Assignment #6: Hagiology
Task #2: Prompt: Write about a prophetic dream.
The dream sweeps the land. It presses upon doors and lingers behind closed eyelids, caressing the fine membrane until the sleeper gives up all hope of sleeping, awakening with a sharp gasp. It slips inside the minds of drunkards, slogging their way home with imaginary tankards still held aloft, froth staining their collars. It slithers under the doors of exhausted parents, cupping their minds tenderly, whispering in their ears. One fine young couple falls asleep where they stand, the taut notes of a violin still ambling through their ramshackle house, and the dream dances through their unconscious minds with little care for how they fall.
Blaise heads to Hogsmeade the morning after the dream sweeps the land. He has a list a mile long of things to buy and do, and an ache in his arm from having slept funny on it all night. He woke that morning with a disappointing darkness in his memory. He dressed in a similar darkness and skirted the edge of the other bedrooms on his floor, taking the stairs two at a time. He was eager to get away from the sour-sweet smell of sleep that blanketed the tower. He is still eager now, as he takes the well-trodden path through the markets and stalls, strolling briskly past the vendors who offer their goods with glazed eyes and fumbling hands.
The whole world is in a state of awe-struck slowness, and it makes Blaise impatient. He cycles through his list with gritted teeth, gathering bread and shelling out a fortune for a new set of blades for Daphne. She will turn twenty-two in a week, and even if Blaise isn't around to give them to her, he won't let her day go uncelebrated. She deserves to be celebrated every day. Even the thought of her sly smile and sweet gaze makes his chest swell with fondness, with undying affection. He pays a little more for a paper-wrapped package of round, sugared sweets that Daphne is particularly fond of, filled with chocolate.
The vendors say very little as they handle his purchases, and when they do speak, it's with a soft, sleep-coated edge to their words.
The sweet smell of sleep is everywhere, poppy-sickly, like warm milk and that top-of-the-head baby scent, something new and vulnerable. That's what sleep is, in the end: the ultimate vulnerability. A performance rooted in trust, a dance in the dark, silent revelry that beckons the audience to drift deeper. And when sleep comes, so do dreams, for they have never liked being left out of the limelight.
Blaise dreams often. He dreams of hunting in the wrong gear and missing the mark by an inch, his arrow burying itself in a friendly hunk of flesh. He dreams of sitting by the river with the shape of his mother and watching the water distort their expressions. He dreams of senseless things and shapeless things and things that leave him flushed and giddy. Grey eyes and bookish looks.
But when the dream sweeps the land, and the warm scent of sleep wrings its hands in Hogsmeade, all Blaise can think about is how he dreamt of nothing the night before.
The tower is quiet, a simple structure packed with elegance, much like the sugared sweets filled with indulgent chocolate. Everyone is still hazy with sleep, though the dream seems to have faded somewhat. By the time Blaise returns, there is noise in the kitchens and chaos in the drawing room, where Pansy and Daphne are practicing their paper charms. One folded bird cuts past Blaise on the stairs, leaving wickedly deep grooves in the wallpaper with its wings. Laughter floats through the cracked oak door. Blaise shakes his head, chuckling, and heads to his room.
The day he moved in, he ripped everything out of his assigned room and replaced it with his own furniture, putting his own spin on things. Salazar's Tower is an isolated academy North of the Black Lake. Dense forests surround it on all sides, and the air is often cold with frost. It takes seven days to travel there from modern civilization. It takes considerably longer to get luxurious furniture delivered on a whim, no matter how much coin you place in the pockets of the postal service.
But the result is worth the wait. Rich, dark floors and plush rugs, a four-poster bed that feels like heaven after a day of draining magical practice, and vast, thick tapestries hanging from the pale walls that tell the history of his bloodline; all of it welcomes him home. He collapses on the bed, burying his face in the cotton quilt, and breathes.
The scent of sleep is rich here too, thick and hazy, still tasting like warm milk. But the scent of dreams is elusive, missing, conspicuously absent.
Bitterness twists in his chest. He should have dreamed. He should have been chosen.
