iridian
She has the distinct feeling that her world is falling apart, that the dreamscape is fracturing around her every second of every day that she does not leave it. But she cannot leave it. There is no mortal body waiting for her on the other side, no other place that could sustain her growing soul like this one has. But this place, this dreamscape, it was never meant to be forever and now that she is grown it is like she is leeching the life from it.
There is no real name for the feeling that has begun to grow inside her delicate chest, but as her world breaks apart and the nightmares unleash themselves, she finds that she is afraid she is dying for a second time. It is like coming undone, like erosion in reverse and when it is finished, she is not sure what will exist of her or the dreamscape.
The sky is the same swirling shade of black and gray that it always is now, and the clouds hang low enough that they bend the trees as they pass. Lightning licks from them like static, and the uppermost branches burn and smolder. The clouds had been higher at first, just a smudge of dark grey on the ceiling of her imagination and so easy to ignore. Then they dropped lower and lower until they hung like shadows over her mountain ranges. She had climbed to a peak once to see these clouds, but there had been nothing beyond the clouds. No color, no sound, nothing but that swirling gray randomly illuminated with flashes of indistinguishable light.
She knew what it meant that they were at the treetops now, knew there was no sky and no birds, no anything that had once been above. It was all only below now. What she didn’t know, not with any kind of certainty that didn’t come purely from fear and loneliness, was what would happen when that swirling grey reached her.
Would it take her, or would she be left in a world empty of anything at all?
She thinks maybe she can be brave enough to say goodbye, though. After all she had lived longer than she might’ve otherwise, gifted this place for years when her own birth would’ve killed her. It was a gift in any amount of time, and though there is an awful ache inside her chest she is still glad to have anything as beautiful to miss as this place had been. She tries not to think about the ones she will miss or the what-ifs that will never be more than curiosities. She tries not to think of her family who will surely miss her, or the way she let them down by never being quite strong enough.
There is one though, one face, one boy, one smile she knows she needs to see one more time before she is as this storm, alive and vibrant and yet entirely ephemeral. Mortally impermanent. She wonders if she is still strong enough to make this place seem beautiful, to find a meadow without those burning trees and fill it with summer rain and wildflowers to hide the roiling storm and lingering distant fire smoke. She thinks, for him, she can. So she finds the perfect place, finds her meadow and plants her flowers in every shade and shape, gives rain to the storm clouds so they seem beautiful instead of broken. It is too much to do more, and every effort she makes draws the ire of those eroding clouds lower and nearer.
Instead she closes her eyes as though this will hide her from everything that unravels around her, as though if she pictures his face she can call him to her when it hasn’t worked before. “Firion,” she whispers, and her delicate wings lift and flare at the gentle yearning in her shaking voice, “please, please sleep.” For as soon as he does she will find that thread that binds him to dreams and pull him close to say a secret goodbye.
There is no real name for the feeling that has begun to grow inside her delicate chest, but as her world breaks apart and the nightmares unleash themselves, she finds that she is afraid she is dying for a second time. It is like coming undone, like erosion in reverse and when it is finished, she is not sure what will exist of her or the dreamscape.
The sky is the same swirling shade of black and gray that it always is now, and the clouds hang low enough that they bend the trees as they pass. Lightning licks from them like static, and the uppermost branches burn and smolder. The clouds had been higher at first, just a smudge of dark grey on the ceiling of her imagination and so easy to ignore. Then they dropped lower and lower until they hung like shadows over her mountain ranges. She had climbed to a peak once to see these clouds, but there had been nothing beyond the clouds. No color, no sound, nothing but that swirling gray randomly illuminated with flashes of indistinguishable light.
She knew what it meant that they were at the treetops now, knew there was no sky and no birds, no anything that had once been above. It was all only below now. What she didn’t know, not with any kind of certainty that didn’t come purely from fear and loneliness, was what would happen when that swirling grey reached her.
Would it take her, or would she be left in a world empty of anything at all?
She thinks maybe she can be brave enough to say goodbye, though. After all she had lived longer than she might’ve otherwise, gifted this place for years when her own birth would’ve killed her. It was a gift in any amount of time, and though there is an awful ache inside her chest she is still glad to have anything as beautiful to miss as this place had been. She tries not to think about the ones she will miss or the what-ifs that will never be more than curiosities. She tries not to think of her family who will surely miss her, or the way she let them down by never being quite strong enough.
There is one though, one face, one boy, one smile she knows she needs to see one more time before she is as this storm, alive and vibrant and yet entirely ephemeral. Mortally impermanent. She wonders if she is still strong enough to make this place seem beautiful, to find a meadow without those burning trees and fill it with summer rain and wildflowers to hide the roiling storm and lingering distant fire smoke. She thinks, for him, she can. So she finds the perfect place, finds her meadow and plants her flowers in every shade and shape, gives rain to the storm clouds so they seem beautiful instead of broken. It is too much to do more, and every effort she makes draws the ire of those eroding clouds lower and nearer.
Instead she closes her eyes as though this will hide her from everything that unravels around her, as though if she pictures his face she can call him to her when it hasn’t worked before. “Firion,” she whispers, and her delicate wings lift and flare at the gentle yearning in her shaking voice, “please, please sleep.” For as soon as he does she will find that thread that binds him to dreams and pull him close to say a secret goodbye.
@[firion]