A dream.
A dying dream.
A darkness deeper than any she had ever known before crowded her vision, eating away at the world, at her senses. She knew she was dying - not only by the surrealism of her surroundings, but because she could feel the numb tingling in the tips of her fingers, the tightness in her chest, and the strange feeling of overpowering weight that had settled itself upon her limbs. She knew by the way her vision seemed to flicker - the way she sensed colors and shapes and sounds on the very edge of her consciousness. The way shards of memory bobbed on her thoughts, fading in and out of focus. The way time seemed to compress and expand.
Yes, a dying dream. This made sense. She was, after all, dying.
Dying as she had never known the threat of death before. Dying a death from which one could never return. A permanent and irreversible thing that would leave nothing behind. A death that would destroy the very essense of her existence, as if she had never been. A death that would obliterate all that she was, ever had been, ever could have become.
She hadn't been saved. It wasn't enough. There was no turning back. There was no moving forward.
Distorted faces swam before her vision, appearing and melting away like hot candlewax. With them came memories of memories. Names that she remembered knowing, yet remaining just beyond her the reach of her recollection. Familiar and yet strange. There were stories behind those faces, but her focus was scattered, and those too were lost.
"Shy'nar."
An echoed name spoken with her voice, though she could not recall saying anything, nor even wanting to say anything. It bloomed in the darkness, an ember on the wind, a rock in a tumultuous sea to which she could cling, keeping her head just above waters that would surely drown her.
"Shy'nar."
There was nothing there. No one. Just the memory of a man she had loved more than she could ever come to terms with. A man she had lost. A man whose steady, honest gaze had captured her from the moment she met it; captured her and never since let go.
The darkness expanded, sweeping outwards, and with an abruptness that should have startled her, she found herself in a room, blocked in by four solid walls, a ceiling, and a floor steady beneath her feet.
It was familiar to her. At first, entirely bare, but she knew what it was meant to be, and in a sudden rush her mind filled in all the missing pieces with hyper-realistic detail. Every crease and wrinkle in the sheets. The feeling of the thick fibers of carpet beneath her bare toes. The way candlelight and shadow danced across the walls. The gleaming curve of glasses resting atop the dark wood of a nightstand. The papers scattered haphazardly over a nearby bench. The closet, its doors flung open, sparsely filled with clothing. The desk, pressed into the corner, piled high with all manner of books and parchments, writing utensils and strange objects that seemed to have no purpose.
She remembered it all. Every detail. She could see the individual cracks in the marbled stone of the walls. She could see the delicate filligree on the lamp that hung from the ceiling, unlit now but still beautiful. She knew it by heart, like the back of her hand, like the syllables of her name. It was etched in her heart, because it was the place where he had been. Where they had been, together.
"Shy'nar."
And as suddenly as the room had appeared, so did he. A blink of an eye and he was there, bent over the desk with head bowed, the scritch of his quill filling the otherwise eeriely silent room. She knew this scene. She had awoken to it many a night.
Her chest hurt.
"Shy'nar." She whispered the name, a pressure building in beneath her ribs that she couldn't explain. Ah... no. She could. She was dying, after all. There wasn't much time left.
"Shy'nar, look at me." Her voice rose, trembling, but the figure did not move, and the scritch of his quill filled the room still. She wanted to reach for him. She wanted to move to him, but her limbs wouldn't obey.
"Shy'nar! Please! Look at me!"
A wave of desperation crashed over her. Panic that had been held at bay, suddenly released. She was dying! She was dying! She was dying, and there was nothing she could do to stop it. There was no one who could save her - not now, not anymore. Perhaps not ever.
No... no! There's still so much... so much I wanted to do! So many plans, so many dreams! I had time! Nothing but time... nothing but time, he said... Where has it all gone?! It's too soon! It's too soon!
Her screams had been silenced, turned inwards, spiralling down into the darkness that was fast consuming all that she was. Her limbs had gone numb - so numb she was no longer certain they were there at all. There was only the growing pressure, the suffocating pain in her chest to remind her that she was still alive, just barely. And then a strangled cry, demanding and furious and heartbreakingly desperate.
"Shy'nar, I'm dying!"
The room shattered, breaking into fragments that seemed to glitter before her eyes. The man shattered with them - his silvery hair, his stiff shoulders, the tense curve of his bent back, the lines of his face that made him appear so much older than he was, the sorrow in his kind, gentle eyes, the weight of his large hands, the security and strength of his presence.
Gone. All gone.
Please... Please... if there is a God out there, listening, I beg you... Don't let this be the end. I'm not ready. I never asked for this!
Why now? What twist of fate had brought her to such an end, at the moment in her life when she had finally felt her heart calm and settle - when she had finally found some measure of contentment, focus, purpose? Nothing but time, he had said, and she had believed him. She had believed him, trusted him, and he had been wrong.
So very, very wrong.
The shards fragmented further, breaking into tinier and tinier pieces until they were little more than glittering sparks filling the darkness with pinpoints of light. Like stars. Like the night sky spread out above and below and on all sides. Floating in an ocean of galaxies.
The pressure was destroying her. Crushing her. The pain was a fire - indistinct yet all consuming. Soon she would be nothing but ashes - but little flecks of embers in this sea of stars. And then even that would be gone.
Scared...
She wasn't certain she had ever known fear like this. She had woken many a night to purge the contents of her stomach over the side of her bed, sweaty and wracked by nightmares - but it had never been like this. Never so paralyzing. Never so overpoweringly, debelitatingly definite. Even those nights, huddled in the corner of that wretched cell, her rotting flesh crawling with white maggots, her body wracked by fever, every inch of her flesh beaten and bloody and broken. Even those nights.
I'm scared...
The pressure was growing and, one by one, the lights were winking out. She was crumbling - physically, mentally, emotionally. Every iota of her being was breaking apart and falling away. Each exstinguished light was another piece of herself, lost.
Save me. Save me. Save me. Save me.
Fragments of words, of faces, of sounds and smells and touches. All that she was, all that she had ever been, turned to crumbs, and she desperately grabbing at the remains in an attempt to keep herself together.
Save me. Save me. Save me.
The lasts lights were going out, and her sense of self was going with it. Her memories escaped her, her thoughts skittering after them. Her feelings scattered, leaving only strange impressions behind - the ghosts of pain and fear and desperation and so much regret and guilt.
Her last thought, cast into the darkness that would consume her.
SAVE ME!
