InsaneJournal

Prompt #14 - Dreams.
Character: Cesare Borgia
Fandom: Cantarella/history
Prompt: #14 - Dreams
Rating: PG
*****

They say a failsafe method to have strange dreams is to think about what you did that day before you fall asleep. I've heard this only recently, I'll admit, but it rings true. It explains many a scare I received in Morpheus' arms. And I'm not referring to your usual parade of leering succubi. Or incubi, for that matter.

The most terrible dream I ever had, though, was not a figment of the mind. I only had to open the window to see that my nightmare had become true.

See, there had been a storm, raging over Rome for hours. One of the heavy summer storms that brew during the day, gathering humidity from the marshes, boiling up in campagna. Storm clouds will push up to the Sabine Hills and the Colli Albani; they'll wheel and mill overhead like Scylla and Charybdis. Once they break, they show no mercy. They'll flatten harvests and rip off roofs. They'll send cattle into panic and make men cower and hide. - It was one of those.

It had been a miserable day to begin with. I was cranky and fretful, and I had retired to my rooms in the Borgo early in the evening. I must have fallen asleep before the storm started, and the sound of rain was gentle and soothing at first.

Suddenly, I saw the city bathed in light. I don't know if you've witnessed it yet, but a lightning sky over Rome is something... quite special. It makes you understand why they call her Eternal. There were lines of blinding light crackling across the roofs, but they were brightest - most vicious - over Castel Sant' Angelo. And with an earth-shattering roar, the explosion of a hundred cannons, the Archangel atop the castle... fell.

An angel, broken and toppling, driven apart from the inside, debris flying, split by forces it could no longer contain. What a ghastly portent.

I woke in a sweat, trembling and drenched. Throwing open the window against battering rains, I saw that my dream was reality. It had happened: the age old statue had broken apart. No five minutes later Taddeo came knocking on my door, telling me that Michelotto had fled.

My angel had left me.

I sent Taddeo away and collapsed against the window sill.