallow the torch, swallow his Light, and then swallow him. Happy, mad, she crows.

Smoky skin reflects the unglow of false stars as he studies the ragged hole in Dream. Crouching, he strokes a tattered edge, absorbing tendrils that flutter as the wound tries to heal. So. Fingers curl, clawing across the fabric of Dream, peeling furrows in crystal blades of watery stone. Black hair spills across bare shoulders as his head tilts, studying the fabric of unreality as it seeks to heal itself. Already, the hole is shrinking. Satisfied, he turns his head and is

Otherwhere. Bare feet touch presumed soil, sinking deep roots into the stone of fantasy. Arms stretch upward, soaking in the starfish that flicker and fade without a wriggle of protest. Shoulders roll, spine tensing in a stretch as he drinks in the whisper of thought against skin. The rustle of feathers echoes back at him, and a child's smile graces dark lips. Outward, inward he stretches, condensing and reaching, tasting, touching. There. Answer. He steps forward into

Sandy air, warmly blue as it licks against crystal-dusty shoals of coral water. There. The dreamer walks undazzled as sunlight splashes against bare legs and ankles, sucking at feet with each wading step. Adam watches, part-apart, as the man leans back into the rippling surge of the skytide. Drifting nearer, he studies the bare, basking figure, answer, figment, confirmation. The human male genital prick is, indeed, nothing like the porcupine quill prick whose colliding meanings had confused him. Expansion. Satisfaction. He reaches down to touch air-splashed skin, and drinks in Dream and Dreamer.

Here becomes there becomes here and stops.

A hole gapes, unreality swirling around it as it begins to heal. Dream lies empty of dreamer and explorer.

Black eyes soak in the confines of a plush bedchamber as he crouches among rumpled sheets, alone. Slow blink.

Here becomes there becomes here becomes...

Growing walls, painted in the scent of night-blooming flowers and life-nurturing decay. The cool bite of weathered stone against a bare spine and the sole of one foot, the other trailing over the edge of Dusk's bench to rest on a pocket of damp moss. Loose silk pants flutter in the healing house's wind-breath, and Adam watches the stars wander past above.

Wondering.

Adhamiel

Date: 2008-07-09 17:45 EST
Quietly, weathered stone grows. Dust sifts from between blocks. A stubborn stem of grass, thready roots dangling, flutters down to the ground. Black tracks the fall, and dusky fingers reach down to claim the dislodged weed. They rub together, reflexively, empty. The bench bites, cool and gritty, against bare shoulders as eyes turn back to, not the stars, but the darkness between them. Fibers of wood stretch, strain, and connect between the broken ends of a support beam beneath the fallen roof. Binding together, they thicken with the patient perseverance of a growing tree. Dusk heals. Adam waits.

Moonlight slips over the edge of the growing wall, soaking into dark skin and getting tangled in black hair. A hand lifts, gray in the colorless beams, and he studies the effect solemnly. Bright black glistens, tiny claws scrabbling against stone, and he lifts his head to regard the bold rat inquiringly. Gradually, a smile occurs to him, as the tenaciously fragile life scrambles onto an ankle, scampering up to sit upon his chest before beginning a busy washing of ears and whiskers. His head lies back again, and starlight bathes bare stone. Dusk sighs.

There becomes here becomes there becomes...

Cerulean sky washing across skin and grizzled brown fur. The rat shrieks, diving off his chest to flee outward, the purring whine of a viper's head in rapid pursuit. The body uncoils behind, a knobby vine that sinks roots into a passing cloud, magenta leaves drooping to soak up sapphire dust. He watches, impassive. Living rat and dream serpent vanish into the eyeless socket of a decaying head, which severs the vine with a wink.

Dream stretches, fascinating, evolving, dissolving. He stretches, surrounded, surrounding. A thought surfaces, face, name, and he whispers it to the listening eyes that turn away so they won't hear.

Melantha.

Reflexively he reaches, seeks, and stops. "You won't be able to find it, and it's too dangerous for you to be taken there." So. She did not wish him to seek her, and so he will not seek her.

