Sand so black it swallows the moody light and climbs up for more; shaping and reshaping itself into dunes. The curl of them like wood shavings.
Magic hungers in one ghost’s bones. It wells up and froths like a caged ocean, full of yearning to shape this dream. It would paint the sands golden, light the sky with falling stars, strike the ghosts away with the back of a hand. One night, it whispers to him, you will dissolve nightmares or, just as easily, create them. You will upend cities and make worlds beyond sight, scent, sound.
But not tonight.
Tonight he is just another ghost in a sea of ghosts, at the edge of the dark ocean. It takes effort to resist the urge to call out when they do, to make demands of his sovereign which he does not understand. The compulsion to speak sits behind his throat, an invader that’s taken root beneath the skin. Not unlike the way he invades this dream, surreptitious. Discrete. For now.
Oh, he despises these wraiths. He’s met them, or something similar, in so many dreams before.
Above his forehead forms a ball of bright white light, centered between the eyes. The ghosts around him shy away with noises of protest (a hiss, a growl, a snap of the teeth). The path, for a moment, is clear.
Dune presses his way through the crowd to find himself face to face with the sun king. The man looks so small in this dream, so childlike. Pressed down by demons. Here, his tattoos are stripped of their gleaming confidence. They seem to shift and stretch as if unsure of what they want to say. Dune almost smiles at that.
He wants to look closer, deeper, at the golden stranger. Not as an orphan to a king but stallion to stallion, the dream world having stripped them of the waking world’s trappings. But the ghosts are pushing in tight now. Dune is calm and silent, a sentinel swinging his head to scatter the ghosts with his light. Yet they only press in with renewed vigor as soon as he turns away.
The two men are up to the shoulder in salt water and being crowded deeper, faster. When his feet no longer touch the sea floor, with a look of calm resignation to the king ("Well. It’s your dream.") the bay takes a breath, out of habit more than necessity, and he leads the way down into the cold sea.
Knowing that sometimes, the only way out was through.
Magic hungers in one ghost’s bones. It wells up and froths like a caged ocean, full of yearning to shape this dream. It would paint the sands golden, light the sky with falling stars, strike the ghosts away with the back of a hand. One night, it whispers to him, you will dissolve nightmares or, just as easily, create them. You will upend cities and make worlds beyond sight, scent, sound.
But not tonight.
Tonight he is just another ghost in a sea of ghosts, at the edge of the dark ocean. It takes effort to resist the urge to call out when they do, to make demands of his sovereign which he does not understand. The compulsion to speak sits behind his throat, an invader that’s taken root beneath the skin. Not unlike the way he invades this dream, surreptitious. Discrete. For now.
Oh, he despises these wraiths. He’s met them, or something similar, in so many dreams before.
Above his forehead forms a ball of bright white light, centered between the eyes. The ghosts around him shy away with noises of protest (a hiss, a growl, a snap of the teeth). The path, for a moment, is clear.
Dune presses his way through the crowd to find himself face to face with the sun king. The man looks so small in this dream, so childlike. Pressed down by demons. Here, his tattoos are stripped of their gleaming confidence. They seem to shift and stretch as if unsure of what they want to say. Dune almost smiles at that.
He wants to look closer, deeper, at the golden stranger. Not as an orphan to a king but stallion to stallion, the dream world having stripped them of the waking world’s trappings. But the ghosts are pushing in tight now. Dune is calm and silent, a sentinel swinging his head to scatter the ghosts with his light. Yet they only press in with renewed vigor as soon as he turns away.
The two men are up to the shoulder in salt water and being crowded deeper, faster. When his feet no longer touch the sea floor, with a look of calm resignation to the king ("Well. It’s your dream.") the bay takes a breath, out of habit more than necessity, and he leads the way down into the cold sea.
Knowing that sometimes, the only way out was through.
@Orestes
