{Sione} Destroyer and preserver; hear, oh hear!
She poured out the remaining waters from the silver bowl in her chilled hands, the long, pale fingers sliding over the untarnished surface. The water hit the ground, the soil around her, seeping into the runes she had drawn around her there.
Her lips spoke the words even as her body moved through the motions, beseeching the Dreaming to hear her call. One could not demand these things from a being such as the Dreaming was, but tonight she had not only called upon this, the proverbial God of all her existence, but those which may as well have been gods and goddesses in their own rights; Gwydion, the one who marked her in the seal of her true self, and Danu, the Mother of all Tuatha, the dream from which all sprung.
She called to them across the stretch of existence.
It was needed, there could be no denying. Kingdoms burning, monarchs dying, balefires extinguished across the Empire and beyond. No one seemed to have a sure answer as to what needed to be done. The solutions were too different, and so many were suffering for it.
She could do little to stop it. Head of House Gwydion, so known for their leadership in times of need and doubt, and she could do nothing to help her people, her House, save give small words of encouragement that went only so far. The armies she was general over not hers to command without consent of the woman who was Regent. If she could do anything, it would be this.
So she'd begun the ritual, her nobles watching from nearby, ordered to remain a distance and not interfere as she called on their Creator, a seemingly prideful and foolish decision, but her reasons as selfless as could be managed. She did not do this for herself.
She called, and drank, pouring out the water tinted with her own blood to the elements, invoking.
As she knelt after her final words drifted into the night, the earth felt soft and pliant, almost unreal. The air stilled and slowed, coming to a stand-still. Her whole focus seemed to shift into but a single point of existence, and for a breath, it felt as though she could feel it all, the merest shift of a leaf hundreds of miles away, the pull of the tide upon the shore of the ocean, the slivered dart of each fish far below. All of creation moving into her. Fingers slipping inside her mind; Danu and Gwydion... the Dreaming.
She felt as though all of time did not exist but rather stretched out into a sheet that never met the horizon, or perhaps it did and kept moving past. It balled into her mind, pressing through her mortal shell until she thought nothing could be more beautiful or more painful or more hopeful or despairing. Everything and nothing, all of belief, doubt, and any thought to have passed the whispering borders of imagination. All of it, and all inside her.
It could not hold. It was too much, this throbbing knowledge that rushed her. She collapsed, meeting the earth in the same manner as before, but this time with the limp weight of uncontrolled descent. It was too much, then and now, and she felt It wrapping about her, in her, through her, ribbonning its way into her skin, soul, and mind.
The Dreaming... inside her...
And then all was... nothing...
Her lips spoke the words even as her body moved through the motions, beseeching the Dreaming to hear her call. One could not demand these things from a being such as the Dreaming was, but tonight she had not only called upon this, the proverbial God of all her existence, but those which may as well have been gods and goddesses in their own rights; Gwydion, the one who marked her in the seal of her true self, and Danu, the Mother of all Tuatha, the dream from which all sprung.
She called to them across the stretch of existence.
It was needed, there could be no denying. Kingdoms burning, monarchs dying, balefires extinguished across the Empire and beyond. No one seemed to have a sure answer as to what needed to be done. The solutions were too different, and so many were suffering for it.
She could do little to stop it. Head of House Gwydion, so known for their leadership in times of need and doubt, and she could do nothing to help her people, her House, save give small words of encouragement that went only so far. The armies she was general over not hers to command without consent of the woman who was Regent. If she could do anything, it would be this.
So she'd begun the ritual, her nobles watching from nearby, ordered to remain a distance and not interfere as she called on their Creator, a seemingly prideful and foolish decision, but her reasons as selfless as could be managed. She did not do this for herself.
She called, and drank, pouring out the water tinted with her own blood to the elements, invoking.
As she knelt after her final words drifted into the night, the earth felt soft and pliant, almost unreal. The air stilled and slowed, coming to a stand-still. Her whole focus seemed to shift into but a single point of existence, and for a breath, it felt as though she could feel it all, the merest shift of a leaf hundreds of miles away, the pull of the tide upon the shore of the ocean, the slivered dart of each fish far below. All of creation moving into her. Fingers slipping inside her mind; Danu and Gwydion... the Dreaming.
She felt as though all of time did not exist but rather stretched out into a sheet that never met the horizon, or perhaps it did and kept moving past. It balled into her mind, pressing through her mortal shell until she thought nothing could be more beautiful or more painful or more hopeful or despairing. Everything and nothing, all of belief, doubt, and any thought to have passed the whispering borders of imagination. All of it, and all inside her.
It could not hold. It was too much, this throbbing knowledge that rushed her. She collapsed, meeting the earth in the same manner as before, but this time with the limp weight of uncontrolled descent. It was too much, then and now, and she felt It wrapping about her, in her, through her, ribbonning its way into her skin, soul, and mind.
The Dreaming... inside her...
And then all was... nothing...