He wrenches himself out of bed and potters about, finding a trunk and propping it open on his bed. He rifles through his belongings, picking out enough to keep him comfortable for a few days, and begins folding. There's a haphazard, jerky air to each of his movements, frustration and anger simmering under his skin. He's part way through ironing a stubborn crease in his shirt with red-hot fingertips, magic simmering under his skin, when someone knocks on his door.
Theodore Nott doesn't give him a chance to turn the lock. He pushes the door open and slips inside, shutting it behind him. Grey eyes and bookish looks, all of it leaning against the wall in an elegant fashion; it's enough to give anyone a headache.
"You were supposed to meet me on the bridge."
"Was I?" Blaise folds his shirt carefully, averting his gaze from the doorway. "I don't recall."
"You were. And you do. We agreed yesterday."
"How do you expect me to remember that? It's been a whole day and I've slept since then."
Theo's hands have always been laughably small, but Blaise loves them. He loves the slender shape of his fingers, the way they curve around the rungs of ladders in his library, or cling protectively to books, coveting their contents. He even loves the way they land on his shoulder, feather-light but immoveable, turning him away from the trunk. But he doesn't love the searing look on Theo's face, full of knowing pity.
"You didn't dream," Theo says, but he doesn't speak as though it's news. "You slept?"
"I slept just fine, thank you very much. Very peacefully."
Theo makes a soft noise, almost disappointed. Regret flashes across his face, and Blaise feels that same regret echo in his expression. He peels Theo's perfect hand away from his shoulder and steps politely back, striding to the window to weave magic on the frame.
"What are you doing?"
"Weaving," he says, pouring magic into the wood. "It's going to get cold while I'm away, and I don't want my projects to freeze over. The jam-jars are particularly sensitive to temperature changes."
The jam-jars full of magic jitter on the shelves, as though the very thought of being cold chills them to the bone. He hears footsteps, quiet but sure. Theo comes up behind him and puts his hand back where it belongs, warm and certain. Everything about him is steady, like fine printed text in a book, but just as a story is unpredictable, Theo's next lines are impossible to divine.
"I'll tell you the dream."
Blaise falters, the magic fading in a brief coil of light. "What?"
"I'll tell you the dream." Theo pauses, and then shakes his head. "Better yet. I'll show you the dream. Come on."
"It's forbidden," Blaise says, gawping at him inelegantly. "You can't…"
But he lets himself be led anyway, something in him aching to know. Everyone knows that a dream sweeps the land once a year, and it tells the truth of everything to come. Voices call out in the dream, selecting those who can travel East, chosen ones with a bright, grand future. Blaise used to believe that he would easily snag the attention of those voices. He walked around with his chin held high, certain of his place in the world, convinced of his own importance. And now his feet drift along the floor, pulled along by hands that he loves dearly, by grey eyes and bookish looks, and he wonders if it's worth it.
"You were chosen, weren't you?" Blaise murmurs. "You dreamed, and they chose you. Theo, this is a stupid idea. Use your common sense, will you? They'll sense it if we share dreams, especially today."
"Not if we don't use the bed. Take the covers."
Together they build a bed on the ground, a nest of quilts and cushions. Blaise's movements are slower than usual, tempered with shock and anticipation. He keeps catching Theo's eye over their slow-growing nook. There is something in his gaze, something curious. It sparks a sort of quickening in his core, and Blaise hurries through the last of the preparations, gathering sweetmallow sickles and orbs of silver lamplight.
"Ready?" Theo asks, climbing into the makeshift bed.
"I'm always ready to make foolish mistakes, Theodore."
"It is not a mistake," Theo says, enunciating each word carefully. "One day you'll learn not to argue with me. Come on, you'll see."
The floating orbs gutter and shiver, casting ripples of silver light across the room. Theo pops the sweetmallow sickle under his tongue and slips down, pillowing his head on his arm. His other hand catches one of Blaise's, twining their fingers together. His eyes close. Blaise watches, feeling like a thief. There is something stolen about this moment, and he intends to keep it in his pocket.
