and all my black beaches (are ruined)
The horror about losing the ability to dream, is that everything is always real.
There is no refuge. There is memory and there is reality and there is a deep, black emptiness—sleep, without its Sandman—that feels like dying. Caine has never done it, died, but he has waded along its murky backwaters many times before and felt less like an intruder than he ought to. It was deep, and it was black, and it was empty. It was sleep, without its Sandman.
So when a silvery voice pierces like a shard of light through his haze of dreamless emptiness—hang on, hang on—Caine knows at once that she is real. He is not dreaming. He might be dying, but he is beginning to question if living and dying are really even worth differentiating. You are either alive or you are dead and everything in between—living, dying, living, dying—is like the moon pulling the sea and the sea pulling back.
So everything is always real. So everything is always happening. Sighing, Caine pulls himself out of the dreamless emptiness and wades back across the sea of blood.
“Can you hear me?” She is pressing something against his wounds; there is a sharp scythe of pain and then there is a spreading numbness, almost warm, certainly golden, that surprises him so much he yanks his cheek up off the rough tree trunk and barely avoids collapsing into her—his wings flare out to steady himself (and her; feathers wrap roughly around her shoulders) until a fluorescent wave of pain pushes the golden warmth out in heartbeat-pulses and everything is right again.
Caine breathes out in pain-drunk relief.
He blinks slowly; there is a golden girl’s face right next to his, her eyes large and forget-me-not blue, and she is asking him if he can hear her.
“... Yes.” His voice is a murmur and rough from days of disuse. There is blood down his sides and blood striping his hair and Caine considers wading into the knee-deep swamp to let the water carry it all away. Instead, he looks to the girl and says, with dead-eyed amusement, “Are you trying to save me?”
The air is thick with the smell of herbs. Mechanically, Caine swivels his head to watch as she packs a thick paste into the gashes splitting apart his shoulders. From his sickbed he had watched the healers of the Hospital do the same every morning and night, their enterings and exits the only way he could tell time. When he had still been more bandage than flesh, he had been kept in the wing cut deepest into the heart of a tree. They were windowless and bleak. He had almost missed Raum's prison cell.
“...we need to get you to the hospital.” He shrugs and swallows a wince. “They're familiar with me there.” Slowly, Caine eases back against the rough yet steady tree trunk, his eyes slitting cat-like silver in the deepening dusk.
“You've done a lot for me already, miss healer, and it's getting dark. Best to hurry along home.” His smile is there and then gone, a bare courtesy, a nod of thanks. He is sure that she is needed by someone, somewhere, soon. He has learned to tell these things from a glance.
“I'll perk right up after some sleep.”
There is no refuge. There is memory and there is reality and there is a deep, black emptiness—sleep, without its Sandman—that feels like dying. Caine has never done it, died, but he has waded along its murky backwaters many times before and felt less like an intruder than he ought to. It was deep, and it was black, and it was empty. It was sleep, without its Sandman.
So when a silvery voice pierces like a shard of light through his haze of dreamless emptiness—hang on, hang on—Caine knows at once that she is real. He is not dreaming. He might be dying, but he is beginning to question if living and dying are really even worth differentiating. You are either alive or you are dead and everything in between—living, dying, living, dying—is like the moon pulling the sea and the sea pulling back.
So everything is always real. So everything is always happening. Sighing, Caine pulls himself out of the dreamless emptiness and wades back across the sea of blood.
“Can you hear me?” She is pressing something against his wounds; there is a sharp scythe of pain and then there is a spreading numbness, almost warm, certainly golden, that surprises him so much he yanks his cheek up off the rough tree trunk and barely avoids collapsing into her—his wings flare out to steady himself (and her; feathers wrap roughly around her shoulders) until a fluorescent wave of pain pushes the golden warmth out in heartbeat-pulses and everything is right again.
Caine breathes out in pain-drunk relief.
He blinks slowly; there is a golden girl’s face right next to his, her eyes large and forget-me-not blue, and she is asking him if he can hear her.
“... Yes.” His voice is a murmur and rough from days of disuse. There is blood down his sides and blood striping his hair and Caine considers wading into the knee-deep swamp to let the water carry it all away. Instead, he looks to the girl and says, with dead-eyed amusement, “Are you trying to save me?”
The air is thick with the smell of herbs. Mechanically, Caine swivels his head to watch as she packs a thick paste into the gashes splitting apart his shoulders. From his sickbed he had watched the healers of the Hospital do the same every morning and night, their enterings and exits the only way he could tell time. When he had still been more bandage than flesh, he had been kept in the wing cut deepest into the heart of a tree. They were windowless and bleak. He had almost missed Raum's prison cell.
“...we need to get you to the hospital.” He shrugs and swallows a wince. “They're familiar with me there.” Slowly, Caine eases back against the rough yet steady tree trunk, his eyes slitting cat-like silver in the deepening dusk.
“You've done a lot for me already, miss healer, and it's getting dark. Best to hurry along home.” His smile is there and then gone, a bare courtesy, a nod of thanks. He is sure that she is needed by someone, somewhere, soon. He has learned to tell these things from a glance.
“I'll perk right up after some sleep.”
