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  • Beqanna

    COTY

    Assailant -- Year 226

    QOTY

    "But the dream, the echo, slips from him as quickly as he had found it and as consciousness comes to him (a slap and not the gentle waves of oceanic tides), it dissolves entirely. His muscles relax as the cold claims him again, as the numbness sets in, and when his grey eyes open, there’s nothing but the faint after burn of a dream often trod and never remembered." --Brigade, written by Laura


    [private]  we are infinite as the universe we hold inside; lannister
    #1

    iridian

    She doesn’t remember falling asleep, but when she wakes again it is in a place that is not home. Her giant sunflowers are gone, and there’s no iridescence in the air from the shimmering pollen that always drifts from the overgrown petals. But even more obvious is the lack of daylight that she always keeps close by, the sun she never allows to set further than dusk before it reverses into dawn and climbs back up the way it had come.

    She does not love the dark, and when the sun turns it’s back on her she feels suddenly forgotten, suddenly lost, suddenly jagged without its warmth.

    There is a sound she does not recognize, a churning and roaring sound that fills her ears louder than any heartbeat and leaves her delicate face damp and dark. It is water, she realizes, an entire ocean of it roiling furiously at her hooves where she stands at the edge of an empty beach. For a moment she just watches, completely unafraid because she knows she can be gone from this in an instant, can be back home and nestled in the warmth of her wildflowers. All she ever need do is wish it into existence.

    But she is curious because she has never made an ocean before, never even seen one, and it gives this darker than dusk place a feeling of eeriness. She takes a cautious step forward letting one small cloven hoof disappear just beneath the surface - except there is nothing there. Nothing solid, and her delicate body would have fallen in entirely if not for the wings that snap open at her shoulders to catch her.

    “Oh!” That is enough for her to know she has no further curiosity about this strange dreamscape, enough to make her close her eyes and picture home, and -

    Nothing.
    Nothing happens.

    She tries four more times, tries a fifth and a sixth before true fear is a cold touch racing down the curve of that delicate spine. “I don’t want to be here.” She says, quiet as though maybe the dreamscape will hear her, maybe it cares. But nothing changes, nothing happens, and when she turns in a small circle she can see that she is standing on a small island in the hazy dark of late twilight, and there is furious black ocean lapping at every edge.

    She also notices, suddenly and for the first time, that she is not alone. Even in this dark he is a smudge of silhouetted color - dark red and gold and a haze of shades that remind her of the way dawn looks in the real world before a storm. Mother had shown her that once. She turns to the stranger, pushed this way and that by a strange wind that tears at the gossamer feathers of the blue and chestnut wings she keeps tucked so close to her sides. “Hello?” She says, nearly stumbling right into him as the wind gives another shove. “Are we in your dream?” She is so small and so delicate, so quiet that she isn’t sure he’ll even be able to hear her over the building storm. “I think maybe you should try and wake up now.”
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    #2


    you used to tell me we'd turn into something
    oh, you said life was much better than this

    Resentment can wage a violent war upon one's mind; but often--too often--it is the quiet assassin of emotions, wielding a knife so deadly and sharp one doesn't know they're cut until it's too late. If resentment were to live and breath, it would walk as if it floated and blend so well with shadows that its victims will only ever see darkness. Resentment and its twin--jealousy--wreak havoc over Lannister.

    And his dreams have not seen peace in weeks.

    The stallion shivers, wings folded tightly against his sides. The burbling, volcanic anger cools into lava's igneous counterpart--this black rock textured and cold and hiding the secrets of destruction just as his fear does. And that's what washes over him, now: fear. This small island is like all the other nightmares he faces. Stuck in an impossible situation, one emotion or another running too wild to take control of his dream.

    Too often his fear manifests in the ocean. How deep and dark, how terribly unknown. His father never told him of the sea and the memories of it he stole from dreams of strangers were very rarely pleasant. Sirens and kelpies, sharks and leviathans. Lannister feels he is blessed to have wings to take him to the sky instead of gills to take him to the deep; and even then, he imagines the feathers and muscles would only serve to drag him to the bottom of the ocean floor, were he to ever be caught in the tide.

