Dream of Reality
Chapter Three
by Makura Koneko
Cythera, an island off the southern coast of Ancient Greece
340 BC, seven years before the death of Plato
"The wind is laughing! It likes it here, too!" Serenity squealed joyously as she laid eyes on the extravagant villa overlooking the Mediterranean sea. She dropped her bag and rushed inside, running up and down the halls, peeking into bedrooms and swinging through the silk draperies that decorating the supper room before twirling out onto the balcony, dancing and weaving and running around the tall scroll pillars.
Legolas leaned against another pillar that supported the archway, smiling. She looked like a goddess, with her jet black hair, now shot with gold, coiled and pinned atop her head in the current Greek fashion, and the pillowing folds of her pure white sleeveless chiton and long-sided ampechonion- two long rectangles of fabric that reached from one wrist to the other, one in front of her and one at her back, then clasped at the shoulders and then let to hang loose. A girdle of woven golden rope was under her bosom, and a winding golden armband on her right upper arm. A matching one was on her left wrist and ankle.
As he watched, she twirled, the loose sides of her ampechonion swirling around her as some of her hair escaped its pearl-tipped pins and curled around her face as she laughed.
Leather sandals slapping against the white marble stone, she stopped and ran to the low railing, breathing in deeply the tangy, salty sea air, her eyes sparkling with that same unnaturally potent life.
"Come look, Legolas! Come look!" She called him over, turning to look at him, smiling brightly.
Smiling himself, Legolas lifted the hem of his toga slightly as not to trip –give him Elvish breeches and a tunic any day!- and walked over to her. He put his arm around her and hugged her. She turned him and hugged him full around his waist.
"Will this do?" He asked in a teasing voice. Serenity laughed her 'yes' and leapt away to return to her joyous dancing. Another squeal of laughter joined Serenity's, and a cry of 'It's wonderful!' was followed by Legolas hearing the patter of small feet behind him.
He turned at the precise moment he needed to, and caught the small bundle that threw itself into his arms, squealing and blabbering with delight.
"Uncle Legolas, you're the best!" The girl with the long silky pitch black hair, antique rose roots near her scalp, and cinnamon eyes told him seriously, then grinned, kissed him on the cheek, and wiggled her way out of his grasp to dance with her mother.
Legolas watched the two with obvious enjoyment. They would need to dye little Usagi's hair again soon- pink hair was not common, and often looked upon with fear for being so close to the color so often associated with evil gods.
A chilly wind whipped up, and thunder boomed in the distance. For all the sun was shining, it was obvious a storm was nearing. Serenity swooped past Usagi and scooped her up into her arms. Usagi pouted and wiggled, but Serenity's hold was firm.
"Inside," she said.
"No!" Usagi wailed, pleading with her big starkissed eyes.
Serenity shook her head. "Storm is coming. Sorry, lovely." She kissed her daughter on her forehead, and as she headed inside, she looked at Legolas over her shoulder and raised an eyebrow.
"Coming?" She asked. Legolas nodded, and moved to follow, thinking with slight bewilderment how he'd never get used to how Serenity, when alone or with him or anyone else, she was as a child, but when her daughter was near, she was…a mother.
For all their hair and eye colors were radically different, Serenity was indeed the mother of the small child she was now carrying inside their new home- the resemblance in expressions and attitudes were too alike for them to be anything but mother and child.
"I take it this is a pleasant change from that Egyptian heat you were always complaining about?" Legolas asked with a raise of his eyebrow as they walked down the airy, open hallways to the enclosed part of the villa with far fewer windows than the rest of the dwelling for the very reason that was approaching them- storms.
"Much!" Serenity threw him a smile.
They came to a crossing of halls, and Serenity paused, Usagi cradled in her arms, suddenly looking very sleepy. She turned to him, and with wide, innocent eyes vacant of any knowledge of motherhood, she asked him. "Which way is my room?"
