The Red Woman is still speaking, but the dreamscape is starting to dissipate around them as the dream ends and tries to push them back to the waking world. Gann shakes his head, and pulls the unravelling threads of dreaming back together. The Red Woman is gone, as he suspected, but that doesn't matter right now; the important thing is to keep Tarva asleep. Besides, finally he has the chance to share a dream with her, one of his dreams, not her nightmare, or the strange visions granted by the Wells of Lurue and the Mosstone.
And he's been trying for the chance since he agreed to join her.
So, beneath a midnight sky, the blue-black colour of her hair, he recreates Immil Vale, giving glowing colours to each feature of the landscape. He weaves the Red Tree with ruddy light; the river shines silver; each blade of grass throws off its own spark of cool, green light. The night is warm and sweetly fragrant – a touch of which he is rather proud, as scents are the most difficult to capture in dreams.
Finally, he throws a handful of stars across the sky.
She looks only at the piece of mask the Red Woman gave her, turning it over in her fingers. "Wait," he says, as her form begins to grow translucent. "Don't you go waking up now, or I will get Safiya to put you back under."
She grows solid again. "And why would you do something like that? I'm certain this fragment goes with the other one."
"I have fullest confidence in your mask-fragment recognition skills. But, Tarva-" she looks at him, raises one eyebrow, "you need to sleep. You can wait eight hours, or, preferably, ten, before you check something of which you're already convinced. There's no hurry. Now, though, you must rest." He smirks at her, not that she's watching; she still hasn't looked up from the mask piece. "Or are you really in such a hurry to escape my lovely dream? Such wonders I could show you." He makes a sweeping gesture to indicate the dreamscape he has constructed for her.
"I'm sure you co- oh." Her sentence is cut short as she finally looks up and sees the beauty around her. In the softly glowing light, her eyes are wide and impossibly dark. She turns slowly, drinking in the scenery.
"And this is all it takes to render you speechless? My, my."
"I have never claimed to be as fond as the sound of my own voice as you, Gann." Her retort is automatic and lacking in sarcasm; she is far too busy looking at everything. "You made all this?"
"Of course. Would you care to see more?" With a courtly bow, he offers her his arm, but isn't really surprised when she doesn't take it. Perhaps by the end of the evening...
They wander for a while, and Gann tells her something of dreamwalking, of the construction of dreams, and of the possibilities – "you are possessed of the Dreamer's Eye, and of enough will to influence the dream as you wish. Go ahead and try."
Tarva thinks this over a moment, and several shapes half form in the air around her. Gann watches, sees the hints of faces from her past, before they disappear again. Even here, even now? He pretends not to notice as they flicker about her. "Like so," he says, and coaxes a luminescent green stalk from the ground. It unfurls, putting out long, thin leaves; a bud appears, and opens shining ivory petals to release its delicate scent.
"I know a lot of farmers who'd love to learn that trick," Tarva says.
Gann chuckles. "No doubt, but dream-crops do not nourish the body." He stoops to pluck the flower and offer it to her. She hesitates for only a moment, and his fingers brush hers as she accepts it from him. She bends her head to smell it, and her hair hangs forward to hide her face in shadow. She doesn't move, but slowly and subtly, a melody is woven upon the gentle breeze – the first notes are barely sighed, but the music gradually gains strength and sureness.
It is hers. It sounds strange to Gann's ears; the harmonies are alien, and the instruments (if that is what is producing the sounds) are like nothing the Rashemi play. Even so, he can understand it; there is youth and joy at first, with a quiet, underlying melancholy that rises, and becomes loss. Finally, it is a farewell.
The last, soft notes die away, and Gann isn't sure what to say. She raises her head, her face carefully empty of emotion. He offers a light comment: "And you told us you were not a bard."
"I'm not. Grobnar composed it."
"The manic gnome with the clanking golem? It sounds... uncharacteristic."
