Brilliant Pampas: Round 2

[leliana]

leliana

she said “oh, I know that love is all about the wind
how it can hold me up and kill me in the end”

It does not take long for the dreams to find her.

It does not take long for it to slip the wool over her exhausted eyes, a cold hand on her sanity, pulling her further into the undertow. She doesn’t resist—has no strength with which to fight it.

So the dream that others can recognize as being just that—a dream—becomes reality for her.

She wakes in this not-world, this world of her dreams and of her fears, and it is as if she is in a fog. Her hazel eyes blink slow, blinking away the sleep she still inhabits. The others, those who had fallen next to her in slumber and remained there still in the physical world, are gone.

She is alone.

She rises slowly, the pieces of this reality beginning to fall into place. She doesn’t see the chinks in the armor as everything begins to lock; she only can see the clouds that are gathering on the border. She can only take in a deep breath, the storm coming in faster than she can even realize what is happening.

One second, she is standing in the quiet—taking in the rest of the Pampas around her.

The next, the storm is upon her.

It is terrifying in its strength, and the very power steals her breath away. She gasps, the crimson of her tangled mane flying around her face, curving around her jaw. Her wings flutter and flap and she pulls them in close to her body, turning them from more vulnerable feathers to their sturdier dragon form.

The only thing that she can think of in this moment is her children.

Is Dovev

Is Vulgaris.

Is Chaol, and Cress, and Exist, and the child Despair she has adopted.

All that may be here in this moment. All that may be threatened by this same storm.

The sky is pitch, the storm picking up the bits and pieces of debris and throwing it around. She tries to move forward and finds that she has to fight the very air, the tar of it sticking in her lungs.

But she has to keep going. She has to fight for every inch.

Not that it matters, in the end.

She rushes forward, tears of fear swept away from her cheeks before they can stain, but she has no way of knowing which direction is which. The earth trembles beneath her, as if cowering before the prowess of the storm, and the sky begins to rumble—low, thundering growls that reverberate through her.

No, she wants to say.

Not like this. Not here.

But it doesn’t matter because the sky is electric, illuminating the path before her that is thick with nothing. Just a thick wall of nothing that engulfs her. She cries out, but the sound is stolen from her mouth.

And then before she can continue to fight, before she can do anything, the sky opens.

She tips her head back in time to see the electricity crackling through it.

It rains down and she is illuminated, her body alight with it.

Her bones are on fire, and her veins spark, and then the darkness takes her.

She wakes up gasping, the tears once swept from her cheeks now soaking them.