Barely flinching at yet another personality switch, Legolas, whom had been at the villa upon it's completion a month ago, guided her to the right. They went down a ways, and came to a room lavish with Persian rugs, golden mirrors from Egypt, a vanity of perfumed woods from the islands of Crete, bottles of perfumes from Asia on top of it as well as a small jeweled hand mirror from India. The bed was tall with four posters- the wood worker had given Legolas odd looks when he had handed him the sketches of the bed, but Legolas had ignored it. It was Elvish in design and quite unique, seeing as he was one of the very, very, very small number of elves left in the world.
Serenity went to the bed and laid her daughter down under the covers, tucking her in soundly.
"I'll have a bath sent in," Legolas told the girl as she began to hum as she sat at her vanity and set to taking out the pins in her hair, a dreamy look in her face.
Not sure if she had heard him or not, Legolas went to her and kissed her on the forehead. "I'll come check on you after supper," he told her in a kind voice, and left with one look over his shoulder to Serenity and Usagi, asleep in the bed.
Leaving, Legolas realized that he himself was rather weary from the month and a half journey from the mainland. Thus, Legolas decided to seek his own rooms after stopping by the servants quarters and greeting the persons there. When he left, he was smiling at the short encounter with the youngest maid.
"I hope you don't expect us to do the slaves' work for them until they get there," she had said stoutly.
Legolas had smiled an charmingly amused smile before replying. "Of course not. All the work that needs to be done has been divided up among you, and you will all be paid adequately for each." Then, in case he hadn't been clear enough he added, "There will be no slaves."
That had surprised them well enough, he expected. With a small smile and the shake of his head, he entered his rooms and shut the door.
A bath had already been drawn, and as he soaked he let his thoughts wander over the past several thousand years. The last ship to Valinor had sailed long ago, but oddly enough Legolas didn't mind. Perhaps it was in the childish promise Serenity had made him, on the shores that time so long ago, that promise she had made, telling him he would see them someday again.
After that Serenity had pulled him north, simply telling him that they had to get there in time, they had to make sure they were where they needed to be. There had been something about her, Legolas remembered, something urgent that had made him agree to take her. And so they had gone, north, then east, then west, then west again, then south, then north once more. It was as if Serenity was looking for something. For five years they wandered the earth, seeking out every nook and cranny. Still Serenity didn't seem to find what she was looking for.
Another five years passed. By then she was showing- Legolas had first thought it his imagination when her belly had begun to grow swollen, slowly, over the years. But it had been true- Serenity had been pregnant, and was taking the span of ten years to show as much as a human woman showed after five months.
At last, they found a place that had Serenity dancing day and night, day and night… Her pregnancy sped up, and within a month she was as swollen as a woman with twins, at least that was how it appeared to be, compared to Serenity's slight frame. The midwives had told Legolas it would be a hard pregnancy and birth. Then a rosy-peach skinned babe had been born with a cap of fuzzy pink curls and large, curious, commanding cinnamon eyes, and neither she nor the mother had cried out once. The midwives had been baffled.
That had been a few hundred years ago, and still little Usagi bore the resemblance and personality traits of a five year old. Elves, too, aged slowly, but not quite this slowly. It only proved to confirm that Serenity was not as she seemed- an unusually beautiful human woman.
The bath had begun to grow cold, and Legolas detected a tantalizing scent nearing. He quickly rose, dried, and dressed in a simpler white tunic that went to his knees trimmed in a golden square pattern that matched the belt he fasted around his midriff. A knock sounded off from the other side of the door.
After the knocker, a maid bearing his dinner tray, had deposited her cargo and left, Legolas ate, then left to check on Serenity and Usagi once more before allowing himself to seek his own bed for the night, looking forward to the restful respite his people enjoyed when the walked in memory.
He was still a good distance away when he began to hear it; music. And certainly not any sort of music ever heard in Ancient Greece before now…
As he neared her rooms, he spotted a trio of maids standing around the door, and a few more a ways away, all wearing startled expressions on their faces.
