May 5: Tanith Lee. “Even In Dreams”
Title: Even In Dreams
Day/Theme: May 5: put on your red shoes and dance the
Series: Tanith Lee’s Tales from a Flat Earth
Character/Pairing: Sovaz/Chuz
Rating: PG
She stood before them in their most rational dreams.
Her lost lover was mad, and she hunted the dreams of madmen for him. He had been driven far from her side and she had never been able to find him on her own wanderings. Now she sent out a vision of how he might remember her into the dreams of the insane.
She had been a maiden when they met, pale as ice, blue-eyed as the sky, black-haired as midnight. She wore gowns as blue as milk and let her hair spill to the ground with the smell of hyacinth and walked as lightly as a summer breeze through the fevered minds of the mad.
None of them called her by her name, the one her lover had whispered.
She dressed in the black-blue armor of her father‘s kind, smooth and sharp as razors. It encased her body in the cold and darkness of night. She walked the demented halls in her father’s armor, leaving her head bare so that her hair, darker and smoother than the metal, could float behind her and her mother’s bluer than blue eyes could search for any sign of recognition in the madmen. He had known and feared her father. Even if he was too mad to remember her, he would remember that.
None of them flinched from this vision, or giggled, or shed golden tears.
She went as a goddess, crowned in living golden butterflies that faded to silver where their wings touched her. She went wreathed in fabric the color and weight of mist, embroidered with the pedigrees of demons in hyacinth blue. Her shoes were like white rose petals, but stained red with the blood of the faithful who had cut their own throats in gratitude for the privilege of sacrificing themselves.
The dreams of the mad combusted at this vision’s presence, the howling, scratching ones fell quiet and still. The silent, staring ones brayed and pulled out handfuls of their own flesh and hair. But none of them were him.
She was the daughter of the most powerful of the demon lords, the Incarnation of Wickedness itself. She was a goddess on earth, who set the oceans on fire, and made statues come alive, and for whom whole armies laid down their lives. She was also a girl, miserably in love, and hoping beyond hope that her love would return to her, or be found.
Day/Theme: May 5: put on your red shoes and dance the
Series: Tanith Lee’s Tales from a Flat Earth
Character/Pairing: Sovaz/Chuz
Rating: PG
She stood before them in their most rational dreams.
Her lost lover was mad, and she hunted the dreams of madmen for him. He had been driven far from her side and she had never been able to find him on her own wanderings. Now she sent out a vision of how he might remember her into the dreams of the insane.
She had been a maiden when they met, pale as ice, blue-eyed as the sky, black-haired as midnight. She wore gowns as blue as milk and let her hair spill to the ground with the smell of hyacinth and walked as lightly as a summer breeze through the fevered minds of the mad.
None of them called her by her name, the one her lover had whispered.
She dressed in the black-blue armor of her father‘s kind, smooth and sharp as razors. It encased her body in the cold and darkness of night. She walked the demented halls in her father’s armor, leaving her head bare so that her hair, darker and smoother than the metal, could float behind her and her mother’s bluer than blue eyes could search for any sign of recognition in the madmen. He had known and feared her father. Even if he was too mad to remember her, he would remember that.
None of them flinched from this vision, or giggled, or shed golden tears.
She went as a goddess, crowned in living golden butterflies that faded to silver where their wings touched her. She went wreathed in fabric the color and weight of mist, embroidered with the pedigrees of demons in hyacinth blue. Her shoes were like white rose petals, but stained red with the blood of the faithful who had cut their own throats in gratitude for the privilege of sacrificing themselves.
The dreams of the mad combusted at this vision’s presence, the howling, scratching ones fell quiet and still. The silent, staring ones brayed and pulled out handfuls of their own flesh and hair. But none of them were him.
She was the daughter of the most powerful of the demon lords, the Incarnation of Wickedness itself. She was a goddess on earth, who set the oceans on fire, and made statues come alive, and for whom whole armies laid down their lives. She was also a girl, miserably in love, and hoping beyond hope that her love would return to her, or be found.