02-11-2019, 11:05 PM
A girl in a tower with no key; a circle of dark clouds crowning the turrets (or maybe they weren't clouds); a smudge of darkness in the corner of a window -- an inky fall of hair, perhaps, or the smokey body of an otherbeast.
It changed from time to time, that story; its inflections and cadence, but the core was always the same.
A wash of need flooded with the final words, spreading out like a beacon into the ether of this world. She could only imagine Jon Little Bird's horror should he witness such seeming recklessness, to fling her consciousness out directionless and trust that body and soul would reassemble whole. Her arms stretched wide against the winds until it almost felt like falling.
Then the world fuzzed like swirls of paint on canvas, realigning anew. The spray of the sea faded and she landed on her hands and knees, fingers curling in stubby grass until the crescent of her nails churned dirt. Salt-soaked petals drifted from her braided hair as her curious gaze peeked out. Ice curled frigid hooks beneath her skin and did not fade when she willed it to; instead a cloud sprang from chilled lips, prompting a smile as she lifted to sit back on her heels.
"A lovely story."
The woman perched on a rock, cowled in silvered grey. Unmoving, she might have been grown from the stone beneath her, garments and all.
Nimeda knew what the woman was in the same way she recognised the wolves' kin, an intrinsic understanding like the difference between earth and sky. Probably not something she could articulate, and a name slipped like water captured in her palm, but it didn't matter. Her lips twitched a greeting, genuine in mirth, a flash of curiosity in her wide grey eyes as the understanding sunk in.
Wolves roamed the dream more often than their human kin, and others flashed like flickering shades, unknowing of the trespass. Few entered knowingly, fewer still with the telling resonance that drew Nimeda's interest like a nose pressed against a sweet shop window. New things woke all the while as the world slowly stirred, yet it remained at times a lonely existence.
This one was rarer still than all those others; not even a visitor, but something stranger. And older.
"It helps," she said, sure her nature would be understood by a creature that made even her feel like a summertime youth. Her neck arced to absorb her surroundings; the sky lit red and amber, and streaked with dark cloud. Shadows clung to distant hills, and somewhere downslope a cheerful amount of water rushed against the shore. The crimson painted door to a dwelling lay behind, and a twisted pillar thrust from the earth, drawing her gaze up.
She couldn't think what had pulled her here, unless she had been somehow snared along the way. Nim pushed herself to her feet, the ground like slabs of ice beneath her soles. A shivering step brought her to the jut of rock, fingers tracing a path that did not quite touch its surface. Her hand paled almost to frozen blue against the black. "We are in a pocket," she observed. Chills chased her bare arms, creeping through the floating fabric of her dress and into her bones. The basalt twisted to the eye like something writhed inside. "And you are not a sea monster."
It changed from time to time, that story; its inflections and cadence, but the core was always the same.
A wash of need flooded with the final words, spreading out like a beacon into the ether of this world. She could only imagine Jon Little Bird's horror should he witness such seeming recklessness, to fling her consciousness out directionless and trust that body and soul would reassemble whole. Her arms stretched wide against the winds until it almost felt like falling.
Then the world fuzzed like swirls of paint on canvas, realigning anew. The spray of the sea faded and she landed on her hands and knees, fingers curling in stubby grass until the crescent of her nails churned dirt. Salt-soaked petals drifted from her braided hair as her curious gaze peeked out. Ice curled frigid hooks beneath her skin and did not fade when she willed it to; instead a cloud sprang from chilled lips, prompting a smile as she lifted to sit back on her heels.
"A lovely story."
The woman perched on a rock, cowled in silvered grey. Unmoving, she might have been grown from the stone beneath her, garments and all.
Nimeda knew what the woman was in the same way she recognised the wolves' kin, an intrinsic understanding like the difference between earth and sky. Probably not something she could articulate, and a name slipped like water captured in her palm, but it didn't matter. Her lips twitched a greeting, genuine in mirth, a flash of curiosity in her wide grey eyes as the understanding sunk in.
Wolves roamed the dream more often than their human kin, and others flashed like flickering shades, unknowing of the trespass. Few entered knowingly, fewer still with the telling resonance that drew Nimeda's interest like a nose pressed against a sweet shop window. New things woke all the while as the world slowly stirred, yet it remained at times a lonely existence.
This one was rarer still than all those others; not even a visitor, but something stranger. And older.
"It helps," she said, sure her nature would be understood by a creature that made even her feel like a summertime youth. Her neck arced to absorb her surroundings; the sky lit red and amber, and streaked with dark cloud. Shadows clung to distant hills, and somewhere downslope a cheerful amount of water rushed against the shore. The crimson painted door to a dwelling lay behind, and a twisted pillar thrust from the earth, drawing her gaze up.
She couldn't think what had pulled her here, unless she had been somehow snared along the way. Nim pushed herself to her feet, the ground like slabs of ice beneath her soles. A shivering step brought her to the jut of rock, fingers tracing a path that did not quite touch its surface. Her hand paled almost to frozen blue against the black. "We are in a pocket," she observed. Chills chased her bare arms, creeping through the floating fabric of her dress and into her bones. The basalt twisted to the eye like something writhed inside. "And you are not a sea monster."