"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
In the blissful world of dreams and sleep, the thin line between life and death is but a mere faltering step. In those blissful moments I see the sun, I feel it's warmth burrow into my depths like probing fingers, warming me to the very core. It's in those precious moments I wonder if I've ever been alive at all. My mind plays vivid tricks, it's the cold, the harshness of the wind burying me in more snow drifts and more frostbitten aches. I hear things, far off things like the tingles of bells, the tolling of some distant chime. Those chimes grow louder, louder, until I feel a real warmth connect to me.
I stir, emerald eyes flickering, groggily open. Hazy with the desire to sleep, and close my eyes forever against the cold, I make out the shape of another. It's the warmth that he generates, like a furnace on a winter's evening. The fire crackling and spitting whilst children roast marshmallows and spin tales. I reach out my muzzle, the soft salmon of my nose so cold, broken in places by the cold ice that has splintered deep into my skin. I reach out to touch the figure. He's a daydream, a reverie on my moment of death. I'm sure. but then his voice echoes, resounding like bullets, hard and sudden in my mind.
'I'm.. sorry?' my throat grates words like course bark, 'Did I break... your river?' my eyes blink, twice, thrice. I ache in places that sinew and muscle never have ached before. the cold has buried deeper, deeper into the marrow of my bones and the knots in every lace of sinew. I quiver then, which means that the cold is shifting, fleeting as the warmth of the stranger starts to thaw me. Groggy and still half comatose, I stare up at him, or equal as my vastness is still quite apparent even when lain like a broken doll. 'But sleep... sleep sounds so good right now...' red tipped ears flicker and fall back as my head lowers and rests against the pillows of snow. I breathe in, sharply, breath like nails digging deeper into my lungs, painful with every gasp. I shiver more, trembling like autumn leaves falling from naked limbs. I turn my eye then, meeting the stranger; he is still there, still quite sturdy in appearance, so he is definitely not some daydream... they normally fade off by now.
'You're... still here?' my mind trickles with thoughts, good, bad, always pessimistic. I try and smile, cracked lips bloody and chapped.
★ ☆ ★
the truth is you could slit my throat,
and i'd apologise for bleeding on your shirt; wanderer
OOC: o_o Don't know where that came from. Poor Eld.
