Melinoe, Goddess of Ghosts (shadedmelinoe) wrote in history_dot_com, @ 2012-09-30 17:01:00 |
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Entry tags: | ~hades, ~melinoe |
Bridge of Light [Ancient Greece, the Underworld] (tag: Hades)
Nightmares were not new to Melinoe. She had, quite literally, grown up with them, as you do when one is Underworld nobility. She adored Phobetor and the rest of his many siblings and the adoration seemed to be mutual, but there was a key difference in knowing nightmares and having one herself.
Melinoe was having a nightmare. Like so many dreams, there was a lack of inherent logic present, no looming, threatening apparent danger. Only a swill and chaotic enveloping feeling of loss, fear and something else cold and oily that settled in the pit of her stomach that she had no name for. Physically her body coiled into a tight ball, dragging at sheets until she was a barely noticeably bump in a sea of upturned and knotted linen. In the darkness of her room she still continued to sleep despite the violence inherently displayed in the makeshift mound, an instinctive bulwark though the menace was inside her own head.
In the dreamscape she hid and covered her head with her arms, cowering. Misshapen and hideous figures were no fears of her, nor were shadows. A childish imagination had no limits when it came to terror, however, and that was no deterrent to using everything that she loved sand saw as mundane against her. Grotesque flowers grew out of stalks from the cold, hard ground, blooming into things with teeth and eyeballs, releasing foul, decayed scents in mockery of her mother’s garden. They reached out to touch her with petals that felt like cold, dead flesh. Say what you liked about the Underworld, they had shades. Not corpses.
Worse still was the empty feeling of being absolutely alone. Bravery for others and around others was easy. Bravery when completely alone and nowhere to go and no one to go to was different. There was hope there, a hope for safety and relief and warmth. In her dream she felt utterly alone in the way that made her feel that somehow in her world everyone she loved had ceased to be, or never had been. An illusion that in the waking world would seem downright stupid but reigned strong in the subconscious.
She shuddered every time a cold, thick petal crowded against her ankles and shins in spurious affection. There was neither light nor shadow, everything was dim and gray, and there was only her and the macabre flowers no matter how hard she ran or how loudly she shouted for her parents, for Thanatos, for anyone. They didn’t answer. They didn’t exist.
Melinoe awoke with a start, stomach cramping from the tightness of the ball she’d tucked into, lungs and throat sore as if she had been running and shouting for people that would never come. Her eyes opened, pupils dilated until they nearly swallowed the iris. They were unseeing under the covers until she finally drew in a long breath and then exhaled it in a barely audible whimper.
She didn’t move.
She didn’t dare.