-To Hear-
She is in a dark place, alone. She reaches into the darkness, and little fires form on her fingertips. They dance and she laughs, long and whistfully. A wind comes up and blows out the little fires, and the floor drops out from under her. No scream is ripped from her throat. She is dropped into a lake, a sea, an ocean! Something pulls her under, down into the bottom, into the earth underneath. Just as her head is pulled under...
she awakens to darkness once more. Songbird lies on the pallet for several long minutes, seeing no trace of the vulture or the terrible blinding white light. This dream was just one in the many that she had been having. Finding no trace of the nightmare in the real world, Songbird lifts her tall, willowy frame off the pallet. She is beautiful, with firey orange hair that flows in waves down to her stomach, and sandy skin, smooth to the touch. Her eyes are two black pebbles, shining and deep as oceans. Songbird wanders dazedly over to a water pitcher, pours herself a tall drink. It helps to clear the dusty feeling inside her mouth and throat. Suddenly finding the nearly ground level ekele too small, she escapes down to the ground and builds a small fire. Finding the warm red-yellow light comforting, she builds it up, lets the shadows it makes dance on her skin. She would not sleep tonight. A breeze sends sparks into the air, and sends Songbird's hair out around her in a floaty cloud. Suddenly a pair of green-grey eyes appear just above the flames. Songbird finds herself lost in them.
"Nightshade..."
"Songbird. Why aren't you in your ekele?"
"I like it out here."
The serpentinely handsome man's eyes narrow. A puff of snowy white hair drops down over his nose.
"No, that's not it. What is wrong, friend?"
"I've had dreams..."
"Bad ones."
"Yes."
"Tell me about them?"
"No."
"Ok." It wasn't the first time he had tried to find out what dreams plauged her. Nightshade goes from a crouch to a sitting position, and suddenly his long nose, thin, muscular chest, and long neck are visible above the fire. Staring at the foliage behind him, Songbird settles her back against the tree. "So, you're just going to sit here all night then?"
"Not unless you can convince me otherwise."
"Hotpools?" He rises and walks to her side of the fire, one sinewy arm extended, before she can answer.
"Sure." Songbird lets him pull her away from the tree, and they walk together down one of the many paths to the hotpools. At this time of night, all of the soakers had moved down to the cooler pools, while the hotter ones remained empty. Songbird begins to join the others, but Nightshade tugs her over to the hottest of the pools. She is too tired to refuse. They discreetly turn their eyes to the ground as they undress. Songbird lets the steaming water swallow her body up to the neck. She glances over at Nightshade to find that he is sunk up to his nose in the water. She giggles quietly.
"What?"
"You look like a turtle."
He laughs breathily. "Maybe I am."
They soak in silence for upwards of twenty minutes. Nightshade sits up a little, freeing his mouth from the water.
"You're thinking about telling me."
"I am."
"So why don't you?" He is not looking at her, but at the softly swaying fern fronds that line to pool. Songbird gathers her thoughts for several minutes, then begins to tell him of one of her dreams.
"Blackness...the warm, comforting blackness of sleep. But, I am not asleep, I am upright, sitting in the middle of all the dark, waiting for something to happen. I reach out, and find nothing. I get up, stumble about, trying desperately to find something substantial to grab onto. Then I am blasted, blasted with awful white light that burns my skin and eyes. A little bird appears out of the brightness, a little sparrow that is singing. The singing gets louder, louder, louder, until it fills my mind. The sparrow gets bigger, morphs from a tiny bird into a raptor, a vulture! It's beak drips ichor and it's eyes glow white and gray. It grasps onto me with it's talons and tears me limb from limb, blood is everywhere, and I screams silently...then I wake up."
She watches for Nightshades reaction. He winces, as if in pain, and closes his eyes.
"How long have you had this dream?"
"On and off, sonce I was a teenager."
He winces again, and reaches one hand across the pool to her, fingers stretched toward the sky. Nightshade says, quietly:
"Why didn't you tell me before, heart friend?"
Songbird reaches out and touches her fingers to his. She feels better just by touching him.
"I...don't know." Gently, she traces the little creases in his hand.
"Do you know what?"
"No."
"I think you will when I tell you."
"Maybe."
"Your name doesn't fit you."
Songbird sighs and puts her hand back in the water. Of course she knew that. She had known that since adolesence. Songbird? She couldn't sing a note, never could, and didn't like music anymore than the average Taleydras. And she couldn't be compared to nay bird, save maybe a crane, or a stork.
"I know."
"Why not change it?"
"I-It's my name, a gift from my parents. I can't just, get rid of it."
"But musn't it be uncomfortable? Like breeches that are too small..."
"Worse."
"You know, you don't have to live with it. No one would blame you if you changed your name."
He was right, of course. Her parents had died a few years back, grandparents a few years before. There was no one left to object, it would be so easy to become what, no, who she really was: Shdowflame. She had come up with the name soon after the nightmares had begun. I was perfect, and yet she continues to procrastinate.
"It is not as simple as that." Speedily Songbird hoists herself out of the pool, dresses, and is gone, leaving Nightshade alone in the pool. Instead of returning to her fireside, Songbird runs lightly down another path, one that leads to her secret place.
