Dreams of the Children

The Homecoming dreams of the Children of Ormwood

Diana

She dreamed of the burning tenement, so many voices crying out in pain as the flames consumed them. People praying for release, for absolution in their last moments. Parents attempting to comfort their children in their last moments. She could put a face to each of those voices and she knew it was her fault. Her plan. But there was another voice, unfamiliar. Perhaps she could save this one. She chased it through the maze of flame and ruin until face to face with the great condor. She was ice surrounded by flame under its gaze. It knew. It knew everything, every sin, every damnation. And she quailed and faltered under its gaze and the dream began again.

Again and again she chased the voice. Sometimes there was one and she lost it only to burn as the flames consumed her, sometimes two leading her in different directions or distracting her long enough that the flames caught her in her indecision, but in the end she always found the condor and wilted under its gaze only to begin again. Yet each time it seemed less intimidating. She could see where the flames had burned its feathers and where old injuries of belt and hand had left great bruises and welts on its flanks. It held its head high because it could no longer no longer fly, could no longer even stand, yet it refused to be cowed by the blows and the flames. She saw herself in those eyes, felt its bruises on her skin, and could not fear it any more. She reached out to touch it as gently as it would allow and this time, as the flames consumed her, they rose as one with them, reborn.

Morris

The lake was black and moonless, only the twinkling of stars hanging mockingly overhead as the boat drifts so very far out of reach and the water rises up to swallow him. Something catches his foot, he kicks away and it snaps back to grab tight and pull him down into the depths. The water closes over him like a cold blanket, impenetrably heavy and stubbornly refusing to move aside no matter how much he flails and begs it to part, for the root-mud-claw-grasp to loosen. No-one comes, the breath is burning in his lungs, head light and full of stars, he has to breath. He can't breathe, he must hold on even as the surface falls upward away from him.

An eternity of this. Rising to catch the barest hint of breath before being plunged back under, alone and floundering. Another hand whips through the water deeper below, felt rather than seen or heard. It whips and swipes, desperate for air, for help, for any purchase to escape from the mud and glar of the lakebed. His lungs are bursting, burning, searing him raw and hollowing him out with the need for air, until finally desperately he reaches out for that hand as water pours into his lungs. A cold grip pulls him down, away from the burning light and stern gazes and into the quiet, cool, comforting silence of the deep, where nothing is asked of him save to be.

Jane

The thorns cut her clothes and flesh as easy as air as she pushed through the tangled hedgerows and overgrown bushes, desperate to find somewhere to hide from it. The gaunt figure lumbered slowly after her, long limbs eating up distance with such casual ease that it took the time to prune a few flowers as it passed. The flowers gnashed and warbled their incoherent half-words, fangs snapping at the gardeners fingers even as he tenderly cupped them in one hand for pruning. Jane kept running and he kept following, step by bloody step she ran yet he kept drawing closer. A voice among the tangle of cries from the flowers, familiar, brother.

It called to her as she ran, beckoning her one way then another, always away from the gardener but she could not follow. Could not bring it to him. SHe knew what it did to her, lovingly pruning each unnecessary digit and limb from her, snip by agonising snip until she was ready to be planted and what was left would be compost and fertilizer. She'd failed him before. How could be be here, how could she let that be his fate too. So she ignored the voice and the gardener caught her. Snip. Snip. Snip. Each time the voice pleaded, begged her to come and she tried not to but each time she followed it the chase was longer and the pain farther away. She plead with the voice not to make her lead the gardener to him, that she was sorry, that she could not lose him again, even as she kept running toward it.

The hedgerows parted before the voice and the gardener was there, brother's voice echoing from the hollow cavity in its emaciated chest. She stopped running and did not resist this time. Snip. Snip. Snip. It planted her in the hole where its heart should be and her brother whispered his forgiveness from deep within.