Γ 32

[silk_for_calde]

[OPEN DREAM ACTION]

A woman's face is visible, shrouded by verdant leaves. Her skin is dark and woodgrained, her eyes sightless and slanted at the edges, and she holds a mirror in one hand. There is a mirror at her feet as well, rippling faintly-- a pool of water ringed with red stones on which you stand, and in it two figures are reflected. There is a young man-- battered and beaten, pale skin a harsh contrast to the sickly lavender and yellow bruises, and the deep stygian black of his robes. Patera Silk, with his unruly straw-colored hair. He's bending to kiss a dark-haired woman, whose delicate hand is stretched across his chest to grasp his shoulder. But, though the reflection remains-- is fixed there on the surface of the ornamental pond, indelible-- no one sits above it.
"Caldé!" someone cries in the distance, and turning, you see what might once have been a pretty young girl. She's clearly malnourished; dressed in rags, her hair unkempt and matted, hanging down her bony back. Beside her stands a tall, silver cat, whose tufted ears curve up like the horns of a crescent moon.

Silk is standing beside the pool, suddenly; leaning heavily on a staff. Vines curl around it, laden with small, purple flowers; they brush his hand, and he takes no heed.

"Your brother Lion missed you," the ghastly girl says, grinning her corpse's grin, her hollow eyes distant and dull. The lynx yawns, and pads toward the augur, its massive paws deceptively gentle in the delicate grass. Silk bends to speak to it as though it were a child.

Suddenly the sun above flares, and for a moment it stretches across the sky, a blinding band of brilliance running east to west, too bright to see anything by. It fades almost immediately, shrinking back to a point of brilliance.

The lush garden around you is burning; the brush surrounding the woman's statue is swiftly consumed, and very soon she begins to burn as well, her mirror falling away. It shatters, shards scattered among the browning grass.

Silk strikes the ground with his staff, once, and the fire fades away.

[ooc: OPEN TO ALL COMERS, whether you know him or not, &c. Multiple people are welcome, either threadjacking or different continuities or whatever, sob, Silk's dreams are crazy love ♥ ♥ ♥]

Comments

[misterblackbird.livejournal.com]

[silk_for_calde]

Though the flames have settled, the damage to the garden remains. Bare, charred branches knit together around him, the remains of the little lovers' glade. A black bird with a red bill is perched in the bushes.

The silver lynx pads over towards Cain. Though, sometimes, when you look at it from the corner of your eye, it seems not to be a cat, but a tall woman with fiery hair.

Silk is watching it move curiously.

[obliviomancy.livejournal.com]

What was that?

[silk_for_calde]

"They are losing control of the sun. The time approaches for us to leave the whorl..."

He turned to look at Roxas, not entirely seeming to comprehend who he was speaking to. The landscape looked a little more drab, a little sterile-- charred grass covers a floor that looks almost metallic.

[obliviomancy.livejournal.com]

The keys are heavy in his hands, solid reminders that he still has control. He frowns at Silk.

"Leave... the world? Wait. How can you--?"

[silk_for_calde]

Silk shakes his head, frowning slightly.

"I'm not certain. We need-- cards. Lots of them, for the monitors..." Drifting off, he rubs thoughtfully at his cheek with two fingers.

"But we cannot stay; Pas will not... no, not Pas; not anymore... The rains won't come."

[obliviomancy.livejournal.com]

"You're not making sense." So, apparently, in foreign dreams people go insane. If these are the dreams of a being with a heart, Roxas is unimpressed. "You know this is a dream, right?"

[silk_for_calde]

"Is it?"

He turns to face the little reflecting pool, starting slightly when he sees the image in it, but smiling, fingers tightening around his staff.

"No. Perhaps it is, now; but this is real as well. I remember it. And the sun--"

He glances up at the clear sky, and shakes his head.

[obliviomancy.livejournal.com]

Mirroring him, Roxas glances up at the sun too. "Well, what's wrong with it?" he asks slowly. Because no sun moves like that, in brilliant flares before it dims down to normality. It doesn't matter to him, not really, but it still means something that he's never seen it before. And if it's real, he wants to know.

[silk_for_calde]

It's ironic-- though in his dream, he doesn't realize it-- that the sun he sees is a short sun. This whorl's sun, or the sun left behind on a whorl barely remembered by the oldest of chems-- barely remembered by the bios who slept beneath the surface of the city, buried deep in cavernous rooms. The scenery is changing around them, subtly; in the distance there is a row of huge glass tubes, and the air is oddly cool.

"It's growing too hot-- the Fliers can't keep it from burning any hotter. So it sparks like a fire. It's been summer since... since..." He shakes his head. "We should ask Patera Pike, he could tell you."

[obliviomancy.livejournal.com]

He spots the transition quick enough - he's on the lookout for these things. After all, Roxas has never liked unstable worlds. "Forget it. So this is your world, huh? ... Where can you go if you have to leave?"

[silk_for_calde]

"This was Ermine's. I came here Hieraxday-- no, it was Thelxday, by the time I arrived." He smiles, and starts to walk toward the glass tubes, unconcerned by the incongruity of the landscape. He beckons Roxas to follow along.

"We'll go Outside; he who descends serves Pas best. He meant us to go outside; and the Outsider is still with us, waiting for us."

If you get closer, it becomes obvious that the tubes are occupied by people-- men and women, nude and motionless, sleeping in their places. Here and there one is cloudy and empty, with a pile of blackened debris sitting in the base of the cell.

