climbing out the back door, didn't leave a mark ; any

[abysm]

Those eyes - dark and doelike - cling to his mind, awake or asleep. 

They follow him, even if he cannot ever truly make out the shape of the face they belong to. He knows that face well enough though. It haunts him despite every caress he’s laid upon it. Only in dreams though. Only in dreams. Only ever the eyes as the most memorable piece he brings back with himself. Even the touches and murmurs become remnants that he’s certain might not have been more than dreamt up but Abysm knows deep down in the heart of himself, all of it was real.

No less real than the river beside which he finds himself as he rips through the fabric of the dream-plains and finds himself back in Beqanna.

It is the river of his misspent youth. So much time gallivanting through wildflowers and beneath stretched-up arms of this tree or that tree. Time spent in the company of his father. Their golden skins almost indistinguishable from one another until the sunlight picked upon the paint pattern that broke up the champagne of Abysm with foamy white color. He stares at the river like he’s never seen it before even though he has. It just looks different through eyes that have found something he’s always sought since he was a child - love, the kind that usually only comes from a mother or a lover.

Everything looks different now.

Even that snake over there on that rock…

“Hello little snake,” he murmurs aloud, certainly not expecting an answer from it nor does he notice that the eyes hold more intelligence than the eyes of a snake have a right to hold. Abysm has never really given much thought to the level of intelligence snakes may or may not have. Nor has he ever given much thought to the intelligence of any creature. Makes him seem kind of vain and self-absorbed which to an extent, has been true the past couple of years. He knows what has been the catalyst for the change in him - that dream-lover and the farseer, and all of a sudden, as he looks from the snake to the river and back to the snake again, it dawns on him that they have the same kind of eyes.

“What would you do little snake, if you could change the nature of your dreams?”
Again, he doesn’t expect the snake to answer him. It’s only a snake after all, content to sun itself upon the rock just as he is enjoying the sun on his back. Simple pleasures for simple lives that aren’t so very simple after all.

@[Kerrigan]