Iris Falco is the Architect. (ariadnethread) wrote in musingslogs, @ 2010-10-11 09:01:00 |
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Once, when Iris was very little, her parents had taken her and her sister to a large botanical garden, complete with a vast, seemingly never-ending hedge maze. Iris had chased her sister into it, laughing as she went, but her laughter slowed as she found herself alone, making turn after turn with no exit in site, her sister's laughter distant and muted. Eventually, Iris' parents and a staff guide came in to lead her out, but the experience left an impact on her. Growing up, Iris would dream about wandering through that maze, her subconscious making every turn into a loop or dead end, her sister's laugh echoing throughout the maze.
But that was then. Now, combined with her only recently discovered navigational abilities and skills in dreaming, Iris had mastered her dream maze. It was difficult at first, but with the help of her memories of that day, Iris had constructed the "true path" of the maze, and while dreaming, Iris could leave it anytime she wished. When she left the maze, however, Iris would find herself in places that she knew were not of her creation...
Iris stepped out of the maze, leaving the familiar dirt path and dark green hedges behind her. The first time Iris had done this, it had been on accident, and Iris had felt confused and a little frightened. Now, however, Iris didn't mind the uncertainty that came with leaving her dream world behind. It was a lot like exploring the empty house at the end of the street, the excitement came from not knowing what you would find inside.
The sky was an odd, strange and warm pink glaze, like paint-water sitting in the sun’s path and with it came the damp heat of another world’s sun and the springy growth of twisted plants that rose and dipped against the landscape. Ahead, a small pavilion: squatting against the bank of a slow-running river, and beyond a building that seemed all ivory, carved into the sky with artisan’s care. If Iris looked to her left, a much-larger-than-life tiger, with bristling green fur and jet-black eyes strolled out from the maze behind her and brushed past her, tail low as he loped toward the river’s edge: his great head turned and he regarded this interloper, this newcomer with feline solemnity before strutting on.
A sharp cry from the air above, something not-bird circling with a feeling of slicing at the air until it shifted between the cold that slivered down the spine and the sticky warmth of the rest of the world. There was music: thin and eerily played but quite beautiful.
Iris had only recently taken up travelling into the minds of others, and so she hadn’t seen much in terms of dream landscapes. Still, Iris knew that this particular world, with it’s strange music and alien sky, would always stand out for her, no matter how surreal the dreamscapes she would enter in the future would be.
The tiger may have not thought much of Iris as it walked past her, but the feelings were certainly not mutual. Iris trembled as it walked past her, and as it soon as it reached the river bank, she began to quickly head towards the pavilion. The last time she had come that close to a projection, it had tried to attack her, and Iris had just barely managed to make a door back into her subconscious--she did not want a repeat of that instance.
Once the river bank and the tiger were barely visible, however, Iris began to relax. She took off her jacket (she had just gotten home from a night class in the real world, and hadn’t bothered to change before she fell asleep), and folded it over her arm. Iris began to half-hum, half-sing a song that had started to get stuck in her head recently.
“Walls are breathing, reaching up,” she murmured, “bum ba dum da dum...”
The pavilion was small and darkly carved with odd things: to look closely, you would see the twisting forms and shapes of not-things writhing together and dying together, and yet the light slanting through the open sides was bright and soft and wrapped about the almost empty place like a lover -- almost, because at the back of it, where it looked over the drifting river, was a small altar. Stripped bare of any trappings of any faith, there was a man on blue-bent knee there, wide shoulders beneath a gold-chain-link mantle and an intricate helm above. On entry, he turned and his wide, wide smile (all ivory teeth like piano keys that would snap) was only a little brighter than the scimitar at his side, and he placed a hand on it, belted across his body with a wide, wide crimson sash. The smell in the pavilion was all incense and honey, rich kind of scents that layered themselves against the tongue and left you hot and sweating with them.
If the dreamer lay within the dream, it was not here.
At the sight of the blue guard, with his toothy grin and gleaming scimitar, Iris stopped. Although she certainly enjoyed exploring people’s dreams, Iris was still unsure how to interact with their projections. The last time Iris had travelled into someone’s dream, their projections had clawed at her, and tried to tear her apart. However, there had been a couple of times when projections had acted politely towards her, and told her about the world she was in and the person who dreamt it. There was only one way to find out which type of projection this man was.
Iris gulped. “Excuse me, sir,” she called out. She was close enough for the man to hear her, but far enough away so that if he got up to attack her, she would have the chance to run. “I’m sorry to bother you, but can you tell me where I am?” As Iris waited for a reply, she tried not to look at the scimitar, and how sharp the blade appeared.