Wonder. Danger" Paindespairdestruction. Dreams flicker across perception; Bodies writhing among flames, minds crying that they cannot escape maggot-riddled bodies. Comprehension. Confusion. Denial. Reluctantly, he turns his attention to other curiosities. Lemming" Again he reaches, touches, and

A childwomanchild stands at the edge of a cliff overlooking stone waves. About the monolith of her presence, a tide of small, furred bodies fades into being and pours past, to plummet and vanish without a ripple. Contemplation. Consideration' Curiosity. The memory of an angry tone. "Who dreams of Lemmings"" He stands without, beside, and reaches, and touches. No lemmings, no dream, no dreamer. A hole gapes in Dream before him, ragged edges yearning toward each other.

Blank eyes stare up at a ceiling, seeing without seeing. She wakes, and shivers. Something is missing. Memory' Dream' Something.

Pleased, he wanders. Fantasy and nightmare fold around him, a soothing envelope of fragmentation. He comes upon a pool of liquid darkness, a new nightmare growing, fetal madness, within. Crouching, he studies it, as it studies him. Pale scales flutter, pale eyes staring blind as it swirls amidst the viscous ooze. He touches, and strokes, liquid recoiling from dark fingers as he shapes the fledgling dream. Four long, narrow legs, to end in blunt, clawed pads. A slender neck, curving up from flexible shoulders into the feline head of a serpentine horse. Fanged jaws gape in a voiceless cry, and the thing scrabbles away, fleeing into the ever-changing scape of Dream. His whisper follows it, and sears it with a name. "Juthamah."

He rises, and wanders on without further inquiry into what might have been left behind. Between steps, between thoughts

Here becomes there becomes here becomes

A colorless reality, more substantial than dream, yet in its own way equally malleable. Shades of gray, from the pale sheen of silver to the soot of charcoal, wash the warmth from dusky skin. He steps forward, and stillness spreads in rippling waves outward. It is a familiar place that he wanders, seeking, wondering. Where lies a path through shadows"

Here becomes there becomes here becomes

The claws of dawn hooking over the edges of Dusk's walls, limning in merciless detail the decay, still so far from healed. As gold touches green, it licks also across coffee skin where none had lain a moment before. Dust sifts, black eyes turn to stare into that harshest of faces unblinking, and, slowly, stone grows. Somewhere, somehow, a rat survives.

Adhamiel

Date: 2008-07-12 04:51 EST
Thunder purred. Wind hissed, and the sky wept rain over Rhy'din. Comfortably alone, he wandered, wondering. She was angry; At him. He was told to fear; He didn't. There was no anger, no sorrow, in aimless steps. Simply wonder. Confusion. And the velvet haze of unfamiliar chemicals veiling perception. He shouldn't have; He knew that, now. But she had wanted him to, and he had wanted to make her happy. He wandered, and the sky's tears ran in rivulets down bare skin, glueing pants to legs. Head flung back to let the moisture patter across his face, black eyes wide, he soaked in the heavy energy charging the thunderstorm around him. He wandered, and gradually he moved nearer Dusk, through the shambling streets of the West End.

Lightning flickered from black, crimson, black as the glow caught in the eyes of rats and reflected off pupils. Impervious to the rain they scurried, keeping company with the other detritus of the city; Dogs, children, less identifiable scavengers. Bare feet pattering against stone, in flight or pursuit, shadows within shadows within shadows. The lightning scalded them, elemental betrayal, to reveal glimpses of despair. A stiffened figure, cuddled close around arms tattered by the marks of the addiction that killed it. Bright eyes glinting as the cat raised its head from the corpse's shredded side, hiss lost in the snarl of thunder, a still frame in grayscale. A head turns, another, another. The two-legged pack slips loose from the rat hole of a doorway, stalking. He wanders, and the sky cries.

