i know you, i walked with you once upon a dream [closed]

[girlinthebox]

WHO: River, Aleron, Simon, Melys, Sina, and Bruce.
WHAT: The Dreamer's going for a walk.
WHEN: Guardian 29
WHERE: The Faaaaaaaaaade
NOTES: CW: Abuse, violence, trauma, etc. Individual starters within.

The Fade is not separate, but intertwined. One half of a woven tapestry, unseen but present and binding. The mages could feel it when they pulled magic through, or walked that plane in sleep. Dreamers? Felt those ties in their bones, the way they tied and plucked at the mundane world of the waking. Their emotions stirred spirits, their memories left imprints that echoed.

Their dreams shaped the abstract around them, without them even knowing. River knew. River had found those paths and wandered them, slipping in and out of one dream and then another, avoiding demons and watching the landscape shift around those who slept in Skyhold.

Here, the bindings were firmer, more secure, but she could see more clearly. Tonight, she made her walk down those paths, following the echoes of sound and emotion like loose strings in different colors. Gather them up and see the picture on the other side.

Carefully, carefully. Here, her touch could alter far too much.

Comments

[girlinthebox]

River's shape shifts, a reflection of the girl in front of her, searching for what pain she feels. "Am I corrupted?"

What does corrupted mean? The mark isn't poison, though it consumes, and change is inevitable. They form, they pass through the Veil, and then take new shape. It is the same with magic, with spirits, with all things.

Her hand lifts to her chest, where the mark would be. Behind her fingers, a light flickers. She's trying to puzzle this out, but better on her than Sina, better than touching her outright for now.

[eolasemah]

Sina looks at her own image with total acceptance, as though it's just a mirror and not another person who just changed to become her twin. She reaches out, carefully, to brush her fingers along River's cheek. "I'm so thin," she breathes, and turns away, not wanting to look at the hated shard. "I've become a shadow." She walks a few steps away down the beach, allowing the green waves to lap at her pale bare feet.

"But without the shem'len I would be dead by now," she distantly observes, looking out at the water. "My purpose is to live, and they have helped me in that." She looks back at River, uncertain, seeking confirmation or denial. Her clothing has become the nightshift in which she sleeps, her hair untied and falling loose to her shoulders. The shard is in her chest now, but far larger than it is in reality, spanning nearly from shoulder to shoulder and down to her solar plexus. Strange flickering cracks appear in the skin of her shoulders, breasts, and ribcage, visible through the shift and painful looking.

[girlinthebox]

"Leaving changes you."

River leans down, picking up something in the sand, a stone rolled smooth by the water. Her thumb rubs at it, swiping away at the surface until something became visible beneath the surface. An eye?

"Taking a journey, you never come back the same. The waves roll over you, the current carries you, and the shape changes. She knew that when she let you go."

[eolasemah]

Sina's attention is caught by the object in River's hand, but she simply watches it from where she is. Is that an eye? A wave of disturbance passes over her, and she looks away again.

"I will return to her," she says, to no one in particular. The sea is unending, and as she stands there, the waves lap up closer and closer to her feet, until she's ankle-deep in the surf. She looks down at it, then back up at River, her expression imploring. "I must."

[girlinthebox]

"Can't backtrack. Won't be what it was. Everything moves forward."

River observes the ocean for a moment, and on the horizon there appears to be a ship. Something like a ship, at least. The sails are red, and the figure at the head of the ship might have horns. It comes no closer, at least for the time being, but Sina's longing for it is still clear.

Home. Everyone wants to find it again. She shifts free of the image of the elven woman, taking her own shape again before offering up the stone.

"There are more paths than the one you took to get here."

[eolasemah]

Sina squints her eyes at the ship, the waves lapping higher and higher with an unrealistic rapidity. She looks down at the water when her shift begins to float around her, then up at River again, her eyes sad and weary. She opens her mouth, perhaps to speak again, and instead is wracked forward by a violent cough.

[girlinthebox]

River hesitates to touch her, but sinks down onto the wet sand, the water lapping up around her knees. Instead of touching her outright, she reaches to place her hands over the glowing mark on her chest. She can feel it pulsing, the way it's trying to change her, breaking down skin and muscle and blood, making her more.

But she isn't ready for that. She wants to be her, a Dalish elf, a First. She wouldn't understand being anything else.

Maybe she can ease the pain. River closes her eyes, and as she does, the water begins to rise around them. The tide is coming in, sweeping higher and higher with each new wave.

[eolasemah]

Sina is in too much pain to speak, but watches her between the waves. She still looks sad and resigned, but her brow creases in a small smile of relief at River's touch on the shard. After meeting her gaze for a moment, she is submerged. And then she is gone.

She wakes up coughing and confused, looking around to a dark tent lit only by the green glittering of the shard.