Author's Note: Written for darklinadaily 'Darklina Week' 2021 Tumblr challenge.
Prompt: 'Loneliness'.
Of What Is Past
The mountains are singing, surrounding, sheltering; soaring into the endless amber sky. The silver forests they harbour reflect the sun rising in the south, their leaves aflame, burning in the dawn. A breeze ripples the crimson grass, making its surface rise and fall like a ruby river flowing into oblivion. For a moment it colour everything carmine, turning the world from scarlet to cerise to somewhere inbetween.
I push the hair from my brow with an impatient hand, narrowing my gaze against the unfamiliar glare of this strange landscape. Life, death, all the echoes inbetween. I feel the weight of every world, hear every heartbeat. Somewhere a stranger is cursing my name. Elsewhere a little girl lights a candle at my altar. I am the Starless Saint, blessed and damned in the one breath. Yet here, it means nothing, rendering me irrelevant.
But then a movement catches my eye, and I realise I'm not alone. In the distance, a girl is wending her way through the swaying red grass, shading her eyes with one hand as she gazes up into the heart of the copper sky. She is short in stature, clad in a flowing sky-blue gown, the bodice embroidered with gold thread, with long dark hair spilling over her shoulders.
I watch the girl make her way down the flashing slope, seemingly oblivious to her audience. As she disappears out of sight into the depths of the forest, I turn away, fighting the jealousy threatening to overwhelm me. Despite every instinct telling me otherwise, I shouldn't be here, not when I already am. My dreams are bleeding into hers, as always.
Without thinking, I lean down, fingers fumbling before plucking a flower from the rich soil. I hold it aloft, appraising its burnished beauty, almost hesitating before suddenly and ruthlessly ruining it, tearing the petals off one by one, scattering them like ash. But in her dream it will still live and flourish, whilst in my dream it no longer blooms
But as I do not know what I dream, neither does she. In her dream it's just the sky and the sun and the fields and her. There is no you. There is no me. But in your dream, there is me; there is you. We are somewhere else altogether. A pirate ship perhaps. Or a drawing room in Ravka. Far beyond the mountains. But I will always be a ghost in another girl's dream and her in mine.