Le Rêve
[There is a forest in late winter. The air is wet, almost foggy, cold, but with the vague suggestion of a coming thaw, of spring coming soon. The trees are bare and the morning sun cuts between them, silvery and golden. There are no leaves on the ground, only moss and roots, and in between those roots, mushrooms--brown, grey, black, white, a thousand different shapes and shades of mushrooms. Poisonous, surely.
There is no path through the forest, but there are clearings. Farther ahead, someone is walking. He has no coat, but he doesn't seem to notice the cold or the damp. He could just as easily be barefoot and he wouldn't notice. But he's stripped to his shirtsleeves and wandering in a forest.
This is Cain's dream as seen by another.
He walks through the forest, then, across, around, through, over roots and stones, between mushrooms. He's walking south, with the sun on his left, but that doesn't seem to matter. The sun light is brighter ahead, as though there are fewer trees, or a clearing.
It is the edge of the forest, which stops almost as neatly and flatly and suddenly as a wall.
But beyond the forest, there is something like a formal garden and something like a cemetery. It is winter: the grass is dull gold, and there are no flowers, but the hedges that border the garden and make it into a maze, are still green. There are people wandering around the garden as if at a party. They all wear grey rags, and only grey, in a thousand different shades of only grey, of their former finery--they seem to come from all places and times--torn silk and brocade, bedraggled feathers, shreds of Elizabethan collars, and they wander in circles.
He knows the way through the maze and he follows it. If he crosses the paths of the Grey People, they turn away from him--whether out of hatred or fear isn't clear, not from their mask-like faces. He follows the maze, and it leads to its own center. A labyrinth more than a maze: a way to, not a way through.
At the center of the maze is another maze, or another puzzle: a circle of the hedges cut with false paths and false doors that seem to lead in and out of the center, a ring of cypress trees, and a square garden temple.
This is a very old place and a very strange collection of places: a cemetery, the gardens he remembers, the garden temple at the Hargreaves' family house.
He goes up the steps into the temple. Two sides are open, only columns like white marble tree trunks. Two sides are walls, one hung with paintings and the other hung with weapons (monstrous, twisted, spiked, bladed things).
"Black sheep," he says and, looking up, there is a flock of sheep on a hill overlooking the garden and the maze, one black sheep in the all-white flock. He touches one of the paintings. There is still blood on some of those weapons.
The floor becomes stairs which becomes a path which lets him descend, now, down below the labyrinth and the garden and the Grey People.
It is dark underground and quiet and warmer. There is a redness in the air, almost a warmth in the color. Perhaps it is the candles. Because to be under the temple is to be in another temple, a darker one, a black marble one, a catacomb, a strange church.
Because it does seem like a church as he walks through it now, through the nave of it, with tall columns and arches rising above him into the dark, shadows all along beside him (an inversion from the sunlight and the trees). There are candles all around, any place that a candle can balance, and they are all burning--and have been burning, the way the wax coats stone and candlestick alike.
But ahead of him, the light is brighter, bluer--still dark, but less like fire and more like a jewel. This temple is underground, yes, and yet, rising up before him, surrounding him, are stained glass windows, blue, red, green, gold, filled with the faces of angels and saints. It is a church now, less than a temple. but there is no altar and there is no cross.
No. Instead, where the altar itself should rise, there is nothing, there is smooth stone, and there are those circles, those chalk lines, those ash marks, those blood drawings, those same rings that appear again and again in his dreams. There are candles at his feet and black feathers around them. The remnants of ritual. He knows them. Dead birds lie at the edge of the outermost ring, glimmering white in the candlelight, and sometimes there seem to be faces reflected in the little pools of blood at their necks--women's faces.
He remembers another dream where a dancer was used as a marionette and a pen to write words with the blood that dripped from her feet. And another dream where the bladed pendulum of a clock scraped lines like these around him into the floor. Those lines formed rings around him--ornate, complicated patterns, like stars or charts, patterns. They had meaning. He drew ones like them in chalk once, one night, in the depths of madness. He was master of those lines then, but at a cost.
