"Unlocking Gardens" -- Daryene Character Sketch
Title: "Unlocking Gardens"
Characters: Daryene
Prompt: ((04)) Insides (for 100originalfics and 100_original)
Word Count: 413
Rating: PG-13
Notes: This piece was spawned when the lights in my apartment hallway went out, and I realized that I wouldn't head through it late at night if my life depended on it. "Unlocking Gardens" is the first of three character sketches that I'll be posting.
Summaries and Timeline --> Here
Preview: "When Daryene dreams, he's always inside of a tunnel. Sometimes they're short bursts of an enclosed space, nothing more than three feet of a corridor before he's clamoring into the light and the waking world."
--
When Daryene dreams, he’s always inside of a tunnel. Sometimes they’re short bursts of an enclosed space, nothing more than three feet of a corridor before he’s clamoring into the light and the waking world.
Other times the tunnel’s a long, straight shot, one that the ebony-haired priest bolts through, hoping to avoid Them (who he knows, somehow, are always just behind him). These are the most common dreams; so common in fact, that Daryene knows that even if he falls while being chased he’ll still make it out all right. It’s comforting, almost, to know that despite his clumsiness he’s still superior to Them (even if it’s only in a dream).
Periodically, however, and always after a particularly long day, Daryene dreams of something that’s only considered a tunnel in the most abstract sense. It’s a tunnel because he knows it is, and how he knows it’s that and not a maze the priest is never able to explain: it simply is.
The rooms in these dreams are damp, but not wet; they hold the sort of chill that’s refreshing after a crowded ritual, but that strangles bones after too long in its grasp.
Multiple walls populate this tunnel, spaced a few hundred yards apart. The murkiness is so complete that Daryene can only ever be sure of the wall’s location by catapulting from one side of the room to another, throwing himself against the solidity of the rough bricks and ripping his arms in the process. Scampering to and fro, his black eyes never reach the pinpricks above, just as their light never penetrates the hollows lurking beneath him.
The rooms are cavernous, and Daryene unfailingly staggers from one to another, skillfully avoiding the creatures that he hears but can never glimpse. Sometimes he knows what they are, recognizing the screeches and caws that only They can make. But other creatures, in different rooms, aren’t half as easy to identify: their arrival’s followed by the pop and gush of boiling water, some heralded in by the splatter of three discordant feet too many.
The gloom from these dreams never lessens, and Daryene always ends up being woken by either his alarm or an amused Ysilde, informing him that he’s late to morning prayers. When Daryene dreams of those tunnels, he curses himself with renewed vigor; he dreads being unable to escape, and despises himself for not saving the cawing, lurching, and splatting beings that are always trapped in the walls beside him.
Characters: Daryene
Prompt: ((04)) Insides (for 100originalfics and 100_original)
Word Count: 413
Rating: PG-13
Notes: This piece was spawned when the lights in my apartment hallway went out, and I realized that I wouldn't head through it late at night if my life depended on it. "Unlocking Gardens" is the first of three character sketches that I'll be posting.
Summaries and Timeline --> Here
Preview: "When Daryene dreams, he's always inside of a tunnel. Sometimes they're short bursts of an enclosed space, nothing more than three feet of a corridor before he's clamoring into the light and the waking world."
--
When Daryene dreams, he’s always inside of a tunnel. Sometimes they’re short bursts of an enclosed space, nothing more than three feet of a corridor before he’s clamoring into the light and the waking world.
Other times the tunnel’s a long, straight shot, one that the ebony-haired priest bolts through, hoping to avoid Them (who he knows, somehow, are always just behind him). These are the most common dreams; so common in fact, that Daryene knows that even if he falls while being chased he’ll still make it out all right. It’s comforting, almost, to know that despite his clumsiness he’s still superior to Them (even if it’s only in a dream).
Periodically, however, and always after a particularly long day, Daryene dreams of something that’s only considered a tunnel in the most abstract sense. It’s a tunnel because he knows it is, and how he knows it’s that and not a maze the priest is never able to explain: it simply is.
The rooms in these dreams are damp, but not wet; they hold the sort of chill that’s refreshing after a crowded ritual, but that strangles bones after too long in its grasp.
Multiple walls populate this tunnel, spaced a few hundred yards apart. The murkiness is so complete that Daryene can only ever be sure of the wall’s location by catapulting from one side of the room to another, throwing himself against the solidity of the rough bricks and ripping his arms in the process. Scampering to and fro, his black eyes never reach the pinpricks above, just as their light never penetrates the hollows lurking beneath him.
The rooms are cavernous, and Daryene unfailingly staggers from one to another, skillfully avoiding the creatures that he hears but can never glimpse. Sometimes he knows what they are, recognizing the screeches and caws that only They can make. But other creatures, in different rooms, aren’t half as easy to identify: their arrival’s followed by the pop and gush of boiling water, some heralded in by the splatter of three discordant feet too many.
The gloom from these dreams never lessens, and Daryene always ends up being woken by either his alarm or an amused Ysilde, informing him that he’s late to morning prayers. When Daryene dreams of those tunnels, he curses himself with renewed vigor; he dreads being unable to escape, and despises himself for not saving the cawing, lurching, and splatting beings that are always trapped in the walls beside him.