Note: I know that according to 'Dreamtime' immortal elves see visions of light, not fear-dreams as the mortal ones do... but since there are mortals who think as immortals there could be immortals who think as mortals, too... also, what other glimpses we have of elven dreams do reveal that immortals too can dream of fear. Leetah dreaming of Cutter asking what his true name is, when she denied the Recognition. And of course the weird vision Skywise and Timmain shared of Teir in 'Huntress'... well, my experience is, you dream of what your heart or soul or mind is full of. So, if there is fear in you, you dream fear. And I think there is plenty of fear in Blue Mountain... read on to see where.
The Lord of Dreams
It was night-time in Blue Mountain. From the highest to the lowest, all slept. Oh, certainly, lovewate might embrace lovemate, friend might converse late with friend beside a cup of wine, some lonely soul might wander thought the corridors to stand upon the Aerie, gazing at the stars, and sigh to herself, and of course the Chosen would be keeping watch taking turns. But sooner or later, all would sleep, none would be awake all night. Although even their dreams had begun to grow stale, and there was no longer anything new in them, not a single sensation the dreamer had not experienced a thousand times already – at least, a dream sometimes felt new while it was dreamed. At least, in dreams things changed. The waking life within Blue Mountain contained no change whatsoever, nor anything worth staying up all night for. So, the Gliders slept.
And all but one, they would dream.
Winnowill lay down beside her Lord, and her body took rest. But her mind was still hers to control. Flightless she was, her body a captive of the world when she was awake, yet the Gliders could sense the power in her. Little did they guess that, while they slept and had no control over the visions their hearts spread out before them, Winnowill's spirit would glide unnoticed from one mind to another, visiting them, spying, observing – and sometimes, changing the dreams. Many might dream of flying, but only one could fly from dream to dream. Winnowill, Lord of Dreams.
She touched Voll's mind, his reveries of days gone by, of Blue Mountain taking shape from his vision. She smiled as she saw herself there, innocent-eyed, with crimson flowers in her hair. Then she frowned, realizing the flowers had been pale pink, once. When they had been real. She corrected the mistake, her touch softer than the softest feather, undetected. Then she moved on to other dreams, one by one.
She touched Egg. He was not asleep, precisely, but neither was he awake in any normal meaning of the word. His was a mind she could not change even had she wished, which she didn't since he was her window to the world outside, and he must remain pure and crystal clear for that purpose. He was shaping what he always shaped, the world and beyond, but Winnowill had no patience for the riddles of his work now, all she was doing was check there was no fault, nor any large change of pattern in the Egg. There wasn't. There never was.
She flitted briefly from Door to Brace to Door the Hidden. Door was bored, but faithful. Afraid. Brace was calm, lost in memories. And the Door no other Glider knew – he was still in pain, but it was fading. She adjusted their illusions to match her plans, and moved on.
Tyldak dreamed of flying, as he always did. It was a storm he flew through, right now, but he kept on going, following some call even he could not name. Winnowill let him be and her spirit glided to observe the Chosen.
Reevol dreamed of a hawk long dead, a fledgling in his vision.
Yeyeen dreamed of being lost in a corridor she had glided down all her life.
Eresir dreamed of watching a human die, fading from youth to age withing a heartbeat, and turning to dust before his eyes. His father's voice could be heard talking softly about secrets only Eresir knew, or so he thought.
Oroleed dreamed of being underwater without drowning, gliding thorugh the water as if it was air. Winnowill halted, watching him for a time, oddly calmed by the sights and sounds of his dream.
Kureel dreamed of the Egg. The shapes in the twisting stone seemed very real, and also familiar – these were the same shapes Winnowill had seen earlier, when she visited Aurek. Now she stepped from Kureel's dream to Aurek's vision, and back again, confirming her suspicion. It was not simply that Kureel dreamed of the Egg – the Egg dreamed of Kureel! This had happened before, though, and Winnowill knew it might have some signifigance, but knew also that finding out that hidden meaning would mean a lenghtly contemplation of the Egg, preferably when her body was in the same room with it. She soared on to a much simpler dream.
Talno dreamed of spying on Yeyeen, who was going bathing. But the dream-Yeyeen took off her helmet to reveal not Yeyeen's pale curls but a glistening stream of hair as black as raven weathers and long enough to touch the floor as she maiden walked to the bath instead of gliding to it. Then she turned her face to him again, and was suddenly crowned and still as stone - Door on her throne. Winnowill smiled at Talno's hopeless fancies and moved on.
Hoykar was awake, she saw, keeping watch, and Aroree was awake as well, in one of those pathetic little moods of hers. Winnowill slipped through their minds with practised ease, undetected, reminding herself to visit them later, and began to move randomly from mind to sleeping mind.
