There’s always something more to everyone.
Dune says it sagely and in that moment she hates his wisdom and the truth he speaks. She cannot deny how right he is. It is a truth about her and it stings, needling her deep in the places she is most vulnerable. He uncovers her with such a comment. It feels too close to exposing her, as if he lifts her forelock from her face to see her kelpie mouth beneath.
Sereia snaps back, as if he has reached out to touch her and move her hair from her cheek. But he is still stood too far back. Instantly she is ashamed and wishes only for things to return to how they were a moment before. Before he called her a fish, before he spoke such wounding truths into the beautiful places of her dream.
Sereia is looking to her feet, no longer the beauty of the dream enchants her. No longer can she bear to look at him when he suggests she might be something more. Isn’t it strange, she thinks, that she should fear him when all he is is a part of her mind, a guide navigating her way through her thoughts. Even guides take you to painful places you do not wish to go.
And that is it. When she looks to her feet, away from him, embracing his truth, thinking herself a fish is when her dream begins to crumble. The rotating light of the lighthouse, beating like her pulsing heart, crumbles, heartbroken into the ether of her dreamscape.
He says the name means nothing, but Sereia does not believe him. Not when he has said there is always something more to everyone . He knows. Of course he does. Why did she let herself think he did not? She likes him because beside him he forgets what she is, but Dune has always known. So why does she hurt now? It hurts because the name feels like a mockery. He denies that too and as she slowly lifts her face to look to him, she is not sure whether she believes him. Not when her dream turns into a nightmare around them - for that is what nightmares do, isn’t it? They play back your greatest fears, they mock you, kill you, hurt you, terrify you.
Then, annoyed with her, he tells her the name means nothing. She knows she should accept what she is, that she should not let such things hurt her. But from him it is a deep, deep wound. He cuts her to the quick and makes her a fool.
Sereia steps back, away from him, away from his annoyance, the name little fish. She wishes she could like it, she wishes she could smile with him, feel sweet and special. But no, it only hurts her and makes him angry. She takes another step back as her dream continues to crumble and change and grow dark and frantic. The sea falls away, it drags the beach with it, fast, fast, fast. It happens as she takes her other step away from him and suddenly she is falling over the edge of the cliff the beach has made. She is tumbling down, down, down, falling out of her dream. She startles awake as her stomach drops and then catches.
Sereia looks around. Deep beneath the ocean, in her place of sleep and rest, there is no pulsing lighthouse, there is no boy who calls her little fish. Her stomach twists with the memory and she swims away, up towards the surface, trying to shed her dream, her sadness, the deep aching loss. She liked Dune, but like all things in her mind, he reminded her of the one thing she wishes she wasn’t.
Above all, she laments that she does not have the gift he gave her. She longs for it to be real, to feel its sharp edges, its intricate layers of rock petals. As always, Sereia wants what she cannot have.
@
an unspoken soliloquy of dreams
~ Ariana
