D U N E
- ☾ -
H
er laughter floats past bright as a cloud wrung of all its rain. Like there was nothing else in the world- no sorrow, no worry, not even memory. Just being, light and merry and here. With Dune. And her touch, warm and friendly, as though they were just children… well her touch he chooses to not think about. Some things were better enjoyed in the moment, not clung to.His ears perk as she proposes a race. He snorts. Dune was never one to turn down a challenge or a dare-- or a race. She didn’t stand a chance, and he was not nearly enough of a gentleman to let her win. “Keep up, little fish.”
Little fish? He’s off before he can ponder the origins of that, too busy winning the race; in fact so intent on victory that he forgets this is a dream. He forgets they could be running a long time. They could be running forever, or at least it would feel like forever when they first wake from the reverie. They could spend a lifetime running without needing to rest... without needing to eat or sleep or even breathe if they don’t wish to..
They also aren’t bound to any physical rules here. Dune runs faster and faster just as easily as standing still, breathless only from the exhilaration of the dream and the warm tickle of Sereia’s breath on his shoulder. Her gleeful presence spurns him on. Truth be told it distracts him, too, but only in the loveliest way.
The sea to their left is but a blue blur now. The fine diamonds beneath their hooves upturn and shatter beneath their force and speed, remaining suspended opalescent and shimmering in the air behind them. Like a fairy path, something from the fables. But Dune is not looking back- he’s charging forward, ever toward the end of the dream.
They run so fast they are no longer touching the ground. It’s subtle at first, hard to notice. You spend your entire life rooted to the ground (well, at least one of them did) you expect it to always be there. Meanwhile the diamonds are still shattering to fine dust that billows like smoke below the dreamers, a shimmering dream road that rises to meet their hooves. It’s not until the smallest incline of his head, as he reaches for Sereia’s gaze, that Dune realizes they’re above the earth. They’re flying.
The sound of his laughter reaches daringly for the sun.
As they draw close to the lighthouse it paints them in alternating stripes of brightness and shadow, something about it like the spinning of a roulette wheel, or the prophetic plucking of leaves from a flower: Loves me- Loves me not- Loves me- There is a heaviness to the come and go of the light, and Dune’s laughter fades. Struck by a fierce desire for the race to not be over, Dune slows- or perhaps he just wants, for the first time, to give the victory to another.
And what on earth are dreams if not our only way of speaking?
