Dune is at the bar, about to knock back a drink alongside some hungry-eyed noble with one too many golden baubles. Piercings on piercings, with golden chains strung between them... at what point does decoration become a burden? Perhaps such a point does not exist if everything is made of gold- it would not surprise Dune if this stranger put a gilded bit beneath his tongue and called it fashion.
But he’s... he’s tipsy, and losing track of the story. Focus. The story is: he is at the bar, about to knock back a(nother) drink- no, he’s knocking it back, the pale golden liquid at the back of his throat, when he glances across the room and sees the child.
Dune chokes, coughs. The decadent stranger pats his back reassuringly with a wing… the gesture is performed with far too much eagerness, and the bay (still sputtering) recoils from the touch and begins to claw his way through the crowd toward the girl. One side of his body is covered in intricate golden paint. It is smudged in places but still mostly distinguishable as some kind of art and not just a smear of gold. As he bumps into strangers the patterns melt together more and more until they look like flames. Until he looks, if you squint your eyes, like Midas on fire.
He reaches the child just as a laughing stranger is passing her a drink. A crystalline voice oozes “You’re so cute!” when Dune barges in with a glare, ears pinned to his skull. “Don’t drink that,” he advises the girl as he snatches the glass away.
(for a moment, he considers drinking it himself, but the logical part of his mind, as faraway as it is right now, murmurs sagely to him that this would appear hypocritical.)
He pours the sweet-smelling drink into a potted plant nearby. The generous stranger pouts and shuffles away, and Dune sighs heavily as he turns to the young stranger. She didn’t have the look of an orphan- and Dune knew that look well- so her parents must be close by, but the young stallion felt protective of the girl nonetheless. Someone had to. His voice softens considerably as he exhales: “Where's your mom and dad?”
☾
And what on earth are dreams if not our only way of speaking?
kissed my penny and threw it in
prayed to keep my soul
I
want to go,” she had told her mother. “Aeneas is supposed to be there,” she says and it sparked something in her mother. Elliana had shown such little interest in making friends that just mentioning his name had been enough to sway Elena into letting her daughter come to the party. While Elliana would deny her reasoning being to see Aeneas, she wanted to see Day Court. Had heard of the sands and the heat, burning through her veins as hot wanderlust. “Okay then.” Elena had said. Her mother had braided her hair, and placed the moonflower in her cream colored mane. “I love that flower,” Ellliana commented, watching her. “Tell you what,” her mother began, peering with blue eyes around their cottage. “I will let you wear this flower this time, and if you take good care of it then next time, I will let you wear the moonflower, okay?” She says to hear daughter, placing a forget-me-not in the blonde of her mane. It was enough of a promise to send a smile on her wildflower of a daughter’s face.
They arrive at the party and her mother kept her so close to her side, as if they were stuck together by magnets. Elli looks up at her mother, blue eyes begging to let her go, to drop the chains she so often feels shackled with. “I think I see Aeneas,” she says as she starts to take a few steps away, those invisible chains clattering and clanging. Her mother is about to pull her back when she looks ahead and something changes on her face, Elliana is not sure what it is, but with some urgency she nudges her daughter’s dark shoulder. “Yes, yes go and play with him,” she says and Elliana sa-shays into the crowd, only briefly wondering what or who could have changed her mother’s mind so quickly.
It is overwhelming. The crowd. The music. Everything. Elliana goes nearly unnoticed moving in and out like the ballerina she would be if she were not an artist first. It is only when she arrives close to where they are pouring drinks that her attention is so captured. All sorts of colors our and swirl in the glasses, and a stranger quickly notices her interest. A glass is poured and Elliana watches it dance in the bottle and she wonders if this is what the fireflies look like that her mother told her about. “Thank you,” she says, watching with blue eyes. Those lips nearly touch the glass in something that looks like an innocent first kiss before it is taken away from her.
She stares at him for a moment, those too blue eyes stand out against her dark face, large and round like she is constantly amazed at the world around her. “My dad is in Denocte,” she says. “And my mom…” she stutters, looking around for the familiar golden figure. “She is wearing a flower in her hair, kind of like mine,” she says, as if that is an appropriate answer. “She said I could wear this one and if I take good care of it then I can wear hers next time.” It would seem that this is more important information to offer than her mother’s actual whereabouts.