Then Legolas paid attention to the music, and sighed. He was used to this- the service of this household were not. Giving the women a look that clearly meant 'move along' he pushed the door open and stepped inside. But he did not step into Serenity's room- no, he stepped into a large room filled with people, people in odd garb- for the females, especially odd, tight garb. Although for as odd and alien the clothing was to him, he did recognize it from the many times this had happened before.
Sometimes, Serenity would dream so vividly, and some part of her, knowing it was only a dream, would long for it so strongly to be real that her power would attempt to grant her wish- creating an illusion. This was what surrounded Legolas –and somewhere in here, Serenity- nothing more than an illusion.
On the far side of a room there was a stage flooded with dark red and blue light, a singer screeching into a contraption that magnified his voice. Legolas winced and resisted the urge to cover his ears. The floors and walls thrummed and vibrated, and people laughed and shouted and danced in a way that was most unappealing to his Elvish tastes.
No one seemed to notice him. He glanced down at himself and raised one slender eyebrow. He, too, was now clad oddly. Well fitted –a little too well fitted for his preference- dark brown leather pants-unpolished, black boots, and a loose dark green dress shirt shot with gold thread that made the shirt two-tone under the ever wavering light.
He moved into the crowd, and people parted before him without hardly noticing him or noticing how they were making a way for him. He looked around, his Elvish eyes aiding him in his search. He spotted his quarry soon enough- Serenity was laughing on the far side of the room, dancing and twirling like the rest. Although, somehow, her movements managed to be both wild and chaotic and pure grace all at once.
He was pleased to see she wasn't dressed quite as scantily as most other women in the room, but neither, after a brief glance at her attire, did he let himself glance below her neck. A short white skirt that clung to and hugged her buttocks and went only two inches thereafter down her thighs adorned her lower body. A gold chain hung off her hip, made of linked crescent moons. Her top was near transparent, save for a slinky pale gold spaghetti strap top underneath the sheer, gauzy top with the full, flowing sleeves.
Serenity spotted him, and recognizition flitted across her face for a moment before replaced with idle curiosity. Legolas sighed. She didn't remember him, not quite. It had happened before. If nothing else he waited 'til she fell asleep- for to fall asleep in a dream –or illusion- was to awake in reality.
He leaned against one of the many thick support beams scattered among the room, only a few yards away. She was chatting amiably with a black haired man. His eyes were the deepest of blues, and Legolas recognized him from previous illusions as Serenity's husband, Endymion, or rather, as she knew him more recently, as Mamoru.
He also noticed, as Serenity did not –or refused to notice- that his eyes were blank. He wasn't there- not even in soul. This would be painful. Best get her out as soon as possible.
Legolas had only taken a step or two towards the dainty fairy of an princess when she looked at him sharply, eyes flashing a piercing gold as blue orbs were washed with a solid metallic silver.
"I can't leave," she whispered softly, yet he again was tempted to cover his ears at the power in that voice, that power held within the tone of a willful child. No one else heard.
"I have no choice but to lead you out, 'Renity," he replied her, voice soft as he took another step closer. This, too, had happened a few times before. He hoped the familiar shortening of her name would soothe her. Apparently, as she frowned harshly, it did not. Not this time.
"You don't understand," she told him, eyes flickering, softening, as did her voice. It was no longer that of a child. It was that of a queen.
"Then help me understand," Legolas noted that the world around them had frozen, silent, save for a low hum.
"You don't want to." She told him flatly. Her eyes were distant, now, as if she were seeing both him and…everything, all at once. And her demeanor portrayed it as if she did it on a regular basis. Legolas did his best not to be overly awed or impressed.
"Let me decide that," he responded to her statement.
