Have been having a massive epic dream, of late. FB people, if you're tagged--you're here. Or some fascimile of you, obviously, I don't know how you'd
really act in case of faery war.
This is part two of a dream that began some long time ago; I have already had part three, but must pack stuff for hauling my ass to the kendo tournament, and have already spent too much time typing this.
And no, this isn't exaggerated; this is what the dream was. Quite intensely detailed. Lots of details I'm not putting in, actually--embroidery on clothing, dust in the air, the taste of floured apples...)
(part one is
here)
In my dream, I vault the side of Eric's airship and am racing toward our army, somewhere near Schenley Park. The army has an audible noise to it, a humming of many feet and bucklers and voices all at once, tense but not yet on the attack. Our encampment is massive, though, and full of many activities at once; getting through it is not swift.
I'm looking for a warlord. Eric grabs the ball of my shoulder, gets my attention; nods. "You did good. Survive this, too." And then he's off into the crowd, to see to his men. I watch him go for a moment, feeling something sharp in my throat. My siblings are all gone, thousands of miles away, and I have no blood-family here; and while I'm glad of that, it's uncomfortable to watch him walk off. I won't be able to see him safe, though he's a better fighter than I am by far, and that knowledge is just more anxiety on top of what I already carry.
I'm walking from cluster of tents to cluster of tents, all of them tall pale canvas, following the pull under my breastbone that tells me where the person I'm seeking is. A neat bit of spellwork. The camp has changed shape since last I was here, and the big Generals' tent is not quite where it had been; but I find it, and jangle the bell at the door. "Littlejohn, is that you?"
"Sir." I answer, and the flap flips open. "Good, good. I heard Gildea had brought you back in. Not too much trouble?"
Inside the tent everything is dim, though it's not too stuffy at least. The General addressing me is tall, slim, honey-hair pulled back in a tight tail. He's got a .45 at his hip, and a dagger on the other side, and his shoulders are not the sort of broad that you get from weightlifting, but the kind that comes of use. "They were waiting for me, I think." I said. "or maybe just looting, not that I know what would be in a college building that they might want."
The General's face fills with tired good humor. "Who knows? Notebook paper? Ramen noodles? Chocolate bars?"
"Some of their number have a serious weakness for refined sugars, sir." someone says, in the back of the tent. "Or perhaps they were simply bored." The General shrugs. "At any rate. What do you have to tell me?"
"Ah--" there's a peculiar sort of
click in my brain, a relaxing of my muscles, and I start to talk. I tell everything I've seen; the golden-light off of the water that's flooded Downtown, the massing army headed our direction, my estimates of numbers and power, the casual way that my enemies pursued me and how easily Eric and I dispatched them. Things I did not consciously remember seeing tumble out my mouth, and I feel the leather thong around my neck with dispassionate clarity, glad of the token at the end of it that fills itself with this knowledge that otherwise I might not be able to bring home. The General says nothing, merely laces his hands together behind his back, eyes half-closed. At the end of it my tongue tangles, and I fall silent, abruptly drained. I let out a deep sigh, clear my throat, and the General faces me again. "Thank you." he says. "Go and get what rest you can, not that I imagine there will be too much time. There should be room for an hour or two, perhaps."
"Yes, sir." I say, barely noticing him in my haste to leave the tent, trying to narrow my focus again back to something human.
(
He chews his cuticles, I note despite myself. The woman behind him, another of the Generals, has lines of exhaustion around her eyes, and something fuzzy caught in the hair by one ear. The rug is dusty. Oh, I am tired.)
I step out of the tent, and the cool air revives me somewhat.
Home, I prod, and the gem hanging over my heart gives a weak flutter in my skull.
Left it is, then. I walk slowly, not having the energy for more.
