FRAGMENTS / Luceti ver.
NARRATIVE.001 - Same Old Dream
Just me trying to get my writing voice back. Don't mind this!
It is the same dream he has every other night. The same one he had on the night he first awoke back in that dead city, surrounded by a rich garden and dancing spirits of the dead. He still isn't sure which one he should be calling home, that place or this one. The number of memories is about the same. And, in the end...
No matter which place, that dream is the same.
The sky in that dream is a rich red color. He stares up at it, watches the jet-black clouds and the dull white circle of the sun. For a moment, his senses are strangely sharp. The air is cold and so dry that his throat feels painfully parched. His mind is a perfect blank, free of thoughts and worries, free even from questions about this world's nature. His fingers twitch, rise just a little bit and...
The object he touches is eerily familiar. A metal hilt bound with leather, a guard designed to protectively wrap around his fingers. A sword. A rapier, to be precise.
For a brief moment, everything goes black.
Screams and sounds of clashing blades resound under the orange sky. The battle feels like it's been going for hours, and the numerous bloody corpses and broken weaponry amidst the trampled grass only serve to prove that possibility. Still, his mind is clear and his motions are perfect in their strength and precision. As he makes his way past the fighting soldiers, he casually reminds himself.
It has been only forty seven minutes since the battle started.
His hand grasps a long spear sticking out of the ground and pulls. The air ripples as his hand pulls back, pulls the weapon back and makes a throw.
Although everything goes black before the target is struck, he already knows that someone died from his hand on that day.
How? He doesn't understand. Before he can think about it firmly, the scene changes once more.
In a waking world, he would have been suddenly overwhelmed by the sudden heavy downpour. Here, in the realm of his own dreams, he reacts as if this is perfectly normal. He inhales harshly as his foot hits a blackened puddle, then charges down the street once his exhale fills him with strength. His goal is a small figure standing in the middle of the street, a young man surrounded by three human shapes that are still moving despite being already dead.
According to his calculations, it should take him twelve steps to clear the distance. He makes it in seven. A heavy blade emerges from the sheath on his back and slashes through the air. A second later, rotting blood mixes with the falling rain.
Once again, his senses give out on him.
The world around him is painfully dark. The stench of dust and old concrete fills his nostrils and reaches all the way to his brain, making it harder to respond. His breath is even and almost perfectly quiet. His hand shifts its grip on the heavy gun in his hand, while his index finger makes itself comfortable near the trigger. Only one foreign sound...
His opponent has all the grace and caution of a hungry bear. A loud footsteps is all he needs. He leans from around the pillar, takes aim and narrows his eyes.
The sound of the bullet digging into flesh is, to him, louder than the gunshot itself.
The world around him fades. Moments later, he finds himself back under the red sky with black clouds and an eerie white sun.
This time, he bothers to look on the ground in front of him. The world in front of him looks as if some invisible force created it out of blackest ink. There is not a hint of color on the jagged ground. Nothing that would keep the world from looking like one giant shadow. The only things here are him and weaponry.
Yes, weaponry. Swords and axes, spears and heavy crossbows, firearms and giants of steel. An everlasting field of blades, each of them coming from a different place and time. Each one imbued with a meaning he should know, but cannot quite remember.
Suddenly, there is a hint of motion under his feet. His shadow, a giant silhouette of pure white, stretches out on the ground in front of him. The weapons follow as thin streaks of white appear on the ground and outline the smallest shifts in the rocky terrain. It takes him a few moments to realize that rather than reaching in the same direction as his shadow, they all point toward it.
At first, the silence is almost unbearable. It absorbs so much of his senses that he barely notices when it's replaced by a faint slithering sound. One of the shadows, the one of the rapier under his hand, reaches forward and connects to his own. Its tip easily discards its original host and pulls all the way into the white figure at his feet.
The shape of his shadow changes just a little bit.
After the first shadow, all the others follow. Soon, the air is filled with slithering sounds as every single weapon at his feet desperately tries to bond with him. His shadow twitches violently, grows a little smaller, then begins to change form. Sure, what was once a human form is an endlessly changing mass of blade-like curves and edges. It shifts, sprouts what looks like enormous wings, then turns into a dragon's gaping maw.
He suddenly realizes that one part of the shadow is particularly strange. There, one small streak of white decides to defy all laws of physics and separates from the rest of the mass. It makes itself at home in the midst of a black circle and convulses into a thin reptilian pupil.
His blood freezes when he realizes it's looking at him.
He wakes so suddenly that his mind doesn't manage to forget even the slightest bit of his dream. Gray eyes open wide as he peers at the water surface above him, then at the blue sky beyond it and the girl standing on the water surface.
The girl standing on the water surface?
Aether freezes as he realizes when he realizes that he knows this girl. A black dress decorated with green and blue that covers all but her hands and head. Long dark hair with an aqua-green hue, the same as the color of her eyes. Her smile is gentle, loving, fascinated, cruel and a little twisted. Somehow, it feels like the most beautiful part of her.
Her lips move. Two syllables. The first one is the same as his name. The second, he cannot recognize.
Another motion. Another two syllables. A gentle, well-placed request... no. An order.
"Wake up."
The sight above him is the same sky he's been seeing every day over the last few months. Sometimes it's white and cloudy, sometimes it's an unsightly gray peppered with rain. Today, it's a clear and beautiful blue. The summer heat reaches through the water surfaces and warms him just enough to keep him comfortable. Blank gray eyes focus and blink before being painted a clear, spotless blue.
Even if this dream comes to him again and again, in the end, it's just another day in this land of wings and fake peace.
Aether sighs and lets a small cloud of bubbles rise to the water surface. Deep under him, blurred and splattered on the rocky riverbed, his shadow lurches and loses its shape for a few short moments.
