Quagmire
"Are you feeling better?"
A worried father tucks his five-year-old in, anxious to get a positive answer. Despite his efforts, the small forehead isn't smooth yet – folds of fear remain, contour to his soft, shaken face.
He brushes locks of chestnut hair with his fingers. It rarely fails to calm Martin down. However, his gaze is full of a primal, frightened wisdom; it bears the touch of some sort of revelation, of the kind children discover so many times each day.
A memory flashes across the father's mind. A reed basket, oaths of secrecy, the echo of a weak, haunting wail. He trembles.
"Did… did your dream show you something you didn't like?"
The little brown head nods. May the Divines be with them.
"What was it, Martin?"
The answer his son gives is unexpected; the tone of his voice, so overwhelmed and certain, even less so.
"It was the end."
"Fire, I say! Fire. From the open doors…"
"Fire? Wow… haha…"
"It is not a lie, you know…"
Though Cyrodiilic brandy blurred his gaze hours ago, the memory shines clearer than spring water. So does the dream, identical, over the years.
"Little brother, we like your weird dream."
"It isn't a dream," he hazily protests. "It is the dream…"
"Whatever you say. Tell us again… the doors, maybe?"
"I told you. Doors that aren't there, but open. They pour liquid fire. People torn apart, eaten. And I see it all in flight… from above. Whooosh."
His brothers in worship roar with laughter, enraptured by his flailing arm.
"You wor-worship the wrong Prince, brother. You… a Vaermina type. Or, well… how dr… drunk were you when you had this dream?"
"Hey. I… I were not drunk… I told you," he moans, offended. "I've always had it."
"What do you see then, son? Does the One…"
"He… yes." Swallowed pause. "He shows up. I never see Him clearly, but I know. The air is full of smoke. I feel His presence in every particle. And then… the claws of the Dragon lie right here, on my sternum. His hand – it pierces a hole in my chest, all the way to the other side. It hurts so, I melt in the fire around me. The lines of the world blur. After that, I…"
"Go on, Martin."
"I… can't tell us apart anymore."
Not the first sigh Martin hears that day, not the first severe gaze. None is more piercing.
"Young man. I… I hope you realize what you are asking of me. A future priest of Akatosh…"
The hammering of his heart fills the void between them.
"Your position – it demands you to be aware of certain things. You come to the Chapel to tell me of your faith, and you speak of visions that… no, no. I won't sweeten the pot. There's but two ways, son. Dreams of this kind are either Daedric heresy, or written in the Scrolls. What are you hiding?"
Who knows? Does he? Is he even hiding anything?
"I couldn't tell, Father Berard. I don't know better. Please, let me in the Chapel. Whatever meaning this has lies in His hands. As for myself… I feel His breath in me."
Though he won't say it, the old priest cannot hope to understand. His life was spent in a small town, holding the calloused hands of farmers. He opens his mouth to find he has as answer, but not of his own.
"So be it, son," his voice decrees. "It flows in us all."
"You know, I think I have seen all this happen before."
Nothing around but the three of them – Martin, the woman and the smell of blood. She is on the verge of death, gashes too wide to be knit by his magic. Unrelenting, he speaks.
"That must be it… what my recurring dream means. How the images twist after the wound in my chest closes. I dream of staying there, always in the Temple, but somehow gone. My pain dies with the fire, under a downpour… the waters of a rebirth. Fresh tears. And there, under the White Gold Tower, I watch the centuries pass, as if – as if I remained there forever, paralyzed."
She has eyes of glass, emptied of all life force. The Daedra, a bitter taste in his mouth reminds him. Their crushing power. How could they stand a chance?
"The calm doesn't last long, though. War and disease sweep the city soon enough. I watch them die one by one, at my feet. The world rotates, constant, to its fate… a flawless machine of open jaws."
She has long stopped listening. From the outside, the ruins of Kvatch follow her in her silence. Martin's head falls, in helpless shame.
"I see it end like that, and I cannot move. I cannot do a thing. Useless, just as I am."
"But… why are you telling me?"
"Because you are different."
Many are the signs this new champion has been given, but this one – the shifting lines of Martin's face, in tune with the stars, are the very grammar of fate.
"You are the only one, my friend. There is no soul on this earth I trust more than yours. You live on a different level than us all… thus you can listen."
The breath caught in his throat remains a secret. Martin is too far gone, lost in his destiny of dark forebodings, to perceive the sounds of this life. The champion lets it pass, heart muted, and does his best to follow.
"The point is, when I met you it all changed. After a lifetime of the same dream, you freed me from its repetition. The first night in Cloud Ruler… I fell in it again, to find there was something beyond – something more to the jaws and the dark, to the world being swallowed. It wasn't empty anymore. All over the land… on the corpses, on the ruins… flowers and butterflies sprouted everywhere. Hundreds of them."
They move in unison, eyes alight.
"And you… were you alone?"
"I am not, not anymore. In my immobility, I feel a presence within that outburst of colour. How to describe it, my friend? It is a strange feeling, even for the dream. Long after the world left me behind, something still calls my name. Just a light touch, a tug at my wrist… yet so greater than me. A benevolent god."
His fingers, unaware, rest tenderly on the champion's wrist. Are they still in the dream? A closer look, full of enchanted curiosity.
"Now, whenever the dream returns, he is my companion. Both of us are statues in that flower field; I watch his silhouette bend towards me, but motionless. I swear to you, my friend, I never wanted anything more than reaching back to him. I call him as he calls me, from the depths of my soul. He… I believe he wants to save me – but parted we are, by such a small infinity. How can a dream be this full of anguish? Each night, I tell you, each night he is on the verge of turning around. He never does. And yet – it's almost like… it's like…"
It is the smell.
Passwall sleepers get used to it, they say. He can't. The putrid planks above his bed are maddening. He forces his mind to run around them in circles, and with each loop – with each movement, inhale, exhale – he leaves behind a sliver of his sanity.
It doesn't help that there are other things. He still chooses to avoid the trap of sleep, even long after the nightmares ended. He sometimes wonders, against his will, whether he inherited the dream he once heard of.
And now that he lives here, in the land of the lost, the deepest folds of his sleep come undone; what his grief hid, layers and layers below, is now crystalline sunshine. It burns at the corners of his eyes, of his nostrils.
From there, forlorn laughter – the god of the dream – howls like a funeral bell. Such is the tune of his fragments of sleep, the rare few, scattered among the smell of moss. The voice of his new king, ringing at the back of his head, with his own mocking lament –
– if only, o fool, you had turned around when you had the chance.
Trippy dream fics = yeah. In which Martin Septim, and not just him, is haunted throughout his life by a dream he doesn't understand. Dedicated to renmorris.