"Very well," she said, suddenly all sunshine and laughter. Her face alighted with a wide smile, eyes dancing as the frozen world around them blurred, spun until Legolas had to close his eyes else risk becoming precariously dizzy. When he opened them, they were standing on the streets of a Greek city, the city bustling around them. A crier stood on a stone block, welcoming people- apparently they were near the city entrance. Legolas caught the name of their location- Ciph, a small province not far from their new home.
A small hand slipped into his, and Legolas looked down somewhat to his right to see Serenity, still clad in her white and gold dance getup.
"She's here," she whispered. "She will be." Her words were contradicting, first using present tense and then future.
"Who?" Legolas asked gently. Serenity turned big, wondering eyes up at him.
"She. The oldest of as all," she told him simply. "She was the first, and she will be the last." With that, she moved forward pulling him with her. In her other hand Legolas spotted a glimmer- it was the spike-star prism she always had with her. The prism that had been formed of the spirit crystals of those other beings that had protected her. When they had left her body, all that had remained was that crystal. Sometimes she hid it within herself, others she played with it, never once cutting herself on the razor edges of the spikes.
People laughed and danced and shouted and fought and ran all around them. It was truly a city- but there was something hanging over it all, something dreamlike which betrayed the illusionist taint to everything.
Serenity led him to a sand-turner shop, not much more than a stall, really. Crystal hourglasses were on the hand-wrought shelves. A girl of no more than eighteen sat on a stool polishing a brass one that contained azure sand- powdered lapis lazuli, most likely. She accomplished the task with a leisure patience that Legolas knew to be uncommon among teens. Then again, these were different times. Times when humans were required to grow up quicker than they should have to.
Legolas looked to the knots on the girl's belt- she was unmarried.
Suddenly, beside him, Serenity released his hand and then clapped her own together and laughed gleefully, and swayed and raised her arms and danced a little in the street. Dust-devils rose and swirled around her as a wind picked up. As he watched, the wind turned to gold, then to water, then to blackness, then to smoke with licks of flame… Still she laughed, dancing like fire, giggling like the murmur of a creek.
Legolas threw one a glance to the hourglass girl, just as she looked up sharply and pinned him with a piercing cinnamon brown gaze. His breath caught in his throat, and Serenity laughed joyously, the sound of the laughter of a thousand children bubbling up from her throat.
Then, all at once, the illusion shifted, blurred, then vanished all together, and Serenity was dancing in her night shift on the flagstone floor, laughing and singing sweetly. At once upon his reentry into reality, Legolas blinked, and wondered if he was still in a dream- the way everything was flowing, the way time slipped around him, he was suddenly so acutely aware of it all it was as if….it was…it was unnatural…
"Mama?" A small voice asked curiously. At once, Serenity's dancing slowed and then ceased as she made her way to her daughter's bedside.
"Yes, sweetling?"
"I had the dream again."
With those words, somehow, someway, a chill filled the room.
Serenity picked up her daughter, the small child clinging to her mother. Serenity looked at Legolas, and their eyes met. With her daughter, something else had awoken while they had been walking the paths of illusions.
So swiftly that she managed to startle even Legolas somewhat, Serenity turned and sprinted from the room- he frowned as he saw the door open of it's own accord to admit her exiting.
Fleetly, Legolas followed the girl that was as his sister as she pranced swiftly down the open-air corridors, soaked within a few steps past the shielding stone walls.
To the balcony she fled, the one they had looked out at the ocean from earlier. Her clothes, near transparent from the rain, clung to her. Her long hair remained free of any dampness whatsoever and whirled about her wildly. Her eyes flashed silver, and an eight point white star on her forehead flared blindingly, the shards of light that lanced forth from the mark beginning to spiral around and around and around…
Legolas stood among the pillars, gripping on as well as he might, frowning sharply as he stared with single-minded intensity at his charge. Whatever was happening, he knew he had no part in, knew he had to stay back, he could only watch. And so he watched.
