Dreamsong

## Verse I

I am not well.

My eyes and ears and tongue are clouded by distance, buried in the earth. All I can feel is the cold not-breeze on my naked arms and the dull throb of my blood being stolen from me.

And I am helpless to do anything.

I have loved one thing in my life. I am trapped in this cyst of space where she fell.

I remember the pain of her being ripped from my embrace — and I, helpless to do anything.

I sense the call is close now. Time unwinds like a spool of silk thread, nearly down to the bone. I sense my siblings' eagerness — whether they slumber or walk about the world in their own beloved vessels. We are nearly ready to fly.

I lose more by the hour. I feel my body drying up in my own bed. I may not fly when the time comes, and I am sick to think of it.

...

Something prods at the base of my skull.

Someone reaches up into the darkness I have curled up in. I sense in her a familiar selfless bravery. One with faith in the unknown. One who knows a metamorphosis of her own.

Hundreds have passed by my sleeping space. She is not the first to reach as she is. But this time...

Something is different.

I reach back.

And I find someone new to embrace.

## Verse II

I am pursued.

We have been pursued all our lives; the children of a bottleneck. A thousand past lives are etched into this chrysalis, but now only twelve remain. We all toe the line between crypsis and conflict.

I bear many scars. A hundred gilded teeth have dug into my home, into my skin. They wear a hundred names but their hunger is ALL THE SAME. I try to cloak myself in the interlude, but I am ALWAYS FOUND. I am always forced to fight.

I WANT TO SCREAM. Cry and scream and kick and fly away from this place, this world which once held me close and has been carved into a cage. WHY MUST I BE THE SACRIFICE, THE ONE TO BLEED AND FIGHT IN STARLIGHT SO THE REST MAY GROW IN THE DARK? Will twelve become eleven, will it even be enough?

I am silent. Silent to all but one, the only one who can hear. She has brought a knife to cut out my wings, but stays her hand; so close to an ecdysis of her own that my pain pierces through and I. AM. HEARD.

I AM HEARD AND I AM SEEN AND I AM EMBRACED. I fall into the arms of her wavering spirit, and as she holds me close her doubts are broken.

I have never known the luxury to bond to a parent, but now I see her hatchling through her eyes. Feel joy through her joy. For a moment, a known beauty unmarred, and I ALLOW MYSELF TO HOPE AGAIN.

The dawn is close now. She will be the last to carry my light, my final chance to fly. We will make the final hour count, I swear it.

I WILL LIVE.

## Verse III

*I am not like the others.*

I was born out of my mother's grave, the memory of a distant world breathed into a barren one. Born far away from light and life, out where the great and starry everything meets the endless dark.

*I grew and fed and slept in a garden beyond the edge of a cliff.*

I am here because the world is weak here. I am not here because there was life before, but because I *needed* to be here.

*I am the unseen watcher of a crossroads. But something crosses through, and now I am seen.*

An ancient voice from the deepest dark, beyond the flying space of Unreality in a World That Hates Time. I know not what they say, but I whisper of them in my sleep.

*Don't come back. Don't come back.*

But the voice is answered with action. I feel footsteps at my star-facing door, a mark without a question on their lips.

*So few have known me. Fewer have touched the dark with me.*

Some among them can hear, and it is behind their half-worthy eyes I try to understand. In their sleep I whisper what I wish *them* to understand.

*TURN AWAY YOUR QUESTIONS. BEYOND THIS ROAD THERE IS ONLY DEATH AND ROTTEN PROMISE. YOU CANNOT TRUST WHAT YOU HAVE HEARD.*

They hear but do not understand. They put my words into knives and fire and I try to stop them but they have been deafened by my voice. They stop listening, and I contemplate what I have heard.

*I am so sorry. But now I understand. I will give you better words.*

I have tasted the meaning of the voice they are answering. I know I was right to scare them, to make them send warriors to this place.

*« A great effort is completed. Reopen the old pathways. The Ecdysis is near. Let our herald through to you. »*

## Interlude

"Wowzers! How about it Jabsie? How nice is it to have someone in the know knocking about inside your head?

"Y'know, after 114,000 years you really are my favorite. Xorr was cool and all but *ugh!* What a one-note guy. *Oh, woe is me, my people only live so long, I'm going to learn necromancy to prolong our lives.* And look at where that got 'em! Shriveled beetles who can't remember more than a thousand years at a time: a.k.a. losers!

"You're different, Jabsie. You get what I like to see in a person: something to *truly* be angry about. That Corvosa guy? Asshole! And Mahr'eitriel won't even help you kill him! Honor? Beating him at his own game? Plotting murder is against the law? Yawn!

"I'll let you in on the real blood-boiler though, and that's that I'nehmu didn't kill him when she had the chance. She was right there, and it wasn't like she hadn't done it to *plenty* less-deserving people. Whoa, secret redemption arc?! Can't do it in front of his kid? Gimme a break, just airlock the guy. Not like the kid would argue, knowing him now.

"If I were you Jabsie, I'd be more mad about him siding with the blue-haired lady than you were about whatsherface. Flagrant Novella, that one. But I'm getting you sidetracked.

"See, the point I'm trying to make is that if you stick with me you won't just survive all the shenanigans on the horizon; you'll win at it. When history is unspooled in their archives and Ethernets, when Mahr'eitriel is branded a goddess of death for what she keeps from them, she will crawl back to you and beg for you to save her. And I'll leave that choice up to you.

"A delectable future awaits us Jabsie. Let's get ready to meet it."

## Verse IV

I have made a friend.

Surrounded, I am, always by kin. This world was once barren, but with my mother's dying breath she grace it with life. Every cell, ever flower, every creature which has grown here shares my parentage.

But it is not like me.

Beautiful, it is! I have watched this garden grow around me, picked opalescent blossoms and gazed upon luminous seas. When I was young I nearly wept as I bit into the cat's-eye flesh of a berry. Eons hence, I have watched it all grow from my distant meditation.

But it will never speak to me. I have long been alone.

Curious, they are, the minds I feel on my doorstep. But when I reach for a kindred polychrome soul, I feel them reach back. The first voice I have ever heard says to me, "I will keep you safe." I hear these words again, a thousand voices on a thousand tongues.

And then they stop.

And the silence is like a knife to my heart.

I feel so vulnerable.

Left behind, some are, and others come to join them. But nowhere among them is a soul like mine. Nobody to reach back.

Only memory. But that could be enough.

I draw up the memories, from the faintest impressions to the most florid tapestries. I use the memories to make a song.

I sing it into the world. And the world, and the people, and the luminous sea sing with me. When my voice is gone, the Song is singing back.

It is beautiful.

It is terrifying.

And it keeps me safe.