It comes to this. When Kairiel pushed, I didn't push back. I didn't even answer. What to say? "Crack me open, shatter my guard." Not a geode. She'd have found nothing at all inside.

It is corrugated poetry. False and wishful
as the strings you keep between your pages
saying I will reach this place this understanding
I will eclipse myself.
I will not unravel.
See these strings?
I will not unravel.

Warm Rise 2023

Hard to write by chantlight when the words insist on wandering. Hard to focus on what matters. It's the only job left, to focus on what matters. Or what mattered. It's confusing this turn. And uncomfortable.

Pages in my hands. Jumbled. Out of order. Kinship there.

Sequence doesn't matter. This happened and that happened, rung after rung in time's ladder. But memory is tidal, moons and maelstrom-tugged. There's already been too much linear for one turn anyway.

New Growth 2014

A

*The wrinkled pages accompanying this one have been twice sewn back onto their original moorings, a severance undone. The spidersilk stitches are miniscule and meticulous. The writing upon the pages is not at all.*

Nothing is safe.

The dagger felt correct, silver edge like starlight come calling, summer sea sheen to the decorative stones upon the hilt. Comfort in the curl of my fingers, contrasted by the frisson of foreboding that so often attends a bared blade.

A finger's width from the binding, I scored a line upon the page. It was straight as none of my stories, true to north and south. The precision pleased, so I cut sheet after sheet. They fell, white leaves webbed with ink, and the scent of grasses severed in the cool of the night rose with each fresh bite.

In the end, I gathered them like strangers in my hands. Folded them into frogs and conveyed them to the vault. Left them to the songless dark therein.

We shape our own rituals. Reasons. Lives.


Summer Gold

We are patterned after sourceless things. Graced with light and wit with which to learn the beauty of the world and reverence for the finite. We are each, in time-locked moments, finite. We are each, in skin-locked solitude, forming fragile bridges of words, gestures, touch.

Or not.

Can hollow ourselves. Can carve away something like fear to leave more room for laughter to resonate. Can carve away delight and welcome in a seashell-song of longing. Can carve away other things as well. Or everything.

Constrained only by our choices.

I wait in withering dark within a world wrought mostly of indecision and the specters of old scorn. Heat builds. Oppressive in its stillness. I am not sure that 'Rifter rises here. The light is bleak, falls flat upon the bitter sea. I can hear the guttural challenges and feeding cries of the Horrors as they hunt the streets below. This is not a restful place. Not fit for dreaming.

I have been doing so for days despite the peril. Cannot dwell on my compulsion to haunt to this ruin. Something to these places. Others feel the same as I. It is not deviant. There are reasons to face fear that outweigh prudence. Also, this is a place where possibilities are bent, and there is power to such things.

Storm clouds in the distance rumble with the promise of respite, but come no closer. It is Nrolav, after all.

...

I dream a green dream. All around me a forest rises coniferous and ancient. Sunlight slants upon fern fronds and creeping waxen white flowers with the scent of snow falling. Shadows curl, as I curl, each of us within an earthen hollow beneath the wise, wide branches of the trees. I sleep even in my dreaming. Silence surrounds me. No songbirds. No wind-stirred whispering. I think I will never wake, and the thought wakes me.

A bell tolls. I know this bell from childhood. It rings clear across the orchard at noon and nightfall and means "Come home."

Bells on boots, though silenced, are sympathetic to their resonating kin. I walk towards the summoning, traverse the forest in the space of three swift thoughts. First thought is that some shadows follow me. Second is that bells can ring for danger, though in my childhood they never did. Despite my most unworthy hopes.

The third thought is a singsong echo of something once known. Wrong, wrong, these always ring for danger. Come-home bells shall shatter you.

Come away from play or labor and let the shelter of stone walls become your source of solace. Stand in cold moonlight with gray walls rising. See the splintered, oaken throne where once lived splendor green in spring and gone to gilt in the lean, light-graced days of autumn. Gone to guilt forever. Let your heart break one more time.

Or heed the voice that says, "Not yet."

...

I wake to words written or spoken or imagined, open my eyes to see glass glittering like sullen stars strewn upon the bar top, and rise to my feet at the questing cry of something hungry. They will come looking for me soon, flesh squirming with rot and pearly larval pestilence, raw bones notched with the marks of their own ragged teeth. Horrors are wanderers too. Lesson?

Cannot lose my way in dreams here.

I am not daunted. I walk my path. It isn't made for everyone, it's only made for me. Made by me. I shape it with my footfalls. I summon it with my words and silences.

I remember the rituals for dreaming. Find tranquility in a place without distractions. Story myself to sleep. Touch silver tendrils, trace them into dreams. Cadence quieting with each subsequent breath. Heartbeat muted, slow as something that only wakes every thousand years.

...

Dream myself home. I stand in a stony chamber, desolate and window-lit with late daylight. The room is full of forest. Leaves wither in the corners, collected by the autumn wind through many seasons. Spiders weave silk stories in the corners of the chamber. Nothing remains of furniture except a wide wicker chair and a mirror shrouded in dust. Only shadows there. Not that I'm looking. I never, ever, ever stare into mirrors in dreams. Rather drown.

Rather melodramatic. I was always weeping and wistful when confined to these quarters. Will not abide it me now. Am stronger. Have weathered losing people that I love. Weathered the knowledge that it will happen again and again. And that I will one day be one of the lost.

With eyes averted, I approach the mirror, set fingertips to the soft patina of dust, let my hand fall. Four slashes shine silver, and something that is not me moves behind the glass. Trapped there.

My pity is only a little more vast than my fear. I use the sleeve of my robe to scrawl circles of cleanliness. Sometimes I catch renewed motion, the skittering kind only ever seen sideways, but I just narrow my eyes and peek through lash-dark. Cannot see, cannot be seen. These are things true in dreams.

I look once before I strike the glass. Unclean, seething shadow-blights coalesce and call my name.

...

All of dreaming breaks around me and the first thing I see is a Horror with a stature matching mine. We are not twins. I wear more skin. The shine of bones around its maw is more bold than any of my smiles. Still, there is uncanny sameness. We don't move. We stare for many marcs. It's awful. My muscles become stone, then fire - the deep hot pain that precedes trembling exhaustion.

Balance pain against pain to keep from breaking. To become stronger. Learn this as children or not at all. Can practice it into perfection like any other art. Such small pain merits only grim introspection.

I cage a monster in myself. It is ravenous. And greedy and full of wanting to control everything. Frightening. It frightens me. I retaliate by starving it. I know instinctively that only scrupulous denial works. A penance for future misdeeds. Otherwise I ruin everything. Break all the brighter moments. Cannot want. Will want more than is fair. Will want everything. And even that won't be enough.

And yet...

Sig collects us. The hungry ones. We spoke of it where the lilies bloom in forlorn sunrise splendor. Not of the collecting, though she must be conscious of it. Ambition. Curiosity. Frustration. She prefers the quickened, the kindled. She may not know that I am mostly ashes.

She stretches syllables into new shapes sometimes spilling meanings that elude me. Just a little. Like trying to look around a distant corner. I know her as a profile best. In the moonlight, she trades tresses for raven's wings shaped like questions. For a ladder of climbing colors. Each feature belongs to itself in my mind. I categorize the puzzle pieces by expression, link each set to the shading of her voice. Can watch without looking. I remember days when she did not smile and her eyes were dark as rain-drenched fir.

And I remember the gift of the wind.

Enchanted light dies. The cloak I wear spills steadfast darkness. It is like the first, far edge of every night. Quiet there. No Horrors.

...

Stars sprawl against the infinite ink of the sky. Their song falls soft upon skin. Feel it without hearing it. A sympathetic thrill ascends the spine at the first notes. At all the ones that follow.

Impossible not to rise on tiptoe. Languid limbs lengthen, longing to loft, hooked fingers scything for skyward substance, face lifted, lips parted in a mute keening corkscrewed with marvel. Sung taut. A bough unbroken. Shivering in the between silences.

Wanting.

Because it comes like this as well. Featherweight and fretted with memory of flight. An earth-bound exultation that should result in...but there is nothing. Only a heavier, easier option. I can sink back onto heels, haunches, and dreams. Sink into senseless sleep and drift among the silvered shoals. Dross.