"Trust a handsome man to judge solely by appearances," she says. "I won't deny some of Grobnar's compositions were..."
"More in keeping with a demented gnome?" he supplies.
"Distressing," she admits. "But he was very close to Shandra."
Gann puts it together. "He wrote that for her?"
Tarva simply nods, and they walk on in silence, for a time. The landscape ripples around them, no longer purely Gann's set-piece, but something more, something almost alive, something that responds to both of them. She still carries his flower; the mask fragment has disappeared somewhere into whatever she uses for pockets.
The Red Tree lets a glowing leaf fall as they walk underneath it; Tarva snatches it from the air, and it's a scarlet flame that dances in the calloused palm of her hand. She offers it to Gann, with a look he can't read. He stretches out his hand to take it, and is surprised to find it burns. She raises her eyebrows slightly, and this is easier to read; she is challenging him. He looks at it and cools its heat.
She shakes her head, and the flame heats again. "As it is, Gann." He nods, and reaches out again; carefully, his hand cuts between hers and the flickering tongue of fire. Its heat is uncomfortable, but not painful as he steadies it on his own palm. She smiles at him – as he has seen only once before, it is a true smile. "Was that so hard?"
"Not at all," he says, and raises his hand. He blows gently on the flame, but not to extinguish it. It rolls down along his fingers and hangs in the air, where it changes its shape, unfurling two wings and revealing a mild-eyed bird's head. The phoenix gives a melodious cry and beats its wings – a spicy scent wafts from them – and darts into the sky. Gann watches Tarva, her eyes shining, as she watches it fly away. The moments when he can see beneath her mask are becoming strangely precious to him.
"Everything is fluid here," he says. "It will answer to you. Even the form you wear now is shaped by your dreaming mind. You may take other semblances and shapes at will; you have your scythe and plate only because you are in the habit of carrying them. Why don't you dismiss them?"
She looks at him, and she's tried to put her neutrality back in place, but it's not perfect any more. Gann smiles inwardly to see it.
"You need not fear," he tells her softly. "This is my dream now, and no harm will ever come to you here."
"Nowhere is entirely safe," Tarva says.
"Don't you trust me?" he asks lightly. "Even after all this time?" He isn't sure how to react when she stops to ponder the question.
"I won't lie," she says, and looks him straight in the eyes. "Gann, I trust you with my life. But I don't trust you entirely."
This takes him a little off-guard. "What does that mean?"
"Every battle, every time you're on watch, my life is in your hands. I know it is safe there, that you're not about to stab me in the back, that your arrows and your spells will both fly true. But..." she pauses, looks for the right words. "You're not like Safiya or Okku, with their promises to keep, or even Kaelyn, with her quest. I know you're only really here because you were bored in that prison. Sooner or later – and I have no means of knowing when – you'll decide you've had enough, and you'll go."
Her words sting – all the more because he knows, from her point of view, they are entirely justified. "Not just because I was bored," Gann says lightly. "I was also rather intrigued by my visitor, the small woman in the heavy armour who carried a scythe taller than herself." He sees her spine stiffen, the wariness in her eyes. It hurts him a little, to see a woman react to him that way. He expects her to back away from him as he reaches out, but she holds her ground.
This wasn't what he'd planned; he doesn't want to startle her, or become another of the memories that clearly haunt her, but...
"Tarva," he says, "brave one." He tries to keep his tone lightly teasing, but the words emerge hesitantly, low and intense, a plea. "Don't fear me." His hand shakes slightly as his fingers ghost along her cheekbone and curve under her jaw. Her skin is cool and soft under his touch; her eyes are wide and uncertain – and, yes, a little afraid - as he gently raises her chin and tilts her face up to his. He can see her pulse trembling in the hollow of her throat, can feel the tension in her body that is not quite a resistance.
He bends his head and brushes a fleeting kiss across her mouth.
Author's note: I don't write romance very often, so please, let me know how this worked- still in character? Not too fanciful, or, heavens help us, cloying?