She saw a plantshaper dreaming of a tree, an ancient, immense tree out in the wild world somewhere. It seemed to her a particularly boring dream, something only a plantshaper would understand or enjoy, and so she flew on to other dreams
Two-Edge dreamed of her, deep in his hole behind many traps and locks and secret doors where he fancied himself safe and hidden. She spent many long entertaining moments weaving the webs of his madness thicker, not with nightmares, but with visions of splendor, beauty and love such as his waking live had never contained.
A rockshaper dreamed of being locked inside a sapphire. He was part of the jewel and could change its shape all he wished, but no matter what he did he couldn't release himself, any more than he would have been able to take the blue color out of the stone. And as his dream-self thought of that he realized he might be able to take the color out, to shape the stone into a colourless type of sapphire, but he wouldn't be able to hold the color in his hand as something separate, it would simply vanish. He feared the same would happen to him. Winnowill left him to his dilemma.
A weaver dreamed of the Palace of the High Ones, cold and dark and silent. It was much like Blue Mountain, only deader, more alien, frightening somehow. There were bones on the floor. The weaver knelt, and studied them. Elf-bones. She began to sing a lament for the High Ones, and Winnowill departed.
The shy girl who had made Voll's crown and every other crown and hat there was in the Mountain dreamed of the little birds she kept in her room. The dream-birds sang with Preserver voices and made a nest in her hair, but the eggs never hatched, and she woke in the middle of the night thinking of a new shape for a hat, new or so old she had forgotten it long enough for everyone else to forget it too. Her waking pushed Winnowill away.
A firestarter dreamed of his sister, who had forgotten her name, and she went asking everyone she met "Who am I?" and they all answered her with their own names, never hers. She went to Kureel and he told her 'Kureel', she went to Talno and he told her 'Talno'. She went to Brace and the dream-Brace answered in the voice of someone under a spell, 'Brace'. The brother watched, as she asked even the Preservers, even the humans, even the hawks and in the dream all answered, speaking their names. She asked Lord Voll, and Winnowill, but neither of them was any more help than the others. And last of all she came to him, which he had been waiting for, but once she asked him 'Who am I?" he found to his horror he, too had forgotten her name.
The sister, on the other hand, dreamed she was made of flowers. It was a fascinating dream, especially since the girl wasn't a plantshaper, and Winnowill followed it for a while. A cold wind blew from somewhere, and the flowers withered, and the maiden dreamed her own death and did not wake, but moved on to a vision of herself as a spirit, floating silently through vaults that might have been Blue Mountain but for the light, the light shining everywhere.
Hoykar dreamed of his childhood days, out in the sunlight, a mountain's age ago, and his mother. His mother's face was familiar, but only when she shaped him a doll out of stone and made it dance to hear him laugh, Winnowill recalled Hoykar was Door's son. With a shudder she left that dream quickly, and then wondered what had caused that reaction. It was almost as if she had felt guilty, but surely that could not be. She moved on to the last of Voll's Chosen.
Aroree dreamed of the world outside, too. The sky was clear, the stars were out, and she rode her hawk higher and higher, as if she would rise to the stars themselves. In her dream she did, and passed the stars, which were like little glowing fireflies. Something disturbed Winnowill there, so she made her hawk swoop down, catch a huge fish from the vastdeep water, and turn back towards the Aerie to eat it. Aroree chastised her dream-hawk angrily, but as her words had no effect on him she gave up, and complimented him on his kill.
A young human slave dreamed of her village under the open sky, and of a bright rainbow.
An ancient hawk dreamed of hunting.
A Preserver, asleep in someone's hair, dreamed of the voice of Gibra, who, to it, was "Sunnysoft Highthing".
Another human, old and fading, dreamed of being transformed into an elf. There was despair somewhere in the dream, but he was woken before Winnowill could study this fascinating vision further, by footsteps behind his door, and he got up, as was his habit early every morning.
Winnowill passed through a few more minds, elf and Preserver, bird and human, and returned to herself. Another day was about to begin. Slowly Blue Mountain began to wake around her. She opened her eyes and found Voll watching her.
"You look so calm while you sleep, so happy, so beautiful." He told her and kissed her softly before rising.
"I always try not to wake you up, for I'm certain your dreams are sweet."
He had told her that many times. Winnowill smiled at him.
**You are right in that, my lord. The nightmares are over for good, of that I am certain.**
Then, of course, she had to distract him from following that thought too far.
The nightmares were indeed over. But so was having any other dreams of her own. Still, it had been worth it, Winnowill thought, it had been well worth it – and she did not mean the dreams and visions she had spent the night spying upon. She meant the sense of control she had found together with this peculiar form of healing. Never again would she be open to the darkness within her that passed for her soul. She had stopped it from weakening her just in time. She stood a feather's breadth from madness, but she was in control of herself.
And she was right, only what she did not realize was it was a feather's breadth to the wrong direction. And the more she sought control, the farther she would descend from peace. She had not locked the nightmares out.
She had locked them within her for ever.