[obliviomancy.livejournal.com]

Following is easy; he falls into a steady stride beside Silk. Neither horrified nor fascinated, Roxas stares at each of the tubes in turn, his expression impassive. A quick frown flits across his features at the debris. "What are those?"

[silk_for_calde]

"They woke up. It may have been Mucor; though I doubt she's responsible for all of them. I'm not certain. There isn't enough room for them to break the glass; I believe they suffocated."

He's pulled a strand of prayer beads from his pocket, running them through his free hand as they walk down the row of sleeping bios. The garden has vanished behind them, replaced by more tubes; they're in a cavernous room, the walls and ceiling too distant to be distinct.

[obliviomancy.livejournal.com]

They keep walking, which is the weirdest thing. With a little shrug, Roxas decides to keep going and leave the tubes behind. But he asks anyway: "Where are you going?"

The option to leave hangs at the back of his mind - but that's not really an option. There's something odd about this world, something he wants to figure out before he goes.

[silk_for_calde]

"The belly of the whorl." There's a black line on the floor, which Silk has been following; he slows and comes to a halt before a deep hole. It looks a bit like a well, but flush to the ground-- several feet across, with a spiraling staircase cut into it. The stairs seem to be some kind of stone, and there's a light blanket of ash on them, growing thicker the further one descends. Silk takes a final glance at the sleepers, before he begins down the staircase.

For a moment, there's the disconcerting sense of being swallowed by a great fish-- a memory intruding, incongruous, on the shape of the dream.

[obliviomancy.livejournal.com]

The keyblades come up as soon as that sensation tumbles over him - but this isn't something he can fight, and it's only for an instant. "Why?" he asks, still at the top of the staircase. At this point, he's stopped. This world doesn't conform to anything like the others the way it should. That's the only way it can make sense - and it doesn't. "Is this how you're going to get out?"

[silk_for_calde]

He pauses in his descent, and turns to face Roxas. "I'm following Mamelta." The augur looks strangely sad, and glances down again. "She's waiting, with the god."

[sleepyseer.livejournal.com]

Morgana stares at her surroundings, deeply unsettled. This is nothing like the nightmares that plague her sleep...this is something else entirely. She finds that she almost misses the usual nightmares.

[silk_for_calde]

The near-skeletal girl, still grinning, makes her way over to Morgana. She moves like a dancer, taking long, slow, oddly graceful steps across the uncertain landscape.

"Are you an augur too? Silk says and father says girls can't."

[sleepyseer.livejournal.com]

Morgana stares at the girl, vaguely horrified. "An augur? No, no! Don't be ridiculous!" Her denial was perhaps a little more vehement than necessary, but she didn't think too deeply on it.

[silk_for_calde]

Mucor laughs-- a sickly sound. You need not be a seer to see she's not all there.

"Have you been bad? When I'm bad my father locks my window, so I cannot fly. Maybe when you are bad they leave your windows open~"

Her expression is serious for a moment, and unsettling-- not suited to her. More suited to Silk himself-- keen and observant.

[sleepyseer.livejournal.com]

Morgana stares at the girl with complete incomprehension. If the girl's words make any sense to her, she isn't going to admit it, even to herself. She looks away from the strange girl and her unsettling gaze, wanting to find an exit.

[silk_for_calde]

And when she looks away, Silk is there-- right in front of her. As though he's been there the whole time. He's leaning on his hyacinth-wreathed staff, looking at her as though he's been waiting for her to notice him.

"Will you come for the sacrifice?" Silk asks quietly. Mucor is still there, if Morgana turns back to look, grinning.

[sleepyseer.livejournal.com]

Morgana stares at Silk, openly afraid. "What kind of sacrifice?" she asks, her voice trembling.

[silk_for_calde]

"To Hierax, to ask him about the sun." He gestures in another direction towards a huge building-- clearly a temple or church of some kind, with crumbling columns and eroded friezes stretching over the walls.
A black bird flies around them, crying "No cut!", and Silk laughs; it settles on the end of his staff, picking its footing carefully between the trailing vines.
Mucor starts to walk toward the manteion, somehow managing to carry a huge, veiled cage, nearly as big as she is. Silk does not follow just yet; clearly waiting for an answer.

[sleepyseer.livejournal.com]

Morgana watches the cage with a feeling of dread. "You're going to kill an innocent animal?" she asks, feeling sick to her stomach.

[silk_for_calde]

He looks at the cage, and back to Morgana.

"Innocence is a subjective term."

[sleepyseer.livejournal.com]

"What is that supposed to mean?" Morgana snaps angrily.

[silk_for_calde]

He shrugs. "If I said the beast was guilty of some crime-- that it had harmed someone-- would it trouble you less?"

[sleepyseer.livejournal.com]

"What kind of crime could it possibly have committed?" Morgana asked sharply.

[silk_for_calde]

Silk smiles at her. "I'm only trying to make a point; it isn't the beast's innocence which troubles you, only its death. If I told you that this bird nearly killed a man, it would not lessen your horror."

[sleepyseer.livejournal.com]

He has a point, although Morgana doesn't like admitting defeat. She looks away instead. "I've seen my fill of death."

[doujin-dork.livejournal.com]

Have a Hiyori that came in juuuust at that last part there. "Woah! That was pretty impressive!"

[silk_for_calde]

Silk smiles, shakes his head. "It is his will to reveal, not to consume wholly." He gestures at the bare branches surrounding him.