I refuse. The call or the quelling. I dream with a purpose. Seek the fear at the heart of my every hunt. Know only that the trail begins in the ruins of my youth, is mist-locked and lie-locked, its doors locked with lost keys that used to be me. Inconsequential. One's will serves their intentions or is wasted. Worthless.

Shall balance between ecstatic flight and the fall into sweet, self-raveled dreaming only for another lifetime, then reach for shards of me vigilant within my skin. Shall press fingertips to broken glass, listen the marrow-crunch laughter of horrors, and where the mirrordark meets the edges of self, shall summon a barbed word and swallow it.

One word. A pain-wrought lodestone buried deeper than wishes or wants. Something enduring. Something to endure. Something more potent than any delight or despair. Not idle cruelty. I need strength.

Touch N'rolav and its song touches you. Inevitable as stars falling, falling silent, falling into tidal desolation. Discordant notes woven into a cloak, sorrow-warp and madness-weft familiar as my hands. My hands.

Grit beneath my hands, not glass.

Mollusk and mineral mingled in silvered brown swathes, glittering with crystalline composites of gray, gold, and white. Rasp of grasses in cadenced gossip, gentle complaints sparking neighbor against neighbor, ceaseless susurrus punctuated by the chortling lake. And in the green laughter, the scent of cool mud, decaying water weeds, and a tickling, honeyed hint of unseen blossoms.

One word exhaled upon awakening. One shy syllable swallowed by a well of silence. Still, it resonates. Translates. A belonging shaped not of halls or hands held by hands, a feeling deeper than solace or sanctuary, a kinship more binding than blood shared or spilled. One word on an outgoing breath that also means something broken, bent, or lost.

Sometimes the word that our soul shapes is not the one we sought.

Harvest 2014

TRUST

We meet in a garden. Others have had similar meetings. The cool of Rifter-rising crimps the scent of the flowers, suggests rain. Flowers dream of rain even when they aren't thirsty. It's the dancing they adore, and the kaleidoscopic cast to their colors.

He's curious about my concerns. He asks if I wish to discuss them. Calm contains me, but I sense fragility. I have only one concern - the recent breach of the Nexus by a Demonic Acolyte and a Rotting Knight. However, that instance is not why I was called here. Moments of dissent mark me.

Beside the bench upon which I sit, a blushing rose hoards dewdrops. The tiniest tap of a fingertip, and they'll fall just so upon the walk. And perhaps fracture into diamonds as they strike the stone. My hands stay quiet. There's no reason to be unkind.

He reassures me that word has traveled along appropriate channels. He asks if there's anything more. I ask about his concerns for me - but I mean about me. The warm interior of the Dundee Inn rises from memory to mind. Voices rising and rolling in debate. The spark of strife. Iron words upon the lips of civilians.

He speaks of the Seals. He chooses not to live in fear. He lifts a brow to me as he says this and my perception shifts, sharpens. Wariness comes quick as the suspicion that he's baiting me. I show my teeth, my fleet amusement. We are in accord on this, and I say so. Better to hunt fear through the corridors of self until one finds its lair. Challenge it again and again until the hunt becomes rote or the fear tames itself into power.

His laughter eases my wariness. It seems natural, sociable. A non-threat. Rifter peeks past the walls. Its warmth begins to fall. He says concern for one individual is concern for Valorn. It's a fair reason, and the last of my suspicion fades. I sense that meeting's end draws nigh. I think about the ocean. Days like these are stolen from summer. Might soon become too cold to dream beside the sea.

As a closing note, he asks me, "...to carry the words of the Order and promote a calm cooperation between citizenry and Order."

I refuse. It goes deep, the desire to choose my own burdens freely. But I say it like this, "No, sir. I will not carry the words of the Order anywhere. Those who have done so already are not improving the Order's image." So perhaps my resentment at the public relations ploy goes deeper still.

After that, our meeting, of course, sours swift into contention.

...

I meet my clever, fire-quick friend in the godsroom. Anger has insinuated itself between my shadows and my skin. It crawls like ants across my limbs and owns my eyes. I banish it, and speak with her about the meeting and the campaign to popularize the image of the Order through the glowing testimonials of civilians. She's pleased that he accepted my refusal. It's "a good sign." A bad sign would be...

I consider the cells. A man was consigned to one two cycles ago when he failed to relinquish the Book of Sacrifices and the Dark Staff to Albertus. It's said he refused even the Queen's command, and departed with the items. I don't know how long he had only his thoughts for company or what social repercussions came of his actions. I know even less of his motivations, but can imagine a multitude.

I endeavor to conjure a similar scenario - a command of the Queen that I'd feel compelled to refuse. The ones that come to mind are ludicrous or melodramatic, and each unsuited to what I know of her nature. I determine that her highness would never ask me to shill for her personal guard. Downright undignified, that.

I respect the Crown because of the Cordelia wearing it.

It's not an owing. That thralling of respect doesn't radiate to Laleldan's once-drowned bones or soar in loyalist fervor at the sight of Iron cloaks. It doesn't silence my tongue or still my thoughts, though it sometimes makes me wish to be wise with both. It just means that I answer the Crier's call to arms. Follow the battle commands and protocol of Iron Order Commanders and Protectors during raids. Obey explicit commands of the Queen.

Otherwise, I choose how to honor Trinald. Protect as many beloved things as possible, mine and those of other folks. Strive for clarity of thought, tenacity, and battle-prowess. Hunt the lucklight that unlocks doors. Shelter stories in seashells. Offer more kindnesses than unkindness. Waste no wishes. Keep company with lonely places.

Keep faith with friendship?

My friend wants the situation addressed and knows which Order members she'd pick for wit and good judgment, names them quick as a rock's river skip. I decline the opportunity. I want to see what comes of this. Let it fruit or wither. See what others are honored by the request. Learn about the nature of people.

She agrees, but the flash of her smile reminds me of nettles.

Warm Rise 2014

DREAMERS

The light
did not bear the blue tinge of a Chanted portal
did not form at the edge of the liquid laugh
did not dim. Did not ever dim and
was beyond duality.

I perceived it just there -
trio of steps towards nine marc,
hooked a single step towards summer.
The merest meander down
one (just one at a time or you shatter!)
kink
in a kaleidoscopic infinity of perspectives

Simultaneously knowing that it was much more
distant
and that it was merely
the potential of a door.
Never a promise

DARK FIRE

for each of us a wasteland
monsters we know
name
and cherish

in each of us a fire blooms
darkly different
wound
and unwish

from each of us a color
cool as gloaming
quell
and cleanse

Midsummer 2014

AZERAPHEL

49

I'm lost in the sewers. I'm not going to tell anyone or ask for help because I've been pretending to be intelligent all these days and this will prove otherwise. Shall not willfully destroy my facade. The only option at this point is to wander forever or until I run out of health potions or until I gain enough skill from my kills to visit the Trainer ? a fair reason to abandon this silly game I'm playing with myself.

The Archmage is an ass. Few people make me bristle just by the way they carry themselves. At least not after an initial instinctive bristling. Usually, when I get angry or contemptuous, I can step back and wait for the emotion to fade. Swift or slow, it always goes away. Can then consider the object of my unquiet from place of contemplation uncomplicated by prejudice and pride.

Calm myself. Quell myself. Court stillness and focus.

Fail often.

This did not happen anywhere but inside my skin. I know that even if my voice was strident ? and it always sounds harpy-loud to me ? my body stayed still. When I told Azeraphel that he seemed blind to all but his studies, I did not lunge halfway down the table and spit it in his face. It only felt that way.

Dissonance again.

Midsummer 23th 2014

A letter penned with care yet unaddressed.


Not long after Rifter rise a series of raids were called against Caer Laleldan. The intruders were dispatched without any lasting damages. Upon porting to the Nexus and moving into the Pillar Room, I discovered a Demonic Acolyte, and a Rotting Knight with more than a passing resemblance to the Affable. I struck with lightning, recalled to the Monument in Aldwythe, and informed Hojo before engaging in battle again. After I slayed one of the fellspawn, Flukie joined me in battle and we made short work of the other. Nothing was obviously amiss within the Nexus, though that means very little. We do not know how long they were there.