He has had enough. He'll tear these rings and all that they bind up apart. He steps into the middle of the circles on the floor.
A voice comes from nowhere and everywhere: "Cain."
And he answers, "No."
And the voice answers, "Whosoever slayeth Cain, vengeance shall be taken on him sevenfold."
The edges of the circles begin to rise up, peeling away from the stone on which they were drawn. The points and the angles of them begin to organize themselves, taking shape, forming around him in preparation. Is he unaware? Is he resigned? It is not clear as the circle rises up and snaps shut around him like a trap or a closing flower and seals him in a birdcage--a birdcage made for a boy. The bars of the cage are gold and blood and made of thousands upon thousands of names, like links in a chain.
The cage is kept on a pedestal, a curiosity, a reliquary in the midst of the church. All around him now are smashed birdcages and pieces of eggshell. And all above him are the stained glass windows and the faces of saints and the grinding gears overhead for thousands of yards: brass and silver. The gears are horrible machinery, like the blades of saws or the teeth of monsters, the mechanisms of hell. It creaks like a ship, it groans like an old man dying of poison.
He is trapped again. He is trapped again and here he will stay trapped until he can find a way to break through the bars of this cage. He will try this dream again, crawling out of the ground in the forest and walking back to the labyrinth, the temples, the circles, and the cage. He will try a different answer next time.
And next time, perhaps, he won't be trapped. Next time, perhaps, he can defeat and destroy all these things.]
[ooc: Ah♥~ The one curse when I get to use my amazing RL Mary Sue power of peculiar dreams to my advantage. And, yes, make no mistake, these are based on my own real dreams tweaked to fit Cain's story. Come and play~ Also feel free to note at which point in the dream your character wants to join in. Time is fluid in dreams, so thread order doesn't matter, nor does length of time spent. Come, see some of the horrors Cain dreams of most nights (this is mild, really). Also, I apologize if my responses go weird or something: I have a cold and probably a fever and I am feeling it omg ;_;]
There is no path through the forest, but there are clearings. Farther ahead, someone is walking. He has no coat, but he doesn't seem to notice the cold or the damp. He could just as easily be barefoot and he wouldn't notice. But he's stripped to his shirtsleeves and wandering in a forest.
This is Cain's dream as seen by another.
He walks through the forest, then, across, around, through, over roots and stones, between mushrooms. He's walking south, with the sun on his left, but that doesn't seem to matter. The sun light is brighter ahead, as though there are fewer trees, or a clearing.
It is the edge of the forest, which stops almost as neatly and flatly and suddenly as a wall.
But beyond the forest, there is something like a formal garden and something like a cemetery. It is winter: the grass is dull gold, and there are no flowers, but the hedges that border the garden and make it into a maze, are still green. There are people wandering around the garden as if at a party. They all wear grey rags, and only grey, in a thousand different shades of only grey, of their former finery--they seem to come from all places and times--torn silk and brocade, bedraggled feathers, shreds of Elizabethan collars, and they wander in circles.
He knows the way through the maze and he follows it. If he crosses the paths of the Grey People, they turn away from him--whether out of hatred or fear isn't clear, not from their mask-like faces. He follows the maze, and it leads to its own center. A labyrinth more than a maze: a way to, not a way through.
At the center of the maze is another maze, or another puzzle: a circle of the hedges cut with false paths and false doors that seem to lead in and out of the center, a ring of cypress trees, and a square garden temple.
This is a very old place and a very strange collection of places: a cemetery, the gardens he remembers, the garden temple at the Hargreaves' family house.
He goes up the steps into the temple. Two sides are open, only columns like white marble tree trunks. Two sides are walls, one hung with paintings and the other hung with weapons (monstrous, twisted, spiked, bladed things).
