Work Text:
In her dream, he is missing an eye. Instead there is just a gaping hole and inside of it darkness. She shouldn't stare, but she does. She looks into that darkness. It is as if it goes on forever. It is like he carries the absence of light inside of his head. This is how she knows she is dreaming.
He does not say anything to her in the dream. He looks at her with his one good eye. He does not blink. Then he turns into an eagle, the iris of his eye shifting to gold. As an eagle, he still only has one eye.
“I don't know,” she says. “You're the one who's all into dreams now. That's why I'm asking you.”
“Dair,” her sister says, exasperated, “I can barely figure out what mine mean after the fact. There's no way I'm in a position to figure out someone else's dream.”
“His eye was the exact color of the sun,” she says. “You know.”
Her sister looks down. She does know.
The color of the sun. The color of a jewel set in a collar. She holds that collar every morning in her hands and sometimes it's unbearably, unbearably heavy.
“It just seems like it's important.”
“Yeah, maybe it is. But I'm not an expert at this stuff yet.”
She nods.
She does not dream of the man again. She does not dream about flying. She dreams of heat and confusion. Sometimes the sun explodes, though it is always an accident.
Eventually, she forgets.
“You're not concentrating,” his father says.
She sighs and steps back, feeling the whisper of magicked silk against her skin. Its touch pulls her back into reality, pulls her back into the present, into what is happening right now. Or, rather, not happening.
“I don't need to remind you what can happen if you're inside of a sun and not concentrating.”
He doesn't, but she raises her chin anyway and meets his eyes.
He does not look away. “Go home,” he says. “I will see you again in three of your solar cycles.”
“Three days?” she says. “I can be back here tomorrow; it's no problem. It'll be Saturday so Dad won't have a fit.”
“No,” he says. “Do not come back here tomorrow. Go somewhere else. Do something else.”
She is going to argue, but for some reason she thinks better of it.
She is a teenager and lately she's been blowing more power than she can probably afford and so what she does is sleep. She needs the rest and if she isn't going to be allowed to go to Wellakh, than fine. She'll sleep till noon.
That's the plan, anyway, but it doesn't quite work out that way.
At 9 AM she is woken by ravens. They are outside somewhere, cawing like they've found the answer to all their problems right inside her bedroom window. She pulls a pillow over her head, which doesn't help, so she goes to the window and opens it, sticking her head out and looking around for the offending birds. There's two of them sitting there, looking incredibly smug.
“Hey guys,” she says, “Some of us are trying to sleep here. You want to take that elsewhere?”
Surprisingly, they fly off, but she can't get back to sleep.
It's right in the middle of the solar cycle at the Crossings. This is obvious because of the press of people around her, but even if the place was deserted, she'd still be able to tell. She can feel it on her skin and what's more, that knowledge feels normal. It feels right.
She goes to a bar, which is cliché but which also seems to make sense. Missing people go to bars. Or whispers of missing people go to bars. Or something. There's a joke in there, too, but she doesn't bother trying to figure it out. She sits down and orders the first thing that humanoids fitting her approximate description are able to consume and then she looks around, taking stock of the situation. She doesn't actually know what she's doing here.
Two cups of some reddish juice later, she feels a bit more awake. Enough to have noticed the man wearing what looks like a sunbonnet and staring at her from across the room. She is a teenager and so she does what teenagers are bound to do: the reckless thing. She walks right up to him.
“Can I help you?” she asks.
He looks up. He has only one eye.
She should be surprised, but she searches for the emotion and can't find it.
“I was thinking,” he says, “That I could help you.”
She does not know who he is. She sits down.
There are times when you know you are talking to one of the Powers. There are times when you don't. There are times when you should know. There are times when you don't need to. And there are times between all of these, times when more than one of these exist or when none of them do. There are all of these things. It has always been this way.
She does not talk about it later. She does not have the words.
Well, that is not strictly true. She has the Speech, but there are some things not meant to be spoken of, or perhaps some things that have not been finished yet and so are not ready to be spoken of. Or perhaps the right people to hear the words have yet to be found.
Whatever the reason, she does not speak of it. She goes back home. She goes back to Wellakh. She breathes in sunbeams.
In her dream, she stands at the base of a great tree and drinks from a well. The water is sweet and the tree is tall, towering above her. Its leaves cast dark shadows on the ground.
In the dream, she knows.