Walking Dreams

Tales of Jaycynda Ashleana and her associates.

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Walking Dreams

Post by Jaycy Ashleana »

They say a dream is a wish your heart makes. What happens when your dreams are nightmares?

The ground bowed as the dragon's talons graced it, reverberating a second later and casting little ripples that disturbed pebble and charred flora alike. Ash fluttered through the air around the black-striped silver beast as her great head swiveled side to side, surveying the desolation she had wrought. Wings tucked gracefully at her back and she stalked forward, long tail slicing through the thick air, salted with death and cold shadow and blood.

Life devoid in this place, nothing stirring from big carnivore to minute bug. All were singed and blackened in the face of her terrible might. She turned her monstrous head up, snout reaching toward the pure black of the starless night sky, and cast a pleased rumble. Pride arched her neck, pleasure at the results of her work gleamed in her wide, green-gold eyes.

Another step, talons rending the earth, and another, sure at first but growing more hesitant, confused. She shrunk in her pacing, smaller in size and manner and then bared feet, two of them, stumbled over the carcass of what had once been a man ... or, perhaps better to say, a dwarf. Small in stature but stocky, blocked and bold, hairless from the fires he'd suffered.

The half-elven woman borne from the dragon gasped, sent off her feet and tumbling over the body, crushing brittle leaves beneath her naked form. "What!" Jaycy blinked, pushing herself up, not immediately realizing that her hands pressed into the dried remains of another creature's stomach. When she finally did, however, she yelped and leapt to her feet, pulling her contaminated hand close to her breast.

"Oh, gods," she breathed, turning her gaze outward once more and this time... this time horror marred her face, gaping, unblinking terror at what she viewed. "No!"

Dream walking was always a bitch. There was no two ways around it. You had to stumble through everyone's dream, seeing things that would make you sick, or proud, or scared, or horny... and none of those feelings were yours. Sure, you could just barrel through those dreams, but then it would cause the ones who dreamed them all sorts of problems.

But, he didn't have to worry about all that with her. There was a direct connection between the two... deep rooted and powerful. He didn't have to deal with others dreams. So when he felt her dive deep into terror, he closed his eyes and drifted, following just her thread until he stepped from the ashes in her dream, those bare feet of his slid through the destruction that was upon the ground. He kept moving forward, until he came before her.

Her body was always perfect in her mind, unblemished by the ravages of a mercenary and assassin’s life, and today was no different. Scars, that curious patchwork sleeve, all gone as she tuned her face toward him and not the bodies around them.

For the bodies… had multiplied. Buoyant and bloated, they seemed to rise from the earth all around them, littering the ground in a nightmarish echo of the remnants of a lost ship at sea.

“Tass… why… why are you here? How…?” Her voice trailed off as cheeks colored, shamed at what he now witnessed. She’d spoken of it to him, aye, but to have her crimes so baldly laid out…

Ducking her head, she screwed her eyes shut.

He didn't rush to her, but his feet continued their trek in the ash. As the bodies continued to litter up, he kept moving forward, stepping on, in and through them. When he touched them, they crumbled having only been held together by a fleeting idea of what the shape might have been.

"You should know, Vana.. I go where I'm needed. And you... well, I've always been close to you."

“I don’t need you here. I don’t want you here.” She didn’t look up, but she didn’t have to. Her nostrils flared as his scent filled her, above the decay that puffed into the air each time a figure disintegrated. They kept coming, though, hundreds, in the end.

“You’ve never come to me like this, before.” Unable to maintain her denial, she shifted subjects, tracking another angle.

His steps stopped just before her, and he squatted down, coming closer to her level. He watched her, the concern and sadness and... love.. in his eyes. "I'm sorry."
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Re: Walking Dreams

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“You were right to tell me I had to go back.” Her words, when they came, were a distant whisper. “You’d said I was destroying…” She choked. “… what I left behind. I didn’t understand, then. Not really. But…”

Words halted again, failed as she finally ticked her gaze up to peer around at the carnage before settling on the dragon so low and so close. “I’m sorry.” For bringing him here, for there being a here at all.

"There is nothing which cannot be mended. No, nothing will ever be the same.. but it can be mended." He reached out to her, that hand offering.