"Black sheep," he says and, looking up, there is a flock of sheep on a hill overlooking the garden and the maze, one black sheep in the all-white flock. He touches one of the paintings. There is still blood on some of those weapons.
The floor becomes stairs which becomes a path which lets him descend, now, down below the labyrinth and the garden and the Grey People.
It is dark underground and quiet and warmer. There is a redness in the air, almost a warmth in the color. Perhaps it is the candles. Because to be under the temple is to be in another temple, a darker one, a black marble one, a catacomb, a strange church.
Because it does seem like a church as he walks through it now, through the nave of it, with tall columns and arches rising above him into the dark, shadows all along beside him (an inversion from the sunlight and the trees). There are candles all around, any place that a candle can balance, and they are all burning--and have been burning, the way the wax coats stone and candlestick alike.
But ahead of him, the light is brighter, bluer--still dark, but less like fire and more like a jewel. This temple is underground, yes, and yet, rising up before him, surrounding him, are stained glass windows, blue, red, green, gold, filled with the faces of angels and saints. It is a church now, less than a temple. but there is no altar and there is no cross.
No. Instead, where the altar itself should rise, there is nothing, there is smooth stone, and there are those circles, those chalk lines, those ash marks, those blood drawings, those same rings that appear again and again in his dreams. There are candles at his feet and black feathers around them. The remnants of ritual. He knows them. Dead birds lie at the edge of the outermost ring, glimmering white in the candlelight, and sometimes there seem to be faces reflected in the little pools of blood at their necks--women's faces.
He remembers another dream where a dancer was used as a marionette and a pen to write words with the blood that dripped from her feet. And another dream where the bladed pendulum of a clock scraped lines like these around him into the floor. Those lines formed rings around him--ornate, complicated patterns, like stars or charts, patterns. They had meaning. He drew ones like them in chalk once, one night, in the depths of madness. He was master of those lines then, but at a cost.
He has had enough. He'll tear these rings and all that they bind up apart. He steps into the middle of the circles on the floor.
A voice comes from nowhere and everywhere: "Cain."
And he answers, "No."
And the voice answers, "Whosoever slayeth Cain, vengeance shall be taken on him sevenfold."
The edges of the circles begin to rise up, peeling away from the stone on which they were drawn. The points and the angles of them begin to organize themselves, taking shape, forming around him in preparation. Is he unaware? Is he resigned? It is not clear as the circle rises up and snaps shut around him like a trap or a closing flower and seals him in a birdcage--a birdcage made for a boy. The bars of the cage are gold and blood and made of thousands upon thousands of names, like links in a chain.
The cage is kept on a pedestal, a curiosity, a reliquary in the midst of the church. All around him now are smashed birdcages and pieces of eggshell. And all above him are the stained glass windows and the faces of saints and the grinding gears overhead for thousands of yards: brass and silver. The gears are horrible machinery, like the blades of saws or the teeth of monsters, the mechanisms of hell. It creaks like a ship, it groans like an old man dying of poison.
He is trapped again. He is trapped again and here he will stay trapped until he can find a way to break through the bars of this cage. He will try this dream again, crawling out of the ground in the forest and walking back to the labyrinth, the temples, the circles, and the cage. He will try a different answer next time.
And next time, perhaps, he won't be trapped. Next time, perhaps, he can defeat and destroy all these things.]
[ooc: Ah♥~ The one curse when I get to use my amazing RL Mary Sue power of peculiar dreams to my advantage. And, yes, make no mistake, these are based on my own real dreams tweaked to fit Cain's story. Come and play~ Also feel free to note at which point in the dream your character wants to join in. Time is fluid in dreams, so thread order doesn't matter, nor does length of time spent. Come, see some of the horrors Cain dreams of most nights (this is mild, really). Also, I apologize if my responses go weird or something: I have a cold and probably a fever and I am feeling it omg ;_;]