Author's Note: Another worthless one-shot. And for once, I swear to the great powers above that I will not delete this one.
Random Person: That's what you said about the last three.
…Silence! And, um, Merry Platypus one and all. (wearing sign around neck stating, "Will Beg Unashamedly For Reviews")
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-Satyr's Moon-
He dreams of a farmer's field, criss-crossed with rows upon rows of wispy wheat ears. Their edges, meek-seeming as they appear, leave bloody welts along the back of his hand as he tries to push them aside, biting into his finger pads with an impossible ferocity. He has no choice but to continue along the only path cut through the crops, though he has read the story; he knows that the only possible conclusion is that something far more agonizing than the wheat ear's sting is waiting on the other end. But he can only go on. He can only go on.
As he emerges from the maze of nettles, deadened black eyes turn to scrutinize him. One beak parts to announce his coming with a flat caw, then the crows beat their wings and stagger into the air as though every movement pains them, but it is only their bodies that remember this and not their minds. They wheel to study him for another moment, then fade into the dark fence of forest. He does not watch them go. His attention is on the figure strapped against a pole, on the far side of the field's end where nothing remains but soil. The figure is dressed in ragged scraps of clothing, and a patch of rotted straw juts from within its side. A hat, worried and beaten so often by wind and rain that it falls low over the figure's face, completes the pitiable ensemble.
The figures stirs. He turns away. He does not wish to see. But the crow screeches incessantly at his shoulder, and he is forced to study the figure, writhing from where its spine is rammed through the wooden pole. Its hat tumbles to the ground, and with an unholy shudder of breath, it lifts its face into view. And then-
-Seed Moon-
She dreams of a valley, circling lazily around her as gusts of wind exchange jokes between one another. The grass below her is eggshell hued, and scattered with flowers. Daisies whisper to one another, tittering over secrets of what blooms discuss when they fold themselves against the moonlight. Roses nudge her gently, and their stems wear no thorns as their buds cast her soft, meek smiles; smiles that wish her to stay, to talk of things that the valley does not comprehend. But no, wait just one moment, little girl. The pureness of the daisy petals is suddenly splotched with purple; now they have become irises. Irises…they represented something, what was it? Daisies were innocence, Ino had told her that, but what are irises? It is…but the word slips away into the twittering air, and all she is left with is a horrible sense of dread, dread that what she took sanctuary from has already occurred.
The roses send her one last, weary grin as their slender spines thicken, their claret blooms lightening into cherry. And then they are not roses, they are poppies. Red poppies. She has seen red poppies once before. They had lined the coat pockets and shaking fingers of a crowd she had once observed on her way to school. The people in the crowd, they had been…
They had been mourners.
A prolonged wail trembles from her throat, and the gentle laughter of the field crescendos into a scream.
-Cold Moon-
He dreams of fire. Fire, the element that is more ancient than any other, because life is always born of its forefather's ashes. It can be extinguished, smothered; it can even be captured if it leaves its mainstay. But it does not vanish, for what is left behind is long in forgetting. But he does not fear the fire, because the figure before him does not. It leaps and cavorts behind them, its crackling footfalls striking out the ballad proper for a massacre. The flames are wild with beauty as they dance their frustration at being unable to reach him, clawing hungrily with branches of everlasting anger. Excepting the perpetual hunger, that is all they know; anger and momentary triumph. The two are often interchangeable. Far away, the belling of something silver jangles around his ears like metal coins falling.
The figure turns to him on curiously insubstantial heels. Its smile is sad, and transparent with flickers of firesong. He reaches out a blackened hand to it, but its arm crumbles to ash at his touch. He withdraws his fingers, curiously unhorrified. He'd known this would happen, but hope is desperate as life in the way it clings to the smallest scrap of nothingness. Its word are gentle, and the wind howls above them as the flames tower ever higher, blazing with the power of what realizes itself to be true.
"We're dead, Sasuke."
Fire and wind intertwine in a roar of conquest, and he topples backwards into darkness. As he falls, the area where the figure's face should be distorts for a moment, to reveal a twisting forked tongue and golden eyes that have long ceased to see the sun. The figure's grin follows him down into the abyss, but he is too tired to care. It is a relief when the blackness engulfs his mind, and then he knows nothing at all.
-Hunter's Moon-
He dreams of a twilight of which the beginning has been lost and the end never foreseen. The sun hovering above the earth on one side, the moon opposite, the two paralleling one another like a double star. A forest of damp grass flails below his knees, the jade stalks reaching up to claw and choke his clunky boots, while nimble paws fly through them lightly as rabbits over powdery snow. His other self stretches, joyous and terribly free, until its fur radiates moonfire and it feels as though its tail could sweep the dusky stars from the sky. Meanwhile, in the body that is barely his, he stares at the sky with the vague thought that it had all been going so well before. He wishes he knew what "it" was.
His face is scorched by the voice's steam as the Kyuubi laughs into his ear, "You have always known." And with that last syllable, the moon plunges into darkness.
-Blood Moon-
They wake, and wish that things had turned out differently.
0o0o0o0o0 We are not always what we seem, and hardly ever what we dream 0o0o0o0o0