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October Prompts | Change
It was a bud. The first flowering of the year. His knee hurt from falling through the door and he didn’t know where he’d woken up. He looked around, not recognising his surroundings. He looked around until, at last, he noticed a little girl standing not far away. In the mist her face was obscured. But that didn’t matter. He remembered her vividly. The warmth of her small hand in his as she led…
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October Prompts | Cleats
Vahash pushed her feet into the uncomfortable shoes. She needed them for traction but they were so heavy and she could feel the plastic studs through the soles. Sitting back, she rolled her ankles, checking the fit. The left was still a little too loose. “Whose idea was this anyway,” she muttered. I could change her mind [Saengdao] She stilled. Irritation, resignation and surrender at war in…
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In her thoughts she calls herself Vahash. Even as she goes by her birth name. Even as she tells it to call her by her birth name. She doesn't want to be Vahash. Her life is miserable. She refuses to be what she was. When she's upset she reaches for a lost relic of that life.
二十七 | Dream
note: It’s been about five years and I don’t think Alfgrímr and Vahash have ever interacted. What is wrong with me?
Word: 227 Characters: Devran Source: Prompt List | by @oc-growth-and-development
二十七 | Dream
A cacophonous riot of crashes and screams clashed against the edge of the dream. Vahash winced. But morbid curiosity bid her stay. It was gone, for once, that creature of dark and thought, and she caught unawares without a guide. She – caught in dreams and subterfuge – all alone.
This was as nothing had been before. A wall built of nothing in a world built to fall once woken. Vahash crept before it, tempted to touch. There was such power within. And then a flash of black on black. Of baby blue. Grey eyes. Blonde hair.
Break it, her conscious commanded. Claim it.
Her eyes flickered. She rose. Touched consciousness, the world awake, and breathed. From the barrier between, she called forth every excess dream, that closed-off wanting, that unknown coming, and – halted.
It will not break. Nor bend. Nor bow. No power here is meant for it. No power but its own.
And the dream world trembled against intrusion. And Vahash shook. How long? How long? He was small ans frail and only a half-born creature, no more mortal than the dark that had called her name, but powerless and unbelonging.
She will not wake. She will not rise. She is not asleep to be claimed.
No one here is awake, she protests.
None but she, and he, and me, and the dread dark you deal by.
The Court of Dreams and Shadows
There is a moment of silence – when the world is only wind and wild animals and the soft sound of her own breathing. She can’t but giggle. Giddiness burbles up in her, relief flooding her veins. Then the buzz of brain activity explodes back to life. Startled, she stumbles back and the floor vanishes under her.
Her eyes snap open to looming shadows. She knows immediately where she is. A million voices wailing and screaming assails her. She throws her hands up in a bid to stifle sounds that cannot be held back but silence descends. Shadows coalesce into walls. No light enters but she senses another presence. Nails pressing into the incorporeal substance of dreams, she moves to stand, pulling the world into her own design.
Vines erupt from below, walls evaporating into mist and sunlight. His powers rise up to twine with hers, melting the vines and grass away, turning the sunlight grey. She digs deep for more, for power and fortitude but each evanesces as swiftly. He keeps apace, destroying as she builds, subverting what she calls forth until frustration bursts out of her in a scream.
Never has she been bested. Never has she been cowed. Never has she been undone.
And yet it is so simply done.
Exhaustion trickles up her skin. A slow decay, it feels like rot. Emptiness follows in its wake like death. Only emptiness. But it is not death. The tether still pulls taut, sensation strong despite the numbness.
“You can’t die…”
She glares up at him. Her lip curls into a snarl and a faint flicker of power goes with it.
He moves to sit before her – all languid and wispy, half phantom but with the violent lurch and stutter of electricity before a light blows. He changes too. No more a shadow amongst shadows, he takes human form, hair wild and messy, almost concealing deep, smouldering eyes. It’s him, she realises, the boy – the singer – that the girls had plastered across their shared room’s walls but with skin like ashes and eyes all black.
“You –“ He frowns, confusion almost cartoonish, but it leaks from him too so that she has to conjure ground to stabilise herself. “Your body will not let you go.”
