[SWP] ACT VI: if you can dream

[Eik]

Losing too is still ours; and even forgetting
still has a shape in the kingdom of transformation.

An unusual silence hung over the world. In many ways it was like everything was sleeping, dreaming, except-- it was terrible.

This silence lacked the restful heaviness of sleep. There was no slow, steady breathing, no rise and fall of the chest. Nothing at all to mark the passage of time except the beat of his heart in his ears. His oldest companion. But (it seemed to him) even his heartbeat was so still and quiet that he questioned if what he was hearing wasn’t just a memory. It was certainly not a dream. There was no dreaming here, just as there was no sleep. Only that terrible stillness and a feeling that grew and grew, ravenous and anxious.

And as the unnatural silence grew, and the heat of the sun wore down the firm edges of reality, all those still alive (still awake) circled round the island’s heart. They circled in a way that was by no means perfect-- some of them with an orbit so wild it was almost completely without pattern-- which was to be expected, for in nature there is no such thing as a perfect circle. But their loops and ovals and halos, their paths, for all their differences, led them to the same place.

The relic.

Overhead a dragon beats his wings like battle drums. There is an unspoken disquiet between them, man and dragon. A shared restlessness that makes Eik stamp his hooves in the glittering sand and wish he had wings to beat and a horn to carve. All he has is magic, powerful and useless as ever, and with it the silence is full of words-- thoughts-- feelings. Fear and excitement, hesitation and an eagerness that almost reminds him of lust.

Is it the relic that is thinking of blood and power and rootless magic?

Forward, the crowd moves forward, just one horse at first, as all things, but then more and more, ants swarming a fallen crumb. Eik hesitates. (I don’t want glory, or power. I just want peace) But someone bumps against him in their rush to claim the relic and before he knows it he’s rushing forward too, keeping his attention wide like a net, knowing that absolutely nothing here is as it seems, least of all  that relic, lonely and wanting and laughing, he hears it now, do the rest of them hear it too?

Laughter.

When something’s let go of, it circles; and though we are rarely the center
of the circle, it draws around us its unbroken, marvelous curve

Drama llama Eik is staying

STAFF EDIT***
@Eik has rolled a 3! He has been awarded +200 signos.