Something Eternal, Part VII
On the whole, the Sea of Chaos was a very boring place. Bizarre, yes, but after a while it wore thin. The Lord of Nightmares still had the 'busy' sign posted on Her doors, the Unendingly Large Featherbed wasn't much use without someone else in it, and the rest of the Sea was little more than an exercise in the Surrealist school of interior design. (1)
Perhaps it's becoming a habit, Lei thought as he walked down the hall leading to Ceiphied's cavern.
The door stood slightly open. Lei eased it further open and stuck his head in warily, ready to retract it before it got removed.
Ceiphied was nowhere in sight. Lei entered and waited for acknowledgement. When none came, he cast a Light spell and set about looking for Ceiphied.
He found a passageway in the far left corner. It was large -- dragon-sized, now that Lei thought about it -- and smooth-floored, curving and twisting gently. It ended in a rounded wooden door, made for humans. This door, too, was unlocked.
The first thing Lei saw was the Sea. Clear and calm, stretching on endlessly under a sunless golden sky.
Ceiphied sat at one end of the cave-room -- no cave ever had floors that smooth -- with neatly folded, shimmering feathered wings. They were, Lei noted, the same shade as the dark-gold globes back in the first cavern. The exact same shade, Lei would wager. Dragons were vain, sometimes, and so were gods.
Ceiphied was contemplating the image of a stern-faced, blue-haired dragon woman carrying an unsheathed sword. The same sword, Lei realized, that she had been clutching when L-sama had shown her to him.
"Rugradia?" he asked anyway, for the sake of saying something.
"Yes," Ceiphied replied simply. He banished the illusion and looked up at Lei. "Mother's note said that I should be polite to you. I think that not going for your head is would be enough, myself, but I suppose I'm biased. Sit."
Lei took a seat on the floor, opposite Ceiphied. "She was beautiful," he offered, meaning Rugradia.
"Yes. She was."
That effectively killed the conversation.
1) "... the Sea was little more than an exercise in the Surrealist school of interior design."
Ohtori Academy, anyone? ... Actually, that strikes me as a good idea. The movie version, I think. ^_^.