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It was Witch that cast her mind out in her dreams, not Jaenelle; it was always Witch, in dreams. Never the shell, only the being contained inside it. Witch had waited, Witch had bided her time, but now Witch was searching for dreamers.
Not just any kind of dreamer, of course. Everyone dreamed, whether it was about the mundane or the fantastical. What Witch was searching for was a specific type of dreamer. One whose dreams were larger. More real. The kind of dreamer that had created her out of the Darkness, all those centuries ago when her web had first begun to be woven. She wouldn't find any Blood except for Daemonar's familiar mind, but curiosity drove her to explore what else was out there in this sea of landens she found herself in the midst of.
She wasn't certain if she could touch their minds, these dreamers, but when she found the right dream it was as easy as taking that step to the left that she'd been so deeply in the habit of, talking to the kindred. Just another way of thinking, again.
Maybe that was more apt than she'd known. Once she was in it she realized one thing: this dream didn't feel entirely human.
She was a strange, foreign creature traipsing through the landscape of someone else's dream. A golden mane hung down her back, pushed behind delicately pointed ears; a small spiral horn grew from the center of her forehead. Her human fingers sheathed a cat's claws, and the small faun's tail at the base of her spine was perfectly visible since she'd neglected to clothe herself in this realm of dreams. Her legs transformed below the knee to make way for delicate hooves.
There was no summer sky blue to her eyes here. They were a deep, ancient sapphire.
She was still recognizable though. Her face was still the same. If this dreamer was someone she'd met in the museum, they would know her. If it was someone she met after they woke from the dream, they would know her. She wasn't worried about that though. She wasn't really worried about anything except satisfying her own curiosity.
Ronan was dreaming of a forest. Miles and miles of forest, not unlike his beloved Lindenmere or Cabeswater, but because he couldn’t reach either of them at all from here, it was a forest entirely of his own making. No matter how far he stretched, he couldn’t find anyone from that other world, not even a hint of them, so there had been no other dream beings inside his dreams.
Until suddenly, there was.
His attention was vast, spanning his entire dream, and her presence was so different from everything else inside it that it was immediately obvious. After everything with Bryde and the Lace, he was much more wary of any other being that inserted himself into his dreams, and he materialized immediately beside her, first as an enormous, dark, spiky shape that condensed itself into a sharp-featured teenage boy.
“Who’re you?” he asked. “And what d’you think you’re doing in my dreams?”
Her voice, when she spoke, was silver and sepulchral. "I am Witch. I was... exploring."
The setting, the forest, felt comfortable. Comforting. Witch had spent a lot of time in the forest, in her human shell, enough that any forest felt familiar in a way. This one seemed bigger than a forest, though. Seemed like something more.
As fascinating as it all was, if he told her to leave she would. It was, after all, his dream. Just because she'd found her way there it didn't mean that she would be a welcome guest.
"Your dreams are different," she told him, an explanation and a question at the same time.
Ronan didn’t bother to answer the implicit question. Obviously his dreams were different, and whatever information she could parse from that she already had, he didn’t need to give her more.
He wasn’t necessarily feeling threatened by her, but he hadn’t had the best experience with other people in his dreams. Bryde had fucked with his head, even though that had kind of been him fucking with his own head. And that had been the least of it. But on the other hand, Hennessy had saved him, so another dreamer-type was not immediate cause for alarm. He was just…wary.
“What are your dreams like?” he asked. “Or do you just walk around in other people’s dreams?”
"I have my own dreams," Witch said. Once she'd had a hard time telling the dreams from reality; they'd all seemed like dreams to her, when she was young. "I dream in the Misty Place."
The Misty Place was different now than it had been when she was young. It was filled with fractals of her power now, restrained so it wouldn't overwhelm the fragile mortal shell. She could still slip between them, settle in its depths like a spider in her web.
She cocked her head to the side, kitten-curious. "Do you always dream here?"
“Nah,” Ronan said easily. “I dream wherever I want.”
At another point in time he might have shown off immediately what he could do. The trees seemed to feel his impulse to do so, because they started to rustle and whisper to him, but he chose not to change anything just yet. He listened to the trees for just a moment to be sure they weren’t actually trying to warn him (they weren’t), and then ignored them in favor of what really interested him.
“What’s the Misty Place?” He had seen plenty of misty places in his dreams but this seemed like a specific spot, to have earned the capital letters. Somewhere he hadn’t been before. Then again, it was possible he had actually been there but it hadn’t been as significant to him, not enough to give it a name; maybe that was personal to her.
Witch blinked at him slowly—her turn to decide if he could be trusted.