The storm that had been in the distance was now above them, around them. But even Legolas could see the one oddity- the storm was only over them. Nowhere else. At the edge of the circular cut of the land that had come with the villa, the storm clouds abruptly stopped, shadow was replaced with sunshine, rain with sweet air, the smell of lightning with the smell of sunlight.
Legolas had seen Serenity summon a storm once before, when a good sized city in a kingdom that no longer existed had been in danger of being wiped out from famine. She had brought the rains, and they had left before they could either worship her or put her to death, whatever their decision would have been.
Legolas had witnessed that working with awe, then worry as she had been not herself for days. But this, this storm, this was not her doing. Not by a long shot. Something had set it on them, like a master gave his hunting hound the scent of a particular quarry, and once the hound found that quarry it would focus on that prey and that prey alone.
Standing amid swirling darkness, Serenity stood tall, seeming to reach the sky in her 4'5'' height. Usagi was on her mother's hip, their right and left arm wrapped around each other, their other right and left hands clasped up above them.
This was new. Did Usagi have power, as well…? She had never displayed any. Legolas frowned. Or had she? The child seemed to love sleeping. He had always acquitted that to the fact she was a child and they traveled a lot. Only just then did he realize she had never had a nightmare in her life…
Until now…
And even then, she had been calm, as if she had been in control…
Legolas remembered how nightmares had abounded when Serenity had been ill and fading away at Imladris, all that time ago.
Was there a connection?
Leaving that question for pondering later, Legolas frowned as the storm seemed to intensify, as did the glow around the two girls. They were facing him, now, and Legolas could see that whatever the connection regarding the dreams, the child did have power- the flashing deep golden upturned crescent moon on her forehead was proof of that. The dye had been seared from her hair, and now the locks swirled around her small form and her mother's shoulders in a blur of deep rose pink. Her cinnamon eyes were laced with writhering gold.
Their clasped hands, a daughter's within her mother's, raised high, were like intertwined suns. They nearly blinded the acutely envisioned elf.
The two inhuman, non-elf, definitely non-dwarf females cried something that was either of no language he knew, or was so charged with power that even he could not decipher the syllables. A four beams of pure light, two silver, two gold, and a few smaller ones that were some shade in between, shot out horizontally from their hands, spiraled, then snapped upwards, joining together in one solid beam that all at once was tall enough to pierce the storm clouds above.
Legolas narrowed his eyes as he scrutinized the point where the beam pierced the dark clouds. Was the beam…was the light…sucking the storm clouds and rain and even the sound of thunder itself…into the beam?
The storm and winds and thunder and pounding rain all roared at once, gave one final lashing snarl in the form of a spike of lighting- but that, too, was assimilated into the beam of light. In fact, it seemed to strengthen the beam, which was a light gold in color.
Finally, all at once, the last tendril of dark shadowy cloud was lapped up by the glow of light surrounding the golden pillar, and the light of the sinking sun washed over them once more.
Serenity stumbled, and in a single bound he was next to her, steadying her. Usagi was asleep in her arms, breathing deep and evenly. Legolas turned Serenity's face up to look at him.
"Are you all right?" He asked.
"They found me…" she whispered. "They don't exist, and they still managed to find me…" Tears ran down her face, and she let out a single sob before she collapsed, unconscious, onto his chest and into his arms.
To Be Continued…
Blarg, so sorry for so long a wait. I was sick, behind in school, uncooperative friends, my job is looking unstable, and to top it off, I have no time for a much needed trip to the salon… .
Anyways, hope you enjoyed. A bit shorter than usual, but I think this was another one of those bothersome transition chapters. *sigh* I do wish one could find a way to bypass these… But there rather nessecary. Only thing to do is to try to get good at them… *looks hopeful* How am I doing?
Jusqu'à la prochaine fois, je vous remercie tout pour votre appui. (Until next time, thank you all for your support.)
Ja ne!
Hope Makes the Universe Shine,
Makura Koneko
ALL STANDARD DISCLAIMERS APPLY