She didn’t take the hand, instead drawing deeper into herself, clasping hers at her chest. “This was the third.” Her sigh came low, deep, and lightly shuddering. “Is this memory, or something else?”

He didn't withdraw the hand, but he took the moment to look around. "Yes."

“Then how are you here?” She asked again, brows knitting. The proffered hand, while declined, eased her minutely. He wouldn’t simply curse and abandon her for this. “You were no part of this memory.”

Taking a step through the split-in-two form of an elk-like creature, she found it too dissipated as he had caused others to do. It seemed she had some agency in this memoryscape, as well.

"While this is a memory, or rather, multiple memories, this is something else as well." He moved that hand then, only to lift it higher, offering her a hug. He didn't answer the question as to why he was here. There were other things that he felt needed his attention... her.

"Something else?" Jaycy cut a look toward him, but shrank at the offer of a hug, cringing into herself. Contact, it seemed, was beyond comfort. "This feels ... like the Library." An uncanny mirror of the Library, perhaps, when the last time they'd met in some between place he'd resisted physically touching her.

Realization dawned, enough to allow her focus to drift once more to the scene around them. "Tass ... how do I mend this?" Her simple question carried weight in sorrow, murmured as it was, and a hand swept out before falling to her side.

"You've kept this to yourself, haven't you?" There was no accusation there in his voice, only concern.

He knew what she was going through. He had worlds that looked like this.. some worse.

"I've told people." I said it, to you, in passing through my tears. She sank to her knees, careless of the ash and rock that coated and pricked bare legs, and leaned back on her heels, peering ahead almost blankly. "I tried to warn them, but no one has seen this until you."

A beat. "Not even Psly." How could she? She hadn't even wanted Tass here, the one person who might understand. "I know together you and I - we've warred, and fought, and destroyed but ... Jaycynda was happy with this. She traded my daughter, or tried to, for this, for the power to level worlds."

"That power always comes at a price. And it isn't always the ones we see or have control over." He didn't press in, but he didn't lower that arm either. He knew how much it hurt. Knew.. because he still had that going on inside. He always would. But if he could relieve her of some of it, even if it's just her knowing that he was there and would not turn away... that would be a start.

"Or ever stop paying." The words drifted away and she fell into a lengthy silence, at least outwardly. Within, thoughts raged. Why now? Why had she come to this place, even if only in her mind, after all this time? Of course she'd plumbed memories once she'd returned to herself, seen this and buried it, focused on protecting and saving her child - all of her considered family, blood and heart - from the threats and trials they'd been facing.

Perhaps it was because those threats hadn't materialized and she had a moment now, to reflect. Perhaps it was that she needed a reminder of a price still owed.

"This is my penance. Please, vana, leave me to it."
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Re: Walking Dreams

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(( Warning: contains descriptions of self-harm/suicide. ))

He watched her, watched the war that waged within. But to stand there.. to not be able to do something. It was something he could do, but would he?

"It is. But it does not mean you have to bear the burden alone."

A sigh, long and deep, exhaled after a time. "Aye, I do, Tass. I..." It's what I deserve died on her lips, unable to give voice to the thought when she was so sure he would deny it and offer platitudes. "I want to bear it alone. I need to bear it alone."

She spared him a glance, still kneeling, and a glimmer of wet jeweled the corners of her eyes. "I... there's a part of me that wants this power." Her head bowed with the admission before turning back to him again, green-gold eyes seeking his as she gathered her courage to continue. "You've borne so much yourself for all you and others have done. Part of my price and payment is that I do it here. I won't risk you to temptation."

"Vana... this is not temptation. This is me, being here when I wasn't before for you."

"You were there. You helped bring me back, and stopped this." Words remained quiet, devoid despite the tears that slid down both cheeks. "That's enough, and more than enough, and I just want to be alone." Her next word had life, urgency in the plea. "Please."

He stood there a long moment, watching her. He knew hat she was going through. He knew it wouldn't be easy. But he would also respect her wish.

He stepped forward then and leaned over, and set a kiss to her cheek, his lips not void of life, but thriving with it, full of warmth and compassion. "Come find me when you wake and are ready."

Then, he turned and started back along the path that he had come.