The decision was almost visible, a certain predatory wariness that melted away into an uncanny stillness. "It's in the abyss. It's too dark for most people. Too deep."
They could only get there in the first place if Witch took them, mostly. Unless it was an accident, like that first time with Daemon, when he'd been chasing her and slipped past his own inner web in his pursuit, fallen and shattered his chalice, his mind.
Her ancient sapphire eyes stayed fixed on him, judging whether he recognized anything she talked about. He wasn't from Witch's world, but maybe... maybe he knew something similar?
Ronan’s (or possibly more accurately, Greywaren’s) attention sharpened. What she was describing sounded a lot like where he had come from, where the roots of him were, that he had stretched from until he was so far he couldn’t really remember it. He appeared a little more jagged and intricate now, as the dream reflected the part of him that was closer to the surface.
“Are you from there?” he asked. “Or did you start as a person and stretch down deeper?” While he was still the one questioning her, this question possibly revealed more about him than he intended.
Witch's attention caught on the change. She had been right; whoever this strange boy was, he wasn't human either.
"I am Witch," she said again. "I am dreams made flesh, dreams from tens of thousands of years before the shell was born." Was he simply a shell, too, this boy that she saw? Was he a shell for the jagged thing inside him just as she was a shell for dreams?
Witch hoped so. She had never met a thing like her before.
"I come from the abyss," she continued. There was no point in hiding it, even if she hadn't made it clear here in this strange place she had found herself. Even if she had let most people see only the shell and not what was inside it. "I came howling joy and pain, rage and celebration."
Please, she thought, please be like me.
“You came from the abyss, but you wanted to be human?” Ronan didn’t know if he entirely understood the bit about howling, but he didn’t really remember being created in the human world, or anything before it. He knew that he had been, though, and that he had wanted to be, had longed and stretched himself to be part of this world – and he sure was full of all of those big emotions, for better and worse. Wonderingly, he added, “I thought I was the only one.”
There were his beloved Cabeswater and Lindenmere, but they hadn’t fully left their abyss-selves (it was funny how easily the word abyss fit itself into his vocabulary, but then, he’d never had a word for it himself) behind when they came. Greywaren had fashioned himself into an entirely new being, to live as a human.
But before he got too attached, he had to ask: “You don’t want to like, end the world or anything, do you?”
Witch laughed, sudden and silvery. "It was the last thing I wanted. The beautiful, bright things, they deserve to be saved."
She had ended some people's worlds, but that... that had been different. That had been a necessary purging, ridding the Realms of a creeping taint that was poisoning the Blood. That was too much to explain right then, though, Dorothea and Hekatah and their schemes and the way they had hurt the people who had been hers.
"Have you ever met a unicorn?" she asked him.
It was certainly possible that she was lying, but Ronan believed her. Or at least he wanted to believe her, very badly, and so he went ahead and did it. It wasn’t like the Lace had exactly been subtle about its hatred for humans and their world, and Witch didn’t give off that kind of vibe at all.
“I could make one,” he said. “But I haven’t met one that already existed.”
"They can be very stubborn," Witch told him, "but they were some of my first friends."
As always there was a flicker of sorrow for Kaetien. There would always be a flicker of sorrow for Kaetien, for as long as Witch lived.
"How would you make them?" she asked. She didn't ask him to actually do it, that seemed presumptuous, but if this was what made his dreams the sort of thing that called to her then she wanted to know the answer.
“Like this,” Ronan said, because it was much easier to demonstrate than explain. He imagined a unicorn, and it was there in the dream with them.
It was probably nothing like a real unicorn, however, since he had only ever seen pictures of fantasy unicorns. It wasn’t quite like the pictures of fantasy unicorns he’d seen, though. It was shaped like a pure white horse with a sparkly horn on its forehead and rainbow colors glinting through its mane and tail, but like every creature from Ronan’s imagination, it had a bestial, feral quality to it as well as a whimsical one. It was something about the glint of its eyes, perhaps, or the way it stood. “And then I’d just bring it back with me when I wake up. If the Board wasn’t stopping me, anyway.”
It wasn't like the unicorns Witch had known, especially not like the Kindred, but her breath caught and then released in a silky sigh anyway. "Oh, he's beautiful."
That feral air only made her fonder of it; it reminded her of a Warlord-Prince in a way. Always a little dangerous, but that was simply the way it was made. Its nature. You couldn't love its beauty without also appreciating its ferocity, she thought.
"I wish you could bring him back." It seemed unjust, that something so wondrous couldn't be brought into the real world with the rest of them. And wasn't that a wonderful talent? Witch had never known someone who could make dreams real like that. "It takes a tangled web to bind dreams to flesh, where I'm from. And a very, very long time."
