; it was but a dream within a dream (magnus)

[Hybris]

I want to walk with you on a cloudy day In fields where the yellow grass grows knee-high In retrospect she would admit that she had mispoken. Hybris could not help but correct herself - he should not be so sad for her. "It was different, Magnus. It was... empty." How could she possibly explain? How could she tell him how it was nothing but blackness and shadow. The sensation of being alive but dead, hearing voices and words and having no control of them. How could she explain to him what it was like to be a prisoner of your own body? It had been cold at first. An endless stretch of shadow in which lurked a thousand voices, a thousand monsters. She was blind and voiceless and completely powerless. But then she LIVED and at the same time did not. A limbo, her lips sealed even as they moved, her limbs frozen even as she walked and ran. It was not a life she would wish on any creature. Hybris Sage died again in that tumble from the mountain and then she had known pain and death. Then she had known - fleetingly - what it was like to feel her life slip away, even as she watched from a distance. But it had been a relief. To be free from the prison her own mother had forced her in to was a blessing and she had welcomed death with a friendly embrace. Only to be pushed back to this earthly world, the same but so very different. Hybris wanted to explain it all to him, but how? Where could she begin? Her mouth opened, then closed, then opened again, before finally her lips pursed together and she simply shook her head. It was impossible. "You are likeable." Simply spoken with an emphasis of truth and trust. Hybris believed that no matter what had happened, no matter what he had witnessed or done, he was good. For what she had known of his heart she believed that, fully, and pulled back to seek his gaze as if she might will him to believe it. "The younger versions of us were naive and judgemental - they could not be asked to understand. But now... there is still good in you and I." Come away with me, in the night Come away and I will write you a song