She passively accepted the loving token, neither tilting her head to facilitate it nor turning away to deny it outright. Eyes closed at the touch of lips to skin, swallowing hard, and only once she felt him recede from her immediate presence did she reopen them.

When you wake…

She understood now why he said this was more than memory; this was a dream, one lucid enough that she could change the course of the scene where she could never in her waking hours. Her green-gold eyes focused, narrowed, on the ground in front of her, intent on the scrap of charred plant that clung limply to its form. Thought and need to find it whole and green again transmitted silently, a mental beam of power beggi — no, commanding — immediate regrowth.

Nothing happened; it remained as dead as it had been seconds before the attempt.

A strangled cry of frustration tore from her and she swatted at the offending stem, crumbling it to dust just in front of her and spreading it atop her thighs. “Why!” came out, harsh and rasped as she lifted her gaze instead to the silent heavens.

Hands pressed into the dirt and rocks when she turned her focus from above to below, leaning forward on her hands and knees. Almost immediately though she pulled back one hand, wincing as it landed on a particularly sharp rock, stung by the keenness of the edge, and bleeding from her palm.

Her eyes widened, clutching injury to her chest, as she noted a speck of green where drops of red had fallen. Life, it seemed, could be reborn only through her own, in this place. The redhead cut a look back toward where Tass had been before consciously spilling more precious drops of herself.

New growth spread.

Swiftly she aimed for and captured the offending rock and pulled it close on her lap, knowing what she needed to do in this dreamscape but waiting to make sure he was gone (how had he found himself here, in her dreams, she took a moment to wonder) and not witness to her next course.

This wasn’t the first time Jaycy had attempted such a thing, nor was this near the last time she’d wished it.

Teagan.

Guilt had driven her to slash her wrists before, to try and heal the world by removing herself from it. PathFinder, Max, and of course Pslyder had ensured that she’d failed, healing gashes and restoring blood… and binding her to Psly so closely she’d become the monster she was today. That wretched hurt had returned, coiled and wrapped tightly around her chest, constricting.

She sobbed once, choked out of her, and tore the sharp edge first up on forearm and then the other. The crying turned to a gasp as pain grew, and she allowed the blooded rock to slip from her grasp, falling over a second later.

As red drained, green appeared, timidly and small at first but then farther away. Desecrated bodies fluttered piece by minute piece in the wind, sent to the air in swirling dancing patterns.

Her last conscious thought was of finally, release.

There was a softness that stirred the few remaining ashes within the new life.. new growth.. and touched the hair that laid upon her cheek. "Don't give so much of yourself that you lose you.. a garden needs cultivating, and time."

Jaycy woke with a gasp, clutching at the sheets around her, soaked in red.

(( Written with the amazing Tass, thank you! ))
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Re: Walking Dreams

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Little-known fact: the redhead known as Jaycy wasn't fond of baths; she much preferred showers. However, the first thing she realized as she opened her green-gold eyes was that she was naked and mostly submerged in a bubble bath, white obscuring her form from casual view. She lifted her head slightly to peer around, brows knitting at the unfamiliar surroundings.

The tub seemed to be seated in the middle of a large, deep and empty cavern. The space around her was void of anything else; there were no decorations or accessories or even living beings that would normally inhabit such a place. The tub, too, lacked a spigot but the water level was near the rim.

For a moment she sighed, then relaxed once more. She'd never been here, nor had she a reason to be here. This must be a dream. Silver-streaked red hair pooled around her face as she sunk again, letting the warm liquid soothe her not-quite-aching body.

Jaycy allowed some time to pass, silent, at rest in the never-cooling bath. Eventually, though, she found herself growing restless, and her hands began to swish and twirl below the surface. "Ahh," she exhaled, eventually lifting one hand and breaking the plane of tension, and pulled clinging bubbles up high. What she saw, though, was not clear water running down the length of her arm but rather a thick, dark red substance and a metallic tang on her tongue. Bolting upright, she screamed, blood tracing down her body to rejoin the pool she sat in.

Correction: this must be a nightmare.

From the darkness, he stepped. Which he? Well, it was him, that's all that matters. He knew the place where they were, for it was a cave deep within one of the hills on the Isles. Why she would find herself here, when she had never set foot... well, that was a question for another time.