“Can they live without their dreamer?” Ronan also wanted to bring the unicorn back now that he’d made it, but he knew – he could feel, still – that he wouldn’t be able to. Even if he had, this was the main consideration: if something happened to him, the unicorn would fall asleep. And worse could happen to it here, where the Board liked to torture them for fun. “Mine will fall asleep when I die. Unless the ley energy is strong enough to sustain them.”
"Many of the dreamers who made me are dead," Witch told him. "The web is what sustains the dreams, keeps them flesh."
As far as what would happen if something destroyed that web, she'd never had to worry about it. It was kept safe in Arachna, deep in caves and well protected by the Arachnan Queen and her people. The only limit on this dream was Witch's own lifespan. She was a fragile thing, in her human shell. Her energy could last for a very long time, but the shell that was Jaenelle Angelline? It was limited.
"Everything has a price," she said. "Even dreams."
“What’s the web like?” Ronan was envisioning the ley lines like a web now, stretching beneath the earth, sustaining the dreamers everywhere, except where it was fractured and smothered by the world above it. He wondered if that was anything like the web she was describing.
It was also interesting that his form, as Greywaren, was sort of weblike, although not like any web that any creature would make. What was it about web-like shapes that beings of energy, forms of energy, liked to take?
"It's like a spiderweb," Witch said. Not exactly like, of course. More intricate. Now, with an Ebony Jewel chip attached restraining her power so that she could continue to exist in the vessel that was Jaenelle. "Well, I mean, the Black Widows who made it are spiders. Technically."
That didn't fully explain the Arachnans either. Beware the golden spider that spins a tangled web. "They're Blood like I am Blood. Kindred."
The words had a weight to them. Blood, Kindred. A clear meaning beyond the surface. It didn't occur to Witch to explain them, they were such a fact of her life.
“A big spiderweb?”
Ronan was skeptical. The kinds of spiderwebs he was familiar with were unimpressive and small, though he knew there were bigger spiders (and by extension, probably bigger spiderwebs) out there. And in another, more magical world, he could imagine a web being quite grandiose indeed. But on the other hand, with power like his, he could fit the kind of power that she was talking about into a small spiderweb simply by dreaming it to be that way.
He didn’t know what Blood and Kindred meant, although he could tell from the way she said them that they began with capital letters. It reminded him of how all the beings in the other place had acted like he was one of them, had encouraged him to return. Someday he would remember again what they all were to him, and be part of that again. He didn’t so much ask directly what she meant as hazard a guess. “They’re from the abyss, too.”
A good guess, but Witch shook her head. "The ones who made us Blood are. Blood are... the ones who live among, but are not of. Humans. Animals. From every species in my world. The Kindred, they are Blood who are not human."
Her mind went to her Kindred friends, the small dog and the large cat who had served in her Court. They were the dreamers who had held her to flesh. The Kindred had always been powerful dreamers, more powerful than humans.
Ronan didn’t get it, but that was okay. They didn’t have to understand each other perfectly. They were still alike, or at least he thought they were. Instead he asked her, “What do you want to dream about?”
"All kinds of things," Witch told him. She had a lot of favorite things, things that the body had done, sometimes to the dismay of those around her. "Riding horses across the meadow. Snowball fights. Flying."
Witch loved to fly, but she hadn't done it yet in this place. Wasn't sure if she could do it, if her magic would be strong enough here to support her entirely in the air.
“Let’s go flying,” Ronan suggested. Of those options, that was definitely his favorite. “Can you fly in here, or do you need my help with that?”
He wasn’t sure he wanted her to be able to manipulate his dreams too much, but well, it sure would make this part a little easier.
"Let's find out," Witch suggested. There was no way to know other than to try; she took a step up into the air, imagined it solid underneath her foot and trusted all her weight to it.
Standing half a foot above the ground wasn't the same as flying, but Witch said, quite reasonably as she stood there on thin air, "If I can air walk I can fly." After all, it wasn't so much manipulating his dreams as it was being able to be herself within them.
Ronan didn’t feel her manipulating the dream, but she was certainly aware of the properties of her own being inside of it, and maybe that was all that mattered. He gave her a hand and made the air around them start lifting them up, and then he went for the gusto and grew himself a pair of enormous, iridescent black wings, much like his beloved raven (but sized for him, or even a little larger). He gave her a mischievous grin and then took off into the sky, curious to see if she could keep up.
Witch didn't need wings to fly; she took off after him quick as a hawk. Quick as the Eyrien who had taught her to fly. Her own smile was delighted, and followed by silvery laughter as she cut through the air with intent.
There was one thing he didn't know about Witch&dmash;she would never be satisfied with just keeping up. It wasn't in her nature.