He opened his mouth wide, and there was no tongue there, only empty, inky blackness that seemed far greater and far more important than the mouth and throat could contain -- from deep within, a bird fluttered free, with wings the sooty color of nothing and everything, and it flew thrice above their heads and onward, beyond the pavilion to the hall that crouched against the sky like a secret. The man, whose skin was the color of summer skies in reality, whose eyes were all pupil and amber, rose from his knees and led the way, with a soft clink and chink of metals moving like water against the broad muscles of his back.
He led the way with the lilting grace of dancers on a floor of swords, and a peacock crossed against the path, with feathers it spread in warning, each one a delicate shiver of a blade in iridescent colors. The blue man ignored it, stepped around and over it, and when he turned his head back to see if Iris were still on the path, he smiled again -- but it was not a nice smile. Something so uncontainable, it defied being anything so prim, but he held out his hand and the palm of it was deep, deep indigo, and the door was in front of them, gold and heavy and ornate, and it swung open at his touch.
A bird had flown out of a man’s mouth, and they had just walked past a deadly peacock. Yes, when Iris would look back on the dream worlds that she had travelled to, this place would most certainly stand out. When the man smiled at her again, Iris shivered. That smile reminded her of one that she had seen on a homeless man as a child. Iris and her mother had just left a department store, and the man had been sitting on a doorstep. He had smiled at the two of them, just like that, and Iris’ mother had tightened her grip on Iris’ arm, and made them walk faster to the parking lot their car was in. You didn’t trust smiles like those on the homeless man or on this projection, they were indications that something was wrong with the person in front of you. However, what choice did Iris have? She had come too far in this world to simply run away from the strange man, and who knew what would happen if she tried to get past the bladed peacock or dancers on her own. Somewhere in the back of her mind, the image of a white door appeared, but Iris pushed away. There weren’t any doors like that here.
Iris looked through the now-open door, and then back at her guide. “Is it alright if I go up, sir?” she asked him, hoping that her fear of him wasn’t apparent in her voice.
He merely smiled his assent, and blinked those amber eyes, which was all the invitation one might find in this place -- ahead, lay a wooden-floored hallway, lit by sconces that jumped and flickered in non-existent wind -- a hallway which when followed, led around and around, deeper and more further into the building. Once inside it was cool, and dark and the light was a thin and pallid gold that danced always onwards. It would take a great deal of time to work further in (but in dreams, this was almost at the heart of this one) but the hallway opened up wide into a vaulted chamber and the music which had become nothing at all during the journey, began again. Now you could see it was played by strange instrumentalists: a giant cat with claws like knives plucking at a stringed object, a snake charmer with a cobra writhing and darting in front of him with each breath of the melody, and dancing to it, with lilting hips and laughing voices, were women, veiled in fabric light as gossamer.
They danced with peculiar grace, sliding in and around one another until you saw that they flickered at the edges and actually blended into one another, becoming one and then separate again, with gold-edged green veils, and jangling bracelets as they stamped -- and then they turned and when the light caught them, you could see they had no eyes -- where eyes ought to be, there was simply an absence above full pouting mouths, and noses. Beyond the girls, in the very fullness of the hall was a chamber -- scattered with cushions and drenched in hangings, and in the centre of it, a long and low table, covered in strange food and at its head, curled on a cushion and dressed in silks, a sloe-eyed man and beside him, a young woman who looked entirely too ordinary to be here, sat with straight back and dressed in something soft and white, taking a piece of something dripping amber (honey) in her mouth.
Dreams, to paraphrase a certain director, are only strange upon waking. When Iris had first entered this world, she had been shocked, even frightened by this other person’s projections. Now, after what was only about ten minutes in the waking world, Iris walked among them as if they were beings that she would see in her day-to-day life. Iris was still afraid, that was true, but it was the type of fear that one experiences when when walking around their school campus for the first time, or when they go to a party that they know few people at. She had almost entirely forgotten about her maze and the real world when she saw the young woman sitting in the chamber. Her ordinary appearance caused something to stir inside Iris, to remember something about a green maze and a white door.
Iris walked to the center chamber, and stood before the woman in white. “Excuse me,” she asked, “Are you the ruler of this land?” Ruler of this land, why did that word sound so strange on Iris’ tongue?
Joss -- for it was Joss who sat curled against the side of a silent king -- looked away from the table laden down with sweetmeats and strange dishes, the meat that was no animal of reality but the smell of which was curling in the steam, and the look she gave Iris was strange and wondering, hazed as though she knew she was quite asleep somewhere. She looked toward the walls, the heavy silks that draped them, the sconces and scattered candles, the girls who danced and stamped and whirled to another world’s music, and she withdrew her hand from that of the solemn, hooded-eyed man who seemed quite impassive to this invasion.