“Why are you gold? Are you pretending to be a star?”
he girl is from a completely different world than him- than just about everyone he knows. Most of Dune’s acquaintances are street rats, beggars, thieves, or a combination of the above. She is clearly none of those… She’s- she’s soft in all the ways Solterran children are not allowed to be. She also is not born of wealth, or if she is it has not yet dimmed the bright charm behind her eyes. He takes her in thoughtfully, intrigued and somewhat bothered by something.
There’s something about her that flutters at the edge of his mind, begging to be noticed. On her brow is a heart-shaped marking that reminds him of someone. And those blue eyes, so familiar… he frowns as he glances around the room for a woman with a flower behind the ear, half in excitement and half in dread to see if the girl’s mother is perhaps palomino in color, with the same eyes, the same heart. But Elena is nowhere to be seen, or any mare with a flower for that matter. His attention returns to the chatty filly, who is staring at the golden paint that is smeared and flaking across his body..
At some point in the evening, he had realized the paint on his body served two distinct purposes. The first, which he was aware of, was to elevate his plain, muddy, salt-of-the-earth colors to something more befitting the decadence of the party. But the second- and this was clever- was so that guests who deigned to converse with the server would be so focused on the paint that the conversation would not stray to Dune, the living being.
“Why are you gold? Are you pretending to be a star?” She asks as though this is a perfectly normal thing for someone to do. “No…” he says, biting off “why would I do that?” with a soft snort of laughter. Kids. “It’s just decoration.” Some people painted the walls of their buildings. The Ieshans painted their servants.
And, in fact, their guests… Dune has an idea. He glances toward his left, where the room opens into a vast, sprawling courtyard. There are less horses there, which would be a relief- Less generous strangers with questionable drinks. “They’re painting anyone who wants it, in the courtyard. Want to see?” His smile is brief and tired, but while it lasts it shines warm and bright as the sun.
☾
And what on earth are dreams if not our only way of speaking?
kissed my penny and threw it in
prayed to keep my soul
E
lliana is not rich by any means, but in her short life, she has wanted for nothing except to stretch her limbs around the world and see all there is with those too-blue eyes. Elliana is a girl who wants for adventure, and the gods (or her mother) have seemed, to go out of their way to deny her it. She hungers not for gems but to see the backside of a waterfall, she desires not gold coins, but to sing into the wind that blows on the world’s tallest of mountains. Elliana wants simplicity and wild all at once, all in the same life. She would bow humbly to the giant glaciers she finds at the ends of the world, she would pray to any gods to keep the sun shining bright even as it burns her skin in the desert, and she would kiss the dragon’s feet only after he is seen in the darkest of caves.
She seeks the undiscovered not with conquer in her eyes—but love.
“Oh,” she says, half-disappointedly. “That’s what I would do.” She offers him, still thinking that it would be a good idea. She thinks it is never too late to change your plan, after all, you can play make believe any where you would like. But she doesn't voice these thoughts aloud, they seem silly, even if in her heart she knows he is the silly one for not thinking of being a make believe star first. Silly, silly.
She watches his eyes with her own of blue, watches to see what he does next, even if she remains quietly looking at him. “Painting?” She asks him, with smiles and eyelashes batting like butterflies. “Yes!” Elli says excitedly, leaping to his side, ready, eager even, to follow. If she were human, she would have taken his hand in hers and given him no choice but to take her friendship in stride. “Can I paint something on you?” She asks him, as they walk towards the Courtyard painting. “I promise I won’t make you look like a star,” she says, on her honor, already forming the mindset that perhaps, he didn't very much enjoy his current look. “You can paint me!” She says when they arrive at the station and hands him a brush, leaving little room for negate her offer.
s a boy, Dune had a magpie’s eye. Anything shining, shimmering, golden drew him in, wide-eyed and wanting. It often got him in trouble.
As he grew up, he became more discerning, and he learned to see the hidden value in things. A small cart, even one worn and ragged, could be purchased on the cheap and used to haul water to the gardens, or deliver goods from the docks to the noble’s houses. Thus its value continued to grow, while baubles and jewelry and other shiny things would only tarnish with time. (More importantly, it was far safer to be interested in carts and tools than earrings and scarfs and other things which had to be tactfully pried from their owners.)
As a young stallion, Dune had taken his magpie’s eye and turned it into an artist’s eye. It helped to relieve the tedium of his life’s toil. When working in the gardens he had a knack for artfully arranging the rows of flowers, and laying the tiled walkways in lovely patterns. Even loading boats at the docks, he arranged the goods and packages in stacks that made the most efficient use of space- meanwhile others piled the wares with little thought (and even less joy) behind each placement. This creative streak spilled over into his free time, when he repaired broken trinkets or put together discarded things to make something new.
