Baby, just to let me down
Dune’s only experiences with love were stolen ones.
“That’s not true,” he would protest. “I love my city; its sound and color. I love the way the dry wind blows through the streets, touching everything. I love the heavy red sun at the end of the day, the joy of drinking deeply from the oasis, the stubborn life that takes root here against all odds. The laughter we carve from thin air and sandstone.”
And it was all true, but Dune had never loved another, not the way most of his dreamers did. Yet he lay witness time and time again to the soap operas they played out in their sleep, and in this way he came to know love in its many shapes and forms. And although it was very strange to live a life where some of your richest experiences were not yours at all, he did not feel like he deserved anything more.
Born and raised in destitution, the bay knew better than to ask for more than the slim gifts he’d been given. The gods were not, by nature, kind. So as Elena dreams her sweet dreams, Dune is there quietly watching from the eaves. And when her lover asks “can I see you again?” maybe it is Dune’s face and not Altair’s. And when their limbs tangle like newlyweds, maybe it is Dune’s long dark legs and not Altair’s. She won’t realize it until later, after she wakes up, when the dream logic will be easy to shake off. It was not Altair’s face, not always, but surely it was Altair I dreamed of. If there is any uncertainty, it will be easily shrugged off-- after all, the mind is such a wild place, especially unleashed in dreams.
When Dune wakes that morning, it is hard to tear himself from the dream. It was such a bittersweet one, the kind where all the joy was colored by an underlying sadness of things unrealized. The use of his magic makes him feeling hollow and gritty, like a sandstorm has run through his mind and wiped clean the inside of his skull. He groans loudly, blinking the sleep from his eyes. I wasn’t supposed to dream last night, he thinks to himself with annoyance. He needed the sleep-- it would be a long day ahead, first the travel to Denocte and then working the night markets. On the windowsill an empty glass. Milk of the poppy, to sooth the jagged edges of the dreaming; shame it didn’t work, he would have to up the dosage.
-
Naturally, Elena is on the bay’s mind on the long walk to Denocte; at least, as much as she can be, with most of his senses trained on the sky and the sand, wary for teryrs and illusions. And then, once past the long expanse of desert, farther than he’s ever traveled before, his attention is tangled up in all the newness. Veneror he’s seen before but always at a distance. The Arma he’s never set sight on, and as he draws closer and closer to the menacing backbone of a mountain, he is torn between anxiety and excitement-- the two being far more similar than most care to admit.
Still… for all the newness and the danger and the heavy wares loaded on his back, Dune finds space to think of her from time to time, if not as a whole at least in bits and pieces. The creamy silk of her mane, caught in a seaside breeze. Her laughter, free as rain, at something absolutely stupid. The crinkle in her eyes as she looks at their children-- and yes, he’s well aware they’re not his children. But the dream is just as confusing to itself as it is to the dreamer, and it leaves a slurred smile on his lips.
We had it all, didn't we? Infinity in an hour.
Eventually he’s in Denocte, carving his way down streets he’s seen a hundred times-- but only ever through the eyes of others. He’s catching the eyes of strangers, matching them to dreams he’s walked through, and he’s jangling his sack of coin, beneath his mountain of flowers, and--
And somewhere out there is a golden girl. Her name is Elena. She has the sweetest laugh he’s ever heard, and when he sees her he will pluck a peony from the basket of flowers at his side, and he will give it to her-- only because he is certain it will make her smile.
@