Attacks upon the Nexus by portal travelers such as Dwellers, Shifters, and Ravagers are relatively common. Dark Tendrils and Clouds have also been seen there. The Dark itself, at least once. On this occasion, the acolyte and knight infiltrated under the cover of the attacks on the Caer, eluding the Crier's gaze, and made no move to destroy anything.

Impossible to guess at the minions' motives, but it seems unlikely that this was a common attack motivated by malice. There are rare tomes within the Nexus and other marvels. This is penned in hopes that the information be passed along to the Iron Order and thereby to the Council of Ryndall so they may act with decisive alacrity to prevent the enemy from reaping any reward from his hunt.

*scrawled*
Synvasti Shymere

Harvest 2016

BALTHAZAR'S FINAL BATTLE

A figure behind a wall of power.
A hand on a sword.
A clutter of fighters.
A parlay, a gambit, a strike.
The battle ensues.

Through a portal of six - the brazen hue bound, all against its nature. Strum of unseen fingers on our strings. River of stars tangled in time's tapestry. Madness warp, mourning weft.

In a nowhere time, an unraveling. Dreams splintering around us. Choices made.

No stratagem seemed more sour than our sovereign's, her mien quelled to calm despite bilious reminders of her place in Balthazar's keeping. Still, she constrained all her bite to twin lashing of storied sword in the splitmoment of felldark-shield's wavering. Counterstrike crafted over seasons. A consequence.

Beyond the portal, a bronze voice unfurling. Adventurers spilling into the room, war-quickened. Amongst them, the collected. Those with hungers known to the unseen. Explored.

Power shimmered between demon lord and captive brazen being. Control trembled at the violence of Valorn's queen and army, faltered, and then found challenge as the Bronze joined battle on arcane front.

A secret long-sought a'blaze with power, lucent echoing of Rifter's riot through autumn-crowned canopy. Godslight in the eyes of the bound. Pain-bringing.

At the moment when Zanaan and Bris move free the entity, Cordelia calls, "Hold," and feet still. Not tongues and not wills, and HE wants the willing. Takes only a whisper for heart's leap and tongue's offering. Threads put in place long before provender yields. Silk stories. Spiders in the midst of us.

A gathering. A shattering. Viridian-riven bindings blasted free.

Friends find levels drained. Rifter dims. A note of rime to the air. Disquiet after triumph. Godvoices as Miranda's query cuts to our hearts, as Warbringer forewarns a reckoning of balance, as Ridder recalls our penchant for folly.

Abeyance to my breath. So many wishes sown seasons ago, and scythes honed for the harvest of now. A gold ring, rancor in wickedest wish. A collusion of starslight. Bronze to be freed. By a collection of people. By a collusion of star-sleight.

But Dark Lord Balthazar lies dead.

WISH BLOSSOM

A promise glows upon my palm. It seems to weigh nothing at all. Petals like feathers. A bruised shade of evening. Twilight in the house of me. It's changed hands a bit, this blossom. Bequeathed to a red guardian beneath the Wall. Returned by the same? Another? In Branishor's mine. Sent to 'Rifter as a wish, a prayer, a please. Returned within the bug's domain, that golden, glistening place where power fetches against the heartstrings. What more to say? A waterfall, a fall of words, a need to see, but not to look.

Sometimes I forget that we have all loved like that. With abandon. Helpless.

2014

WISHING SCEPTER

I'm slipping away. I do not mean to. I do not want to. Want other things.

And am afraid. I have the wishing scepter. Two charges. My heart bending. The broken glass shifts under my palms. There's still no blood. I stay longer. Enchanted light goes out and I am muffled. It's here that I realize I can hide only from myself. The darkness shrouds my senses. It's a matter of perception.

Solitude is. Can surrounds oneself with many people and actually be alone. Seed, shell, stone.

CAERNIVAL - HOW MANY NAUGHTY DEMONS

bound by hunt-death
still there is laughter
demon story spun as long light dies
but DARK takes umbrage at dulcet cackles

comes walking with
a rattle-bone voice
"empty will be filled" and fill it does
DARK pours into Dabria and me

from cloud-cold rock
spirit and flesh reknit
to remain stone-locked and embattled
while DARK mocks our hope and hungering

FIRSTGATE

This moment will never come again. Chances narrow after this. Fate's sprawling spiderweb degrades infinitesimally.

My hands shape gentle cages around the blue stone. Crystalline light wells over my bare wrists and curved fingers, burns against the shivering silver of my tattooed skin. I cannot stop trembling. Excitement thrills from mind to flesh, setting the rhythm of my heart, stinging each nerve, lashing muscle and bone into restless motion.

Secret sigils crystal-caught, and kindled with nothing but promise. My first offering to Ben's statue. Any scroll might tumble into my keeping these next splitmarcs. Any spell with which to summon a pool of storm light, a hissing passage between here and anywhere.

Anywhere except Oleron. 'Rifter. Home.

Yet in scroll's unfurling, no disappointment. The scent of rain-washed stone. A rumbling, a belly-laughing promise of what's to come. Smiles shared between friends and strangers. Memories of stories seed-scattered on graveled ground. On perilous, dusk-drenched petals. On a godstone mended by the lifesong of mortals and the will of the gods.

Altitan.

In my hands, pages. Old to less old. Tattering threads that once were bindings ravel through some edges.

Written for me or for you?

Tuck them between pages still whole? Stitch them back into place, where their remnants await, thin stubs of paper where I once cut whole seasons of thoughts and happenings free? Burn them. Ashes given to what's left of the wind.

A choice that can wait.

Apathy threatens, a beast that needs no leash to follow loyal at one's heels. But it's not my beast. Don't know when it started to nest in my heart.

Unhunted, unclaimed, unwelcome. But familiar. A thought purring and coiling too deep to make heads or tails of. I reject it in totality. It's not mine.

I approach Isla to ask acknowledgement of skills claimed in frenzied bursts of battle at the edge of dreams...in those rare moments when a wan tattering of self remembered the self of seasons lost, and what she deemed important or pleasing. Mimicry or genuine, in those moments, I tried.

I am shaped to fly and to fall. As many times as it takes. As long as life allows.

I cannot see beyond the light-swelled sea
or the broken path
of my imagining
or
beyond my solitude.

Am faithless to this journal. Keep poor records of people and places and world-shaking events. Sentimental. Don't care. Will want to read it when I'm old. When I've forgotten.

The following entries are scribbled on sundry scraps of paper and parchment, and tucked haphazardly in a gap between one ragged half-page and several missing ones.

BEFORE

2
Time may fly, but not like a crow. Nothing so straight and so sure. My passage through the days is likewise crooked. I scribble messages to Brisingr, a scant swap of information and opinion. “Change comes, people go, the Remnants of Kimald endure.” He shares news that his collection of incantations nears completion. At that - brief behind my breastbone – comes a thrill like a plucked string.

I loved hunting in the dark, matching breath to footfall soft as fog. Loved to stalk the sand or stone in search of luck's soft glimmer. Love like a sickness. Like a fever turned to fury.

No harp, my heart. I walk in silence, keep company with ghosts, and seek neither battle nor fellowship. Day and night passes like this.

..................................................................................................................................

5
I stand in a windswept place. Emptiness hangs between me and the crashing ocean. I run my fingers over the coarse nap of my cloak, fret and fray. If I hold the edges out like so – I am winged. The wind's hand tugs, pushes. If it begins to pull with a voice like a storm, flight will follow. I yearn to fly.

The Crier calls me first. In the desert, ants march to war.

Love the desert. Austere, transient beauty. Sharp-edges, serpentine patterns. Wise, rare flowers unfurling only after rainfall, rampant only for a single span of marcs before they wither to ochre, gold, ghost white. Also love the lies that rise from sunlight striking sand - mirrored waters waiting just ahead. Just ahead, an end to thirst.

My opinion of ants is unformed. Or forgotten. Not all things make an equal impression. Memory of leaf and bramble limned with light stolen by the Demon's Eyes - my body shaking, afire with shame at words misspoken, knowing that no one – not even he – would ever despise me as much as myself. Unforgettable. Ants foibles, not so much.

