DARKNESS IN THE EAST
DARKNESS IN THE WEST
OF ALL THE PRETTY ASHES
I LOVED YOURS THE BEST

The night begins as the best ones do: with wings. Dune takes a form roughly the size and color of an albatross, afloat on huge white wings with a knifelike edge, sharpened enough to cut through the fabric from one dream to another. Crossing dreams is a fresh trick, one that makes him feel restless and hungry and bigger than his body. He moves like a hunter, though not in search of prey... just something-- someone-- interesting.

At some point he cuts through a cerulean blue sky and slips into darkness. There is a pulsing, and a crashing, and the scent of salt and blood. A nightmare? He tilts his head, peers below with sharp, beady eyes. There is a girl, eyes closed but savage as a thunderstorm, waves foaming against her like a rabid animal.

Now this is interesting.

Dune tucks his wings close and he dives into the heartbeat ocean with a soft splash. When he rises from the dark waters it is in his own flesh: white feathers replaced with skin dark and slick as oiled walnut, wings drawn out into long slender legs. The ocean rises and falls, knee to chest to knee. Something about its movement gives the boy a sense that the waters are angry. But what would he know? Dune had never been fond of the ocean-- which is an odd thing, as it is known that all dreamers love the sea-- and Dune is most certainly a dreamer.

(It is worth noting he is a dreamer by circumstance, not desire; his magic a coincidence, and one not particularly complementary to his disposition.)

There is a fish in his mouth (the dream, it takes hold of him sometimes, and the forms he takes have instincts beyond his control) so he swallows it hastily and whole, one-two, the motion garish and unnatural in this herbivorous body. Disgusting, really, he should probably be ashamed… but he just looks at the dreamer with his dark eyes, shameless. His back is to the depths of the sea, for no one ever taught him to not do that. There was no one who cared enough to teach him such nuggets of wisdom, caution, creed-- but he made do. He almost even fluorished.

There is a horn sprouting in the middle of his forehead. It twirls out slowly, a mockery of the dreamer's, and soon there are two unicorns standing in the waves. Dune is restless, and he sways back and forth where he stands. He wants to ask “what happens next?” But in the end he chooses to watch it unfold, and find out for himself the dark dreams of the once-dead.

That is when the water begins to turn red.

D U N E

DARKNESS IN THE EAST
DARKNESS IN THE WEST
OF ALL THE PRETTY ASHES
I LOVED YOURS THE BEST

She looks to him with want-to-forget eyes.

Well, maybe that’s not quite right. It’s almost like she is not looking to him but away from everything else: the smoke, the waves, the many churning shades of crimson. It’s not like she’s searching for salvation, or escape, or a color that isn’t red.

When he looks back at her, he is struck by the thought that she is something crafted. Made with intention, pieced together carefully-- not tossed to the air like Dune, left for the wind to shape at its whim. He thinks he might be jealous, until the fish settles in his belly and the salt-copper scent of the dream forces itself up his nose and down his throat.

She asks who he is. He wonders if she can’t feel the answer in the singing tap-tap of her horn against his. Imposter, is what the rolling bells sound like to him. Intruder, it tolls. Mortal. Orphan. Thief. “Nobody,” he exhales. "You?"

Nobody-- Doesn’t she know?

“Why are we here?” He asks, because this does not feel like one of those strange but happenstance dreams. 

This feels like the front line of a war.

D U N E