Disclaimer: I do not own the legal rights to Slayers, Shakespeare's works, Tom Stoppard's works, or any other literature/anime that I may or may not reference in the future.
I do not profit in a monetary sense from writing fan fiction.
Thank you for your kindness and tolerance.
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What Dreams are Made Of.
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Once upon a time someone asked: 'Why do we dream? What do dreams mean?' It was the kind of questions meant to make you think, maybe even make you abandon your materialistic lifestyle in exchange for a secluded mountain top. Unfortunately, the majority of taxpaying peasants were too busy trying to survive to listen to the questions in the first place. Most of the people in the village were quite practical; and abandoning the fields to sit around on a rock pondering the meaning of this or that was not practical or, generally, profitable. Lina Inverse, some crazy girl who was passing through, was not as worried about practicality as the mere peasantry.
Alas for the deep questions, Lina was a tad bit lazy, and liked to leave the deep stuff for other people to bother with. In the end, the questions about dreams were utterly irrelevant to the plot. Well, not utterly…
Lina was dreaming.
And Lina knew what the dream meant. It meant that the monotony of exploring the uncharted outer world was about to be shattered. Her current dream was a sign of more interesting times.
Wait, wasn't that some ancient curse?
… Oh well.
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The dream had started in that murky area of unformed thought, the breeding grounds for unregulated potential. Lina could have dreamed anything she wanted. Lina chose an all you can eat buffet, her own personal castle, and a giant bath of gold coins. Hey, it was her dream, wasn't it?
Was it?
"…ina…" the voice was very far away, and yet it managed to invade her pleasant dreaming mind. "Lina Inverse" the voice persisted with infinite patience and impatience. "Lina," by now it had fused with her dream completely; there was no escape from it.
The bath of gold coins was growing exponentially in her dream. While Lina normally didn't mind getting more money, she drew the line at losing food to the sea of melting money. Her castle also melted into the liquid gold, but she didn't mind too much, she was just irritated.
Lina was left sitting at her table and floating above the eternally changing golden waters. Yes, this counted as interesting…
"Hello" the other greeted as she pulled up an overstuffed armchair next to Lina.
"Whaddya want?" Lina replied grumpily, without the slightest fear or respect to the other who had called to her out of her dreams at some ungodly hour. "I never expected to see you again."
The other smirked the smirk that had irked many a bandit and a few demon lords. She used Lina's smirk. 'I wonder if that counts as plagiarism.' Lina wondered. 'Naw, she probably has preemptive trademarks on everything. I'd just end up losing money…'
"Lina darling, are you happy?" The Mother of All Things asked in a motherly tone.
"You dragged me out of my happy castle and took my food at this ungodly hour to ask if I was happy?" Lina squawked incredulously, "and please don't call me darling, Luna only pulled that when she was feeling particularly sadistic." The sorceress added quickly.
"Do you want a pet, Sweetie?" The Lord of Nightmares inquired, this time in a sugary voice that could have produced the cavities that only occurred in bad dreams.
Lina almost fell out of her chair; but she stopped herself before she had a chance to plummet into the incessantly swirling tide of chaos. 'I'm not swimming without a swimsuit, and I'm not risking a dip in undiluted chaos either' Lina reminded herself.
"Well," the Golden Lord continued, magnanimously choosing to ignore Lina's confusion and irritation, "I think you want a pet. That's splendid; I'll drop him by tomorrow at breakfast. Seeya later alligator." And thus the one who had longed to regain her shape slipped out of Lina's dream.
Lina was left alone, dumbfounded. She gawked at where her image had sat. Then Lina decided to dream-slap her dream-self across her dream-face to focus her dream-mind. She was back in the fog of unformed ideas, back where she had begun. Lina hated returning to square one, she preferred to stride forward with her face to the future. Well, not all was lost in the return…
"Humph," Lina grumbled into the mist of whimsy and reason, "Well if YOU run off, then I'LL sit in YOUR chair for the rest of the night. I never said I wanted a puppy or anything."
So the incredibly mature sorcery genius left her own seat and settled herself into the overstuffed armchair that belonged to the other. And there she sat, with a petulant pout upon her face, until her alarm clock woke her many hours later. Lina wasn't patient, she was stubborn.
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He was nowhere, he was everywhere. He was at the beginning, he was at the end. He had to have been somewhere, he thought therefore he was. He decided to not care where he was or was not, he didn't have a map so he didn't know where he ought to be. He just was there, alone.
He was not alone.
She was there, wearing a face he knew too well.
She spoke in echoes of falling snow and peals of laughing thunder. He couldn't understand what she was saying; he wasn't made to understand the mechanics of the universes. She smiled in waves of golden light and shadow, and a twist of an impish mouth.
Then she brought out the shovel and a large burlap bag and a thick rope.
'Somehow,' he mused as his head rang with the blow, 'I don't think this is going to be fun for me…' But by then his conscious mind was devoured by darkness, and he didn't think until few hours later.
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Golden eyes searched unseen skies. Golden fingers caressed a nonexistent cage. Golden voice poured out to no one's ears. Golden shadow cast a golden light.
There is a fine line between being alone and being lonely.
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Author's Note to the Generous Reader: Welcome and Thank You. I am pleased to meet you and I hope to see you in the future.