The flicker of shining silver, leather dull with the saturation of water, identifying patterns lost to the night. Hollow faces, pale empty eyes, graceful bones beneath skin leached of color by the lightning, rain-stringy hair plastered to skulls, teeth bared in a rictus grin of desperate confidence. A dull grumble from heavy clouds. Black drops to the darkness, tilting inquiringly toward the stiff-legged prowl of mad dogs. Silent, he watches them circle, testing. Silver shines bright in the last lick of electricity. Wide, wondering eyes lower to the stain across bare skin, but he makes no sound. Head tilting, he simply turns and ducks between the tangled vines sheathing Dusk's healing walls. In answer, a trickle of rainwater washes away a bit of wind-packed dirt, stone moaning, subsonic as it heals. One, two, then three, lean hounds slip into the ruin behind.

The storm, passed, left spreading stillness in air washed clean of the scents of city sloth. Roots drank hungrily, drips sang a soft music into dirty puddles. The sky no longer wept. Feathers rustled, a dry hiss in the relative quiet. Birds slept uneasily beneath eaves, scavengers took no notice in their pursuit of another mouthful far below. Snarling erupted, of dogs on four legs instead of two. A pair of mongrels slashed and snapped over a scrap of rain-soaked leather. Dusk breathed, the sigh of wind through cobwebs of glass in window frames and the gape of empty doorways. Silver shimmered, twisting in the breeze amidst dangling vines, night-blooming flowers slowly opening with the passing of the rain to spread their perfume.

Black shuttered by closed lids, rough stone bites into the skin of shoulders and back as he lies on the hearth-bench, fragmented gleams reflecting dully off golden ornaments, coffee skin washed gray by the colorless light. Fingertips rub together absently as the chest rises and falls slowly, steadily. Clouds reflect the city's light back down on it, but he doesn't watch. He neither dreams, nor visits Dream. Tonight, he simply waits for dawn and the clarity of unshrouded thought. And wonders.

Adhamiel

Date: 2008-07-19 16:45 EST
Through night, through streets, through shadows and star cast swaths of silver he flits. Light touches, and is not given back. This time, there is no storm to linger through, no wonder to indulge. There is only confusion. Feral eyes lift to drink in the starlight, but not a glimmer is returned from them.

Not until the weeds and vines of Dusk wrap around him, shielding away the temptation of the world beyond. Notsafe. Slowly, coffee skin reclaims the right to reflect light. More slowly, black hair catches star sheen and splinters it. More slowly, the darkening stain across previously pristine flesh fades, soaking back in. Black eyes do not remember how to reflect. Not yet.

Mine. Me. Come back, me. I need you to be mine again. I do not want to lose me, just when I found that I have me.

No scab, only a narrow line, dark mar. A reminder. Memory sears, and words simmer to the surface.

Bleeding usually hurts.

So, this is what hurting feels like. It is strange. I thought it would be bad, I thought it would break what is me. But it is just another feeling. I have become too real. I cared. I liked. And she hates me for it.

I do not understand.

Darkness rustles. Sometimes, darkness rustles, and as he crouched there, huddles beneath a shattered roof, out of sight of the pin fire dancing so far above, darkness does. Fingers close in a hard fist, beneath the sheltering mantle, and eyes mimic their clench. Both open again, to regard....Silver. Bright, beautiful silver, formed into a painfully perfect acorn.

I cannot be silver. It is too bright.

Slowly, he rises, bare skin veiled by shrouding black. Shoulders twitch as he steps back out, to stare, impassive, at the stars. Something whispers.

You did not want me, without ever knowing me. She does not want to know me. I have become too real, and it has taught me how to hurt. Hurting makes me more real. I do not think I want that, any more. It is too hard to understand.

Fingers lift, tracing across a line of darkness on dusky skin.

"I will remember. Caring hurts."

Bare marble shines, unyielding, beneath the wash of moonlight. Nary a trace of lush weed growth, not a smudge of decayed, nurturing mulch lingers between the stark walls of Dusk. Upon the hearth bench he lies, eyes closed. Breath does not stir the scar, but he does not sleep. He never sleeps. He does not dream. Not now. Darkness washes across the floor around, sheltering him in shadows. An acorn, barren, lies forgotten where it had fallen to stone. Pale night-blooms drip from withering vines, and Dusk heals. Tonight, it doesn't breathe.