When her scream broke the darkness, he stepped quickly forward to the edge of that bath and wrapped those arms around her. He was sure she would thrash at him, but to make sure she knew he was there, he would endure.

Another screech tore from her throat at first contact; she'd not been facing his path and he'd come too fast for her to recognize someone else's presence. She did thrash as arms encircled her, purely in reaction for the sudden touch while in this bath smacking the water and kicking legs to send blood sloshing over the sides and around them both. "NO!" She roared, finding voice on the third attempt as she was unable to lurch forward and out of whatever's grasp.

However, recognition eventually dawned as to the identity of her captor - whether through some link between them or his smell or his feel or just instinct - and she stilled, breath heavy with the exertion and terror of those few moments. "Ta... Tass." The redhead ceased her efforts to withdraw, not leaving his embrace but also not yet trying to leave the hell-damned bath.

"Wh... why...." The halting word as question came next, though deep down she might have thought she knew why. She still wouldn't look back at him.

Dripping in blood, be it from the pool, or him, or her.. or whatever.. He wrapped her up and lifted her out of that pool, as he still held tight to her.

"Shh. Dreams are dreams, and nightmares are nightmares. But how you got a nightmare into a dream, we will have to find. Where you are is not where I am, but is where I am."

As ever in dreamscapes, her skin was perfect, devoid of the scars and remnants of trials faced in the waking world. Red ran off her smooth flesh as she was lifted from the bathtub and pulled into his body, staining him and his clothing, soaking in before disappearing from casual view. Fat drops splashed, too, onto the smooth carved floor of the cavern, ticking at the outside edge of the white marble and sliding down to pool at the base.

She turned her face into his chest, strands of saturated red hair sticking to her cheeks and neck and shoulders. Her hand followed, pressing over his heart, leaving a half-print as reminder. It remained that way for several long moments, or only mere seconds, or even years in this ethereal world, as she calmed and found solace in him.

"I..." Jaycy murmured into him, "... do you know where we are, then? What does it mean?" Finally she peeked up.

"I know as I know. We are where we are, which is here, that isn't here, but is still here. Here is always here, for those who wish it."

He held her close as he stepped from the bath, not seeming to mind at all that he was covered in the blood, or that it was soaking into his clothing, or perhaps into himself. He moved with her into the darkness, leaving the bath behind. Where they were going? Well, into the darkness for now.

A riddle; a non-rhyming enigma that made one take pause and mind verse and cadence to puzzle out the sense beneath the sublime. Her brows lightly knit as words rattled inside and repeated under mumbled tones until her face cleared and she nodded, just ever-so-slightly. "But I've never been here," she confirmed unnecessarily. "Somehow I must be inside you."

For he too could be the darkness.

"Did you call me here?" Step by step, red faded, not only leaving behind the trail from where they'd been but also supernaturally drying, sticking in little bits on her, but also subsuming into her flesh as much as it had him. It didn't seem right to her, that he would call her here under these circumstances (for why would he ever bring her to a literal blood bath?) but this place was wholly only of his conscience.

"Freedom was sought and freedom found. But this is only a freedom for now for you have not decided what freedom you really want. But this freedom I can offer for the time till you are ready. But still the freedom where you found yourself isn't the freedom that was offered. Thus the question of the nightmare within a dream. A thought to follow another time."

His words flowed like a river, rushing over hidden rocks as he carried her through the darkness. It was almost as if a light came on, or the scene shifted, for there was darkness one moment, and the next, they were standing in the mouth of a cave, looking out to a vast land, dominated by a mountain that climbed deep into the clouds.
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Re: Walking Dreams

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The suddenness of the warmth that came with light - warmth not on her flesh but in the vibrancy of color riot that spread before them - made her turn her face outward and blink, owlishly, slowly to acclimate. Words washed over her unprocessed until she shifted her focus again toward her fae companion and contemplated thoughts that swirled.

Finally, Jaycy responded, whispering. "Freedom from the pain of memory? I'll never be free, not even with your offer. Freedom from her? I don't want that; I want freedom for her. I don't want to hide here." Compliance in his hold fell; she tried to squirm out of his embrace and gain some distance between them. "I want penance, and productive distance." Perhaps that was what had turned offer to terror; the inner knowledge that she still had and always would maintain a deficit in life's scales.