She blinks at him. Realisation hits like a tsunami and her breath stutters despite not needing air.
Her voice is barely audible. “You were alive…”
Around them the world bubbles up like magma. Memories and dreams flicker around them like lightning.
“Yes…” He looks at her then. “They call me Noir... Hei. Kuro. Dubh. Musta.”
The bogey man, she realises. All hope of escape evaporates. It makes sense now that he could drag her back into unconsciousness. She would ask but he knows.
“Look.” He urges. “You’ve built ruins. A court of nightmares.” His voice drops then; more felt than heard. Embarrassment stains the atmosphere. “Stay…”
She stares at him until the silence is no more an impossible dream.
The Court of Dreams and Shadows
In the dark, she awakens. Branches claw at the open window, the flutter of curtains like phantom limbs reaching for her. Saengdao watches them. There’s peacefulness in its languid movement that she recognises – only just. Eyes peeling away from the night, she examines her hands. The brown is washed away in moonlight and only heightens this feeling of death that sticks to the insides of her ribs and clings to her lungs.
Everything is slow. Everything is quiet. Life itself could be receding and she would only faintly recognise its absence. A veil of sleep still shrouds her. Every second more her eyelids long to close but she knows that if she does then he will be there. He calls to her, even now.
But this is a torment.
She can feel them around her. The other girls sleep and she can feel their dreams, their mindless thoughts and plans. The girls they like, the boys they like… What to write, what to buy, what to say, what to do… There are tendrils of her own consciousness reaching for them before she understands what she has done. A shiver passes over each as she relinquishes her hold.
One girl is not breathing. And will not breathe again.
Saengdao rises from the bed. Bare feet padding over the cold floorboards, she crosses the room to lay her palm over the girl’s forehead. She feels the slow mechanics of the lungs, the intake and the slow exhale; the painful pulse of a frozen heart; the buzz of activity of a computer switched on as her consciousness is dragged back from silence.
And yet she wonders what a relief it would be to bring silence to her world.
The Court of Dreams and Shadows
She is pure, tremulous rage. Darkness spills from her fingertips and writhes in her throat. Revulsion gathers at the tip of her tongue but she holds her silence with the determination and devotion of saints as she stalks the halls of her crafted palace of shadow and sin. The promise of decay lingers beyond the walls. She knows they are watching.
They are waiting. They have longed for her demise for so long now. They must have surrendered all hope. A part of her congratulates them. Another part is desperate to rip it from them once more.
The air ripples. The walls sink into the evaporating floor. In what remains of the doorway she finds him waiting and watching. There is power in him that is lacking in the others. It lacks in her as well but if she is to die then it should be by no other hand than this.
Her imagined heart flutters. There is hesitation in her still. What she has done may live on. She does not know what will become of her. She thinks it may be like the Dreaming. She will not run from it as others have. The pleasure of the chase will not be his.
But he does not chase.
He flickers from sight. The soft rush of his breath tickles the nape of her neck. He extends a hand by her side.
“Come,” he whispers.
The Court of Dreams and Shadows
The edges of dreams distort as she waltzes through the dark recesses of a multitude of minds. The brightest suns darken in her presence. The purest of hearts quivers in sudden tumultuous pain as she glides into dreams not of her own craftmanship and moulds them to her blackhearted vision.
The world is shadows and secrets and corners that lead to dead ends and death waiting in the reaches for the slightest of errors. This, she knows. She has walked this world and its other for as long as she has breathed dark shapes to life between hands wound around longing and desire. She has stalked the minds of friends and foes and twisted avarice into selflessness. The longer she straddles these two worlds the farther she finds herself drifting into the dark.
A rush of shadows blackens her hand. She moulds it into legs and eyes and imbues it with the venom of terror. It scurries away, then, vanishing into the tea party of a four year old, growing to gargantuan proportions. A scream rises in its wake. Then ceases.
She stalls. At her command the darkness recedes, stripping colour from the imaginations of the unconscious. Her creation is revealed lost. By the almost woken child crouches another. His head is bowed, visage hidden from sight but she feels the rippling of this world around his form and knows that he exists as she does.
