song and shadow / shadow and song

[nekokoban]

The first dream was when he was ten years old. His mother slept in her new bed of earth and his father spent nights in his chair before the fire rather than retire to a lonely bed, and Len pulled blankets into a heap over himself and curled up as small as possible, keeping his head under the pillow and breathing hot stale air until he slept.

He dreamed: he found himself at the top of a series of weathered stone stairs with nowhere else to go but down.

So down he went.

In his dream, Len walked and didn't actually count the steps, though when he reached the bottom he knew there were precisely seventy-six. He looked back and had the thought: there's a new one every time someone different walks this way. He shook it away and kept going, down a short narrow passage that opened up into a large cave full of strange pale light that echoed with dripping water and the sound of his footsteps. At the far end was a dark coiled shape that spanned the width of the entire curved wall.

It opened large yellow eyes, and Len recognized the dragon. With the peculiar logic of dreams, he wasn't afraid, but he did stop, because he'd never *seen* a dragon before, not in pictures and not in dreams. The dragon stared at him without blinking, and something small and white uncurled itself from beside its great muzzle. Len turned his head and realized it was a girl.

She had his face.

"Hello," she said. Her voice did not echo in the cave, though it set off a certain chain effect of ripples down his spine. She had a smile that was brighter than anything he'd ever seen. "Who are you?"

"Shouldn't you know?" he asked. "I'm dreaming. People know each other in dreams."

She frowned at him. Her pale brows drew together and she touched her mouth with small white fingers, like she was testing the feeling of her words before she said them. "Well, if it is a dream, then it isn't a very good one," she said. "Because I don't know who you are. I'm Rin," and she held out her hand.

Len looked at it. He looked at her face. He reached out and grasped her hand in his, and it felt a little like finding a missing part of himself. She blinked a few times, and he thought: ah, you feel the same way.

"I'm Len," he said.

+++

"There was a boy," she said, as the High Priestess brushes her hair. "He sang with me. There were harmonies that I've never heard before. I think even the dragon liked it."

"Don't be foolish," said the High Priestess, whose mouth was a flat line, but whose eyes were very sad. "It doesn't like or dislike your songs. It's just calmed by them."

+++

The last dream was when they camped in the shadow of the Dragon Mountain, which loomed tall and foreboding and so close that the air smells faintly of sulfur. He did not have enough blankets to make the same sort of cocoon he did when he was a child, so he curled on his side and shivered, exhaling soft puffs of steam with his cheek pillowed on his folded jacket. He listened to the sounds of breathing: Meiko, Kamui--not Kaito, though, because he knew if he rolled over, he would see the smiling man tending to the fire instead. Six months, and he couldn't remember Kaito sleeping once.

He closed his eyes.

In the cave, he lay with his head in Rin's lap, both with their backs to the dragon, who seemed uninterested in their presence. (After the first time, it didn't even bother to open its eyes whenever Len came.) She ran her fingers through his hair and did not sing for him; something in the line of her back, as she leaned over him, made him think of the rain the day their mother died.

"I'm almost here," he said.

She pressed her fingers down until the tips rested against his scalp. She said, "Be careful. The Oracle is angry."

Len rolled onto his back and looked up. Her face was very serious and a little sad. He wanted to ask why she looked like that when he was coming to rescue her--and after that, he wouldn't have to dream to see her, or hold her hand, or listen to her sing. He reached up to touch the corner of her mouth, like he could push it back up into that smile he remembered. Before he could, she caught his wrist and pulled his palm to her cheek instead.

"I'm waiting," she said quietly. "Promise me you'll be safe."

He said, "Promise you'll wait for me."

She didn't answer him, just like he hadn't answered her. She kept her hand pressed over his, against her cheek, and she closed her eyes to sing.

Comments

[lluvia]

Bawwwww. ;;


K-Kaito doesn't sleep he waits aaaaaahhh.

[corinthian]

Aaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh ♥ !