To my right, there's a small group clad mostly in black and shoaizome blue. Christian is at the head of it, looking almost relaxed, arms folded, faint smile on his face. Behind him, his men and women are talking in low voices, somebody is poking at a campfire. There's a man clad in a creamy grey, clothing that seems to me to be a bit unfit for the battlefield, sharpening a long knife. His hair is the color of cream, and probably longer than he is tall; it's been loosely pulled up in itself several times, and it tumbles in an artless fashion that would probably take hours of work to achieve on a human head.
He's plainly not human, though. Human people do not come that beautiful, human skin that delicate would have no place under sunlight. He's also grinning incessantly, baring perfect white teeth. He smiles at me, nods, and Christian looks up. "Wait a moment?" he asks.
In the confines of this dream, I know Christian, but I think that I do not know him well. His small group--there are no more than seven of them, I think, a woman with dark skin and hair cut severely to her chin, a man all in brown with a humble face, others moving in and out of the tent behind them--glances up to me for a moment, sees in the set of his shoulders that all's well, and goes back to what they are doing. Only the grinning pale beautiful one keeps sitting in his camp stool, toying with his whetstone, eyeing me through heavy lids. "This one has been hunting today," he says, and something about the his tone on the word 'hunting' makes the muscles in my back tense. His expression hasn't changed, but something about him is all bloodlust, or maybe sex, and it takes a conscious effort to stand still.
Christian smiles then, not at my reaction but at his subordinate. "Enough, Gareth." the pale man laughs, a musical noise, and his attention falls back to his knife.
I wonder who they are, this group, and how they got caught up in this battle. They're plainly not part of the regular army, and just as plainly they've been working together for longer than this season. Christian takes a breath, releases it. "You're head of the scouts, right?" he asks. "I have seen you." I nod. "Yes, sir."
"Is there anything you could give me to make the day easier?" I think a moment. "What are you?"
His eyes gleam a moment, and he smiles broadly. "Excuse me?"
I sigh, cursing magically-increased exhaustion. "Sorry. What sort of fighters? Not mounted, plainly. "
"No." he bites the smile back. "Not mounted. Combination of--close-to, and air."
Behind him, the white-haired man hoots. "Air!" he says. Christian doesn't have to turn around, the set of his shoulders shuts the man up. "Forgive my second," he says. "He's excitable." I shrug, not really minding. "Well. Air is useful--they don't seem to have anybody but ground fighters, though some of them..."
Massive tentacular horrors knuckling in behind the glittering throng, something huge and made of shadows that I can't look directly at, gods-be-damned mages clouding everything I've been spouting numbers, estimates, positions again, and Christian looks a bit keelhauled. "Sorry." I say "Useful skill, but when I'm this tired..." He looks sympathetic, and I shrug. "I can't be sure. There's some big guns out there. Their frontguard is quicker than ours, I think, so a lot of it is going to just depend on brute force. Our sparkly boys are gonna do a good deal of long-distance damage, we still have one or two of the missile-launchers, but not a whole lot of ammo. Any of you guys riflemen?"
The woman with the severe hair gestures from the campfire, but the rest of them don't look up. "Right. Well. Okay. I'd recommend, honestly, that you attach yourselves to one of the battalions armed with guns, and see if you can't provide assistance there." Christian nods.
"But I'm no strategist." I continue. "And even if I was...tanks aren't gonna win this, we need something else."
That smile again, flashing and gone. "I see. Thank you."
I'm just so god-damned tired, I can't even muster an elegant reply. "Sure thing." I say. "You need me, ask for the Fifth, I'm attached to one of their magicusers when I'm not out on Survey."
And I walk on.
I pass by a bunch of people in a dark and elegant blue--healers. Mallory is there, and her hands are full of silver fire until I shake my head--I must be
dangerously tired, if I can't turn off the sight that has her look that way to me, her skin seeming to glow from inside and her hair full of dark lights. Usually I'm better shielded than that. Two hours of sleep might not be enough. I pause, but she doesn't look up, bustling from table to table, poking at bundles of something or another, and I don't want to get in the way of vital work, so I walk on. I'm closer to my own tent now, to the people I'll be working with.
