in the garden
i will die
i will die
T
here is a voice in the sun. I’ve known it since my birth, warning me, watching me, judging me. I can hear it still, as my spear misses the vulture-that-is-my-brother and the desert shimmers with all those bodies rising from it. I think I should recognize them, but I am glad — I think I am glad — that I do not.
The earth-colored stallion is still here, watching me. As if he, too is waiting for something, expecting something, wanting something more — more than what I can give. It is always more than what I can give. I turn to him, and for a moment (in that slow dream way, the way that always gives you more or less time than you deserve) there is only he and I, looking across the sand at one another.
Something in his eyes makes me pause, makes me wonder, that wariness that is more lifelike than dreamlike — but I will not remember it when I wake. “I—“ the horde is nearly upon us now.
And just like that my time is up, speeding up, gone.
“Who are you?” I whisper, and no longer is my voice dry like the desert — it rustles like leaves in the forest, like all those dancing flowers back in Delumine. I am not sure he answers (if he does I do not hear it) before I turn and face the Davke with my teeth bared. And as the first of their spears breaks the skin of my chest —
Ipomoea comes awake with a start, body covered in a thin sheet of sweat.
Around him the grasses tremble, untying the braids that had formed around him. And when he lifts his head above them at last, he sees not the rolling, shifting dunes or the desert, or the red-tipped spear lodging itself between his eyes; he sees only the prairie grass, stretching endlessly before him. And the sky, a deep bruise-blue, starless and moonless, beginning to lighten in the east.
He lets out a breath that he did not know he was holding, feeling his lungs tremble and his heart stutter like neither of them yet know they are safe. The dream echoes in his mind again and again, each time in a little less detail, each time shorter. And each time he still hears his brother laugh, and still sees the betrayed look in the eyes of the earth-colored stallion. It stays with him long after it ought to, crawling like ice down his spine.
Because on one side of Eluetheria the trees are shivering, and in their roots, he knows, is the same feeling of betrayal.
@Dune "speaks" in which I abuse dashes
