STRANGERS UNTIL A STRANGER MAKES THE OLD HUNGERS
BRUTALLY WAKE
Sometimes we are not ourselves in dreams. Sometimes it takes who we are and builds us up into something better. Stronger, swifter, smarter. Other times, the dream tears us down, removes our armor piece by piece. Times like that, times like now, we are left small and defenseless, simple as children.
Dune does not think this dreamer is herself. Not when her lips quiver, not when her head shakes. Not when she whimpers and cries.
This dream is no rapture, despite the landscape of soft, gentle whites and blues. It hurts Dune, it is physically painful, to be in this dream. The shadows are sharp and sticky, they gnash and claw and cling to him like tar. Sorrow and guilt and fear all twist at the edge of reality, tugging the psyche always toward bleak terror.
“But the ocean is gone. Where is the ocean? Do you think it dried up?” Dune shifts his attention to the horizon. White and still and featureless. Heat waves dance, triumphant and mocking. “Maybe,” he concedes, personally more concerned about all the horses turned to salt than the sea. Thankfully the dreamer returns her focus to them with a few pitiful sniffles.
Dune never felt comfortable in front of crying women; he averts his gaze to the ground and shifts his weight.
“Can’t you turn them back?” He knows she can, because this is her dream. Because here they could be flying, or swimming far below the sea, or existing without shape or form or feature at all-- turning salt back to flesh should be child’s play. All she had to do was wake up. But not actually wake up, because that would end the dream. She had to awaken a part of her that she might not know was there, let alone that it was asleep. It is not something that could be taught. Dune could maybe guide her, and he would try, but success is not a foregone conclusion.
The bay begins to walk among the statues, peering at one very very closely. Eyelashes made of salt crumble in a forlorn breeze. “I think you can turn them back,” he says this as though it’s something he’s just decided. He looks to her with brows raised in expectation, and resists the urge to lick the closest statue.
@Saphira <3