Despite all this, Dune had never painted before. (He once applied limewash to walls, but that was all rote motion, not something he would consider painting). His creativity had always been channeled toward fixing or improving upon something that was already there. Not creation. So when the girl passes him a paintbrush, he stares at her a moment like he doesn’t know what to do with it. Then he shrugs, obligingly, and turns his gaze to the empty canvas of her shoulder. “You can paint whatever you wish,” he says, "even if it makes me look like a star." His smile is laughing. He was only going to wash it all off as soon as he left, anyway- it seemed unwise to show up for work gilded in paint from the night before.
He had not noticed the moon marking before, but as soon as he does he knows what he will paint. Every moon needs a sky. He begins simply enough- stars, pinpricks of bright paint all across her shoulder. “What’s your name?” He asks as he works. Although he finds this activity childish and inconsequential, he takes the act of creation very seriously. A small frown juts across his lips, and his brow furrows in concentration. “I’m Dune.” He begins to paint billowing clouds, kissed by moonlight, swirled in shades of silver. Her skin is velvety smooth, a perfect canvas. He imagines his own is lumpy with scars and muscle that would distort whatever image she attempted to paint on him. Not that he had very high expectations of the little girl's artistic abilities.
☾
And what on earth are dreams if not our only way of speaking?
kissed my penny and threw it in
prayed to keep my soul
S
he is a creature who is comfortable in her skin, who is so content to watch the world pass by her, and she sketches images of it on her arm. She likes watching others smile, laugh, but she too likes to watch when tears stain their cheeks and fear covers their eyes. She likes watching life cross someone’s face, all the good and the bad. Elliana, as her powers and her connection with the dead grow, will come to crave these moments, moments where she can see the life in another, just to make sure she has not lost herself in the land of the dead.
And so this party, these faces, these voices, these lives, offer her so much comfort and love and joy. If she knew of Dune’s dream wandering, and if she knew of her own powers to come, she might have asked him, how do you know which world you are in? How do you choose which way to go when you stand on the bridge between them? And how do you survive knowing both worlds without crushing under the weight of it all?
And do those dreams ever cross over into this world? Does he hear it? The buzzing, the constant buzzing that makes her bones weep.
Like a wispy girl, lost to whim and wander, she watches with dreamy blue eyes as he takes the paintbrush. He says she can paint whatever she wishes and a world of possibility opens up before her. His dark skin reminds her of the earth. Her mother told her that from the earth rose flowers in the spring, flowers like those in her windowsill. And suddenly he appears before her not like a canvas, but a garden, with flowers blooming, just as she knew they would in Dusk come spring. She starts painting as the whisper of his smile hangs on his lips. She thinks of first a sunflower, and mixes paints to just the right shade of gold.
“Elliana,” she responds as her brush finally touches down against his skin. “But you can call me, Elli,” she adds. Everyone does. Elliana has always felt too large in her mouth, like there is too much that is held within that name. It was not like Elli, Elli like a butterfly tucker between gentle palms, with quiet, fluttering wings. He says his name as she finishes the sunflower on his chest. Another brush, another paint color, and she begins to paint tulips on his shoulder. “Do you like the party?” She asks him abruptly. “I heard parties are supposed to be fun,” she says if only because she thinks she would rather be painting by her cliff side cottage, or fulfilling the wanderlust that hums steadily below her skin of golden shadows.
une is a watcher too, but not at all like Elliana. She watches with a big, golden heart; the watching puts her at ease. Meanwhile Dune watches with a certain noble brand of ambition. He does not look to climb his way above and beyond others, but he has a keen eye for… opportunity. And he sees clearly there is little opportunity in befriending and amusing a child, but he does so anyway- for some of the guests have sharp teeth and sinister intentions (not to mention the poisoning going around), and some fleshy, beating part of the boy cannot help but to see a girl that needs protecting.
Not that he is a knight, not even close! If he appears to move with nobility it is only the flighty feet of one used to dipping his way around street brawls. And if she were to ask him how he survives the dream world and the waking without being crushed by the weight of it all, he would say there are many worlds, not just two. Take this world they’re in now, this lavish festival with its music and drinks and decadent bite-sized antipastos: it exists on top of a different world, one of perfect, practiced smiles and bone-bending labor and sweaty chefs in a crowded kitchen. And that world, it is built on families that fight their way, tooth and claw, to scrape by in poverty.
