11-05-2019, 05:35 PM
>I was in the darkness, so darkness I became;
For a long time, she was used to being lost.
She was lost in places, in people, in her own traitorous mind. Struggling in a churning whirlpool of fury and madness, swirling and drowning, such was her existence for a long time. And even when she recovered - when she drug herself out of that whirlpool, dripping and gasping - she never forgot the feeling, or lost the sense that she was only a misstep or two away from falling back in. These things haunted her, and would manifest, sometimes, when she stumbled.
She is lost now, because she reappeared into this world in a blink.
She is lost now, because she doesn’t know a thing about the woods around her, the crushing presso of the trees.
She is disoriented, walking this path. She doesn’t know how she got here. Her best guess is that she sleep-walked, that her nightmare was so deep and vivid it stirred her body into movement.
That she doesn’t know this forest is irrelevant. If she walks in a straight line for long enough, she will find somewhere familiar, and then she can orient herself, find her way home. She wonders if the deserts have noted her absence. If they have, they might find her before she finds them, for they will surely send a search party for a missing queen.
Until then, she will walk.
So walk she does, through the woods, trying to focus on her breathing. She will be in the deserts soon enough. She repeats this, again and again, because it is only the promise of the warm, baking sands that keeps her calm.
She sees no one until she does, and when she does, she thinks she is still dreaming, and laughs. Of course! This is all still a dream, the nightmare of her own death bleeding into something else, something more abstract and symbolic (a dark woods, being lost, of course, of course). Strange, that she should dream of her, of all things, but she will take it.
She speeds up to the dark mare, whom she has not seen in years, lighter now, relived in this dream.
“Ana,” she says, affectionate, “it’s been awhile.”
Craft