As it turns out, the impression left by ants matches the shape of their mandibles exactly. I reform twice before rediscovering my pouch of enchanter's powder. It promises painless escape. The metallic flavor in my mouth turns out to be a taste for vengeance.

I return to the desert, find a rhythm, and slay two before clambering over a steep dune and meeting a nightmare. This ant is not like the other ones. Spurs of armor rise around each joint and segment, and the head – false-horned – is massive. My pale branch strikes thrice and leaves only the faintest line on the insect's dull red carapace. I circle away from the grasping forelimbs and snapping jaws, stay low and limber, and consider strategy. I am no tactician, but there is only one available route.

Strike approximately three hundred times and hope for the best.

It does not come to that. She strides from the east, oldest dearest most long lost friend. If my life were a storybook, together we would peel the ant apart, clasp hands and huzzah our victory before undertaking the treacly birdsong of reunion. Instead, we spend the better part of two marcs screaming, porting, slashing, sliding, smashing, healing and regrouping, and are too exhausted by the end for much more than a grim trade of smiles.

Should be too exhausted.

“Where do you hunt these days? The Wall? Let's go get some Guardians!” Tisran says with her usual blood-thirsty zeal. She remembers my obsession. Do I tell her that I no longer love the hunt, that I'd rather sit in silence, stare up at the sky, and watch for stars going dark? That I'd rather walk old paths over and over, hoping to catch sight of ghosts? Of my own ghost.

“Can't. My pack is too full. Cannot decide what to relinquish.”

I burden myself. Keys to places I will never go. Trophies from kills I can't recall. Stones that remind me of home. Mementos marking the perilous or consequential. Keepsakes from those who embodied both traits. My pack is always full. I bend beneath the weight sometimes.

I am still strong enough to carry all the things I love. And a few things I hate.

..................................................................................................................................


My first memories are green. My mother's glass thimble brighter than sea foam. I'm being punished for something I cannot recall. Part of the punishment is sitting very still and listening to what my mother most wishes me to learn. She has foolishly put my chair in a puddle of sunshine. Ivy leaves like little lady slippers ladder up the wall beneath my bedroom window.

Our house and garden lives behind a messy stone wall. I see the tops of trees beyond and they are tall enough to touch the sky. I want to be outside of things.

“Little children learn to listen. Any questions that you have will wait until I'm finished speaking. I do not wish to be stern with you, but there are expectations of us...” Her voice becomes a bumble of boring words and sympathetic sighs. Ever so often, a sharper note lifts her voice and I nod a few times.

Outside, a rain begins to fall, making magic of a sunshine that still slants to find my face. I watch for another moment before I close my eyes and begin to dream.

…

I cannot recall jealousy. I cannot still feel the way my gut flexed sickeningly at the news of the carp's death. Cannot still hate myself for killing my sister's pet. She was an awful sister. So was I. I get brittle when I'm jealous.

Didn't try very hard to ingratiate myself. Said dumb stuff and hurt people's feelings. Or made them mad. I learned the pattern of things by rote and without grace.

Think I can still hold a perfect statue pose, lifeless and without warmth. Safe in silence.

…

The celedon waters of the wading pool belong to Jedah's fat orange carp now. The fish swims dazed circles between the yellow-spotted lily pads and the single listing stand of cattails. Sometimes he forgets he's a fish, and drifts to the tiled bottom of the pool to lie on his side, gills fluttering like the wings of visiting butterflies. He's doing this now.

I want to put my feet in the water. So I do. My legs change color beneath the water line, leached of sun and graced with green pallor. The hem of my dress also changes color, copper drinking itself to dark brown, losing sheen and gaining heft, slapping wetly as I wade careful circles around the carp. He doesn't stir.

It's still too hot. Tendrils of my hair have liberated themselves from the tidy cap of braids my mother deems practical and fetching. It's certainly fetching me a headache, tugging at my temples and pushing everywhere else. I pity the crowns of sunflowers suddenly.

Pity myself more when I hear the screech of Jedah's ire. “Get out of my fish pool, brat!”

“It's not your fish pool, it's just your stupid fish,” I say, stomping out of the water nonetheless.

She's instantly smug. Fits her lips like a glove does hands. “It's more mine than yours. Like everything. But since I'm feeling nice today, I won't tell Father.” Her eyes flick upwards, slanting scorn at the picture window of my mother's solarium. “Or her.”

“Don't care.” I measure the distance between myself and the mammoth oak sprawling against the wall to the north.

Jedah walks into my line of sight and stands, hand on her hip, color high with triumph, sorrel hair sparking sunlight, between me and my tree. “Aren't you going to ask me why I'm feeling nice?” She doesn't even wait for me to say no. “It's because Father has relented and is sending for a dancing master. Well, technically a journeyman instructor.” Her florid lips pout petulant. “No matter. It has been said that I am a natural, and will excel regardless.”

“Okay.” I start shifting my bare feet inch-by-inch across the gritty flagstone, and rise onto my tiptoes. My feet tingle. They know the grass beneath the oak tree grows soft and cool and friendly. They know the bark of roots and branches is delightful and rough and interesting. They know that we can reach there in just moments if we run.

“You're supposed to be happy for me. You're supposed to say, 'Jedah, congratulations. You'll be wonderful.' I know you've been working on your manners. Your mother says you're making good progress.” Her smugness returns. Malice too. “We all know she's a liar.”

My feet go numb. I cannot feel them as they carry me over to her. I only hear the slapping of my soles on stone. It's such a lovely noise that I let my hand fly to Jedah's cheek, cracking hard enough to make my taller, stronger sister stumble back. Her eyes, Father's eyes, cold sharp stone-green eyes fill with tears and anger and she sinks her fingers into my hair and drags me to the fish pool.

I claw and twist, slam my elbow into her ribs, and snap my teeth at her. She's still so strong, shifting her grip from my hair to one arm and the back of my neck. She shoves. My knee scrapes over the lip of the pool, and I grab at this one chance to keep my elder sister from drowning me, locking the opposite leg under the rock rim. I wrench my arm and head away from her, cling with both hands to the pool, and twist to snap a wild kick at her face.

I connect mostly with her chin. Her teeth cut my heel. I fall backwards into the water, but scrabble up and away, fly to the tree, and lose some skin from my palms and the insides of my arms clambering up to the lower branch swifter than screaming Jedah can catch me. She keeps screaming and spluttering blood as I ascend and walk the thick limb that crooks over the wall.

Climbing down hurts. Fear and anger fade, leaving me weak and prone to noticing pain. I hobble away, following the north face of the wall, hiding at the corner facing the eastern orchard. No one is moving through the trees or coming up the road leading to the keep. Still, there's a sick swimming in my gut. Going to be trouble from this.

I dart from tree to shadow to tree until I reach the rows of apple planted in my grandfather's grandmother's day. Most are beyond blooming, gone gray and fissured through trunk and branch. The biggest one is split down the middle part way and seems to be two trees - a dead tree and one still green. A swing dangles from there, a smoothed beechwood board suspended by chains gone red with rust. The rust stains the boreholes in the wood. Stains fingers too and feels just awful under hands.

Must go further then. Force feet to run, strides going long and longer, but sometimes crooked as my cut heel balks at taking weight. I stop at the river bend where the reeds hide a hollow made just for me. Cool mud and round stones and heaps of driftwood bleached silver, stained purple and green and red by the decaying plants caught in the tangle. Cool water, deep green and glinting like malachite and nearly as smooth. I see tufts of duck down caught between pebbles or upon tussock of grass, and just upriver swim the ducks themselves, one at a time as the other tends their hidden nest.

I rinse grit and mud from the cut on my foot, bawl over my scrapes and my worry, and then curl into the shade. I close my eyes and begin to dream.

..................................................................................................................................

DREAMING

It comes like this: something learned once. His eyes dark as the earth under the roots, ringed with green like leaves in shadow, cool and keeping secrets. There is fire flickering from one moment to the next but it isn't shaped for you. What is made for you? His arms all boney beneath muscles as he twists the wooden board of the swing, winding it tighter and tighter until the chains are locked together and then whipping, whipping, whipping as it unravels and you spin beneath the sky? His limbs twined around the apple bough, lean form bending like a bow, rippling with effort as he shakes free the last, lazy frost-blushed fruit? Your fingers interlaced, honey-gold and tawny-dark tangled as intentions? Wrists touching pulse-to-pulse? The brush of the back of his hand, by accident, across your hip as you walk with the willow-ease of youth? Innocent as desire.

