theatrical_muse #192: Write about a recurring dream you've had
It's not so much a dream as it is a memory.
Fire. He dreams of fire, first and always.
It starts from under the ground, like a giant volcano suddenly springing to live, the size of a planet. It sweeps across the land, scorching it away, nothing hidden alive, all life remaining wiped out in mere seconds. No more snow atop the mountains of Solace and Solitude, the peaks flattened and crisp. The silver leaves and red grass are like tinder, always looking like fire and then becoming it. The soil gone, next through the atmosphere, catching flame like it was made of petrol. The orange sky mixes with other sharp shades of yellow and red. The clouds are gone. It's turned into a sun, a planet becoming a star, the brightest star in the galaxy, burning brightest in the universe.
More like a nightmare, really.
But it doesn't stop there. It doesn't even stop when it sounds like billions of screams in his head at once, a cacophony of highs and lows and pleads and cries and death. The sound of death.
Tendrils of flame shooting out of the planetstar as if they were alive, speeding so quick, no ship could escape its reach. Hulls sturdy enough to survive intense barrages of firepower, best in all of creation, most efficient, most effective, burnt away. Disintegrating under the outstretched fingers of all of Time's rage, Pain's fury, Death's wrath. Nothing but dust in the end, and even that burns away.
And the blaze still doesn’t stop. It doesn't stop, even after every last ship is gone, it keeps stretching and reaching and clawing a path of destruction about it. A wave of heat pounding so intense, it feels like being cooked, like catching on fire, like melting. Like it will rip apart the fabric of the universe if it doesn't stop, and it will rip him apart, too, bit by bit or all at once like the rest, he doesn't know, he doesn't want to know, but this is it. This is it for him and all others. It’s the end, he knows it.
Usually don't dream about much else, really, but then, I also need a lot less sleep than most of you lot.
He doesn't just dream about the silence, at the end of it all. He dreams of faces. Old friends, old colleagues. All gone, now. All dead.
They all have looks of anger, or disdain, or disappointment. And he wants to tell them how sorry he is. Not a word goes by. Not from him, not from them. They can't speak, as if he's forgotten their voices. Their faces might not even be the ones they had when they died, just when he last saw them.
The silence fills his head to bursting. Romana. Susan. Ush--the Rani. Borusa. Everyone. Everyone he had ever met, known, cared for or hated, dead, ghostly, and silenced forever.
He's never sure, when he awakens, which is worse--the fire of all the universe's hells raining down upon everything in a passionate fit of scrubbing out two wretched and warring civilizations, or the sheer aloneness and nothingness that comes just after. And he's never sure if he ever wants to sleep again, where fire and darkness dances about his mind.
If it's all the same to you, I'd rather not get into it. I'm rubbish at storytelling, and they're just dreams, anyway.
Fire. He dreams of fire, first and always.
It starts from under the ground, like a giant volcano suddenly springing to live, the size of a planet. It sweeps across the land, scorching it away, nothing hidden alive, all life remaining wiped out in mere seconds. No more snow atop the mountains of Solace and Solitude, the peaks flattened and crisp. The silver leaves and red grass are like tinder, always looking like fire and then becoming it. The soil gone, next through the atmosphere, catching flame like it was made of petrol. The orange sky mixes with other sharp shades of yellow and red. The clouds are gone. It's turned into a sun, a planet becoming a star, the brightest star in the galaxy, burning brightest in the universe.
More like a nightmare, really.
But it doesn't stop there. It doesn't even stop when it sounds like billions of screams in his head at once, a cacophony of highs and lows and pleads and cries and death. The sound of death.
Tendrils of flame shooting out of the planetstar as if they were alive, speeding so quick, no ship could escape its reach. Hulls sturdy enough to survive intense barrages of firepower, best in all of creation, most efficient, most effective, burnt away. Disintegrating under the outstretched fingers of all of Time's rage, Pain's fury, Death's wrath. Nothing but dust in the end, and even that burns away.
And the blaze still doesn’t stop. It doesn't stop, even after every last ship is gone, it keeps stretching and reaching and clawing a path of destruction about it. A wave of heat pounding so intense, it feels like being cooked, like catching on fire, like melting. Like it will rip apart the fabric of the universe if it doesn't stop, and it will rip him apart, too, bit by bit or all at once like the rest, he doesn't know, he doesn't want to know, but this is it. This is it for him and all others. It’s the end, he knows it.
Usually don't dream about much else, really, but then, I also need a lot less sleep than most of you lot.
He doesn't just dream about the silence, at the end of it all. He dreams of faces. Old friends, old colleagues. All gone, now. All dead.
They all have looks of anger, or disdain, or disappointment. And he wants to tell them how sorry he is. Not a word goes by. Not from him, not from them. They can't speak, as if he's forgotten their voices. Their faces might not even be the ones they had when they died, just when he last saw them.
The silence fills his head to bursting. Romana. Susan. Ush--the Rani. Borusa. Everyone. Everyone he had ever met, known, cared for or hated, dead, ghostly, and silenced forever.
He's never sure, when he awakens, which is worse--the fire of all the universe's hells raining down upon everything in a passionate fit of scrubbing out two wretched and warring civilizations, or the sheer aloneness and nothingness that comes just after. And he's never sure if he ever wants to sleep again, where fire and darkness dances about his mind.
If it's all the same to you, I'd rather not get into it. I'm rubbish at storytelling, and they're just dreams, anyway.