I'm BACK!
Did any of you miss me?
Life has been exceedingly crazy--I'm writing this from the flat where I live now with my fiancé, in Cheshire, in England. *is happy* I've got time enough to write now, so expect a bucketload of updates soon...and now, here you are. I've actually been DREAMING this story, so I know how the next few chapters will go. Enjoy!
And crit--it's been far too long since I've updated, and I'd like to know if this is still wanted.
DARUNIA
It is said that stone does not dream, for to dream you must be capable of thought. At the same time, the same people might say that a mountain can be aware, or wary, or unfriendly. But a mountain is stone, is it not? They are wrong in the first assumption, and correct in the second. Stones are the longest dreamers of all. Stones do not move, or breathe, or truly live--their living must be through their dreaming.
My people are stone. When we became what we are, it changed us--we can travel now, and seek wonders with our true, waking eyes, but still we dream the dreams of mountains. Why else do you think we curl in sleep so often, and for so long? The dreams of Hylians and the Zora people are passing strange to us through their very unreality, their intangibility. But to them, my folk seem stupid and slow! Our eyes look on other worlds than this, and because of that, other peoples think that we do not see. Still, none of us have ever seen reason to correct them--the dreams are more important than proving who of us is right.
And now, as a Sage...my dreams have changed.
I knew that in accepting this role, when I could instead have passed it to another, I gave up my life. I no longer have the body I was born to; that too I sacrificed to be able to save my people. They have already put me aside, as is wise, and chosen another to lead the Gorons. At times this saddens me, and oh, I miss my son, my little Link! He grows fast for one of our people, perhaps knowing that it will be his turn soon to lead. At the seven major days of ritual, he comes to my Temple and speaks to the air, knowing that I hear him...and sometimes, I have the strength of will to appear before him. But it is hard for both of us, and it would be easier for him if he thought of me as dead. I cannot be his father now.
Perhaps that is why I have these dreams.
When my people dream, we dream true things, or things that are almost true. It is a blessing to be able to see in the worlds that lay just atop ours, like shards of slate, like grains of sand pressed flat beneath a stone. And while I can still dream those dreams if I want, there is little reason to do so, for I need only bend my mind upon another place to see it. It is poor recompense for losing my life, but I feel no regret, for my people are free and brave and noble, in some small part due to my loss. But now--if I grow weary, and desire to sleep--perhaps once in a year, I dream as Hylians do. In my dreams, I see my son, and the sons and daughters that I was not allowed. In my dreams, I hold them close. In my dreams, the jewel-deep eyes of my beloved are undimmed by sickness, and she never fell victim to Ganondorf's darkness. In my dreams, I am allowed a measure of peace. And when I have drunk full of it, I wake, and I remember. I remember the color of my youngest daughter's hands, and their sureness with a chisel as she gives the stone of our home the shape it wants to take. I remember the sound of my mate's sweet voice, lulling our son to sleep. I remember getting older, watching my children as they grow tall and wise and find mates and homes and rest-stones of their own. In my dreams, I am allowed what in my life I have denied myself. It is true that I have no regrets; what I did, I had to do, and no other could have done as well. I am not a creature much given to higher learning, but there are some things I grasped that few others of my race could even guess at. It is not pride, only truth--I had the knowledge to become what I have become. I would not have passed the task to a child, who has no knowledge of the world beyond our cliffs. I did what I had to do. But sometimes, I miss the life I never had.
It is said that stone does not dream, but such words are false.
I dream.