    The thought of drowning lodges spit in Lan's throat. He chokes, eyes closing against the might of his coughs and the racing of his heart. When he finally flutters his eyelids, vision blurry and unreliable, he is watching a stranger spin a circle. He watches for what feels like an eternity, stiff-jawed and statuesque. Not even for a second does he wonder if she is of his own design, no--she is too lovely.

    A gust of a storm's wind blows as Iridian notices him. Lannister does not move.

    She nearly falls into him. Lannister does not move.

    Hello? she says. Are we in your dream? she says.

    I think maybe you should try and wake up now.

    The air around them suddenly thickens, the world pulses. Lannister blinks heavy, weary eyes at this stranger. An eerie red light glows at the bottom of the horizon. Storm clouds as black as night roll too-quickly over them. Lannister continues to only blink, body rigid, mind racing.

    "I can't," he says. His mouth is the only part of his body to move. "I've never left my dreams." He turns his head now, stiff and robotic. He looks out over the now frothing ocean, heart clenching with fear. A few fat rain drops slam into his face by the force of the wind.

    "I'm sorry you're here," Lan says after a few moments, too weary to look Iridian in the eyes. "I'm sorry," he says again, voice cracking with fear.

    lannister



    @iridian this is weird sorry!!!
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    #3

    iridian

    She is so caught up in the myriad of things going wrong all around them that it takes far too long to notice the way this man is frozen in place like a piece of carved stone. Her eyes are everywhere but him, and maybe it is because she is huddled against the solidness of him now, but she still does not notice, does not realize, does not look up into a face whose expression she will know intimately well.

    Her attention is fixed on a world that seems bent on hurting them both. A horizon too red to look at, storm clouds that fly past them at a pace that makes her too dizzy to watch. She knows dreams well enough to recognize when one is unraveling though, and so finally, finally, she looks up into his face and notes all the things she had been so stupidly blind to. She sees someone stiff-jawed and frozen, with deep furrows of tension traced across his jaw like lines drawn between distant constellations.

    “Oh.” She says, and the word is a sound she presses against his dark shoulder like a kiss, touching her lips to the dark red of his storm-damp skin. “It’s okay.” She says again, and that voice is like gentle sunshine pressed against him. “It’ll be okay, I promise.” And it is a promise she has no business making, no way to keep, but she knows what it is to be trapped inside a nightmare you cannot escape.

    She smiles up at him, watches him with two eyes the color of painted cerulean skies and nearly too wide for her delicate doelike face. “This is the first time I’ve ever left my dreams, so I don’t blame you for not trying it.” She is joking of course, and there is so much warmth in her crinkled eyes as she watches him, so much compassion for this stranger who feels suddenly like she’s known him forever. Is he even real? Or did she make him in her loneliness.

    “Come on.” She tells him, and in case he needs more encouragement she takes a lock of his mane between her teeth to pull him back away from the shore and towards the center of this very narrow island. It is as much to ease his fear as it is to ease her own, because the frothing black waves feel like a pit of despair opened up inside her delicate chest. “I don’t want to look at it anymore, I’d rather look at you. I’ve never met anyone who can’t leave their dreams, I thought I was the only one.”

    She keeps those luminous eyes on his face, keeps her wings tight against her sides so the wind won’t tear her feathers free. “It’s nice to meet you.” And it is so obvious that she genuinely means it, that even despite the raging seas and black storm clouds, it is worth it to be here with this new companion. This kindred soul. “My name is Iridian. I’ve been dreaming since I was born.” Wasn’t born, though. Not really, not without a body to wake in. But it doesn’t matter because she knows how unlikely it is that she’ll ever see him again anyway. “If you could leave, where would you go?” And just like that she begins the reshaping of this dreamscape that is not hers to alter, using his thoughts to steer them.



    @lannister
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