D U N E
- ☾ -
H
e’s- He doesn’t--
No one has ever said his name like that. No one has ever smiled at him like that. And she’s glowing with that smile, he’s never understood the expression before (nobody glows in solterra unless painted in glitter or gold) but it all makes sense now, this is what they mean- there’s no light literally being emitted but she’s, there’s no other word for it, glowing. He wants to rub his eyes, screw his head on a little tighter. This feels too much like madness.
She remembers him.
Somewhere, Dune’s body sleeps on real sand, pale silver beneath the light of the stars, and that Dune smiles in his sleep. A small, shy smile, smeared with sleep. A warm, gentle breeze tangles his dark hair.
Meanwhile a warm, gentle ghost-breeze tangles his dark dream-hair. The only difference here is the crushed-diamond sand and the glowing girl. It’s a big difference; one world is infinitely preferable to the other.
She likes his gift, marvels over it with more attention that he had expected. The sight tickles him; he always enjoyed giving gifts. Especially when they didn’t cost anything.
“The canyons,” he says simply. It is said that the skin of Solterra, not the sand but the water-chiseled canyons, was so in love with the moonlight that it soaked up that glow, coalescing it with a rough embrace, and beneath the force of mountains the desert rose was shaped. Many saw the crystal as a testament to a love that could never be, and a symbol of patience and dedication.
Dune, crow-like, just saw a pretty thing he wanted to keep. He thinks she might like the story behind it, but he doesn’t feel like sharing it. Perhaps he’s afraid of sentimentality or skewed meanings. He does not want the gift, the gesture, to seem grander than it is. And when she asks him to keep it for next time, his expression is torn between delight and despair. One emotion for the thought of another night together, another dream, and the other for the acute realization of how rare a second dream is- how slim must be the chances of a third!
But despair, in the dreaming, can turn things sour fast, and the last thing he wants is to grapple with a nightmare. He nods and takes back the rose. There are already enough sharp edges to this place, carefully concealed with veils of silk and velvet. There is, he understands, something decidedly monstrous about the girl. But he only has eyes for her light and her softness, her long smooth angles, and he is content to turn a blind eye to the shadows.
“This is how death arrives,” he supposes. “Wearing a pretty face.”
A moment later she says “I’m glad you came back.” And if in that moment he had to choose between a dull life or beautiful death, it’s not clear which he would prefer.
He wants to say too many things: I would have come sooner if I could, or I’ve tried so hard to get here again, or something, anything, but the sight of her is like a hammer to the chest and all the words he grasps at collapse into, simply: “Me too.” He takes another step closer, the shimmering sand crunching like teeth underfoot. She’s curled up like a flower, hidden behind a wild curtain of hair. But he can’t unsee her. He wouldn’t, even if it were possible, even if she asked him to.
The thing about Dune is that necessity has made him greedy. And Dreaming has made him bold. He gently brushes the hair from her face, tucks it behind her ear. He meets her eye for a long moment that stretches thin as glass. The instant it's about to shatter he turns abruptly and trots down the beach, calling behind him “How far does it go?” When she begins to follow he shifts into a gentle lope, and diamonds splay behind them like sea foam in the moonlight.
And what on earth are dreams if not our only way of speaking?
