The Day My Dream Died

44 - ****'s Breath

- 44 -

****'s Breath

//\\

To process everything seems a grasp for the unattainable. Where to begin eludes her. Drawn between conflicts, taut, tearing her in two, three, four...

Had she imagined Akota? How had Elineal dragged her all the way to Kellean? What should she say to Pelanea, knowing her brother's fate? Where is Seli and can she still save her? Will this pain bear her ever downward? Forever the fool, is freedom possible for her? Is it real to begin with?

Prying apart gradually, creaking and snapping.

Lise struggles to stay with one thing long enough to reach any kind of understanding, even the semblance of it. Pain pesters her, pulling her away. She needs to think, needs to work past this haze. Pain plucks every thread of thought. Left a frayed mess. Sick of it all.

A moment of reprieve, she feels her self separate from herself. Pain dulled, distant, experienced and forgotten the next second. It's only a matter of time. The self-awareness gained in that brief detachment dissipates, but its echo rings in her empty mind. It is only a matter of time...

The only end.

Pain's hot breath fogs her lens once more. Still, she earned an insight. First and foremost, she has to clear her head somehow. The state she is in precludes even the semblance of understanding. If it isn't the pain, it is the drugs, the sleep deprivation, the grief, the guilt. To peel back the folds and see beyond-that's what she needs.

There is a place of ultimate clarity. A state where all excess is abraded. NON. It is next to death, an end she desires so dearly-but if she dwells in it with the intention of rebirth... is the risk justified? She might awaken weeks, quadrants, even years from now-long after the clarity would be of use.

If she could reach the undermind uninfluenced she might find respite from the pain there. But that would mean abstaining from the painkillers and getting some sleep, which are mutually exclusive just now.

She yearns for it still. NON. It is within her, an emptiness, just a breath away. It does not beckon. It needn't. It is a matter of time. Let go. Reality will be pulled from her, she will be pulled from her; all slipping away, left with what cradles everything.

But Lise clutches reality. Full with the fear of loss, afraid to lose herself again. Afraid of what will happen in her absence. Change, constant and irreversible, irreparable. In the same cloying, clinging clutch, she refuses the face of reality. Rather than love, an embrace from terror. Hugging truth and coveting the comfortable lies over its shoulder.

From that embrace she bears out something horrible. The marriage of her contorted perception and reality, consummated. Pain's progeny is birthed in her wake.

Wailing, screaming; it tears from her. Pain breathes through her, and she watches their child writhe, stagger, and rise. And she can do naught but scream at her own pain and terror manifest-an infant fiend, suckling at her breast.

It is worse.

Clinging to her, the fiend chews at her undefended mind. She can feel it, gnawing feebly, but is too far gone to act. Doing little more than let it feed, weeping as its venom seeps in, further clouding her mind with pain and fear.

She rolls in the bed, desperate, clawing at the blankets, needing escape. The pain crests with her panic and she loses the fight in moments. Vision narrowing to pinpoints in the dark, she trembles and whimpers. Begging death.

"What happened?"

Pain pain pain. What greets her as she blinks awake. Eyes filmy with poor sleep. "What...?"

"What happened? Did you dream?"

Lise trembles, a dream... Had she dreamed? "Where am I?" The tremble touches her words. She feels wrong... disoriented... violated. "What's happened? What is this?"

Pelanea... Yes, that's who speaks in the darkness. Pelanea leans forward, peering at her. "Are you alright? You were speaking in your sleep and kept crying but I couldn't wake you up. Do you need medicine?" She whirls the bottle, sending the pellets rolling around the inner glass.

"Please..." And again she takes the medicine without water, bitter.

"Are you in pain? No, I mean, that's obvious, but how much? Should I fetch a physic? Aleen?"

Lise struggles to recall her dream. She feels its lingering terror more than she can remember it. If it was a dream... Dreams, as experienced by non-dwellers, had become a rarity for her. She can only interpret it as confirmation of what she fears. Pelanea's questions hang around her, untouched, as her spiraling thoughts draw her down and down.

She is water. Rushing, rushing. Flowing through life. Frothing with vitality one moment, growing to a great roaring power, and the next moment she is slow... placid-but always flowing. Even as parts of her trickle away, lost to life's strand, she flows. Here, she feels the dregs of her drift to a stop, and at last she perceives the whole of the crater she fills. Stagnant. And her fresh mass turns foul.

She begs a sun come burn her away, lest she fester further. Better to expedite her end than live this gradual putrescence.

"Are you alright?" Pelanea asks, watching the slow creep of despair blear Lise's gaze. And when she again gets no response, "I'm going to get Aleen..."

Lise hears her, but can't care.

Everything... stills.

When Aleen comes, she knows. Under upheld lantern, she looks into Lise's eyes and sees the end in her. The breath she takes, controlled, speaks more than words.

"Pelanea, send for Bente... and Alestier. Tell them to meet me there. Then bring Eclait here-if she resists... you may use my title."

\\//

'There! Don't let her slip away! Hold her!'

She feels their hands on her, touching her mind. Aleen pries the clinging fiend from her chest, lifting it up by the nape like a cub. It does not struggle-hanging limp from her clutch-then it does. The fiend thrashes suddenly, slashing at Aleen, and they go down in a grapple.

When next she becomes aware, the fiend is sealed in a cage. Aleen looks worse for it, significant chunks taken from her forearms, gashes leaking red along her ribs.

'Harmony... Come feel this,' one of the people who holds her, prodding around her boundaries. 'What is this? It's... there's a hole... or something... I can't figure it.'

Aleen takes a breath, concentrating on the fiend's container a moment more, then comes to her. She looks down at her. 'Lise, are you conscious?'

Lise doesn't know. She feels herself like water, and can't move.

'It's probably something to do with that mending gray we found. She needs time to-'

'I don't know, it's strange. Forget that for a second, and feel this...' They take her hand and guide it. 'Right... there. Does that feel like mending gray?'

Glazed with fatigue a moment before, Aleen's gaze sharpens. 'This... I know this...' Her thoughts slow, stopping, and start again frantic. 'Pull back! PULL BACK!' She shoves the other two away. 'Don't touch it again.'

'What? What is it?'

'I don't know...'

'You said-'

'I recognize it, but I don't know what it is.'

Lise knows it.

Too late. The hole. Lise feels herself like water, draining. And even as they realize it, she is beyond them. Trying to catch her they come away with wet hands. She bleeds into the void and knows vastness. And knows nothing.

NON