-To See-
It is a ledge, from which one is able to see the entirety of K'Vala Vale. Little lights shine everywhere, and inplaces there is complete darkness. The moon is not visible tonight, only countless stars. Songbird stares at them, wanting more than ever for there to be endless night, never the harsh light of day. A trickle of unseasonably cold air rustled her clothes, and then there is an empty feeling behind her. Songbird turns to find an amazing sight. It is a woman, but not. Her hair is the moonlight, her limbs quicksilver. She wears the shadows like robes, and fireflies gather around her neck like flashing jewels. And in her eyes are two sepeerate fields of stars.
"Star-Eyed." Songbird does not drop to her knees, does not collapse in awe. She is too paralyzed to do so.
"Child-mine." The woman's voice is that of starlight.
"Goddess....what will you have of me?"
"I will have you be true to yourself, daughter. You must listen to your friend, and yourself. Both of you are intelligent. You have lived in torture too long. Let your spirit fly free. Do not try to live as what you are not, Shadowflame." The Goddess places one pale finger under Songbird's chin, forcing her to look into her goddess' eyes. In them, she sees herself, slowly deteriorating, not sleeping for fear of the nightmares, pushing her friends away, until one day she dies in her troubled sleep, alone. The Goddess releases Songbird from her grasp. In seconds she has melted into the night sky. Only then does Songbird fall to her knees. Shaking, she lifts her hands, palm up, to chest level and looks down at them. She whispers, forcefully,
"I am Shadowflame."
~-|-~
"You seem...different today, Songbird." Nightshade had come to her ekeleearly that morning after she had run away from him.
"No, not Songbird. Shadowflame." She met her friend with happy eyes.
"Oh, !" He sweeps Shadowflame up in his long arms and lifts her off the ground. It was that happiest that she had ever seen him. She could feel love, pure and sweet, flowing in an almost substantial line from Nightshade to her. Shadowflame squeezed tighter, not sure that she would ever let him go. One of them let go evetually, Shadowflame wasn't sure which one of them.
"Have you confirmed it with the elders? Have you even told anyone else?"
"No to both."
"Well, come on, then!" He drags her off toward the vale commons, and Shadowflame's laughter rang out down the path.
~-|-~
"It's official! You're Shadowflame now!" Nightshade duplicates the hug from before.
"Well, I have been since last night, actually."
Nightshade puts her down and looks deep into her dancing black eyes, still not releasing his grip.
"What did make you change your mind?"
Shadowflame is reluctant to tell him of her meeting with the Star-Eyed. "Let's just say someone gave me a very good reason why I should."
"Well, I for one would like to shake their hand."
"I don't think that would be possible..." Shadowflame gives Nightshade a mysterious grun, to which he replies with one of his squinty, confused looks. "Come, walk me to my ekele."
"All right." Nightshade uncircles his arms from about her waist and catches up her hand fiercely. Shadowflame, with a certain amount of coyness, let him. They had just about reached the ekele, when a group who had already managed to hear about Songbird becoming Shadowflame bustles them off to a gathering. There, Shadowflame is met with many friends, all totally accepting and exstatic about the change. Soon more friends arrive from the kitchens, bearing trays stacked with fresh food and exotic drinks. But the clincher for Shadowflame is when her half brother Sunrabbit brings over a rag tag band of musicians to provide music.
"Dance, my friend?" Nightshade grins down at her.
"You go on, Nightshade, I have to steal her for a minute." Rainlight, Shadowflame's short, golden brown haired friend had snuck up behind her. Her cornflower blue eyes sparkle mischeviously.
"Ok, but next dance, she's all mine." Nightshade wanders off to mingle with the wallflowers.
"Well, you've got me." Shadowflame turns to her friend while slowly sipping a bitter fruit drink. Rainlight just searches her face for a moment.
"You have been gone for so long. Oh, your body was here, but you were not. You could not seethe love in his eyes, that has been there for so long, but now...now you are beginning to see again." Rainlight glances over at Nightshade, who is even then keeping one eye on Shadowflame. "Go slow with this one, Shadowflame. He is worth your time." With another cryptic smile, Rainlight melds with the rest of the crowd.
Shadowflame is standing, stunned. Night shade, in love? With her? She takes another look at her friend over the past few years. Tall, strong, always appearing at her fireside when she was most alone. Long soaks in the hotpools, longer walks through the vale and the surrounding forest. Never had she seen him with another women, although she had always assumed that he did have other relationships, just like any normal man. It only occurs to her then that Nightshade had perhaps been waiting for her, waiting until she came out of her indifferent fog, out into the real world.
And then she looks at him now. Thin and wiry frame, taller than her by three of four inches. His long, dove white hair, always loose, hanging down to his waist. Moss on stone eyes alrge above an aquiline nose and soft lips. Could Shadowflame love him? Of couse. But she is hesitant. She was beautiful, however Shadowflame had never had a relationship before, is in fact still a virgin. But Nightshade....who knew how many women he had been with.
"Shadowflame?" The music of the first dance had stopped mere seconds before, and Nightshade was beside her, ready to drag her out for a dance, if need be.
"All right, I'm ready now." But, as Shadowflame was swirled about, she thought, Am I ready for other things?