(no subject)
Date: March 22, 2003
Status: Private (The Sphinx) - Complete
Setting: Manor garden
Summary: The Sphinx suffers of bad dreams as well.
The Manor garden was sunny and warm. The Sphinx found comfortable looking spot where the golden rays formed a pool of light, and settled down for a sunbath. She closed her eyes and smiled, the warmth a soft touch on her face.
She had not slept too well in the past few nights, although she wasn’t quite sure why. Twice now she had started awake in the middle of the night, greatly annoyed and with an unidentifiable sense of dread. She hadn’t managed to fall back asleep afterwards. Thus, she was somewhat weary, and with the heat coaxing her to relax, she drifted off into a dream.
The Sphinx found herself back in ancient times, in a place where the hills of Thebes melted into her grandmother’s vineyard in Arima, forming a landscape that had never existed. For some reason she did not find this strange; instead, she stalked between the vine growths, and searched for her brother.
The mortals had called him the Nemean lion, although of course that had not been his name; Nemea had merely been the place where he resided. The Sphinx could recall that she had not seen him for a long time, but all the same, she knew he was here, now, and that she needed to find him.
There was a slithering sound, and she crouched down, ready to leap; it was only her Echidna, though, slithering through her grove, writhing her hands, her dark eyes red with tears. “You see”, the Sphinx’s grandmother hissed, “you may mourn and grieve, for so many years, so many winters and moons and nights, but in the end, you can but give in. You have to do what you need to survive and not dwell in what was lost, and there will be new beginnings, that again turn into ends, and what does it help, to avenge everything again and again and again?”
“There are other things that matter besides survival”, the Sphix replied. “Such as dignity.” Although what one did with dignity if one was dead, that she wasn’t quite sure of.
Echidna slithered away, and the Sphinx followed. Around a corner, behind a boulder, into a cave - and there he was, her brother, lounging amidst a pile of bones. Only, while she watched, what she saw stopped being her brother. All of sudden, his brushy coat of fur was gone, and what was left was a bloody carcass, still bleeding after being so cruelly flayed. After that the maggots came, so many of them, and they devoured him until nothing, nothing at all, was left of the Sphinx’s brother. Then she became aware of a shadow, someone standing there behind her, blocking the entrance to the cave. She heard laughter - and then that something attacked her, and she couldn’t - she couldn’t fight, couldn’t breathe -
The Sphinx woke up, the terror making her heart pound in her ears. A cloud had covered the sun - yes, that’s what the shadow had been, she was almost certain of it - and a wind had picked up, making the grass around her rustle. There was no one here, though, no one about the spring on her. Slowly, the fear faded off. Still a bit shaky, the Sphinx stood and headed back indoors. She would better find something else for herself to do, she thought. Something that would keep her awake.
Status: Private (The Sphinx) - Complete
Setting: Manor garden
Summary: The Sphinx suffers of bad dreams as well.
The Manor garden was sunny and warm. The Sphinx found comfortable looking spot where the golden rays formed a pool of light, and settled down for a sunbath. She closed her eyes and smiled, the warmth a soft touch on her face.
She had not slept too well in the past few nights, although she wasn’t quite sure why. Twice now she had started awake in the middle of the night, greatly annoyed and with an unidentifiable sense of dread. She hadn’t managed to fall back asleep afterwards. Thus, she was somewhat weary, and with the heat coaxing her to relax, she drifted off into a dream.
The Sphinx found herself back in ancient times, in a place where the hills of Thebes melted into her grandmother’s vineyard in Arima, forming a landscape that had never existed. For some reason she did not find this strange; instead, she stalked between the vine growths, and searched for her brother.
The mortals had called him the Nemean lion, although of course that had not been his name; Nemea had merely been the place where he resided. The Sphinx could recall that she had not seen him for a long time, but all the same, she knew he was here, now, and that she needed to find him.
There was a slithering sound, and she crouched down, ready to leap; it was only her Echidna, though, slithering through her grove, writhing her hands, her dark eyes red with tears. “You see”, the Sphinx’s grandmother hissed, “you may mourn and grieve, for so many years, so many winters and moons and nights, but in the end, you can but give in. You have to do what you need to survive and not dwell in what was lost, and there will be new beginnings, that again turn into ends, and what does it help, to avenge everything again and again and again?”
“There are other things that matter besides survival”, the Sphix replied. “Such as dignity.” Although what one did with dignity if one was dead, that she wasn’t quite sure of.
Echidna slithered away, and the Sphinx followed. Around a corner, behind a boulder, into a cave - and there he was, her brother, lounging amidst a pile of bones. Only, while she watched, what she saw stopped being her brother. All of sudden, his brushy coat of fur was gone, and what was left was a bloody carcass, still bleeding after being so cruelly flayed. After that the maggots came, so many of them, and they devoured him until nothing, nothing at all, was left of the Sphinx’s brother. Then she became aware of a shadow, someone standing there behind her, blocking the entrance to the cave. She heard laughter - and then that something attacked her, and she couldn’t - she couldn’t fight, couldn’t breathe -
The Sphinx woke up, the terror making her heart pound in her ears. A cloud had covered the sun - yes, that’s what the shadow had been, she was almost certain of it - and a wind had picked up, making the grass around her rustle. There was no one here, though, no one about the spring on her. Slowly, the fear faded off. Still a bit shaky, the Sphinx stood and headed back indoors. She would better find something else for herself to do, she thought. Something that would keep her awake.