“I don’t know,” she said, and her voice was thoughtful, contemplative. “I don’t think I’m ruler, exactly.” It was a soft, husky kind of voice, one pleasant to listen to, the kind that made you drowsy to listen but a drowsy of being too happy and too rich-feeling to want to go anywhere or do anything else. It was a golden kind of sound, and Joss went on, “I think he is. He ought to be, he’s alone here, most of the time.” If Iris had been looking at the man straight on just then, it would have been a moment that was a blink, because in the next moment he was crowned, heavy with jewels -- but as if it had always been thus and it was simply an error in the looking that said he had not been before. Joss’s hand curled out of his grasp, still speaking, “If he were king, he’d wear a crown, and it would be so beautiful it would hurt to look at.” Her voice, so slow and contemplative fell into a rhythm, but as she spoke the place around them altered -- and then,
“Are you supposed to be here?” Joss looked at Iris, and her brown eyes were steady, interested rather than timid.
Iris blinked, confused. “Am I supposed to be here?” she repeated. She looked at the king, covered in jewels (had he been in the chamber with them all this time? He must have), and then back at herself. Iris was wearing jeans and a white button-down shirt, and held a black canvas jacket over her arm; no, she did not belong here. Still, where else could belong? There was no other world aside from the one that Iris and the young woman were in. Right?
“I. I think. Maybe?” Iris frowned, and ran her free hand through her hair. “I don’t know anymore.” Her mind flashed very briefly to walls made of green shrubs, and a white door, but she was not sure where she had seen them before, or if they were important.
“I’m sorry,” she told Joss, “But I can’t remember.” Iris looked around them. Her feet and legs ached terribly from the trek. “Is it alright if I sit down? It feels like it took me forever to get here.”
“It’s not polite of me not to have offered,” Joss, all dark soft curls and wide brown eyes, was concern and faint embarrassment, “I can offer tea? That’s how they do it, a cup of tea perhaps?” To look down at the table, now hip-height rather than low, and twisted white-iron rather than wood, it was covered not with dripping delights from the depths of the East but pastel pink-and-white cakes and steaming teapots, more than enough for anyone. The king had quite vanished and in his place a footman, dapper in a livery that was the same crimson and gold as the hangings had been -- Joss swept aside her nightgown’s skirts, all delicacy to be seated, the teapot in her hands.
“We ought to shake hands, really, if you’re supposed to be here.” The voice was back, low and rich and wondering. “You’d be invited to an afternoon tea with cucumber sandwiches, because of the way they make them, it’s usual. And there are always people to help you with your chair, because that’s the way it ought to be. If you’re here.” A frown, a soft one, but all the same -- “If you are here.”
Iris did not notice the sudden change in setting, for it had been as it always was. If someone had reminded her of the green tiger, or the blue man with the scimitar, she wouldn’t have known what they were talking about--who can ever remember the beginning of a dream, particularly when they’re in the midst of it? Still, the switch from an alien Arabia to an English sitting room did cause the image of a green maze to reappear in Iris head. Iris pushed the thought away again, however. She wanted to talk to the other young woman, and now that she thought about, she kind of wanted some tea.
“Well, in that case,” Iris said, holding out her hand, “I’m Iris. But what do you mean, if I am here? Where else could I be but...here?”
Joss’s smile was quite, quite bright -- the kind of smile that was more vivid because the giver didn’t often give them, and her hand on the teapot was steady -- until Iris asked her question and then it wavered and the stream of fragrant liquid wobbled on its way into a paper-thin cup and she looked all at once confused.
“I don’t write people like you,” she said, and the timbre of the voice was not that full-throated, gold kind of melody, the one that wove patiently on between the weft of dreaming, but something quite quiet, and thoughtful. “Not because I don’t like you, because I’m sure you’re very nice,” a hasty assurance: Joss played by the rules of even her own dreams, her own stories, manners mattered, “But they don’t write -- you could be elsewhere.” She set the tea-pot down, and it melted, a twisted puddle of china and tea against the tablecloth, steaming all the while and she looked at the proffered hand with consideration.
“I’m Joss,” she said, and took it. And all at once, it was nothing at all. Everything broken, gone apart and quite awake.
Iris had been surprised by the melting teapot, and had wanted to offer to clean it up, but then Joss had taken her hand, and she was lying flat on her stomach, listening to the wail of an ambulance siren outside of the Hamartia. She rolled over onto her back, and stared at the ceiling, thinking of green tigers and blue swordsmen, and worlds that changed in the blink of an eye. Iris looked around her room, at the photo of her and family in front of maze, at her white bedroom door with its pink plastic lei wrapped around the handle, and wondered how she could have mistaken the dream world for the real one, how she could forgotten anything from her life. She had never lost herself in a dream before, but then again, none of the other dreams Iris had visited so far had been quite as vivid as Joss’. That had been her name, hadn’t it? Joss?
Iris grabbed a pen and a small black notebook off of her dresser, and started writing furiously. She wanted to remember the dreamscapes she visited, and, like with normal dreams, she had to write them down in order not to lose them. As Iris wrote about the green tiger and swordsman, she wondered if Joss did the same.