The air feels as it does after a rain, almost cold despite the sun, and for an instant I'm overcome by the smells of green-growing things, and the crystalline quality of the air is electric. I close my eyes, try to filter it out, and the greeness goes away, muted and replaced by the scents of orange blossoms and biker leather--I grin despite myself, knowing another of the people who in waking life are my senpai is there without having to look. There's a fluttering relief in my chest--dream-me hadn't seen this one in a while.
I turn, opening my eyes, and Rob waves a hand, straightens from the broad tentpole he's leaning on. He's wearing something slim of some pale-dyed, moon-gold tone (a shade I've never seen him in, in real life--this dream is full of colour), sleeves cuffed and rolled above his elbows, dark trousers to ankle boots, nothing loose to catch if he should have to move swiftly. "Good to see you made it back in." I say, since he's something like what I am, some sort of scout, though not under me. He shrugs, half-smiling, and the motion is easy; he's well-rested. "Any news?"
A cloud darts between us and the sun, and I try to pass off the shiver as just having to do with that. "Yeah. They're really close--it's going to be today."
Rob's face goes still. "Okay." I'm afraid that if I start to talk, I'll just spout it all over again, and the expression on his face says he knows better than to ask specific questions that might trigger it, not before I've slept. "No guarantees that the camp will be safe." I say. "So if there's anything in there that you have to save, send it back with the camp followers--the General's putting out a call that they're to go another ten miles or so back." Rob grins, then, shakes his head. "Just stuff." he says. I let myself yawn this time, try and draw in a bit of energy from the grass beneath me and the sky over me. "I won't keep you." he says. I feel a ridiculous gratitude, bow, and make my way across the grass to my own little encampment, smelling roasting apples on the cookfire already.
I am within twenty feet of my encampment when I feel a tingle over my skin, and hear "Gen!" from the circle of tents. "Alex." I say, quietly, knowing he'll hear--he's triple-warded our campsite, ever just a bit paranoid. He is wearing black, a brown-black, trousers tucked into high sturdy boots, simple shirt. His fiercely curling hair is long, pulled back uselessly, and his hands are covered in soot.
(I decide not to ask.)
"Everything okay?" he asks. I snicker at the oddness of that question in the middle of what is shortly to be a battlefield, but I knew what he means. "Worked a treat." I say, hand hovering over the talisman. He smiles briefly, and Julian comes up behind him, in celadon and tan, buttery-soft trousers and loose shirt. "Dinner's going to be a bit." he says, and even exhausted I can see the pleasure in Alex's eyes at the sound of his voice. I feel such an absurd gratitude, to have my family here with me, my un-brother and the complex thing that Julian is. "I need to sleep." I say, the words slurring a bit. Alex steps back, and I push into my tent and collapse onto my bedroll.
It's occupied. Warmth fills my chest, and I slide over, pull Dave's arm about my waist. "You just get in?" I ask. He mumbles into my hair. "Hour or so ago. Have the second camp set up, was setting wards for 'em all night. Glad you're safe." his fingers curl around me, one hand laces itself through my loosened hair and tightens. I arch my back, feel the puff of his breath on the back of my neck. Everything is good. I kick my boots off, loosen my collar, sleep.
(I wake, almost, to the sound of my roommate's cat yowling at my door, wind outside, a car passing on the bridge above my house. I do not open my eyes. I don't want to wake yet, there is something I am supposed to do...I fall back into the deeper parts of sleep.)I wake in the tent an indeterminate amount of time later. The sun against the tentwall has moved, but I couldn't even tell you in what direction...Dave is up, quietly settling into his boots, and pulling his dark hair back. I sit up, blink, trying to get the I-can-see spell to settle right in my head. More useful than contact lenses, less likely to fall out in a brisk breeze, but sometimes it's slow to recognize that I am awake.
"Morning, love." Dave says.
"Morning?"
"Well, no. About mid-afternoon." he smiles, teeth sharp. "Sleep well?"
