August 18 - Centuries before I come to where you are
-
They call it a city, but by today's standards it's barely larger than a village. Small houses and narrow streets cluster around a well. Reddish rocks and sandy plants surround them, sporting the occasional goat. There is a road, a few miles north-west, but the turn-off towards the city is nearly invisible, even if you know it's there.
Or so she has been told. She has never seen the road, young as she is (youngest of seven, four still alive). Her world is as big as the few streets she runs each day to fetch water; one bucket is still too heavy for her to carry so she makes two trips. Her world is as big as the women who visit her mother, and the stories her brothers bring home.
She is six years old.
She quite likes her memories of this town, its dust and quiet poverty. Although she can no longer recall her mother's face or the names of her brothers, she remembers the town.
No-one else does. It's been thousands of years since she tore it to the ground.
-
She is short, with short dark hair, pale skin and blue blue eyes. She doesn't look older than twelve. Precocious, opinionated, well-educated. Rhode Camelot, they say, will be a splendid member of society one day.
She smiles at them, or laughs. I dream of it, she says.
She's lying.
-
She first saw the Millenium Earl some years later, striding through the streets of a burning city. She noticed him because he wasn't running; she had laughed at the screams and danced in the smoke, but she was rapidly losing interest in the inferno, and the unscared man was a pleasant diversion.
"Did you do this, then, mister?" she muttered. She watched as he moved out of sight, soot making dark shadows again the fire as it fell (down, down, down). None of it touched him.
And as she left she looked back at the ruins and added, "It was beautiful."
-
The emperor was in his throne room when she walked in, unannounced. Startled, he jumped, furious with his guards for letting her take him by surprise. Who are you? he asked, and, What do you want?
The girl stood by the window, surveying the view; from where she stood nothing could be seen that was not the emperor's land and property, and she said so. But it is not enough, she added, If you want to be remembered.
Not yet, perhaps, the emperor said. But who are you, to know of such things? And because that was his dearest wish - to be remembered - he added, Are you perhaps the messenger of a god?
She laughed. Oh, yes, she said. However did you guess? But I am human nevertheless.
What is your message? the emperor asked. Do you bring a prophecy for me?
Prophecy? I bring many things, she said. And I suppose that could be one. Prophecy, then, it is. Her smile as she turned to face him was too wide. She raised her arms. Your empire will not last past this nightfall, she announced. Your name will not be remembered, not even by me, although I will live longer than you can possibly dream.
She skipped up to him, where he sat petrified on the throne, and she stole his crown and placed it on her own head before dancing out onto the air outside the window.
-
When each of her siblings is born, she is there. She is attendant at the birth of the twelve who came after, and the one who came alone.
(there was a story, once, about a woman who opened a precious box, although they told her not to, and let loose the evils on the world, and that there was on that was last, that was not evil -)
(but there are many stories, and she has forgotten so many, and really, who can blame her?)
When Noah's Pleasure was born, she was there. When Noah's Wrath was born, she was there. She was there at the birth of Noah's Bonds and his Lust, and she was there for the fourteenth, who had no name.
She was there for them all. No-one was there for her.
-
At night she visits the dreamers of the world.
She makes a sport of it, sometimes, winding the dreams into webs of tangled silk and earth, and watches. Which dream is the strongest? How will the story play out?
Sometimes she grows bored of this, and becomes an actor herself, pulling threads for an end, or just to see what happens.
Hers are not the dreams you awake from screaming. They are the ones that leave you with a terrible sense of unease and have you sleep with a lamp on for weeks afterward.
-
She has dark hair, dark skin, amber eyes. She is still short, still precocious and opinionated, and her manner not much different despite the starry crosses on her brow. Rhode Camelot is the oldest child of the Noah, but the others often find themselves treating her like a younger sister. She doesn't mind it, either.
But they would never dare try to predict her future.
-
Sometimes dreams are strong enough that she almost gets sucked in. This one is spectacular, its strand pulsing grey in potency. She enters:
White moon, black moon. Four columns and fallen arches, grey stone half submerged in dark and murky water. This dream is out of scale with its intensity; it's quite small, all things considered, and quiet. Desolate, almost.
And there is the dreamer, seated upon the tallest stone, cradling a body in her lap. "Ah," she whispers. "I should have thought you'd have a lovely dream for me."
She weaves the webs and strands around herself, forms a body and face (this is how she sees herself, awake and real in a sleeping world).
The intensity of the dream really is amazing, she ponders as she hops across the stones. The still air tastes of rain and dust, although the sky is clear. The rocks are rough and textured, the stones smooth and slippery, and as she steps the noise is quiet.
It's loud enough for the dreamer to hear, though. The girl looks up, alarmed, tears still wet on her face, and falters. "What are you doing here?" she asks.
"Dreaming," Rhode replies. "The same as you, Linali." She pauses tilts her head. "Or perhaps not quite the same as you." She smiles, and takes the last steps to the base of the stone the dreamer sits on.
Linali stands slowly. She rests the head of the other (the boy, the body) on the stone and straightens, wary. "What do you want?"
"Does there have to be something?" she asks. "I like your dream." She steps up, considers the prospect, then motions at the third. "Except for that. How could you, Linali?"
Linali glares at her. "I didn't kill him!"
"No?" She smiles and leans towards the dreamer. "But this is your dream."
-