He would lose himself in her dreamworld now if he had the chance.
He would so gladly face nightmares of her creation instead of the ones of his own. It would be so much easier to face something that he cannot control instead of feel his world tilt and slip beneath him and have to face the fact that he is the one who has caused it. He is the one who has lit the match that started the forest fire. He’s the one who started this, who caused the damage, the one to blame, the one to blame.
But such things soften a little as she begins to talk, as she gives him something to chew on other than the gristle of his own misery. It gives him something to focus on other than the ship sinking down around him. She begins to talk and he is helpless to do anything but listen, but sit and sink in the meaning.
When she is done, he almost takes a step forward—lifts his red leg before setting it down again—and he instead just angles his antlered head, studying her with his storm cloud grey eyes. “You look tired,” is all he says at first without thinking that such a thing could be taken as an insult. “That sound tiring.”
He wants to tell her that he’s tired to. That sleep does not come to him easily.
But his fitful slumber feels so thin, so flimsy compared to her own.
“Do you have to be alone?” he asks suddenly, flint in his eye as he studies her. He has no idea how such things work—how her mother’s dreamworld operates. He doesn’t know whether she is allowed to bring someone or if she can control anything about it at all, but it suddenly feels very important to ask.
“I would go,” he swallows hard. “If I could. If I can.”
BRIGADE
when I was a man I thought it ended when I knew love's perfect ache
but my peace has always depended on all the ashes in my wake