Re: To G. Tolleson; a Missive from Afar
Posted: Sat Sep 08, 2018 12:59 pm
Several things happened in short order: Genny had offered her trust in exchange for a demand, Gloria charged, and the sword vanished. There was something else. What was it? It was there, it was somewhere, right on the tip of her tongue. As if she’d walked into a room and forgotten why she’d come; Elliot’s touch was gone and she stood as if fending off sleep, dumbly watching the enthralling illumination, the thorns, and blue roses as they came into existence.
“Keep her,” questioning, sing-song words fell out of her, as if she were trying to remember the next line in a childhood lullaby she hadn’t heard in years. Her hand reached out to the space between, slow as if she moved through tar, with straining fingers, grasping for the wrist of that tattooed arm. Perhaps all she’d catch were tendrils of smoke and imagination.
The words drowned as familiar, small bells began to chime. Their merry warning initiated glistening ripples like water drops onto the fabric of the dream that had been the floor. The sound distorted to hearty tones that built into a gentle melody as lucidity lost out, the hand that had gripped the sword relaxed, and focus fell away. The horrors Gloria reflected were captured upon the surface, an undulating reality that became like water.
The sword had been a thread tethering Genny to memories, to the control of her slumbering body’s conscious mind. The sword ought to have been just an object, merely a memory pulled with purpose into a lucid dream. It was as foreign and as out of it’s own time and place as the deformed creature. With it yanked free, as though it were the only thing holding her upright, she collapsed. Or rather, she inverted. Folding into herself and through what was left of the floor until she stood below them both, a curious reflection looking down, up at them from below.
The floor, as unstable as it might look could easily hold Elliot. His mind wasn’t quite so easy to enter, after all. But for Gloria, it might be as though the water rose, or perhaps she fell. The dream below the turbulent sea surface, beckoning and pulling her under.
“Keep her,” questioning, sing-song words fell out of her, as if she were trying to remember the next line in a childhood lullaby she hadn’t heard in years. Her hand reached out to the space between, slow as if she moved through tar, with straining fingers, grasping for the wrist of that tattooed arm. Perhaps all she’d catch were tendrils of smoke and imagination.
‘...wake up now,’
The words drowned as familiar, small bells began to chime. Their merry warning initiated glistening ripples like water drops onto the fabric of the dream that had been the floor. The sound distorted to hearty tones that built into a gentle melody as lucidity lost out, the hand that had gripped the sword relaxed, and focus fell away. The horrors Gloria reflected were captured upon the surface, an undulating reality that became like water.
The sword had been a thread tethering Genny to memories, to the control of her slumbering body’s conscious mind. The sword ought to have been just an object, merely a memory pulled with purpose into a lucid dream. It was as foreign and as out of it’s own time and place as the deformed creature. With it yanked free, as though it were the only thing holding her upright, she collapsed. Or rather, she inverted. Folding into herself and through what was left of the floor until she stood below them both, a curious reflection looking down, up at them from below.
The floor, as unstable as it might look could easily hold Elliot. His mind wasn’t quite so easy to enter, after all. But for Gloria, it might be as though the water rose, or perhaps she fell. The dream below the turbulent sea surface, beckoning and pulling her under.