Um. Hi. This is Prelude, which is the first bit of Butterfly-proper, and um yeah.
Okay. This chapter shares a theme-song with the last chapter--Regina Spektor, On the Radio. Alternatively, try Snow Patrol's The Last Shot Ringing in My Ears.
The poem at the start is totally Carl Sandburg's, and he is awesome. Also the poem (Fire Pages) fits this Angela way too well for me not to include it, so... The starter world is Christopher Paolini's, and honestly he's welcome to it.
Warnings for this chapter: Major badness for a character, badness in general, twistedness.
Beta'd by redneckgal. (Updates will probably be once a week? If I can be stuffed.)
Prelude: In Which There Are Dreams
I will read ashes for you, if you ask me.
I will look in the fire and tell you from the gray lashes
And out of the red and black tongues and stripes,
I will tell how fire comes
And how fire runs far as the sea.
Carl Sandburg—Fire Pages (Smoke and Steel, 1922)
--
You dream: Darkness wrapping you, a shroud of nightmare and decay—oh goddess, no
You see-- His voice. Angela. What do you see? Clear like crystal, and twice as sharp—you scream, in your mind, and the power pushes you down, drowns you--
Goddess, please--
You're suffocating now, and you have no choice. You open your dreaming-eyes, and--
The world is on fire, from Spine to Sea, and a thousand voices are pleading, calling your name and calling for help. You can't help the scream when it comes, bubbling up through your throat, tearing it raw. You can't hear it, for the pleading.
Your master makes a disappointed noise, and you feel the world shift.
You see--
Morzan is standing in front of you; you recoil but realize it's part of the vision, thank goddess. His sons are with him—the older one, Murtagh, with his sword slung over his back and his fire-bright dragon behind him, and the younger one, Eragon, grinning half-feral, all of them with lazy, easy grace etched into their bones.
You turn—behind you—the Varden. Jeod—goddess, please, don't let me speak—he leads them, slim, deadly sword in his hand, flanked by a young, dark-skinned woman with murder in her eyes and a young man, dwarf-made hammer gripped tight in sweaty palms—
You pull yourself out of the dream, fighting so hard, and you know they'll hurt you after but you must protect them, they are this world's last hope--
You wake.
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