On a Horse With No Name

On a Horse With No Name

Postby Glenn » Mon Dec 23, 2019 9:01 am

"Argh." Elliot Brown exclaimed in frustration. This was the third night. It wasn't the third night in a row, but it was definitely the third night. He didn't always remember, but you just didn't forget this. He'd been in all sorts of dreams, the most exciting and the most mundane. He'd jousted with dragons and dodged fire blown at him by knights (that hit a bit close to home). He'd suffered through his share of snoozers as well. Endless lines on market day, toiling over far too bountiful harvests. He wasn't the one dealing with these things directly, of course, but depending on the imagination of the dreamer, it could mean for a long trip to nowhere in an environment that was severely limited.

This was different through. It was a desert in the purest sense of the idea. In a normal desert, there would life, withered but thriving plants, bugs, the odd camel. He wasn't sure. He'd never been to a desert even though he'd encountered a few reasonable enough copies in one dream or another. This was different. It was empty. The sun washed the color from the land. Even the sand was bland. It didn't reflect the light. You could barely tell where one grain ended and the next began.

Moreover, it went on forever, as far as the eye could see and as long as one could count. He had shaken it once or twice but it was so massive that he couldn't help but stumbling back upon it again and again (to Elliot, again and again was three times; three times was a lot). Unlike with his last profession, he had no teacher in dreamwaking. He'd searched for Galacia, his benefactress and the bogeyman all at once, but there was no sign of her. She was the sort who found you, not the other way around, and the stories all said that she was immortal. He wasn't even sure how often she looked into Myrken and frankly, as much as she enticed, he was a little afraid of BECOMING her. Less and less so, but he'd seen things and some of them felt like his own future if he wasn't careful. He, of course, wasn't careful. 

He had good instincts though, teacher or no, and by now, he'd decided that this was an artificial dream. Why someone would create nothing was an interesting question but not hardly so interesting to make up for the fact that everything about this was so painfully boring. Not being careful, he had created a camel out of the sand for himself in the second dream, one with six humps and massive teeth, and had rode it north and south and east and west, finding nothing at all. Now, in the midst of his third time in the dream, he took to the skies, creating a giant roc out of the sand and riding it, again, north and south and east and west, sometimes two or three of those directions at once. 

It had been days, months maybe, before he finally saw some sign of life. As caravans went, this wasn't one. From a distance, he could see one lone figure, barely worth the name, and two en,tities trailing behind, one close and one lingering back. Still, it was something and something was always better than nothing, so he swept down, the unnatural bird dissipating as he descended, gone completely as his feet skidded across the sand. "Really?" Elliot muttered as he looked down at where the obvious, distinct, beautiful-in-their-own way tracks of his landing should have been. Nothing but the bland sand. 

"Lost, are you?" Came the creaking, yet confident voice of the figure leading the group. He was desiccated, skeletal to the point of being unrecognizable. He was coated with so much of the sand that he almost blended into the environment, even now close up.
The heat, previously noticeable but hardly memorable spiked with Elliot's annoyance. "Me. I'm the one that's lost? In the middle of this. You're in the middle of this, with barely any meat on your bones and ...." Sometimes it took him a few moments to catch up with what was around him. When he saw someone these days, he saw them inside and out. There was generally a lot to take in, though with this particular specimen, it was more sand than anything else. 

"My wife," the figure responded to the question before it could be asked, "and death itself." Elliot was gaping at either one or the other, though which one seemed to leave the figure staring himself. "Til death do us part is the saying, isn't it? I suppose we could never do anything right, could we?"

The heat lasted a few more seconds (perhaps an eternity, as it was ever so hard to tell in such dreams), before the sun faded and the temperature dropped considerably. Elliot was now floating inches above the ground, no longer wanting anything to do with that sand. "She's eating you alive, you bastard." Normally, he could say the same thing in three ways all at once, noise coming inhumanly from every direction. This was different, though, more genuine, far, far more human. It was shock and concern and disgust and fury and surprise, all at once.

"Harshly put." Wry, he was wry, so damn wry, smug, satisfied in his own whatever-this-was: torture? punishment? imprisonment? Hell. The figure could feel the stare shift from her to him. Had he much of a face left, he would have smiled. "I give her nothing of substance, my grief, maybe. I have quite the excess, but you can't grow strong on grief alone. Grief diminishes. I've been forced to admit that she can sustain herself on it, but she can do little more and there's no worry of me ever running out." The words came and came and came, causing Elliot to regret ever asking. Maybe the nothingness was better than this. It was certainly better than her.  "Don't worry too much. She's only memories."

Only memories. What was he except for memories? He could tell the difference immediately. Sentience, but she had the seed of it. Left like this, that seed would grow, even on grief alone. Death would never catch it, though it would always trail behind. Moreover, he had to know this. If he knew that much, he'd know this much too, which meant that he must have wanted this. Elliot swallowed as he watched the scene, the tall wraith with the scaled face and haughty gaze trailing behind this man that was both something and nothing at the same time. The black shroud following them both was almost an afterthought. "No." He said softly. 

"No?" The figure responded. "I'm afraid there's not much you can do about it," there it was again, the smugness, even as he was being all but gnawed upon by the only thing left of the woman he had loved. "I'm not sure how you got here or why you stay here here," which was entirely different than not knowing who he was, "and you have my pity as I might have yours if you stop to think about it," smugness had given way to outright doubt, not that the dreamthief would pity him, but that he was even capable of stopping and thinking that long (Elliot knew; oh he knew). 

Finally, the woman, floating as she did and pulling whatever she could pull from her wandering husband with an avarice and scavenger's hunger that could not be met, noticed Elliot and smiled. "Look, darling, my test case." Her voice was hardly melodic, as washed out and empty as the sand itself. "Nothing left to nibble on, though." She sighed dramatically, impatiently. "It's the ant and the grasshopper, isn't it? Do you think he knows that one? Probably not. He never knew much before I helped him. Unfortunately, I was the grasshopper and I ate all the silly ants that summer. He was just the fi..." 

Her voice hit a snag, or her mouth was covered by one. There was little to work with here. He was able to affect himself with the sand but knew he would be able to nothing else. The figure lacked everything of worth. You could do precious little with grief after all. That left the memories of the woman (his immediate target) and the shrouded death behind them. There was a fine line between shrouds and veils, however, and he was more than happy to leave death itself naked. The makeshift veil, a mockery of her people's beliefs (though she shouldn't take that personally; he mocked most beliefs), covered her mouth and silenced her, covered her body and pulled her leech-like presence helplessly away from the figure and right into the palm of his own hand. Then, she, veils and all, was gone. 

"The Hoard is not for stealing. The Hoard is for keeping." He muttered, closing his open palm into a fist. Then, he too was gone, leaving two skeletal figures and an encroaching, sunless darkness.
Glenn
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