His pensive thoughts are interrupted by the soft tickle of her eager paintbrush and then the gift of her name: Elliana. It sounds like the name of a flower, although most names do to him. Dune would claim it is the result of his self-taught education… really it’s because he has a romantic streak. “Nice... to meet you... Elli...” He speaks slowly, for his focus on the painting dominates his attention. He moves across her shoulder and to her chest just as she moves from his chest to his shoulder; they pivot around each other without thinking, natural as swans dancing.
When she asks him if he likes the party, he laughs and draws back his paintbrush to consider his work. It is not the best rendition of a night sky, but not the worst either. “Not particularly. Too stuffy for me.” He wrinkles his nose in an overexaggerated display. “I was just about to leave before I saw you about to drink gods knows what.” He glances down to the flowers she’s adorned on him and smiles. “Hey, that’s not too bad.” It’s the honest truth-- she has more talent than he assumed she would, for someone so young. “How about you, Elli, think it’s a fun party?”
☾
And what on earth are dreams if not our only way of speaking?
kissed my penny and threw it in
prayed to keep my soul
E
lliana does not wish to climb higher onto the mountain to look down at the others around her. She wants to climb high enough to see above the clouds, to find out if they look like snow when you get to the other side of them. She does not wish to dive into the deep ocean, to go further than anyone else and harness whatever power the sea hides. Instead she wants to find the shells that hide there, and ask the fish, ‘do you get scared of the dark down here?’ She does not wish to be the first to travel through a jungle, but only to make it to the waterfall it harbors and smell the flowers that cling to it, and let the mists gather on her skin.
She is happy to watch others pass her, climb higher, go deeper, Elliana is content to watch, ands he will wave them in passing, blow a kiss only when their backs are turned.
Another child would laugh at the way he is tickled by the paintbrush, but Elli is so concentrated that any twitch of his skin is not separate thing. It is like when the wind blows against the back of her canvas and the paper bubbles up. Part of the process, part of the painting, part of the beauty and the story. “I like your name,” she gifts him with a compliment, something she does not so freely give as her mother does. “But I like the sand dunes, maybe that’s why,” she says, such a childish assumption, but one could not believe it to be untrue. She loves the flower on his shoulder, it glows gold like the sand in what she imagines it must shimmer like in the sun. The golden orange hue is stunning, nothing like the gold paint he worse before, the gold of wealth, of money. This was the gold of nature, of exploration.
She looks down at her night sky body when he pulls away and giggles. It is beautiful, she thinks, she would have to keep it until her papa could see. It would be a battle, resisting a bath for that long, but her mother, she should understand. “I thought the same,” she says with a winkled nose as she adds a stem to her final flowers and backs away from the garden she created where she once believed a star to be. “I think I prefer the quiet of a field or a forest,” she says, even if such things are never quiet with the giggling sun and the dancing grass. “I’ve never listened to the dunes though, Dune. What do they sound like?” What do their shadows say? Who lurks inside them, waiting for someone to hear them?
une was not proud of his name. He didn’t dislike it either, it was just… it was just a collection of letters. And while he had grudgingly come to identify with those four letters, they didn’t really mean anything other than their definition: a huge pile of sand. So it does not warm him at all to hear she likes his name, or dunes in general, except for the wry amusement that comes with trying to remember what it felt like to be so young. To be the age where what you liked- or did not like- carried such heft. Before you had time, and experience, and oh-so-many mistakes with which to define yourself.
“I’ve never listened to the dunes though, Dune. What do they sound like?”
What did the dunes sound like? Well, he had never considered it. It was like describing the scent of the sea or the color of the sky just before sunrise- things like that are better left to the poets, in Dune’s opinion. “They’re quiet, mostly. More quiet than field or forest. But when the sand’s just so, and the wind blows just right, they sing.” It was an eerie, keening kind of singing that he was not fond of- it reminded him too much of nightmares. But there was something spectacular about it all the same, something that should be experienced. “I... I could show you, if you like.” It would look wildly inappropriate to leave the party with a little girl, but Elliana was not just any little girl, or at least that's what he told himself.
Whatever makes you sleep at night, etc.
He leads the way through the crowd and into the night. Here by the Ieshan's estate, the sounds of the party overflow into the broad walkways. Crickets and frogs, lured by the lush landscaping, sing away mindlessly. But outside the city, the hush of the desert is absolute- and if they walk far enough, and if they're lucky enough, they will reach the place where the sand sings.
☾
And what on earth are dreams if not our only way of speaking?