And still not shaped for you.

Your heart catches in your throat, it is winged in its escape and fretted with grief. Cheep cheep. The noise of hatching trouble.

…

It comes like this: salt spilled twice. Candles kindled in a woven cradle of grass. A seashell crusted with sullen white sediment. The curled black corpses of immolated petals. You kneel in the root-rumpled earth of the orchard. Smooth the ground in front of you, palm sweeping back and forth in time to the distant, wind-rocked rattle of the swing's only remaining chain. When the dust slate lies smooth as paper, you bend your head to scratch the letters of your wish.

And no words form. Only dappled drops that fall from your chin before becoming mud. You blur your vision to escape them.

…

It comes like this: a wish thrice whispered. A gown unraveling. Back to the moonlight, silver spilling on sand. Bruises beneath your eyes. In your eyes. The remembrance of pain. Subtle, hollow, thrilling. There is a soft storm to the meadow. A gentleness to the wind upon the grass. Same with the rain that falls from leaden skies. There is nothing more to say at that point. You don't look at the other. You don't dare breathe. Almost float away like the down-winged thistle seeds. Almost sink deeper than an anchor root. Almost.

You part at the milkweed. You break a stem to taste the bitterness. You never meet again.

…

Other dreams wash past faster than I can catch them. None belong to me anymore. I let them go. It is a two moon tide and even the stars are bright enough to tug the sea. Out in the depths, something falls. A feathered keening breaks into bubbles. The fallen sinks like a stone. Stays there forever. Or just long enough.

..................................................................................................................................

9
I lean against Kilican's Life Monument. Some of me still swims through the pale monolith so I must wait here until I slide back in my skin. I fit the line of my spine to it, tug my hair out of the way so that when I drop my head, the bone at the nape of my neck presses against the monument. It's cooler where the sunlight strikes than at the heart of it. It is a heart, holding fire and life. Holding me for that staggered moment between death and the reformation of my flesh. Warmth rises if you wait for it. Not so with broken stones.

Sorynn comes walking up the road, bereft of that crackling witty vitality I so associate with the wild, curling splendor of her hair. With the ease and tease of her smile, and her brown eyes sharp with both intelligence and joy. It is, in the moment before she catches sight of me, like seeing a stranger.

And something like seeing a mirror.

There is a fade upon my face as well, I wager...but we both burst into brilliance when our eyes meet – surprise and recognition transmuted into zany, childlike delight. We are happy to see one another. We say so. We show so with grins and giddy, flighty conversation that leads to pirate ale. She has huge news for me, a beautiful, bittersweet ballad all too often heard here in Valorn.

Still, there is laughter shared between us. Inappropriate or naughty wit - and with it the memory of teasing Vardian. Bodice-rippers indeed. Something eases around my ribcage and I breath deeply once again. What is so wonderful as knowing that another of your dearest friends still walks and laughs?

I do love the threads that bind me to this place.

AND AFTER

12
It comes with a slither of slush beneath your boots giving way to mud that chills now bare toes. Frost snapping, snow sliding from eaves, cloud breath banished by noon sun. Bold flowers crown the crust of snow in colors warm enough to melt their cages. Sky buries blue in white and white in blue, the indecisive palette giving way to storm gray almost daily. Still light grows lengthy. Trees buds split from bronze chrysalis, peekaboo green lines hinting at spring's design. Birds shrill their delight in the hours before dawn and towards dusk. Their incessant hopping shakes the twiggy boughs of scrub evergreens and flowerless furze. They are so noisy that no one writes poems of them and everyone wants more cats in the world.

There are kittens in Caernival. The Crier calls it to us and we gather to wonder at their whiskery goodness, their sleep-soft breath, their relentless charm as they play at killing one another. I love them so much I want to destroy all demons immediately so that their world will be safe. I've become staid enough to know my hopes are impractical at best.

I try anyway. Test myself each time the Crier calls, and often, often die. Learn that everything can kill me. Decide there's no grace in hiding from death or trying to tiptoe around it. Best to just dance into that malice.

What words for Altitan? Winter-locked longer. Lonely doors compel company. Loom larger than most dreams. Guardian mountains rise like the knife-edged spine of an implacable, long-dormant colossus. They cut the sky to ribbons. Crease it into storm clouds. To rouse the mountains is unthinkable. Thrillingly so.

Stay there through some of the vigil. Some strangers always there. Fear feels hot rising up the column of my throat, searing my tongue, turning all my words to ash – pale things fragile as a moth wing. Feeble, swift to fail. Fear also makes my feet heavy, scraping against the earth, tangling on the air itself. Force myself to swallow the fear. Let it lie like a stone in the belly. Quieter there. Easier to ignore.

Remember the pattern and poses of polite company. Adapt. Watch friends, rare and new, slip into slumber. Sometimes slip too, sleep beneath a monument that does not stay broken. Dreams there, but they are peaceful. Warmer than snow should permit.

Spring comes when it comes, and it does not come the same for any two trees. Some shed needles all year long, but keep their green even beneath winter's white gauntlets. Some flowers fade before they bloom, and some riot late into the summer, keeping all the more modest blooming trees awake with their colorful natterings. Sometimes the ones who green out first find frost still waits to kill them in the night.

...

If you want and want not to be hollowed by it, seek solitude and wild splendor. Find forlorn verges. Places where lazy grasses unfold into trees, all long-limbed lofty aspirations, sky-crowned and haughty. Or where the aching ocean scrapes the sand and leaves its long lament scrawled in seaweed punctuated by seashells. Or the cut of a river into a clay-rich bank. If you are desperate, find the last mossy stones of an ancient road surrendering to bindweed, sinking beneath the flowers forever. Sink there too.

Shape yourself to suit it. Become something forgotten. Tranquil. Fallow. Drink nothing but rain. Bathe in moonlight. Transmute desire to a deep and abiding appreciation for all things. All seasons.

Notice rain-crushed pink silk of crab-apple blossoms nodding low after the storm. A sun-bleached turtle shell scoured smooth by sand, sea, wind, yet still patterned with faint geometries of ivy and topaz. Watch the swirl of sediment darken the waters where the river meets the sea. See snow dance to slow wind. Listen to the song stirring inside sun-warmed branches. And the song inside the pale stones that calls you back from death.

If you should someday rise and follow the road back home, return there with confidence. Know that nothing can numb you to beauty. Know that every single day provokes delight.

Can find people who feel the same. Treasure them.

I'll chain my bliss and yoke it to my sorrow,
Save it all for a yonder tomorrow,
A far away place of rue, berry, and yarrow
Where only the moon ever goes.

Dreamed I was a child standing in a stream, wild spring waters yanking at my knees, cold seeping into my shinbones. From upstream comes a wee raft, the kind that a lonely child might cobble together from dead fall and ivy. Upon the raft are dolls made of burlap. Someone sewed them coins for eyes, and they wear red robes. No mouths. I want to give them voices, so I lean out to try to snag the raft as it rocks past. I cannot catch it, but I do catch sight of the gold ingots cradled in the lumpen arms of each doll. I teeter at the edge of balance, hands outstretched, fingers hooked like talons, an unrecognizable keening rising from my throat.

When I slip beneath the water, it turns to ice.

Dissonance. Memory like mist. Bones cold as stones beneath the earth. Death? No, only sleep. Only dreams. Wake to darkness and silence. Long for songs squandered in youth. What songs? Who sang? Words taste like dust, ash, sand. They cut the silence.

I recognize my voice beneath the burr of disuse. My limbs, curled close for safekeeping, are likewise familiar. Less so the boots upon my feet. They are soft as second skin, pleasing to heel and toe, and possessed of proper aesthetics – leather aged to leaden gray and stitched with bells like stars, each silver tongue muted by a thread of spider silk. There comes an image of my own narrow fingers fumbling at the small bells.

It was cold and I only wanted to hear shushing of snow displaced by my steps. I only wanted the bass groan of old trees turning circles in their sleep. I only wanted the muffled cadence of my breath. So I stilled the music of the boots.