"What freedom you ask for is for you to decide, but it was asked, and it was offered and it was given. Freedom of thought. Freedom of worry. Freedom of stress. Freedom of hurt, hate, love.. Freedom is what was offered. Every freedom is different for each that has sought it."

He didn't hold her as she started to want to break free, for he wasn't there for that. That was for another. But he did turn those purple hues that seemed to dance with fae light towards her, watching her.

Allowance where she expected resistance meant she fell with an inelegant thud onto the ground at his feet, and followed that sound with a yelp that escaped with the surprise of her sudden landing. She took just a moment before scrambling up and stepping hastily away, first turning her head over her shoulder to peer at him before shifting gaze outward, hands crossing her bare stomach.

"Freedom of love. I wish I could be like you. The version of you that gave up love. You were right; we've no place for love, either in getting or in giving. Even here I've no freedom, like you claimed, because there is no freedom from hurt. I am dead, or dying, from this hurt." Even with her back to him her voice carried easily behind, breeze soft and sweet in lie to her pained monologue.

"Dead means nothing to the dead. But it means something to you, so you are not dead."

He turned his attention outward, and watched as a dark spot in the bright blue sky started towards them, growing in size as it neared until it banked, showing black wings to a dragon that was familiar to her.. who was last seen in a no end place in a no end situation.

"Dyin--" She started to repeat the word but then gasped at the incoming visitor. While not precisely friend, she'd cared for the dragon from the moment they - the friends journeying to save Karma - had first encountered it in the Void and had promised to see it to the Emerald Isles. Tass had honored that promise and this truly had been their reward. It was here. And it confirmed her assumption as to where they were.

The tiniest of smiles bloomed on her lips, curving them, and she lifted a hand before spiriting her gaze back to Tass, finally turning to face him once more. "I can't hide here, vana." Even so strange a version of the man was entitled to the endearment. "I need to do something to help people."

Green-gold eyes fell to the ground, head ducked in shame, cheeks flushed even behind the bitter crimson that remained flecked on her skin. "I'll just twist here, if I stay." Belief could become reality even here, she feared, especially after her inauspicious arrival.

"Freedom is always freedom. Here is not here for everyone, but here is here for those when they want it. Help what and who needs to be helped, but here is still here. And there... I will go with. Alone is too alone."

He kept those eyes on her as he spoke, watching the light wash over her and the smile that light her up.

"Sometimes being alone is all we deserve." Words given to another, words passed to him. The sorrow in them was as deep as the first time she'd uttered them but they held the ring of utter credence, even as the light bathed her bared skin.

"Sometimes, but not always. Sometimes is rarely the times when some comes. Sometimes is more times a time when we are harder on ourselves than times we should be. This times, alone is not good to be alone."

Over her shoulder, she peered for Void Dragon's recent position. "Would you bring that one, too?" Apathy over the idea reigned but why else would Tass have called it so near?

"You are here. Here is there and there is here. What need I to bring what is already here there?"

She snorted, for a moment displaying a vigor. "Of all the Tasses, you're my least favorite sometimes." The quip was perhaps sharper than intended and she recognized it, flinching and bowing her head. "I'm sorry, that was horrible."

A beat, then two. "Aye." The redhead finally acquiesced, offering a faint nod before turning her back on him once more to watch the skies, darker clouds peeking yet not quite encroaching. "You'll go with. I know I won't be able to stop you anyway."

"But not all times." There was laughter in his voice, as he continued to watch her, though he lifted his right hand and beckoned back to the darkness.

"Sleep is needed for sleep is needed." As soon as the words where out, the darkness shifted and showed a bed that rested within a meadow, under soft twinkling stars. A place where she had been, so long ago, before one went to dance with the shadows.

Most times," she muttered, casting one last look at him before focusing on the changing scene before her. The sigh she gave, both perhaps weary and relieved, preceded her trek to the grove and the easing under silken sheets.

As she lay, eyelids slowly easing shut, red seeped into sheets and pillow that encapsulated and caressed her, until none remained on her form or in her hair. By night's end, red silk so dark as to be almost black covered her, smooth and slick over her purified form.

(( Written with Tass! ))
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