I can't remember. "Solidly, I guess." He snaps his jaw, and I shake my head, absurdly pleased by this everyday thing in the midst of all this strangeness. He's tucking his shirt--blood red, china red, beautiful peacock of a boy--into his black trews, reaching for slim silver knives and belting them on. He has a sword of some European tradition, narrow and basket-hilted, and that goes on too--knowing I'm watching him, he cocks a hip and poses. "come
on, is there ever a moment you're not vain?" I ask, an old argument. He laughs, and from outside the tent I hear "if you are awake enough to bitch, you're awake enough to eat!"
Katie?
Katie is here?Dave's face is blank with surprise; he must not have known. I rip the tent open, throw myself out it, and Katie is standing there, so tall, and pale, and smiling, her hair redder than it used to be, and long, and I've pulled her into a painful hug before she has time to say hello.
"What are you doing here? You're supposed to be in Sacramento! Before the phones went down, your mother said..."
Her face goes tight with pain for a moment, and I trail off. "Kate...are your sisters okay?"
She takes a quavery breath, sighs. Shrugs with only one shoulder, a sharp motion. "I didn't make it out before the Veil fell." she says. "Got stuck without combustion engines about four hundred miles from here. Got a ride with some crofters, then some guys with, like, scales..." she looks me in the eyes then, and she's still my Kate, regardless of whatever else might have happened since I saw her last. "The girls got out. Everyone but Tiff, at least, I'm not sure about her but I have no way to find out for certain. Anyway. Came here!"
I'm shaking my head. Alex is behind her, holding something that smells delicious. "Always said, could find you anywhere." I say. "Glad to see it works both ways."
Kate is the only one of us dressed in machine-woven cloth, and it's ragged and torn. The stuff just doesn't hold up, here, for whatever reason--when the vines came, when the Veil fell, a lot of things started to behave erratically. "I should have a shirt you can wear." I say. "And Dave's about your height, you can cinch some of his pants until we can get you a needle and thread..." I trail off. This is stupid. I've got a meal between me and
death if I'm unlucky, or worse, a meal between me and watching Dave die, or Eric, or Rob--and I'm offering her a sewing kit? Mama bear, always.
Kate just smiles, and hugs me again, and Alex hands dinner around.
I can't stop watching her, this piece of everything that I walked away from to save my sanity--I wonder about my own sisters, my brothers, if they're faring well. If stuff in that part of the world can even detect stuff here. There was a little while, when the world started going thin and strange in places, we had a little warning, and a lot of people left, but--well, this is me. Why would I walk away from this?
If I had known it would come to war, maybe I would have done. Maybe.
And Kate would have been trapped here without me. And I would never have seen Dave again, or Julian, or Alex. I question every choice before I've made it, but it's unhealthy to question overmuch once nothing can be done.
Alex is sitting back in Julian's embrace, looking as relaxed as he always does before he has to do something that might kill him. Dave is pacing a bit, reciting something under his breath the way he does sometimes when he's trying to think of something else, Katie is looking tired and happy.
Ah. "Kate...do you have any weapons? Or know how to use them, for that matter?"
She shakes her head. "No gun. Got stolen." her eyes go dark. "Not bad with a handgun, but that's about all."
Damn. But before I can worry, Alex raises his head. "Stay with me." he says. "I'll be working from here. Julian's support team. You can help him, or you can go over and work with the healers, they always need another set of hands." Alex has to work from here, or it's better if he does--he's been in this encampment for weeks, it knows his tread, and the triple wards have a lot of him in it. He can't work from a place of power, but this is close.
Dave is behind me now (
the cat, the cat is yowling at the door, shut up, I want to stay with my friends in this green place with the rain-taste on the air, shut up), his hands on my shoulders, and there's a sudden whistle in the air. Fireworks. We turn, and I'm not hungry anymore. Tall screaming fireworks, from the main encampment--two green, one gold.
Time to work, boys and girls.
And then I wake up.