Of Dreams...
Based on a 5 min challenge: three words: Sorrow, blossom, song. Please use the first word as the first word of the story.
Um. Blossom didn't really fit. But the other two are there. Kinda. And it *is* slash. Kinda. So apart from that, the challenge is met. Oh, and apart from the whole too chicken to post it bit.
Sorry about that ;-).
Tem.
Sorrow shapes me. In the winter of my mistakes I am left without words or feelings. Each night I count up my griefs, and I am angry, I want to protest that it was not me. I did not want this. I did not set it in motion.
It was not my fault!
And then they ask me, in the dull glare of morning, how do I feel? Is there anything I want to say? Do I need anything? And I am only able to shrug, and pull that half face that codes for 'smile', instead of the real thing.
One day, when I am free again, I will ask him if that bright sunlit day had meaning for him too. I will ask if, between the insanity and the darkness that wraps me, he saw someone who he could trust, want, love.
In my dreams I see them together.
In wild jungle-light, the man-wolf rises from the dead, and with the arrow still buried beneath his breast he walks towards the hunter. I watch, buried in shadow, as they walk into each other, and the arrow pierces them both, wounding equally. Bound by the mutual wound they melt into each other, and their blood smears. I can see the tracks it leaves, smell the sweet death-like tang.
Is this what love is?
As they move closer and deeper, and the wound, piercing deep becomes another wound, the arrow, another kind of penetration. They do not even hear the low rumble singing in my throat as they kneel, eyes held, hands held. Their lips touch, and I scream that they show such tenderness -- I could have had that! It was mine! Let me in!
They twist against each other, moving as though dancing, drifting towards ecstacy. It used to be, in my dreams, that they would dance with their eyes closed. Sometimes, one would watch the other. Sometimes, the eyes would open, but stare as though at someone else, somewhere else, pretending to not exist in this moment. But now they always meet, blue to blue. Living sacrifice partnered with life in sacrifice. Hunter and hunted, paired equally
Is this what I was asked for, and failed to give?
If he had sacrificed willingly, if I had asked him to die, would he have lived for me?
When was I asked? Who did I fail? Why did I never find my *him*?
Why, when *I* killed, as the dream bade me, did I fail?
Is this why I am alone, in a stark white room, where stark white men give me pills and needles that shear through reality and leave me slinking through the dark underbrush of their dreams?
A sentinel.
On her own.
Magnificent Seven stories, Sentinel stories, Star Trek Voyager stories, The Ragbag
Page last updated 21:42 28/03/2006.