I , SHAPER.

a dream itself ── is but a shadow. 

[lereves]

[ Enter Sandman

QUOTH THE RAVEN :   WE ARE SUCH STUFF /  AS DREAMS ARE MADE ON.      A  WRITING BLOG FOR ‘MORPHEUS’  /  DREAM OF THE ENDLESS.  a study in storytelling as the fabric of humanity ,  woven by a romantic ( of the gothic nature )  —   a study in humanness through that which is inhuman.  THE ANTHROPOMORPHIC REPRESENTATION OF DREAMS , PRINCE OF STORIES. WRITTEN BY MARINA.   

Exit Sandman ]

[lereves]

‧₊˚ ☁️⋅𓂃 ࣪ ₊ ┊ ░ re. helena diehr . . . @lamorts : why does he revel in murder and madness?

it's a good question , he supposes — as good as any other , as most questions tend to be - though there is such a thing as stupid questions, dream has found that even them carry within them a small galaxy of wonder-thought, foolish as one may be : the very act of a thought becoming word has its secret wonders, the shapes one creates out of . . . ah , we are getting carried away again. let us go back :

[ Sandman watches the nightmare Corinthian in contemplative silence, the weight of a question on his mind ] .

‘ there is a common misconception , ’ a moment of silence , feather-light in the air , no more than a beat ‘ to the nature of dreams or their role in this world. everyone . . . rather , everything dreams , just as everything dies. i'm sure you're aware of it. ’ another beat , this one longer than the one before. it sits between them, spreads itself out in the space between their inhuman-human forms. ‘ dreams are nothing more than a reflection of one's nature . . . nightmares are the same. if that exists within him is because he learned it somewhere. like a mirror. ’

[lereves]

lamorts​:

this is not a story of consolation. grief, i have learned, stretches like muscle and flesh. it is the tiniest sharp ache at the side of his body, it clings to him like second skin. i know him :        he will carry his grief in silence, as he does with most things. he will take her absence and make weight of it to carry it dutifully around his neck, like a length of rope. this hollowed ache will move inside of him and settle for the tender parts of his inside, where the red of anger and white of mourning make wound, where black only ever means the end of something.

perhaps in other stories, the red of poppy flowers does not bloom over blood-stained concrete floors. red, somewhere else, would be sweet, slow and loving. but this is the story i have to tell :        violence & the abrupt end of it.  she lives stagnant in this last moment. the flutter of her wings is paused mid flight, the gentle curve of her head bowed to look back at him from the hidden place of his memory. memory, like a pale star, orbits him.  this is grief :       the difference between what you remember and what you see. 

(  but we should let the bird rest now. this was never her story.  )

there is an impossible moment when i hear the rattle in his ribs like a flutter of wings & the mansion trembles under his body. there is the very darkness of his eyes, suddenly touched by a single star, the naggingly specific weight of his stare — even the illusion of power is still power — that touches me discreetly, subtly, from across the glass.  ❛  i do not, but jessamy would not let me refuse her.  ❜

(   think of my body as a map , sketched out in a piece of parchment :   here ,  near the curve of my spine ,  lies a river , though the water is not made for consumption.  there ,  on the third rib down of my ribcage , lies a vale so deep no light will reach its depth , though , somehow , stars still shine within it.  perhaps that is where i keep my heart.   )        dream’s eyes are that of a thousand galaxies ,  though now they are more akin to a flood.  there are so many stories of floods throughout the universes —  humans will think instantaneously of noah but that was not the first , no , that was not the first.  once ,  the dreaming would reflect him.  does it still , now , that he is not there?  does the grief in the vale of him make the leaves fall in silent mourning?  do the skies turn grey and bitter and thunderous?    [   Sandman moves his eyes to the spot where a body was slain  ]       “  the poppies grow already dead. have you noticed?  ”     

it seems impossible that something would grow in rot , so perhaps it is fitting that red-turn-grey-turn-pale-white and whiters   —   for this is what this house is : rotten ,  and a rotten house bears rotten children , and the rot grows and spreads and takes even the most innocent of lives — a poppy , midbloom , poisoned by an ancient evil which lays in the heart of a basement at the center of a house , made sick by the greed of men.  once , dream stood tall as a giant amid the stars and the world and the universe .  now , he is stripped and small , and poppies lay dead at not his feet. 