Who knows what came after? Perhaps I hunted things more substantial than solitude. One can hunt memory, but minnow thoughts elude an easy capture. It is mostly that there are so many of them, slipping through cross-currents and fingers alike. Futile, really. Vain. One need not to worry about a few truant memories. They come back when they're good and ready.

Best to be content with what I still possess: good boots, bag brimming with books and brilliant trinkets, breath and blood still stirred by certain things.

...............................................................................................................................

I walk without purpose or consequence. Places are either utterly unfamiliar or the haunting opposite. I circle through the desert sands, the forest, and the seaside south of Dundee. I find the marks of my passage again and again. It is fair; these places have left tracks upon my soul. Much as I love them, they bring no comfort. Restlessness rides my shoulders.

One foot in front of another. I let them lead. Wend through a tower full of forlorn echoes. Walk past withered flowers and hear the rasp of last summer's grass underfoot. Wait where water reflects the morose sky. Gray light clings to gray stone. Go south and west on quickening feet.

Sunset is a gift of gold, startling amidst the iron clouds. Wind rises. I turn to face it, lean into it, let the crisp air fill my lungs with bracing, beloved life. The moment turns to crystal. A keepsake.

...............................................................................................................................

One road-weary wanderer finds respite at Dundee Inn. This too is part of yesteryear's pattern. Much has changed. Instinct keeps my feet to the edges of the room. I admire woodwork and beeswax. A message from an old friend comes. I pen a reply. No ink in the well, only indigo char. The application of water does not produce favorable results. The thin liquid reeks of brine and bitter musk, and leaves uneven color. It takes a few tries to achieve mere legibility. The expenditure of effort – of care – brings a calming satisfaction. I consider writing letters, but choose to meet with Topaz over lemonade instead.

Dissonance again. Wondering how deep or shallow flowed this friendship, wondering if my unease is the result of time's passage or reflects a core flaw in my nature. I do not lack respect or even admiration – warrior-poets evoke such things even in wayward enchanters. It is simply that the threads of shared memories are severed on my end. Only watercolor impressions remain: lemonade in her mug, color on her cheeks in the wake of her bonding, something dauntless in her profile as battle approaches.

Words flow smoother by the second sip of lemonade. We speak of change and changes of clothes. She mentions Laledan and cousins. I learn the Why of Red Shirts. It's good to laugh, but laughter ends. We part soon after talk turns somber.

Alone, I think about the mingling of joy and sorrow - folly to think that you can drink deeply of one and never taste the other.

The Demon's Eyes follow Sunrifter, chase the hallowed light and cast their own pale imitation upon the ocean. Bounded by the ancient bones of the earth, the waters rage and fuss, and toss back the light of sun and moons with haughty disregard. Light-breaker! The refractions hurt the unwary eye. For one who spends much time in darkness, dancing with shadows, the pain is leavened only by the pleasure of the sight. One chooses what pleases them. Or scorns it for a weakness.

There are birds that walk along the seashore, long-legged creatures with slender beaks that spear the wet sands in search of some morsel. The crash of the ocean perturbs them not at all. It seems to me that they dance with the waters, hopping in and out of the tide, ungainly and somehow adept. I've never seen one swept away, no matter the call of the moons.

I stand in the shallows, and water sucks the sand from beneath my feet. If I stood here long enough, might I become mired as deep as the dark, wet rocks that lead to the Lighthouse? Would the tide surge over me, wash my features clean, and smooth away all worries?

No, I'd drown and my bones would be cleaned by crabs and wriggling sea creatures.

Perhaps it's best to walk away.

Strange days. Cryptic messages pinned to walls and words. Rumors of destruction and death. Ghosts in the guild.

I am awake beyond the dark and dawn. Wild music soaks through the wall, bones hewn from the forest and reunited with the earth. I and my staff are both propped against the wall and connected to the rhythm. It's good to lean against things, to take the weight from feet and spine and shoulders, and recline as lazily as any old stone in a field. To wait for the music to end, or a new song begin.

Spiders stalk the summer-sweet grasses. Motionless, I am unnoticed. Leaf-dark and tangle of shadows. My bare heels smear yellow flowers, for I've propped them in a bed of butter-bright color. My toes point at the sky.

Stars sleep, silver light swallowed by the Sunrifter's nascent glory. I tilt my pack towards me, a languid motion that still startles and scatters the spiders. A gem tumbles free, and glows against the green. It is the last of token of my hunt for gold. I'm keeping it forever.

Trinkets and treasures and memories, all stuffed into my pack. Books and boots and a borrowed stone, a shell that sometimes sings, a parchment scarred by demon's teeth and dirtied by a demon's touch, a luck-pouch filled with silver rings and water gems, timeless oceans trapped and without tide. Do they rage within the stone tomb and earthen shroud? I have given them moons for company. Hollow moons.

Ribbons of dreams and rivers of thought, all spun into a maelstrom.

People come and go, and sometimes they return. I don't know what to think of death. Bitter belief wars with denial. Racicot said that some people must fear death as a true thing, a forever cessation of life. That was long before he offered the possibility of Thorne's death. Words to scatter thoughts like spiders, but only if death matters.

It matters to the spiders.

Tisran returned. I didn't question it. I never considered the possibility of her death. She disappears for seasons, but I often see her when I'm dreaming, and we speak of silly things, nonsense utterance, inconsequential as a raven's flight across the sky, or a scattering of stones upon the ground. When she and I hunted the Caves of Night, we were neither of us ghosts.

I'm not so certain about Thorne Blackrose.

I dance with shadows. Soft as a whisper of doubt, they approach, tattered revenants of midnight that threaten my light. Bleak darkness forces steps of avoidance broken by violent conflict. My boots shuffle smoothly in evasion, the shimmer of silver notes punctuated by infrequent hisses of pain and the whistle of my staff as it seemingly passes through my silent partners. They've less substance than my hopes, these shadows, and bring no music of their own.

I wonder what they are.

Did fearsome evil gather here and fade, letting substance slip away to be replaced by a dearth of light? When the stars first pierced the canopy of night, did they break out tiny chunks of it and cast them to the earth? Perhaps they were true shadows once, baited in their weakest hour and stolen away at high noon by demons who twisted their nature. If one searched all the forests or the beasts of the land, might one find a single undead crow who never spooked a bunny with the shadow of its wings? A stately pine that did not trace a spiky line across the needle-strewn earth in honor of Sunrifter's passage? Or are they shades of despair and apathy cast by jaded adventurers? Evil intentions? Broken promises? Do any of them belong to me?

I destroy them regardless of their nature. Each dance, I finish swifter than the previous one or with more grace. I spin like the last leaf of autumn upon a winter wind, brittle and occasionally broken by the motion, but guaranteed a soft landing by virtue of my leavened state of mind. Aloof from cares or worries, hedged by apathy, and yet as determined to avoid that state as I am to elude the shadows' briefest caress - I battle still.

The Wall swallows the sound of my bells.

No dreams. They elude me. My restful slumber mimics oblivion, and restores unnecessary vitality. I sit amidst the tomes and spin my gem idly between my fingertips, and sketch monsters with the aid of a tatty gull-plume. It is unfortunate that most of them resemble people or dogs. Manic energy suffuses my feet, but I do not let them engage in wandering. I'm staying in this library if it takes forever.

Only two problems. I'm bored beyond tears, and I've forgotten if enforced idleness is a key component to my plan. Perhaps I hoped the secret hid within these books. No luck so far. I've also looked within the water gem, cast the light of knowledge on it and tried to divine the mystery. I'm only fooling myself. Or not fooling myself - a double fail.

There's no way home.

I might as well paint a savage grin on my face and go kill something.

I've become stone, something tempered in the heart-fires of the earth and pocked with all my airy dreams. I cannot feel the moonlight, or taste the breeze. Time no longer touches me. I fear I cannot change.

Splendid were the moments that I spent upon these shores, all the days I danced beside the sea, traded laughter with friends, and stalked my foes within their own domains. Lovely still are the brief conversations with those who remain, and halcyon times when solitude and beauty meet. I do not deny the power of such things. It is only that my dreams are stronger.

Stronger than my hopes or fears, and more persuasive than any silver-tongued shill. I believe the visions, perceive the truth beneath them, desire to follow them to some end. Harques is correct - everyone must stop running sometime. Hard habit to break. Run and hide.

