[backdated | week 26, day 2 | around dawn] dream -- eventual audio
You’re running.
It’s dark out, and you’re running.
Your breath surges like the pull of an invisible sea, in and out, in and out, and you’re running.
There’s somewhere you need to be. It’s very important, even though the exact reason escapes you right now. You just have to get there, now, no matter how exhausted you are by the time you arrive.
You stumble, almost fall, recover. Keep going. You have to keep going.
Something catches your eye as you run past it. The image of a girl, sitting in a circle with perhaps a dozen ghostly figures. They’re not human, you can tell that instantly by just glancing at them. They pass her a green wine cup, round and deep and it fills her hands even as it fills with the light wine. You slow to a halt, watching this happen, even though you know that it ends. You know that it ends, but at the same time you don’t know how it ends, so you watch as a bird disrupts the ceremony. It catches at one of the inhuman feet, pulling it apart even as the rest of the beings dissolve into light and mist and shadow, leaving the girl alone.
You turn away. It isn’t time for you to help, or harm, her yet. This isn’t your part of her story.
You need to run, so you do.
Dodging around trees that even your eyesight can barely see in time, you breathe easily. This should be tiring you out, but oddly, it isn’t. You can almost see the air glowing as it comes in and out, filling you with energy.
That should worry you, but again, it doesn’t. Nothing bothers you, except for the pervasive feeling that you need to be somewhere. Now. And you’re running late.
Another glimpse of someone catches your eye. You don’t have time to stop, don’t really want to, but your steps slow to a halt anyway. Just like the girl
Renzu, her name was Renzu
in the circle, the scene draws you in. You have to watch as it unfolds in front of you…
A young couple is crossing a bridge. The boy is leading the way, a lantern in his hand. The girl suddenly stops, starts to turn back. The boy argues with her, all of it taking place in eerie silence. He goes back, tries to grab her hand. She retreats, edging away from him, fear and love and tears warring in her eyes, on her face-and then the board beneath her foot snaps. It gives way, and she falls, leaving only horror behind her, and an echoing scream torn from his lips that again, you cannot hear.
You turn away from him, too. It isn’t time yet, not time to try to help and, ultimately, fail.
You turn away, and run. The sense of urgency is increasing.
The thing that catches your eye this time is a collection of people standing at the edge of a cliff. A female figure wraps a beautiful kimono around a smaller figure, bent with grief. The small figure moves through the rain, hesitant but certain at the same time. The other people move out of her way, until she’s standing on the edge of the cliff. And then… she falls, into the hungry flood below.
You can’t move. You can’t turn away, you’re rooted to the spot. The scene vanishes into the darkness, and eventually you’re forced to move. But you move toward where the scene had been. It doesn’t seem to matter; you feel that you’re going the right way, even if you’re changing course now.
It takes a while to get up to speed after seeing that one. It helps that you remember that story had a good end, but it was still hard. Seeing her sacrifice herself so willingly.
The next scene is a memory. Another mushishi, coming to a village. The woman who loved him, killing a the god of the mountain and making him a meal of its flesh. That man becoming the god, becoming tied to one place, finally able to stay…
You wish you could have helped him. But that had been his choice, too… time to move on. You’re nearly there.
It’s raining. Raining, without a cloud in the sky. In front of you is a backwards rainbow, bright as the river of Kouki itself, reaching up toward the sky.
These things are out of place with each other, you know that. But it doesn’t bother you. You can stop running now, as the rainbow gently lifts itself out of the ground and flows away somewhere, leaving on a journey of its own. The rain moves away, leaving you clean.
Yes. This is a good place to stop for the night.
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[Ginko woke, blinking up at the leaves above him. That dream had been… strange. He recognized most of the people in them, but not the scenes he had seen. What was that, his idea of what had happened to them before he walked into their lives?
It wasn’t like him to think about that kind of thing. He levered himself into a sitting position, reaching for his cigarettes…
Only to (somewhat belatedly) realize he was wearing his clothing again, instead of the kimono the gods had given him. He was sleeping beneath trees, not in an alley. And unless he’s very much mistaken, it’s the same forest he fell asleep in two nights ago.
What was this, more games? Or had Edo been a dream? Reaching for the Hitomi, he notices with a faint grimace that it’s switched on. Wonderful.
Switching it to the voice function as he lights the cigarette, he takes a drag before he speaks.]
Anyone else spend yesterday in a city called Edo?
[He pauses, as if he’s going to say more, then simply turns off the feed.]