You wrap your name tight around my ribs
And keep me warm. I was born for you.
Above, below, by you, by you surrounded.
She had done everything in her power to barter with the misery, to eke out from life what pleasures she could between the bloodshed and the raw moments afterwards… those hot, sticky, coppery moments; coalesced into one faceless thing, donned in a hundred pairs of insensate eyes and hundred blue tongues, lolling. If one can imagine: Everything surrounding seems to quiet, to disappear into a shapeless whirl of life beyond the sill at which she stands, marvelling at, and sickened by, the pantomime of godhood. That’s what taking a life is, really, at the end of the day, isn’t it? To mime the ordained power of the divine ‒ to wield the purloined scales of judgement and finality, so uncouth in mortal hands. And keep me warm. I was born for you.
Above, below, by you, by you surrounded.
She hadn’t made peace with any of it, but she had found small ways to make it all go away, and if that’s the closest she ever comes to absolution, to freedom, so be it.
Nor, indeed, is she meant to be forgiven ‒ not meant to be pitied in the quiet way that he does now, taking in the enormity of that ill-begotten punishment ‒ she may not have earned this cryptic existence… but then again, maybe she had, in a way, for sins gone unpaid. It had simply been a happy coincidence. Long Like the King.
Not that she believes any of that. Those dizzying height of self-awareness exists in the centre of her labyrinthian arrogance and anger, glowing softly as a holy grail might, far too pleased with itself. No. It had not been more than pouting ‒ not from her perspective ‒ at least, not as far as Zolin goes, and if she could have, she would have stood at the margin of life and death with him and revelled as she played numen of carnage once again.
She really only has herself to blame. Not that she would say otherwise. That level of self-awareness is perfectly accessible..
He’s right, though, life is about suffering between the small mercies.
He’s right, too, that it’s a bloody grim train of thought.
As they walk, the world becomes a little less dark, a little less stagnant ‒ so gradually, that it is almost imperceptible, except that nothing in that choking underworld can ever go wholly unnoticed. The way the dream mutates does not feel like a shift to her, but a phase ‒ like night bleeding into dusk. She sees it, recognizes it with a cocked head, but the exact moment things begin to unweave she cannot quite put her finger on. Perhaps the lucid walker experiences otherwise, her mind holding onto him in unsteady, increasingly suspicious hands.
But the sputtering braziers throw less splaying flamelight, and a more consistent ambience basks the intricate details of the ceiling into sight. They are engraved with images of life and death; gods and mortals. Now and then, a beam of wood, so out of place in the necropolis, spans wall-to-wall.
The passage-that-was-never, too, becomes wider, and the darkened rooms that split off from it are filled with heaps of vaguely equine shapes, dented, dull helms rolling down them with sharp clattering. Strange flags wave windlessly at the precipices, piercing through the bodies like claimed earth. These tableaus in-between, she offers only cursory, vapid glance, a look that says, not this again, and nothing more.
The walker cackles and Cyrra turns her sharp gaze on him, brow cocked. It echoes, inelegant and unwanted in this place, but where it lands, it seems to burn holes in the fabric of the dream, pinpoints of sunlight slanting through, elaborating motes of dust. Dune, from the low quarter, the Viper Slayer plays with anger, annoyance, and interest, in equal measure. She would never admit it ‒ like he rebukes his joy in being noticed‒ but she receives his presence gladly. As gladly as she can. So that he is here at all, somehow, is immaterial; the how is what sticks like a thorn. “Dune, from the low quarter,” the mockery he waits for never comes ‒ it has never meant much to her, which is rich coming from someone who grew up in the Queen’s gardens; but an Arete had always been an Arete, no matter their origins. “Cyrra.”
The sound of voices grows louder ‒ the clinking of mugs, the sound of oud strings and tabla percussion. Cyrra seems not to notice at all, her ears turned back to him, grunting, “accident. Minor difference, from my perspective.” The words lack enough venom to be dangerous but are hard enough to be chastizing.
Her mind has always been a guarded palace.
“How do you you opps into someone elses’ mind?”
It is, after some moments walking, that they ‒ dreamer and walker ‒ come to a door, light limning the cracks around its frame. She considers it ‒ the intricate girih patterns etched in the wood, the brass handle, shaped like a hooding snake. ‘So do you always wear a collar, or-’ Cheeky. Her lip twitches, pulse quickening in her ears. “Al Miqyas Aldhahab,” Had he not challenged her? This is what she came come up with?
Well, it’s no flight through the cosmos, but, ce la vie.
She moves to press her nose against the door and it opens at the slightest brush. The light that streams in is blinding, like stepping out at first sun-up, but Cyrra moves into it greedily, the dry warmth of that place like a lover’s touch. “It’s not a collar,” she blinks, slowly letting the scene emerge from the wash of white. A tavern, with brightly coloured, geometric patterns on the walls; vibrant, aromatic smoke curls up to the wooden beams above from circles of huddled heads and the air smells like wine, ale, jasmine blooms and spice.
“...it’s a… long story…”
She smirks.
Somewhere, beneath the din of laughter and conversation, two, slightly slurred, coquettish voices surface, rippled versions of themselves ‒ ‘they call me the Viper Slayer, where I come from...’
‘...oh, aye? Well... I have a Viper needs Slaying…’
It isn’t a long story, at all, actually. It is an interminably embarrassing one. “I met a metalworker in this place. He made it for me.” She turns her head, craning over the patrons with their fluted, golden cups and elaborate, flowing cloaks, to where she knows she should be sitting, flushed and too close to the hale Leishan. But there is only an inchoate shade, like an imprinted presence. “Do you drink in dreams?” she turns to him, “If you don’t, this is a good place to start.” She doesn’t bother to ask him if he can drink here at all, or if those kinds of pleasures are denied a walker. She can, she’s dreamed of wine many-a nights.
She mutters something to a server passing by in a lilting, melodic tongue. The pretty girl with kohl-lined eyes nods her head and sways away, the golden coins that hem her scarf jingling. She returns with two cups. Cyrra takes one in her mind’s grasp and raises it, before bringing it to her lips, “to your health, Dune.” The other sits expectantly on its tray.
The pretty girl with kohl-lined eyes winks.
@Dune
MINOR POWERPLAYING IS PERMITTED