As soon as he saw that she could fly with him, Ronan really took off. His imagination filled the world around them with rainbow beams of light, lush rolling fields and forests, glittering bodies of water, and fluffy clouds. Some of the clouds and beams of light made musical sounds, and sometimes there was a flutter of vibrant birds, or a splash of rain and spark of lightning. Ronan wasn’t only concerned with going fast; he rolled and dipped in the air, occasionally dove headfirst towards the ground and then swept back up in defiance of gravity. He raced her sometimes and then went off in his own direction whether he was in the lead or behind.
Eventually he landed on a cloud – which didn’t have the density to hold him until he believed that it did – and lay on back to look up at the sky, elated and out of breath (even though he didn’t, strictly, need to breathe).
His reckless dives had been thrilling; Witch had taken a few of her own, as well, once he'd put the idea into her head. Andulvar and Prothvar would be furious with her if they had seen, but for the moment it was just Witch and the dreamer boy. She might have missed the two of them dearly, but she didn't miss the scolding she would have gotten for this.
Witch did a couple more swoops past him before she settled on thin air near his cloud with a contented sigh. "Dream flying is almost as good as really flying."
Almost. Witch wouldn't give it that last inch, no matter how real a dream could feel.
“I can’t really fly,” Ronan said wistfully. “At least, I haven’t managed it yet. Not for very long.” But he was better at dreaming now, learning new things all the time, so maybe… maybe he could dream himself a better way to fly. He’d dreamt himself wings once, but they hadn’t really worked the way he’d hoped.
In his head, he could hear Bryde saying, what is real? But no matter what Bryde said, the world of the waking had a reality to it that dreams couldn’t touch. So he wasn’t going to argue with Witch’s logic.
"Prothvar tried to tell me I couldn't fly when the body was a child. I surprised him by jumping out a window." Witch cocked her head to the side, lips quirking at the memory even as she allowed, "He didn't take it well."
That wasn't the point though, the point was... "You'll dream something that helps you fly someday. It just might take a little more dreaming than the rest."
“Did you fly, or did you hit the ground?” Ronan figured it was the first, but he had to ask, just to be sure. As he looked up at the sky it was starting to swirl with sunset colors and the stars were coming out. He wasn’t doing it on purpose, so maybe they had actually flown all “day” inside the dream. “What’s it like to really fly?”
"I stopped myself in the air a few feet down," she said. It wasn't quite the same as flying, but nothing really was.
As for his question... she pursed her lips, trying to find the right way to describe it. "It's a little like falling. But better, because you don't have to land until you want to. Or until you get tired."
Ronan considered this. He thought probably she meant that there were actual risks involved, unlike flying in a dream, where the physics of the dream would just change to prevent a fall hurting (unless it was a nightmare). There was no true swooping sensation in the gut when you dove from the air in a dream.
“Someday,” he said. “Someday I’ll figure it out.”
"You will." Witch couldn't be positive about that, but she sounded it anyway. If he could create this wondrous place, then he would eventually figure out how to fly in real life.
Until then, flying in a dream really was almost as good. The details were almost right.
"Would understanding how wings work help?" The question was genuine. Witch could explain the anatomy, the physics, of wings. She'd healed Lucivar's wings from the ground up.
“Probably,” Ronan agreed. He needed to know the true reality of an object to create it properly, to bring it back into the waking world. And he didn’t know how wings were supposed to work, especially for a human-shaped being.
It was possible, he considered, that this was part of the reason why Chainsaw hopped around a lot. Maybe he hadn’t made her wings properly, and they only flew because of magic, in spite of the physics of them. At least she could still fly, either way.
So she explained, the flex of muscles and the way delicate bones came together to form the frame. It was... frustrating, because there were some concepts that couldn't be conveyed by just words, but Witch didn't exactly have paper and pencil to demonstrate what she was talking about. So she painted the picture with words instead, as ineffective as they were.
The explanation was clinical, a healer's instead of a poet's, but she thought maybe that was what he needed anyway. That understanding of how the thing was made.
Ronan listened, and he wasn’t sure he fully understood, but it was still more understanding than he’d had before. He was tempted to try experimenting with wings, but it was starting to feel like he should be waking soon. “I’ll try again sometime,” he said. “Even if I can’t bring it back. Are you going to come visit me again?”
"I will," Witch promised. She didn't tell him when; it depended on other things, her life outside of the dreams and where they ended up and when. "I can help you practice. Even if you can't bring it back."
At least then when he could bring it back he'd have had time to perfect the process.
But it was time to go, so she told him, "I'll see you next time."
And then she dove; when she hit the ground, she was back in her own dreams, safe and sound.