A/N:I found this laying 'round. I think I was going for something bigger, but I left it as is. I cannot for the life of me remember what exactly I wanted to do with this, but I remember putting effort into it, actually looking up things in different sites that could aid me in my writing, because English isn't my first language, so I wasn't confident at all in my skills. I also remember it was late. REALLY LATE. And my fingers itched. With that in mind, this really goes nowhere. It is neither allegory nor fable, though I suppose I was aiming at one of those that distant night. I hope I didn't do too badly though. I share this because I felt I couldn't just leave it there in the dark to collect dust and die, still at the risk of embarrassing myself... Oh well. People need to get embarrassed every now and then. This should bring me down a peg or two. Sorry for using you for this Lon'qu, sweetie. I didn't know who else to grab from the game.

Dreamland

In the last lingering hour before dawn came before a crisp pond a soldier turned weary from many a battle and naught yet close to a night of rest. To the side of either hand, before him and at his back, misty darkness was a-flutter, this the ghostly skirts of the creaking trees.

With lips gracing that water which he stirred in the cup of his palms, the soldier unto the forest spoke:

"Being an intruder, of boorish steps on thine temple of quiet mist, I plead of you but exactitude."

And the forest unto his plead an answer laid in the visage of a martlet spirit perched atop a dead tree's branch so as to observe the goings of the trespasser. The martlet's voice, inlaid with sweet echoes as if from many throats it sang, was a masterful wise lull:

"Exactitude, but not pity… He who imagineth our wrath upon his insult to be scant must of bloody battles thrive - a mercenary, or an assassin. We have yet to know of lesser cretins than those which serve under mad kings, or the maidens in blossom of loose skirts from villages about our edges. Yet thou hast spoken thine cairn's lasting words. We shall make you rue this day, and thy mortal remains should serve as our door's welcoming sign."

The soldier, of head teem with black curls that curled as claws, had his trembling hands fall to spill the cool water his tongue had yet to taste the briskness of.

"And I am yet to know of one of Naga's own who bequeatheth judgement as if to lay the weight of the sins of a whole kind unto a single man. I am not to be held answerable for every fault under the sun my fellow kinsmen have committed."

In the tender flush of morn, the light smote javelin-like into the woods of name unpronounceable by lips of decaying flesh, yet dubbed for travelers' sake. It was Dreamland which the soldier faulted with his step.

"Dost thou judge that Vengeance at Her raging cusp hath us in Her grip of madness? Thou art not stupid; thou desireth Death."

And in swift motions becoming of the infinite ocean's waves, the martlet of white fire feathers fell, as snow in stillness falleth, from the dead tree's perch. Dust of reverie danced in whorls a-sparkle, conjuring shadow and light and nature, which blowed to knit a vision of womanly delight impinging upon the mortal's imagination.

Neither did the soldier dare stir or speak aught, for his bones and blood, blood which spilt as ink to record in mysterious semagrams the carnage and fury of war on his marred skin and among his curls, froze. The light upon his head fell - a primeval mother's touch -, and it was the crusty head of a dead volcano.

"Answer us, thou were best; is Death of thine dreams oft visitor?" taunted she; the vision. "Is this face of ours the face of thine last judge?"

In his clogged throat, his voice he found as a fearful child's tremulous knees:

"Divine lady, no advice had I of aught about my surroundings. Blunder, but blunder, be mine, unintended and irresponsible, whilst I was in a haze of debility."

Surreptitious, his eyes glances stole jerkily, yet only the lady's feet did he see flecked with pink petals as she walked and caught them from the face of the pond.

"Oh you men, invoking the weakness of your mortal flesh for alibi. Thou avoid our inquiry with practiced words, well practice be for liars."

He was ware of rugged wood nails pointed against his throat where veins throbbed to the rhyme of his berserk heart.

"Elocutionist, thine name we demand."

In full vision were her garlands now. 'Twas Dreamland, after all, and wild played the imagination of beauty. Candle-white were the lady's skirts - fluttering tides -, falling yet clinging to her earthy skin as creepers cling to walls when the wind blew. Thraldom took the eyes in the soft swelling of her chest, minimal though it were. And this made him recall songs of mini-breasted sylphs oft passed for dreamed up tales of sailors lost in drunken fantasies of the Aegean sea.

Her hairs - tendrils of moonbeams raining as wind-buffeted veils of silver raineth - were all ajumble in the grip of mossy coiled roots. Her jewels were the droplets of dew on the vines noosed to her collar and neck, and the martlet's feathers clung with turquoise moist.

Into her steel-brown eyes he spake in near delirium, "Lon'qu, divine lady, martlet. This be the name of the man at thine will. Dost thou not see the truth inlaid into each cut?"

Here the warmth of the golden sky god seeped into still oozing slits on his bare chest and back, and arms and head.

"Belike foes of thee found no mercy much as they searched; not in blame. Gods themselves dealeth not ruth nor respite. Thine claims of innocence art mayhap not unfounded, but how to trust a man?"

"Should an oath from me avail thee, lady, martlet?" the soldier inquired.

"Oaths from men bloom into rotten atrocities," she spake, and in an altered tender voice added, "Lon'qu, thine word means little to us. Go, beyond our woods, walk till mad if need it be, But thine face is unwelcome, as it is the face of a vanished man."

"Then Death awaiteth," spake the soldier with black thoughts and black curls. "Deliverer of Her grace thou art. And yes, in strange dreams a-night have I beheld thine form, yet hope it stirred, not fear. Demons, fantasticoes, are these sentiments of fright. Extract them with thine claws, martlet, if fate layeth cruel betwixt our paths. A slave of fear I have been too long and thine nails rake as a caress."

"Though the caress be of deadly intent? Child," spake she as her time-wethered nails retired from his throat to trace the thinly veined eyelashes which had fallen, resigned. "These eyes we know of. They, dark Chon'sin eyes, we too have held among the brume of our mind's far plains. Amongst mist and shade, from beyond the reaches of our dreams thou come, at last.

'Twas our role to find a wounded soldier seeking refuge at the folds of this naked mountain child to Demon's Ingle, when the wind sougheth laden with pollens thro' our branches. Here thou beholdest where thine body shall repose, Lon'qu of Chon'sin; Demonland. The journey was long; across the plains of burning Valm and thro' toothed ridges, and with sad silent days and their nights at thine back. In me thine home is; lay, and rest.

This is home."

So the soldier laid, and what meant his mind conjuring fancies of lips upon his he knew not. But peace, at last, was found.