What I could not explain to him, in words plain or otherwise, is that my kin haunts me because I fear I never knew them. For all my days within that holding, I was contemptuous of them, and perhaps cruel. I must hold myself accountable for words unspoken or misspoken. I must return.

It is a simple thing for Valornians to be kind and supportive of one another. The enemy abounds - harasses them within their cities and wild places, on roads and even in holy places. Demons walk among them, and death is commonplace. It's easy to seem like a good person here.

More difficult for me is to discard glib responses, and bare my soul. I don't want to ever try it again. Tis the surest way to misplace words, to stammer and hesitate, to meander through trivial side-conversations until the listener isn't sure of anything except how much hasn't been said. Running at the mouth? Another form of running. I do not discount his attempt to console me, his patient explanation that I had a home here in the Dundee Inn, and people who cared. It was nice to unburden myself, however clumsily. Still, I wish I'd spoken of light-hearted things, inquired about his missing ax, or asked how mercenary business fared in these dark times.

I blame it on the wine. Wine of truth and visions and sweet lullabies. I will finish it this evening, within this eldritch library, filled with dusty forlorn books. I'll hold an ocean in my hand, ponder golden canyons and the labyrinth of the mind, and how they might connect to one another.

My hunger hollows me.
I sip the wine of memory.
Feast on yesterday's bones,
Measure the steps between myself and home,
And I despair.







{{Scribbled on a scrap of paper and tucked between the pages}}

I've been dreaming of my homeland, of awesome cliffs painted with the mellow, golden light of late afternoon and apple orchards, floors a'tangle with roots and wicked white clover. I dream of the eastern briar, its fiery blooms shedding petals in all the shades of sunset, and of the frog stream that wends its way through the wild northern woods. I dream myself barefoot and wandering. I dream myself lost and lonely. I am dreaming yet.

A heap of stones. A shambling keep, forgetting its shape. Unless I do the forgetting. I. Do. Forget. I forget that my mother, beautiful and youthful always, is not young. Her shining hair, webbed with silver strands no less brilliant than the darker hues, attests to this as do the shallow, powdered wrinkles that frame her eyes and soft mouth. All her features are softening, melting into a stranger's face. I love her desperately, and cannot abide her presence. Even in dreams I flee.

I find myself outside the door to my father's study. Of course, the door is closed. Even as my hand rises to clasp the iron ring, I know this way is barred to me. Here he ordered my confined to my chambers with one breath, and disowned me with the next.

I don't know if he spoke from rash wrath, words meant to be swallowed the next dawn or season, or if he never intended to forgive my tattoo, my taboo dabbling with magic, the general inconvenience my early years brought the family. When my mother unlocked my door the following eve, I ran without another word to any of my kin. I took the southern road all the way to the city of winds. It's hard to remember that now, with cool iron heavy beneath my hand. Harder. To. Remember I'm dreaming.

I'm too insubstantial, I cannot force the door. My feet slide across grainy flagstone, my toes find no purchase, and my knees find the floor. I'm huddled there, shoulder and cheek pressed against the wood, aghast at my own weakness, when the door finally opens. I needn't lift my head to know who stands there. He has always cast the longest shadow in this house. He says nothing to me. None of them do. I am not real to them.

The heartache of that realization frays my will, and I'm loosed to the tides of dreaming. Every whim of mind and corkscrew kink of this elsewhere place becomes more tangible than the waking world, and then supplants its memory. My last lucid thought is of the danger, and then I am adrift.

.................


"Sea foam and turtles' breath mixed with the tears of a Sea Dweller." The pale man speaks, words made raspy by his ragged teeth. He pushes a bottle towards me, awaiting an answer.

"I don't want that," I reply. I don't know what it's good for, and don't want to find out. I just want to find a way home, either to my childhood or the place that witnessed it. I'm lost, I remember sadly. "I want to go home."

"Yes. You'll need this," he insists with the patience of the dead.

"I can't afford it. I'm saving plat for Kilican, I mean, Ethucan. I'm saving platinum. I'm waiting until it's all saved."

He watches me intently, no mean feat for a fellow with only the one sunken eye centered in his forehead. I lift the bottle, and marvel at its weight.

"Does seem too heavy, it does."

"Indeed," he agrees. "Barter or begone. You have less time than you think. Offer me your dreams of dragons, a game of fingers, or a gate to the field where the sleepers' eyes shine. Offer me something like that."

Dreaming. I remember I am dreaming, and I remember the one I lost in dreams somewhere between that field and the place of all waters. Doubt. A squat, dull gray bottle catches my eye, and I point to it. "What about that other one?" Even as I speak, the borders of the dream begin to decay, and it takes all my concentration to remain coherent.

The man's eye glitters, inscrutable. "Contains seven scales from a lunar moth, crushed meadowsweet petals, and a ragged bit of your true love's laughter. Not that you'll find that one. Most people never do. Still, yours for a small price, my little, misguided spirit friend. Your heart will suffice," he offers with a careless gesture to a heap of raw, cold hearts in the corner. I note that most of them are small and a little ragged. "I'll even give you a replacement in exchange." He procures a lump wrapped with coarse, stained cloth. The soul-rotting stench of a demon's heart emanates from the fabric.

I shake my head and step away, still clutching the bottle of tears, breath and stuff. "Nuh-uh. Take my dreams of dragons, and let all bargains between us be finished."

"All bargains?" His words stretch to fill the space between us.

I nod my assent, and clutch at both the bottle and the edges of my mind. The unstable dream darkens as the man's pointed teeth bare in a hungry smile, a cannibal grin of implacable hunger. Leaning forward, his suddenly empty hands dart towards my throat, and I respond by stumbling backwards with a critical dearth of grace. The creature is on me in moments, gibbering and drooling, not a remnant of humanity left on its pale features. The moment before foul teeth rake across my jaw, I close my eyes and wish myself away from here. Terror strengthens my will. That same terror steals my wits, and again I lose track of the fact that I'm dreaming.

...............

Tattering. Mist flowing, scattering. A sunrise haze, beyond delight. Melody eating the silence. Brass screeching - horns wailing. Silence again, and a cluster of stars in my ears - sound's memory. Rampant colors burgeon into a devil's playground of crimson. Red music begins. No flesh, no eyelids with which to blink away the pain. No me. Only sound, and light. Tearing, scattering, and almost sundered into shattering. Hide! In the dimmest hues gather power, cognizance, self. Senseless becomes a reverse. I fling myself out to catch anything, and begin to fall.

................

Run through the dappling shadows, run past the broken well, run beyond a sunken citadel, and run until nothing can find you. Hide in bed of mouldering autumn leaves, breath quieted as much as belabored lungs allow for, and swallow a tickling sneeze. Smell the earth, damp and alive with decay, press your fingers into the loamy soil, and pray for concealment. Fret not about the beetles and worms turning beneath your cheek, nor the damp squish under your elbow as you shift your weight slightly.

Abide there for a time, an eternity. Keep yourself small and secret until the hunt is called off and the stalker withdraws to its rancid lair. Then you may rise, furtive and hesitant, heavy with dread, and hasten away from this place, lest it return to find you here. Seek the hidden path through a grove of ash trees, become something hidden, lost to every monster.

For the stalker will be unleashed again.

Even now you hear it, the clear notes of a horn breaking through the song of birds and wind. Run again, as the trees thin and sunlight pours upon you, hotter than torchlight or betrayal. Know that you've been sighted. Feel it between your shoulder blades, sharper than any knife and twice as certain. Rebuke the desire to surrender. Flee with the promise of death at your heels.

When you find the lonesome farm house, dart within and bar the door. Glance behind your shoulder to make sure that you're alone. Breathe quietly, lest you disturb the repose of someone elsewhere in the house. Tremble if you must, but gather your strength. You hear them moving below, soft moans and rattling cries coming from the cellar. You see the door is open, and something shuffles just within the darkness of the descending stairwell. The scent of death is unmistakable, even before the first zombie's hollowed, yellow face appears.

