01-23-2019, 10:43 AM
Her eyes open with a snap to a world of tall grass and swaying red flowers. For a beat everything seems normal - the meadow soaked in color, the sound of the whispering wind - even the sting of flies where they bite her dark roan skin. But when she lifts her gaze to the sky from where she still lays cheek-down in the grass, she finds not the aching blue of a springtime sky, but something dark and choked with grey. She blinks, tilts her delicate head, confused.
The grey is thick and billowing, multilayered and with so many shades it reminds her of how dark water swirls in the churning rivers, strange and ominous. Something lands on her face - a fly for the way it bites and stings, but then the stench of burnt hair reaches her nostrils. Dazed still, it takes a moment to understand whats happening, takes too long to realize that the sky is buried beneath smoke, that the bite on her skin is burning pieces of ash and fire as they rain down on her in the wind.
She is on her feet in an instant, awkward and stumbling from her flower-induced lethargy. But from this new height she can see a horror unfolding, a world once beautiful now turned burning inferno. How could it be though, how was there no one in sight, no screams, no fleeing bodies. No sign of magic to force it back.
She turns, instinctively headed back towards home to be with her children, but.. there is no home. Nothing but an endless dark that falls away at the edge of a cliff, a waterfall of dirt and plant sliding over the ridge in slow motion as the Pampas erode away without anything to hold it in place.
It’s just an island now, a floating heap of burning land crumbling away at the outer edges.
But that’s impossible, where had everything else gone? Her children and her family, her friends. Even the inhabitants of the Pampas were nowhere to be found as she raced along near the edge of the island for any sign of life, of reason. It didn’t make any sense, and oh god, what if they were gone? What if something had happened to them.
She is frantic at once, her heart beating itself to death in her chest like a bird caught in brambles. Her sides heave, sweat damp across her neck and her haunches, nostrils flared wide and scalded red with irritation as the fire drifted closer across the Pampas and smoke began to settle.
“This is a nightmare.” She whispers, ragged and broken, meaning it not in the literal sense until her eyes fall once more on the red field of flowers not entirely burned up yet.
The flowers.
She blinks, suddenly confused, feeling muddled like there is something she should be remembering, something vastly important hiding somewhere just out of reach. She stares harder at the flowers, taking a step closer to smell one even as the inferno blazes closer to this last corner of safety, the last corner yet to burn. Ash falls like rain, still bright and burning, biting her skin until there are tears in her eyes, wet streaks drawn through the soot of her face.
The flowers.
With a gasp she remembers, though it comes so slowly, a reluctant thought meandering back to nestle in her mind. The plague, the fairy, the flowers. “A nightmare.” She says again, so soft, feeling the burn of the inferno like a wall of heat against her aching skin. But she feels less certain, less sure that a dream could feel like this.
Less sure when death stares at her like a beast frothing at the mouth.
Fire licks at her nose, turns her dark and charred until she is backed up to the edge of the nothingness. Then with a wordless tightening of her jaw, she turns and leaps off the edge of the crumbling Pampas island and falls away into the endless black nothingness.
She wakes suddenly, the breath stolen out of her lungs as she scrambles to her feet to find a world untouched by fire.
The grey is thick and billowing, multilayered and with so many shades it reminds her of how dark water swirls in the churning rivers, strange and ominous. Something lands on her face - a fly for the way it bites and stings, but then the stench of burnt hair reaches her nostrils. Dazed still, it takes a moment to understand whats happening, takes too long to realize that the sky is buried beneath smoke, that the bite on her skin is burning pieces of ash and fire as they rain down on her in the wind.
She is on her feet in an instant, awkward and stumbling from her flower-induced lethargy. But from this new height she can see a horror unfolding, a world once beautiful now turned burning inferno. How could it be though, how was there no one in sight, no screams, no fleeing bodies. No sign of magic to force it back.
She turns, instinctively headed back towards home to be with her children, but.. there is no home. Nothing but an endless dark that falls away at the edge of a cliff, a waterfall of dirt and plant sliding over the ridge in slow motion as the Pampas erode away without anything to hold it in place.
It’s just an island now, a floating heap of burning land crumbling away at the outer edges.
But that’s impossible, where had everything else gone? Her children and her family, her friends. Even the inhabitants of the Pampas were nowhere to be found as she raced along near the edge of the island for any sign of life, of reason. It didn’t make any sense, and oh god, what if they were gone? What if something had happened to them.
She is frantic at once, her heart beating itself to death in her chest like a bird caught in brambles. Her sides heave, sweat damp across her neck and her haunches, nostrils flared wide and scalded red with irritation as the fire drifted closer across the Pampas and smoke began to settle.
“This is a nightmare.” She whispers, ragged and broken, meaning it not in the literal sense until her eyes fall once more on the red field of flowers not entirely burned up yet.
The flowers.
She blinks, suddenly confused, feeling muddled like there is something she should be remembering, something vastly important hiding somewhere just out of reach. She stares harder at the flowers, taking a step closer to smell one even as the inferno blazes closer to this last corner of safety, the last corner yet to burn. Ash falls like rain, still bright and burning, biting her skin until there are tears in her eyes, wet streaks drawn through the soot of her face.
The flowers.
With a gasp she remembers, though it comes so slowly, a reluctant thought meandering back to nestle in her mind. The plague, the fairy, the flowers. “A nightmare.” She says again, so soft, feeling the burn of the inferno like a wall of heat against her aching skin. But she feels less certain, less sure that a dream could feel like this.
Less sure when death stares at her like a beast frothing at the mouth.
Fire licks at her nose, turns her dark and charred until she is backed up to the edge of the nothingness. Then with a wordless tightening of her jaw, she turns and leaps off the edge of the crumbling Pampas island and falls away into the endless black nothingness.
She wakes suddenly, the breath stolen out of her lungs as she scrambles to her feet to find a world untouched by fire.