# Awakening, An Aisling's Dream 
*by Lydien du Vent*

### Part One: Flame, Immured
*Once, when I was young, I had a dream. My senses were  
not dulled, withal, but keen and discerning; heightened,  
yet in strange accord, none more sovereign than another.  
A sort of synesthesia, wherein all that comprised  
my self laid equal claim to whatever I beheld,  
be it reverie or nightmare.*

In this dream, I met a young boy. A child, outwardly, but  
His eyes betrayed an age far greater. They were aflame with  
passion, with contempt - in them, I beheld the reflection  
of a life of bloodshed, of war, and of loss.

The child spoke not with voice but with color. His words  
were pigments, like an artist's, save that His canvas  
was the thin veil of frosted air between us. He wrote  
upon it with light, with sinister flame, in a language  
I had never known, but understood innately.

To me, He painted His revelation, though I did not witness  
it with mine eyes, but rather tasted it upon my breath:  
Fire of deepest jade, a voracious blaze, insatiable though  
it supped constantly upon wisps of tenebrous mist. And as  
the sombre strands kindled the flame, He painted screams -  
pained, tortured wails which infected me with anguish and  
with sorrow; with empathy for the souls of those whose loss  
I suffered but could never know or ease or cure.

Then, the boy sighed, and from His lips bled enmity. For  
the souls whose screams obscured their own failings, their  
sins - their indulgences of the flesh, their impurity,  
their feigned innocence. Deserving of punishment, they  
were, but in His enmity, I tasted also a bitter remorse,  
for the punishment was cruel and unrelenting. And in the  
moment of their demise, the dark tendrils knew only fear.

Quickly was His contrition obfuscated, hidden away,  
and in its place a deeper, more concentrated abhorrence  
than I had ever felt. Resentment; not for the voices, not  
for the clouds of smoke, nor for the life once lived which  
had been lost; but rather for that for which that life,  
that self, had been deliberately sacrificed - bargained  
away for some consideration long forgotten. For now,  
as He closed His mouth, I witnessed not the flame, but  
that which lay beyond it. An empty nothingness,  
so vast and so sable as to siphon the light from the flame,  
consuming it like a ravenous vortex, a void  
from which nothing could ever hope to escape.

And thereupon, I beheld the oblivion for what it truly was:  
a prison, the flame's prison - His prison.

### Part Two: Apostate
*At first, this dream, this world, was foreign and obscure,  
indiscernible, an offense to itself, without meaning, or  
shape, or purpose. But little by little, it gave way,  
the foreignness became familiar, the obscurity: clear.  
The sensations were not mine, but it was to me they spoke;  
to my will which they bent, or perhaps I to theirs.*

A woman. Dressed in a simple, white gown of fine velvet.  
It was sheer, such that I could make out the comely shape  
of Her delicate form and the fairness of Her silky,  
unblemished skin beneath as it flowed loosely past Her hips  
and down Her slender legs. Though She looked the other way,  
I could see the silhouette of Her face cast against the  
moon through the window; it was clear and warm and focused,  
framed by Her flaxen hair, smooth and without flaw.

She paid me no mind, for Her focus lay elsewhere; on a  
finely-carved loom with threads of pure, golden light.  
Meticulously, She wove warp and weft - together and apart,  
over and under, with a precision delicate yet deliberate.  
I could not help but marvel at Her - Her beauty, Her poise;  
I was enamored of Her, enthralled by Her.

And yet, as I stood there, in awe, She was perfectly  
composed, each movement made with absolute control, the  
threads at Her fingertips gently humming, beating with a  
quiet, inexorable pulse; living, breathing, not merely  
displaced by Her hands, but rather compelled to obey them.  
Not once did Her focus waver, not once did She offer me so  
much as a glance. She did not need to, for in Her focus,  
in Her silence lay a knowing: that I was already caught in  
the web She so expertly wove.