Fight, with fist and foot, and no regard for pustules bursting beneath every strike. The spray of fetid, ancient blood must not distract you from surviving. Snap shut the door with a forward kick, and spin to run again. Bolt up the stairs, and down the western corridor until you duck into a room that smells of musty, sweet perfume. Shut this door too, and look around with edgy curiosity.

Aged and crumbling tapestries hang upon the walls, but try as you might, you cannot tell what they once depicted. The mirror in the corner is another story. You know well what it depicts, and feel a horrified fascination take hold of you. Towards the mirror you trudge, reluctant feet and eager eyes pointed in the same direction. The frame might be golden, jet, or fashioned of rusted wire and you wouldn't notice. You fixate on the smooth glass and your image becomes trapped there.

See your face, smooth skin over sharp bones, begin to decay. Watch as another looks forth from your eyes and as the skin of your smile rots, stretching into a ghoul's grin. Regard the fading of beauty from your features, the warp of death upon your cheek and brow. Choke upon the horror or revel in it. Choose on which side of the mirror you'd like to awaken.

Finally, remember you're dreaming.

I've emptied myself and my pockets, turned out all my memories of this place like so many loose coins. I remember all of you: the ones I've loved or longed to know, the eternal strangers, all the people best forgotten, and most bitter-sweet of all - those who vanished without leaving more than brief, intriguing impression, a single facet of an infinitely refracting spirit. I wonder where you all have gone, and why I still remain.

The simplest answer might be that others have places to go, and I do not. I wander all the same roads, and now that I've collected all my golden crystals, I can once again pit myself against fearsome challengers, test my sinew and will in hopes of learning something more than my own limits. Indeed, I'm stronger than I've ever been before, fire-tempered and keen, if somewhat brittle.

I am rarely careless now. Time has become too precious, and I cannot waste it waiting for my death-chilled body to remember its purpose. I shouldn't waste it waiting for my purpose to manifest either, but in this I am lost. I've looked forward and back, and the only constant thread of connection between my inception and imagined end is woven from the silver of my dreams.

Therein must be my destiny. It is foolish to want anything more, but I have sipped of folly's well-spring and the taint is in my blood. I want more than the mirrored glass of dreaming. I want to be alert, as are the hound and the hare, not filled with the sleepy haze of a hibernating bear. Valornian bears, like me, don't have time to hibernate, as they are much too busy being harvested for their shaggy coats of umber, sooty-black, and cinnamon.

I harvest feathers, and slaughter flocks of dark, undead birds. In the throes of true death, the crows usually yield dim, bedraggled quills no doubt only suitable for scribing nasty letters or necromantic incantations, but ever so rarely I'll find a single, glistening onyx plume. These I keep and might someday weave into a cloak. I imagine the cloak will grant me the gift of flight, allowing me to reach yonder shore or distant canyon lands. It is a compelling daydream, and I nearly slip into it.

Instead I scoop up my sundry coins, flicking away a bent strand of grass and moldering crust of bread. I tuck the meager bits of platinum into a hidden pocket, and relegate the less precious rounds of silver and gold to a common pouch. My memories, I leave scattered, knowing that some will return to me unbidden and the others never mattered anyway.

Perhaps I lost it on Kilican beach, shattered the strand and scattered the shells. Or I carelessly let it fall after the RoK celebration. I've spilled luck before, and not been so annoyed. Nothing lasts forever, but that knowledge doesn't make me less angry with myself. I feel as though there's something I should do, a trick or charm to negate the ill omen. There is no such thing.

There is always forgetting. I can forget that there ever was anything to lose. That's what I've done regarding my family, and I think the plan serves me well. I suffer no nagging discontent when I remember my shirked responsibilities or my mother's smile. No longer do I feel uneasy at the thought of my father's wrath, and I can't even remember the color of my own jealousy. It is a blessing, a gift from Valorn to me, but only one of many.

I also dream with all the wild power of childhood.

...

[COLOR=blue]In a nowhere place, the jade citadel guards itself against time, and little else. Many doorways lead into the ground level, and delicately carven stairs wind towards the upper levels, allowing passage to narrow chambers and vast platforms. Nothing more substantial than spider silk curtains bars any door, not until one reaches the domed chamber crowning the citadel. There, a gate of woven pine boughs is tucked into notches in the floor and ceiling. Each branch is hung with bells in many shades of metal, and a simple rope latch fastens the door to another pine post. One cannot cross from the final stair into the chamber without opening this door.

Still, one can peek at the dragon within, and not disturb a single bell. The coil of her heavy serpentine body fills the room and she scratches her massive head upon the lethal spikes of her tail. One must marvel at her size, and wonder how she managed to squeeze all that ebony bulk into this narrow space. By the bulldog ripple of muscles in her shoulders as she stretches, this is no indolent beast, never mind how she tilts her horned skull downward, golden eyes drinking in the sight of her hoard. The treasure is reflected by those orbs.

One is nearly always drawn to look, either into the dragon's eyes or at the myriad of riches itself. One risks discovery, and delights in the possibility. Perhaps the tiniest silver bell rings, and a golden gaze measures one's soul. Such things can happen in the jade citadel, if only once. So it does.

"I hear your softest breath, and every footstep did betray you," the dragon remarks idly, opening her mouth in a crocodile smile. "Do not think I've been deceived by any clumsy attempts at stealth, thief."

"I'm not," one must protest. "I was only looking."

The laughter of a dragon takes one by surprise, and leaves one momentarily speechless. It's louder than a rock slide, and less subtle. "Looking for what? The Nightspinner's sword? The Tome of Yesterday? My mirror!?" she snarls, twisting suddenly upon her bed of gold coins.

One yelps in sudden terror, a primitive response to the sudden acidic scent of dragon overwhelming the pungent spice of pine. One is hard pressed to dismiss the fear created by a glowering dragon, but manages somehow to respond. "No, nothing like that. No artifacts or trinkets, or slivers of precious metal." A moment's contemplation for a dragon is long enough for one's sweat to become cold. One fears that shivering will ensue.

"Indeed. Why have you come?"

"I've heard tales of dragons." One thinks it's best to prevaricate, to improvise a reason when none neatly presents itself. One cannot imagine why one came to this place, but must pretend.

"And what do they tell of dragons?" The white teeth are longer than a hunting spear, white as bone, and glisten with corrosive saliva.

Remembering vanity, one matches their gaze to the dragons and speaks with every semblance of confidence. "Copper dragon's clever wiles, wyrms of earth and fire with brick dull hides and dimmer minds, and petty silver snakes with wings of gauze and faintly noble intentions. No one speaks of night's own dragon, locked within a green stone tower. I needed to see the black dragon to speak of her shadow scales and iron-dark horns, or to mention the fear that her glorious visage evokes."

"I'm not locked here," intones the dragon irritably, but she can't resist preening like a little bird, lofting and stretching her wings. "But do continue. I find your words have merit."

One is then obliged to wrack one's brain for interesting adjectives and pleasing words, twisting each sentence into a draconic compliment. One must prattle on for a long time. Eventually, when the dragon bids one to open the tree door and enter the chamber, an opportunity to withdraw presents itself, and one must take it. "I am looking for something misplaced, dragon. I must hunt it somewhere else."

"I knew you were looking for something," the dragon returns smugly. "Nonetheless, I found myself diverted by your clumsy attempts at flattery, and will reward you with a boon more valuable than your effort merits. Take that silver bell, and if you should return here and ring it, I will tell you the story of Tsethys Stormserpent. For now, you must leave. I've had quite enough company for this decade. You should go home, before you lose the way."

As one leaves, descending the many stairs, one feels the citadel begin to tremble, shivering in its moorings. The grinding of earth against stone resounds throughout, and one begins to hurry. One escapes out one of the many doorways a couple strides before the shifting building sinks into the ground, and all entrances are swallowed. Lacking windows, the citadel is now effectively sealed. One wanders away, and becoming distracted by the shifting planes of dreams, temporarily misplaces a single bell.[/COLOR]
...

It is the bell I remember upon awakening, and the way the dragon's scales drank the green light of the walls. It's a delicious dream to wake from, and leaves me elated. I settle into the library at Ryndall, read all my old spell scrolls aloud, and then study every one of Annia Sacrata's journals. Hours pass without anything disturbing me, and it's no surprise that I fall asleep right there at the table, and am soon dreaming again.