Just me trying to get my writing voice back. Don't mind this!
It is the same dream he has every other night. The same one he had on the night he first awoke back in that dead city, surrounded by a rich garden and dancing spirits of the dead. He still isn't sure which one he should be calling home, that place or this one. The number of memories is about the same. And, in the end...
No matter which place, that dream is the same.
The sky in that dream is a rich red color. He stares up at it, watches the jet-black clouds and the dull white circle of the sun. For a moment, his senses are strangely sharp. The air is cold and so dry that his throat feels painfully parched. His mind is a perfect blank, free of thoughts and worries, free even from questions about this world's nature. His fingers twitch, rise just a little bit and...
The object he touches is eerily familiar. A metal hilt bound with leather, a guard designed to protectively wrap around his fingers. A sword. A rapier, to be precise.
For a brief moment, everything goes black.
Screams and sounds of clashing blades resound under the orange sky. The battle feels like it's been going for hours, and the numerous bloody corpses and broken weaponry amidst the trampled grass only serve to prove that possibility. Still, his mind is clear and his motions are perfect in their strength and precision. As he makes his way past the fighting soldiers, he casually reminds himself.
It has been only forty seven minutes since the battle started.
His hand grasps a long spear sticking out of the ground and pulls. The air ripples as his hand pulls back, pulls the weapon back and makes a throw.
Although everything goes black before the target is struck, he already knows that someone died from his hand on that day.
How? He doesn't understand. Before he can think about it firmly, the scene changes once more.
In a waking world, he would have been suddenly overwhelmed by the sudden heavy downpour. Here, in the realm of his own dreams, he reacts as if this is perfectly normal. He inhales harshly as his foot hits a blackened puddle, then charges down the street once his exhale fills him with strength. His goal is a small figure standing in the middle of the street, a young man surrounded by three human shapes that are still moving despite being already dead.
According to his calculations, it should take him twelve steps to clear the distance. He makes it in seven. A heavy blade emerges from the sheath on his back and slashes through the air. A second later, rotting blood mixes with the falling rain.
Once again, his senses give out on him.
The world around him is painfully dark. The stench of dust and old concrete fills his nostrils and reaches all the way to his brain, making it harder to respond. His breath is even and almost perfectly quiet. His hand shifts its grip on the heavy gun in his hand, while his index finger makes itself comfortable near the trigger. Only one foreign sound...
His opponent has all the grace and caution of a hungry bear. A loud footsteps is all he needs. He leans from around the pillar, takes aim and narrows his eyes.
The sound of the bullet digging into flesh is, to him, louder than the gunshot itself.
The world around him fades. Moments later, he finds himself back under the red sky with black clouds and an eerie white sun.
This time, he bothers to look on the ground in front of him. The world in front of him looks as if some invisible force created it out of blackest ink. There is not a hint of color on the jagged ground. Nothing that would keep the world from looking like one giant shadow. The only things here are him and weaponry.
Yes, weaponry. Swords and axes, spears and heavy crossbows, firearms and giants of steel. An everlasting field of blades, each of them coming from a different place and time. Each one imbued with a meaning he should know, but cannot quite remember.
Suddenly, there is a hint of motion under his feet. His shadow, a giant silhouette of pure white, stretches out on the ground in front of him. The weapons follow as thin streaks of white appear on the ground and outline the smallest shifts in the rocky terrain. It takes him a few moments to realize that rather than reaching in the same direction as his shadow, they all point toward it.
At first, the silence is almost unbearable. It absorbs so much of his senses that he barely notices when it's replaced by a faint slithering sound. One of the shadows, the one of the rapier under his hand, reaches forward and connects to his own. Its tip easily discards its original host and pulls all the way into the white figure at his feet.
The shape of his shadow changes just a little bit.
After the first shadow, all the others follow. Soon, the air is filled with slithering sounds as every single weapon at his feet desperately tries to bond with him. His shadow twitches violently, grows a little smaller, then begins to change form. Sure, what was once a human form is an endlessly changing mass of blade-like curves and edges. It shifts, sprouts what looks like enormous wings, then turns into a dragon's gaping maw.
He suddenly realizes that one part of the shadow is particularly strange. There, one small streak of white decides to defy all laws of physics and separates from the rest of the mass. It makes itself at home in the midst of a black circle and convulses into a thin reptilian pupil.
His blood freezes when he realizes it's looking at him.
He wakes so suddenly that his mind doesn't manage to forget even the slightest bit of his dream. Gray eyes open wide as he peers at the water surface above him, then at the blue sky beyond it and the girl standing on the water surface.
The girl standing on the water surface?
Aether freezes as he realizes when he realizes that he knows this girl. A black dress decorated with green and blue that covers all but her hands and head. Long dark hair with an aqua-green hue, the same as the color of her eyes. Her smile is gentle, loving, fascinated, cruel and a little twisted. Somehow, it feels like the most beautiful part of her.
Her lips move. Two syllables. The first one is the same as his name. The second, he cannot recognize.
Another motion. Another two syllables. A gentle, well-placed request... no. An order.
"Wake up."
The sight above him is the same sky he's been seeing every day over the last few months. Sometimes it's white and cloudy, sometimes it's an unsightly gray peppered with rain. Today, it's a clear and beautiful blue. The summer heat reaches through the water surfaces and warms him just enough to keep him comfortable. Blank gray eyes focus and blink before being painted a clear, spotless blue.
Even if this dream comes to him again and again, in the end, it's just another day in this land of wings and fake peace.
Aether sighs and lets a small cloud of bubbles rise to the water surface. Deep under him, blurred and splattered on the rocky riverbed, his shadow lurches and loses its shape for a few short moments.