I'm sorry there's so much pain in this story. I'm sorry it's in fragments, like a body caught in crossfire or pulled apart by force. But there is nothing I can do to change it. I tried to put some of the good things in, as well. Flowers, for instance. Because where would we be without them?
I do not understand dreamers.
I do not understand the way they paint their skins or bejewel themselves; I do not understand their dances or their poetry or their magic.
Most of all, I do not understand the raw exuberance of their lives; the way they allow joy and pain and love to color their expressions in equal measures, as they come, in waves of pleasure or agony. I have always watched them from afar with a bemused expression; I have always humored them.
(What I cannot admit to, ever, is the way I read most voraciously the stories of dreamers. My bookshelves are lined with poetry; with romances; with escapades and adventure tales, of lands I will never visit in anything save for imaginative words).
The Festival unfolds before me in brilliant fire; the colors might have astounded me if I were a dreamer. But already, as I have said, I am not, and instead I find the entire affair a waste of resources. On a political level, I understand the practicality of a festival between Delumine and Denocte—I understand the benefit of merging our cities, our cultures, of letting bonfires lick the sky.
But why, I wonder, must it be under the guise of night? Why must it be with children’s laughter rising high and bright in the spring air, like the unfurling of so many wings?
I know Prigovora should not accompany me to such an event; and yet he is there at my shoulder, a nightmare slicing through the knee-high grass. He does not turn to look at me but stares out through the flames, his irises glowing as all good predator’s do in the darkness, in the glinting light: bright and wide as saucers.
I am here, he thinks, through our Bond. I have known him for an eternity and I will never grow accustomed to the sound of his voice, grating, nails against stone or metal against metal. To keep the dreamers at bay.
I turn away from him but he trails my shadow. I do not know if it is my haste to get away or if it is my simple preoccupation with my thoughts, but the abrupt pivot to the side and beyond has me colliding with something else—
It takes me a moment to recognize, with the sound of air leaving their chest, it is not a something but a someone—
“Excuse me—I apologize. Are you… alright?” My head is ringing, and I realize that is what I had hit. His head.
He is bathed in bright blue firelight; in the thought of stars; in a night that is fresh and new, and not the dead thing that it feels like in my chest.
I do not understand the way they paint their skins or bejewel themselves; I do not understand their dances or their poetry or their magic.
Most of all, I do not understand the raw exuberance of their lives; the way they allow joy and pain and love to color their expressions in equal measures, as they come, in waves of pleasure or agony. I have always watched them from afar with a bemused expression; I have always humored them.
(What I cannot admit to, ever, is the way I read most voraciously the stories of dreamers. My bookshelves are lined with poetry; with romances; with escapades and adventure tales, of lands I will never visit in anything save for imaginative words).
The Festival unfolds before me in brilliant fire; the colors might have astounded me if I were a dreamer. But already, as I have said, I am not, and instead I find the entire affair a waste of resources. On a political level, I understand the practicality of a festival between Delumine and Denocte—I understand the benefit of merging our cities, our cultures, of letting bonfires lick the sky.
But why, I wonder, must it be under the guise of night? Why must it be with children’s laughter rising high and bright in the spring air, like the unfurling of so many wings?
I know Prigovora should not accompany me to such an event; and yet he is there at my shoulder, a nightmare slicing through the knee-high grass. He does not turn to look at me but stares out through the flames, his irises glowing as all good predator’s do in the darkness, in the glinting light: bright and wide as saucers.
I am here, he thinks, through our Bond. I have known him for an eternity and I will never grow accustomed to the sound of his voice, grating, nails against stone or metal against metal. To keep the dreamers at bay.
I turn away from him but he trails my shadow. I do not know if it is my haste to get away or if it is my simple preoccupation with my thoughts, but the abrupt pivot to the side and beyond has me colliding with something else—
It takes me a moment to recognize, with the sound of air leaving their chest, it is not a something but a someone—
“Excuse me—I apologize. Are you… alright?” My head is ringing, and I realize that is what I had hit. His head.
He is bathed in bright blue firelight; in the thought of stars; in a night that is fresh and new, and not the dead thing that it feels like in my chest.
