01-01-2021, 08:15 PM
iridian
Time is a secret that she is not the keeper of.
There is nothing regular about the dreamscape. Day lasts until night comes, but sometimes it seems to Iridian that night forgets to come at all. Like the sun is a permanent star in a sleeping sky, carved into the blue as though it cannot exist anywhere else. It stays and watches, casts short shadows that never seem to creep, until suddenly, Iri blinks, and the black remains behind even after she’s opened her eyes again. Night, in odd perpetuity.
She has no idea how long it has been since she last saw Firion, but she knows she will be sad to see him again, sad for him to discover the world they built together has eroded in his absence like a broken promise. She let the details grow hazy, stopped visiting for a while when his absence carved a foreign pain in her chest that she did not understand. When guilt finally chased her back again and one ever-night found her in their little forest clearing, she knew leaving had been a mistake.
She had stood at the center of it all and looked up at a sky that was charcoal and colorless instead of a deep aching blue. She saw stars that were gray instead of silver, and trees that were wilted and tattered by a heavy wind that did not exist. The shades of everything were wrong, and all the peace had gone from the silence. It was heavy somehow, like a moment of strained anticipation, a held breath never released.
If there was a way to fix it, she couldn’t remember how.
Not, that is, until one evening of dusk when she woke beneath a hazy purple sky to the sound of her name on wind created from his breath.
“Firion.”
It took only one single beat of her racing heart to find him, to clasp fingers around the thread of his dream and anchor herself there to him. She appears suddenly, standing only a few feet away from him, dragging them both to their place. Their broken place. And at once she understands why it is broken, why the colors are gone and the trees are too heavy for their trunks, why the weight of the silence is breaking her bones as she stands there staring at a boy who is both familiar and now somehow a stranger.
Pain rises in her chest and in answer the trees creak and sway, the timber splintering in answer to her heart.
And that had always been the problem, she realizes. She had put too much of herself into this place, too much of her heart, and when loneliness had begun to darken her, it darkened the dreamscape too.
“You came back.” She says, and she’s trying so hard to mask the pain in her face because she doesn’t blame him for staying away, but she cannot help the way it makes her chest ache. How much it hurts to be alone here now without the dream of ever leaving.
(She is sure she won’t ever be strong enough.)
She studies him, and she does not realize that she has changed as much as he has. That she is longer and leaner, still willowy and doe-like but not in a childish way. That the blue of her eyes is several shades deeper, like buried gems or impossible ocean depths. That her chestnut is so red it's nearly russet, and the leopard markings sit like gleaming bronze overtop. Both would seem harsh if not for the patches of quiet white spilled over her like snow.
Her chestnut wings fold at her shoulders, tucking in close to her back in a way that speaks of the uncertainty she means to hide from him, of this new weight in her he won’t recognize. She takes a step closer, and there is a doe-like grace to the gentle movement as her cloven hooves halt again.
There are so many secrets swimming in the blue of her eyes as she watches him, studies his face and the way he looks back at her. Someone wiser might try to hide those secrets, but she is young and carved from trust and pain and more loneliness than any one single heart can withstand. So when she finally speaks again it is soft and unsure, and those luminous eyes evade his with quiet care. “You were the last visitor I had.” A pause where she chances a look in his eyes and finds herself suddenly shackled there by the gold. “It’s nice to see you, Firion.” And she has no idea why she is suddenly whispering.
There is nothing regular about the dreamscape. Day lasts until night comes, but sometimes it seems to Iridian that night forgets to come at all. Like the sun is a permanent star in a sleeping sky, carved into the blue as though it cannot exist anywhere else. It stays and watches, casts short shadows that never seem to creep, until suddenly, Iri blinks, and the black remains behind even after she’s opened her eyes again. Night, in odd perpetuity.
She has no idea how long it has been since she last saw Firion, but she knows she will be sad to see him again, sad for him to discover the world they built together has eroded in his absence like a broken promise. She let the details grow hazy, stopped visiting for a while when his absence carved a foreign pain in her chest that she did not understand. When guilt finally chased her back again and one ever-night found her in their little forest clearing, she knew leaving had been a mistake.
She had stood at the center of it all and looked up at a sky that was charcoal and colorless instead of a deep aching blue. She saw stars that were gray instead of silver, and trees that were wilted and tattered by a heavy wind that did not exist. The shades of everything were wrong, and all the peace had gone from the silence. It was heavy somehow, like a moment of strained anticipation, a held breath never released.
If there was a way to fix it, she couldn’t remember how.
Not, that is, until one evening of dusk when she woke beneath a hazy purple sky to the sound of her name on wind created from his breath.
“Firion.”
It took only one single beat of her racing heart to find him, to clasp fingers around the thread of his dream and anchor herself there to him. She appears suddenly, standing only a few feet away from him, dragging them both to their place. Their broken place. And at once she understands why it is broken, why the colors are gone and the trees are too heavy for their trunks, why the weight of the silence is breaking her bones as she stands there staring at a boy who is both familiar and now somehow a stranger.
Pain rises in her chest and in answer the trees creak and sway, the timber splintering in answer to her heart.
And that had always been the problem, she realizes. She had put too much of herself into this place, too much of her heart, and when loneliness had begun to darken her, it darkened the dreamscape too.
“You came back.” She says, and she’s trying so hard to mask the pain in her face because she doesn’t blame him for staying away, but she cannot help the way it makes her chest ache. How much it hurts to be alone here now without the dream of ever leaving.
(She is sure she won’t ever be strong enough.)
She studies him, and she does not realize that she has changed as much as he has. That she is longer and leaner, still willowy and doe-like but not in a childish way. That the blue of her eyes is several shades deeper, like buried gems or impossible ocean depths. That her chestnut is so red it's nearly russet, and the leopard markings sit like gleaming bronze overtop. Both would seem harsh if not for the patches of quiet white spilled over her like snow.
Her chestnut wings fold at her shoulders, tucking in close to her back in a way that speaks of the uncertainty she means to hide from him, of this new weight in her he won’t recognize. She takes a step closer, and there is a doe-like grace to the gentle movement as her cloven hooves halt again.
There are so many secrets swimming in the blue of her eyes as she watches him, studies his face and the way he looks back at her. Someone wiser might try to hide those secrets, but she is young and carved from trust and pain and more loneliness than any one single heart can withstand. So when she finally speaks again it is soft and unsure, and those luminous eyes evade his with quiet care. “You were the last visitor I had.” A pause where she chances a look in his eyes and finds herself suddenly shackled there by the gold. “It’s nice to see you, Firion.” And she has no idea why she is suddenly whispering.
@[firion]