help me lose my mind | self para
The maenads were running through the trees, howling at the night like wild beasts, forgetting what it meant to be civil. Their hearts all hammered in sync to the drums the satyrs played in the distance, the natural music of the night, the beat of the wilderness. Their tongues were laced with wine, their lips and chins stained red from indulging in the chalice Dionysus shared with them, and he felt himself inside each of them, coursing through their veins and seeping inside their heads so he could start to rewire them, tear down their conventions, their restraints, their beliefs, and their own sense of self so they could be reborn, if only for a night, truly free. He followed after them, trying to forget his worries just as the maenads did, but he found himself constantly distracted by one in particular: the newest addition for the night.
Aisa was all giggles and disorientation as she ran, and he watched with endearment, glad to see her finally enjoying herself and forgetting the fact that she was feeling miserable only a few hours before. Dion had found her alone, eyes greener than ever in contrast to the redness surrounding them, so despite her denial he knew she had been crying, finally crippled by the guilt that came with her job, and he couldn’t find it in him to leave her in such a state of self-loathing because he sympathized with her burdens and knew he had just the thing to help. She was weary about joining his maenads in a bacchanal at first, and he’d be lying if he said he wasn’t a little weary about it too.
Bacchanals were sacred and they were intimate, dangerously intimate if he was expecting to maintain that wall between him and Aisa since they were just as much about unity and breaking down barriers as they were about easing pain and worry. He told himself that it was just for one night and that he’d keep things tamed and watered down rather than show her the full extent of his worship. This was just a friendly favor, a kindness that he didn’t share with any of the other gods because they wouldn’t understand it and it wasn’t their place. He didn’t think it was Aisa’s either until he saw how easily she slipped out of her robes and responsibilities, and how easily the other maenads took to her.
They all gravitated towards her when they danced and ran, and while it might have been interpreted as them being friendly to the “initiate”, that wasn’t how the maenads worked. There was no pretense and no politeness with them and they were only drawn to what they craved deep down. As odd as it was, Dion wrote off their behavior and still felt as if he needed to keep an eye on Aisa to make sure she wasn’t pushed too far from her comfort zone, but the only one who was really struggling to step out of their comfort zone was him.
“Aisa! You’re supposed to stay in the woods!” he called, but rather than slow down she sped up, laughing out of drunkenness as she continued to stray towards the city. The rest of the maenads already began hunting their prey in the woods as they were told to tonight, but the few who spotted Aisa followed her example, much to his frustration. While he was never one to control a maenad’s whims, he didn’t want to instigate trouble in the city– not while Aisa was here. It was supposed to be a night of fun for her, not bloodshed and even if he was an Olympian now and even if this city had allowed his worship, the opposition he and his maenads faced from some of the mortals was never-ending.
He couldn’t keep up with her. Even as drunk as she was she was smart enough to out-maneuver him through the streets, but she stopped after she came across a mortal man who had left the comfort of his bed to spy on Dionysus’ madwomen. Aisa latched onto him, and the mortal was completely enraptured by her like a hungry beetle incapable of seeing the fatal danger of this carnivorous flower, only the delectable beauty. Dion’s jealousy was flaring as he witnessed it, and he justified his sudden possessiveness with the fact that the maenads weren’t meant to be ogled at for the pleasure of outsiders, and neither was Aisa if she was his maenad tonight. Dion wasn’t merciful to those who blatantly disregarded the rules of his rites, but again, he wanted to avoid ripping people apart as best as he could, so he settled for entering the man’s mind and scrambling his wits around. The mortal lost his coordination then and tripped into the fountain he and Aisa stood beside. Luckily for the mortal, Aisa lost interest in him and took to running again, but unluckily for Dion, he completely lost sight of that pale body and crazy mess of hair after she rounded the corner.
“Gods, she’s going to be the death me,” he growled, annoyed by his own worrying, but he couldn’t help it. He thought he was doing a good thing in dragging her into this, but instead he lost her and there was no telling what sort of mess she’d get herself into by morning. For all he knew, she’d wake up in a strange place feeling worse than when he found her. Before he could allow himself to envision all the horrible scenarios of how the night would end, someone leapt onto his back with a wild yell, nearly knocking him to the ground.
“I got you.” He had never been more relieved to hear Aisa’s voice in his life, and the sound of her mischievous amusement caused him to laugh along with her. The worry and the nervousness he felt before melted away now that he finally had a hold of her– or more accurately, now that she had a hold of him. Her arms and legs were tightly wrapped around his waist and chest, and her full lips were boldly pressed against his ear after the laughter died down. “Let’s run away. Just you and me,” she murmured in a sultry tone, raising the hairs on the back of his neck and igniting a fire in his chest that he couldn’t extinguish even if he tried. She may have been drunk, but with his sacred wine inside her he was acutely aware of the things she craved, the things she thought would make her truly happy, and for once her desires were beginning to correlate with his.“--And we can be like this all the time. Just Aisa and Dion.”
○○○○
Damon was torn away from his dream abruptly, but even now that he was fully awake, the dream stayed with him, as they sometimes did, blurring his conception of what was real and what was all in his head.
‘Are you scared?’ It was Ana’s voice he was hearing, he recognized it, but when he looked beside him, he saw she was still sleeping. He tried his best not to panic. The voices would go away eventually, and as scary as it was to hear things that weren’t there, this particular voice was a pleasant one. He needed to remember that. ‘You don’t have to be.’
Even if there was little space between them, Damon still reached an arm around Ana to gently pull her into him until her warm back was pressed against his chest and his face was buried safely within the heat of her neck. He needed to hold on to something real to make the unreal go away. But these voices and these images didn’t feel unreal. It was as if he just found a dusty door in the back of his mind that he had forgotten all about, but something was desperately trying to break free from the other side, and he was too afraid to let it, too afraid of what it’d mean if he let it all out. ‘It could be so easy.’
Soon enough the voices started to fade as he managed to match his breathing with Ana’s; however, the dream didn’t fade from his memory. He remembered every scent, every sound, and every word. He had dreamt of chasing a woman through the woods long before he ever met Ana, and since coming to Valencia, that dream became more frequent, but it always ended before he could recognize who the woman was. He wanted to assume that the woman took on Ana’s identity because he was in love with her, but that didn’t explain the rest of the dream, why it felt so familiar, or why they had spoken in a different tongue, dressed in a different time and called each other by different names.