Day after day, She worked the loom with the golden threads.  
And each day, I watched. My infatuation growing, deeper, more  
intense, until it became limerence, perhaps even obsession.  
It was not until She was nearly done with Her creation that  
I took notice of it at all, felt the power that emanated  
from it, as though it were made from latent potential.

And then, She drew the final thread across the loom and all  
grew still. It did not blaze like a flame nor gleam like  
the sun, but rather shimmered with the promise of what yet  
may be. The light swelled then softened, it took no form.  
I could sense that it was alive, and that it waited,  
though for what, I did not know. It was a lattice, of  
brilliance and silence and desire and fear, and at its  
heart, it was radiant, perfect and effortless.

But at its edges, it was something else. It searched for  
something to give it shape. There was a hunger, as if the  
light itself yearned for shadow. I felt then its pull,  
a subtle tug as though it had reached within me and  
gripped my very being. Whether through intuition or  
instinct I do not know, but its significance to me  
was apparent. Writ upon my future like an ill-star  
across the sky. It was a quiet, terrible summons.

She frowned, only slightly, as if acknowledging this flaw;  
one She had already foreseen, quietly relinquishing the  
hope that Her premonition might still have proved false.  
And then, She turned Her gaze upon me, just for a moment.  
And in that single glance, my fate was sealed.

### Part Three: Aisling
*The dream was indistinguishable from waking life. In sooth,  
I was afeared, that the dream should prove endless.  
How then could I know, how would I discern the difference  
between it and the true way of things? Even now, as I  
flounder, the chill grasp of uneasiness gripping the breath  
in my chest, am I even certain I know which is which?*

A simple child from Gusty Row, born in Abel, living an  
inconsequential life, a Mundane life, among the merchants  
and sailors and Fiosachd's faithful. It feels a lifetime  
ago, ancient history, that I laid down to bed, for the  
last and first time, unknowing, unassuming, unwilling.

When I closed my eyes, it was not repose that greeted me.  
No, I did not sleep, but I did dream. My eyes were closed,  
yet still I beheld a place, a realm, that felt both within  
and beyond, without sky or sea or land or life. It was a  
liminal space, a world which could only exist when it was  
unobserved, for it was not mine own eyes that witnessed it,  
but rather senses borrowed from somewhere else, from  
something else; senses unfit for a poor boy from Abel.

And, as I stood there in that impossible place, a light  
began to shine. Not an outburst of revelation, but rather  
a calm and quiet weight, like a warm blanket, as though it  
had been waiting for me to arrive, to greet me with the  
comfort and recognition of an old friend. A flame, of  
golden jade, a boy with sorrowful eyes.

The flame burned more brightly now. No more was He  
stifled, smothered by the endless obsidian void. He reached  
out to me, or perhaps I was drawn to Him, and a radiant,  
golden lattice of bittersweet memories leapt from His hand.  
It buried itself in me, tracing the seams of my mind,  
filling the hollow spaces I had never known were there.  
Though there was no warmth, I felt heat. Though I was  
blinded by the light, I saw: Blurred visions of hundreds  
of years of suffering, of greed, of betrayal. The world  
was revealed to me and it bestowed unto me only woe.  
The shimmering shapeless energy began to consume me, and  
I sensed now that it was not only light; that the distress  
which suffused me was born from long-forgotten tendrils of  
inky-black smoke, the wails of a thousand thousand souls.

And then it was over, as quickly as it had onset. The  
otherworld took shape once again, but now I could see it  
as it was meant to be seen. It was brighter, clearer; every  
sound was pure and filled with harmony; every light cast a  
shadow that held within it purpose and will. I beheld now  
a world with its own pulse which endured beneath the  
surface, like the steady beating of a heart, or the  
rhythmic cadence of a drum.

The air was heavy with a new taste, like a child's first  
sips of wine, or the wartime call of one's king. It was  
a loss of innocence. For though I understood nothing,  
I knew: Whatever I had been before, I was no longer.

The dream had ended, or perhaps it had only begun.