"Find me in the dark," Theo murmurs, except his mouth stays shut, and his chest rises and falls in the solemn, relaxed breaths of the deeply asleep.
Blaise hesitates. He casts his gaze about the room. The sickle feels cool in his hand, the metal bent and dented. Sugary sweetmallow dust lingers on his fingers, eking out of the coin. He doesn't understand it. He never has. But the magic allows them to sink into each other's minds, and that's all he needs to know.
The window shakes, rattling in its frame. He wonders if the half-baked magic will keep the gods out, and decides that it doesn't matter. Slipping down to lie opposite Theo is the easiest thing he's ever done, in the end, and the coin feels like a promise under his tongue.
Prophetic dreams are not uncommon, but descriptions of the phenomenon are difficult to come by. One thing most dreamers agree on is that walking through a prophetic dream feels like falling through water. There is resistance, a sort of elasticity to each movement. But for the most part, the images blur past like rain, impossible to grasp.
Blaise stands, blinking rapidly in the sudden wash of colour. It is muted and soft-spoken, the dream, but it's still brighter than the dark he left behind. He lets it rain all around him, scanning the world as it whirls by while someone's hand sits in his.
"Found you," Blaise says.
Theo huffs, a simple breath of laughter that pierces the waterlogged silence, and squeezes his hand. "So you did. Have you seen anything interesting yet?"
"Other than the inside of your mind? Not especially. This is your dream, Theo. You were the one who wanted to show me something in here, to share the oh so grand prophecy that I was never supposed to see. Shouldn't you be the one telling me where to look?"
"I've never shared a dream before." Theo peers around, sounding only mildly curious. "Only studied the theory."
"Oh, it's like the blind leading the blind, then," Blaise mutters. "I suppose there's no harm in walking and seeing where we end up."
And so they do. They take the narrowest part of the dream, where periwinkle curtains part to reveal a dirt path through the woods. Birds sing in the distance, their call twisted and wordless. But Blaise recognises the power of their song: it belongs to the voices, the ones who choose who to come and who to go, who to show the dream too. The path widens, sloping down a bank.
"I recognise this," Theo says, pulling him to a stop. "This is it. The dream of prophecy."
A river rises into view, bubbling up through the dirt. It's like watching a drawing come to life, each section carefully-filled in, blue crayon crashing against the line of the bank. A bridge arches over it. Two figures stand there, silhouetted in the fading light.
"Is that us?"
Theo hums.
"Mirrors really don't do me justice, do they?" Blaise asks. "Is this the view you're blessed with daily?"
"Only if I'm unlucky enough to stumble across you."
"Who invited who into whose head, Theodore?"
Theo squeezes his hand again, a little harder, in reprimand. It's hard to see him clearly in the dream. But everything about him is familiar, and Blaise would know him blind, unseeing, in the deepest of dreams.
"This is how I knew I could share the dream with you," Theo says. "This is our future, so when you weren't at the bridge this morning like we discussed, I knew it had to be something else. I think this dream, this future, is happening now. So in a minute, we'll go up to the bridge, and we'll see the rest of the dream together. And we'll work everything out from there."
"That sounds like a dream," Blaise says, a little hoarse. The emotion is… unexpected. He knew there was something between them, some unspoken intimacy, some unlabelled sort of love. But Theo rarely shows his true colours, and Blaise has gotten good at reading the black and white subtext.
"A dream you wouldn't mind having?" Theo asks.
A dream, if he's honest, that he wouldn't mind never waking up from. The two figures on the bridge are talking, just like this. Blaise feels like he could float right up and out of the dream. As the dream grows darker, the light fading fast, the two figures step off the bridge together. Hand in hand.
"Well, let's go and find out, shall we?" Blaise says.
And they step onto the bridge together, hand in hand.
They wake with their hands tangled together in the dark, visions of wars and spells and quests dancing in their minds. When Blaise leans in and steals a kiss, it tastes of sweetmallow and silver light and metal. When Theo makes a soft, muffled noise in his throat, the orbs flare brightly before snuffing out, one by one, and they go back into the dark together, but not to dream.
[Word Count: 2,467]