The dreamer rises, pure glory made flesh, and soon overtakes him. They twirl higher and higher with the graceful abandon of hawks; masters of their universe. The silence expands, palpable as fog, and perhaps for the first time he resents it.
Before he can brood too much over the absence of her song, the silence is broken by the pok! of tiger’s eye crashing through their outstretched wings. He looks at her, nothing more or less than a steady look. And then an ethereal rain begins to fall, the light dancing off it a rainbow of shimmering color.
She’s spinning round and round, she’s dancing and spell-casting, and he just watches, not daring to blink. He watches her cast a golden noose, and without struggle he lets himself be caught. But this noose settles sweetly on his brow instead of tight around his throat. It takes too long to realize it is a crown, to match her own, and when he does Dune stirs up stardust with a molten rumble of laughter. She would have no idea how sweet this moment is, and he does not know how to begin to show her.
It is so beautiful, so beautiful to feel like a king, even if only in dreams, after a lifetime of destitution. He feels his soul rising just as his body-- with gold-winged grace.
A sapphire falls into his rich brown cheek, where it remains lodged in a crimson embrace of blood. A ruby hits his spine and his dream skin stretches to absorb it. Amethyst strikes his shoulder, and sinks in deep. So the sky falls around them and so he transforms, bit by bit, until he wears a body not of flesh and bone but ore and precious stone.
And feathers, of course, golden feathers that brush against her inky black.
Somewhere far away, another Dune sweats in the mid-day heat, trudging ever closer to his destination with a flutter of growing panic. Not yet, he thinks, this clever boy who taught himself to cleave the mind in two. So deeply entangled in the daydream, he can’t smell the city around him. Escapism at its finest. I’m not ready... He clings to his dream crown, and his richly ornamented body, and the cosmic rain.
It’s a slipping sensation that seizes him. A visceral understanding of the grains of time slipping through the hourglass, the fabric of this universe slipping away beneath him. Time was not reversible; not here, not anywhere. Dune swallows the lump in his throat, stretching his wings toward her with an urgency that approaches feverish. He wants to say something, but he doesn’t know where to begin.
When he speaks his voice is pure Solterran. Sand, grit, countless shades of heat. Fearless. “Can I see you again?”
Before he can brood too much over the absence of her song, the silence is broken by the pok! of tiger’s eye crashing through their outstretched wings. He looks at her, nothing more or less than a steady look. And then an ethereal rain begins to fall, the light dancing off it a rainbow of shimmering color.
She’s spinning round and round, she’s dancing and spell-casting, and he just watches, not daring to blink. He watches her cast a golden noose, and without struggle he lets himself be caught. But this noose settles sweetly on his brow instead of tight around his throat. It takes too long to realize it is a crown, to match her own, and when he does Dune stirs up stardust with a molten rumble of laughter. She would have no idea how sweet this moment is, and he does not know how to begin to show her.
It is so beautiful, so beautiful to feel like a king, even if only in dreams, after a lifetime of destitution. He feels his soul rising just as his body-- with gold-winged grace.
A sapphire falls into his rich brown cheek, where it remains lodged in a crimson embrace of blood. A ruby hits his spine and his dream skin stretches to absorb it. Amethyst strikes his shoulder, and sinks in deep. So the sky falls around them and so he transforms, bit by bit, until he wears a body not of flesh and bone but ore and precious stone.
And feathers, of course, golden feathers that brush against her inky black.
Somewhere far away, another Dune sweats in the mid-day heat, trudging ever closer to his destination with a flutter of growing panic. Not yet, he thinks, this clever boy who taught himself to cleave the mind in two. So deeply entangled in the daydream, he can’t smell the city around him. Escapism at its finest. I’m not ready... He clings to his dream crown, and his richly ornamented body, and the cosmic rain.
It’s a slipping sensation that seizes him. A visceral understanding of the grains of time slipping through the hourglass, the fabric of this universe slipping away beneath him. Time was not reversible; not here, not anywhere. Dune swallows the lump in his throat, stretching his wings toward her with an urgency that approaches feverish. He wants to say something, but he doesn’t know where to begin.
When he speaks his voice is pure Solterran. Sand, grit, countless shades of heat. Fearless. “Can I see you again?”
@Warset
