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we are infinite as the universe we hold inside; lannister - iridian - 06-28-2021 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.” RE: we are infinite as the universe we hold inside; lannister - lannister - 08-01-2021 oh, you said life was much better than this lannister @iridian this is weird sorry!!! RE: we are infinite as the universe we hold inside; lannister - iridian - 09-26-2021 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 |