D U N E
- ☾ -
I
t was not often like this for Dune. This complete and total abandonment of reality. This forgetting, even for a moment, that it is a dream. That he is an intruder, a hitchhiker, a ghost. Always he can follow the thread back to his real body, which shifts in its sleep and inhales the scents of home-- wet ash from the fireplace, the thin straw of his bed, and, from outside the window, sage and sand. But sometimes he gets so caught up in the magic he forgets himself. And so if he looks like a god it does not entirely surprise him, for in moments like these he feels like a god. He is orphan-turned-beggar-turned-jack of all trades and master of dreams. Why not take another step up, claim himself a god? Here, beyond the realm of contestation; Here, where there are no rules at all, and no one to challenge him.
It’s the sound of her victory that stirs him from the reverie. The warm chime spreads from the lighthouse and hangs as no sound does in reality. Like the sky, it tricks the senses into thinking it is within reach; Dune almost reaches out his nose, convinced for a moment that he can touch this sound, speak to it.
It is a dream, it is all a dream.
The light fans out behind him, casting a halo in his unwieldy mane that billows in the seaward breeze. “There’s always something more to everyone.” Like whatever insidious thing she hides from him, swept behind the curtain of her long mane and revealed only in the briefest of glimpses. There is a reason, there must be a reason, why her dreams always feel something like a battlefield. Perhaps this is why he is reluctant to show her the truth of things, that he is not of this dream but flesh, stirring far away in his simple bed. Knowledge is the only currency that holds weight in dreams, and once given it can never be taken back.
Sereia thanks him, and while courtesy demands he say “you’re welcome,” the words don’t come. Dune is not here to be benevolent. His reasons are entirely selfish- she fascinates him, and in dreams he always sought that which intrigued him most. “Of course,” he says, letting her thanks slide off and away.
And then his mistake comes back to bite him, hard, in places uncouth. “Why did you call me little fish?” He blinks dumbly. “Are you mocking me?”
“I don’t know,” he says quickly, “no, of course not! It didn’t mean anything,” his voice is gently pleading, and without thinking too much about it he reaches out and tugs gently at her mane as his mind grasps for some reason that might satisfy her. “You’re by the sea,” he remarks finally. It is something he had not realized as true until it was said out loud. But as he listens carefully now he can hear her sea outside the edge of this dream. The constant movement, the crush and roll, echoes in the consistency of light here-- look close enough and see it flickers gentle and rhythmic as the pulse of the ocean.
And like the ocean as the storm draws in, the light grows frenetic, the shadows feverish. The pulse beats faster, urgent, and Dune has a sinking feeling. The lighthouse begins to crumble, bricks falling from the facade one after the other. “It didn’t mean anything,” he says again, this time annoyance edging into his voice-- annoyance with himself, for ever using that stupid, stupid name.
And what on earth are dreams if not our only way of speaking?