(  let us think again of the map of my body , and the vale-of-darkness in which lies my inhuman-human-heart.  if i close my eyes , this pale body of mine finds itself in the center of it , and licks the wound of loss in griefrememberance. but it is not enough. look closer :  no wound heals before the next starts oozing. )     “ you have become more like my sister than i thought.  ”  

[lereves]

lamorts​ :

in the bowels of a house in wych cross, england, a dream awaits. there is little to the house, other than that old money countryside aesthetic, partially gothic, partially bad taste, all of the labyrinthine chambers filled with decadent mystique. the house is a symptom, the house is a body in the dark, the house stubbornly persists in its self-awareness, both setting and character here, the whale that swallowed something bigger than itself.

& light crawls through the keyhole to find staircases that twist and turn, bone that is not bone, and windows that look out, yellow-bright, towards the night. but fawney rig is not a dark place, shadow to shadow endlessly in a veil of black-within-blackness, the nothing that expands on itself between the stars. the beginning was once bizarre-blackness / untamed un-light. i have known the dark intimately, the nuances of it that make it both grave and womb. the dark is the beginning translated into the ending of every story, or an open-mouthed animal waiting for an unfinished sentence. this place is not the dark, it is a basement.

in the basement, there is a @lereves​ inside a bell jar, the very white of his skin like a lampshade in the dark. by his feet, the aftermath of a murder, the blood against the floor which the house had drank with a very human appetite. there is barely a mark of it now. this house is a place of hunger. & although silence is soundless, it speaks. i know what this is:         anger, grief, sorrow. this man is their personal ghost. ❛ hello, dream ❜ , there is very little to say other than this. ❛ jessamine says to not blame yourself. ❜

a colorless white shape curls within itself , head to knees to calf to feet , thigh to stomach , and a heart which folds and unfolds with each unearthly beating  —  unearthly, of course, because there is no heart in this body of his , only a rememberance of a muscle which sheds its hope in distant agony  :  like leaves of a tree in bitter winter , falling to the ground in silent whoosh and the world remains unmoved   (   and unmoved , here , is a metaphor — it still moves , round and round again , its gravitational pull like a tug on the bottom of my stomach , the distorted faces of my captors become old and grey and fat with the stuff of dreams. unmoved as in careless , unmoved as in neverstopping. ).  

dream has spent over ten years in captivity , the slow breathing of the world lost under the palm of his absent hand , loneliness kept at bay by the knowledge that he was not alone — somewhere , outside of the human-made-maze of this house, hope in the shape of a bird lingered, black-feathered and night-dark. the newfound tense is not a mistake on the part of the narrator  :   dream finds himself still in captivity ,  while obisidian-colored-hope lies dead in front of him. loneliness crawls up inside and finds a home within the shed pieces of his heart, a blanket over what once was  — griefstruck, griefswept, griefnonsensical.  a carcass which lies in front of him , scarlet blood which drips down his glass cage , and white , white , white. there is no comfort in white , unlike humans have fooled themselves into believing. white is blinding , unlike the darkness. dream closes his eyes , and still finds himself wanting.   

(  my captor’s take her body away but the ache still lingers , the presence of her on the back of my mind like a phantom - limb , and i can not do anything but stare at the spot where she once flew in ,  where hope once festered and grew akin to an infection ,  though benign.  i can not think of metaphors of joy right now — grief has taken me as hostage ) .    “  . . .  death.  ”          he says , and remains unmoved , all but the eyes ,  self-contained-galaxies which move to meet her own.    “  i did not think you often took messages for those who remain. ”