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edenfallingWherein, for some unknown reason, dreams are in present tense and italics, though the rest of the story remains in past tense and normal font. If that is too jarring, please tell me, since dream scenes will be a recurring thing. (1,425 words)
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Weregild, part 6
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Every person dreamed uniquely, if only because every person carried a different collection of memories and preoccupations down into sleep, to be rearranged over and over like a demented jigsaw puzzle with infinite possible solutions.
On a more practical level, Ariadne had found that dreams tended to fall into four broad categories: replays of events that held emotional significance to a dreamer; mangled fragments of a dreamer's recent life; embodiments of a dreamer's current worries; and scrambled flights of fancy with no obvious source in anything from waking life. The second and third type were most useful. Memory dreams tended to be obscure unless she knew the dreamer well, and the fourth type -- the utterly batshit dreams, as she sometimes called them -- were worthless to anyone but a fantasy writer seeking new story ideas.
Tonight, Cobb was dreaming in slightly skewed memories. Ariadne settled herself on the outskirts of his mind and watched.
-----
He stands in a fashionable Paris salon, feeling terribly out of place in his jeans and t-shirt. Everyone must be staring at him, murmuring about naïve colonials. He has no idea how Dr. Franklin ignores the constant stares and whispers.
And then he looks across the room and sees Her, looking at him. Her hair curls softly around her face, stray tendrils escaping the elaborate styling; her eyebrows are a rich brown, and he thinks her hair would share that color, free of its dusting of powder. Her eyes are a grayish blue, like skies that promise coming rain after a drought. Her hands, when she moves them, are both delicate and strong.
He wouldn't mind if she stared and whispered. She can do anything she wants.
Suddenly they're standing side by side, and she smiles and offers her hand. "Mallorie Deschain," she says, when he asks her name. "You are Dominic Cobb, secretary to the estimable Dr. Franklin. You are very brave, to have come across the ocean knowing the English would hang you if they should catch your ship."
Her accent caresses each word like honey.
She is ten years older than he is, at least. She is beautiful. She is rich. She is perfect.
He has no idea what she sees in him, why she lets him marry her, why she carries his child.
When the vampires kill her, when they throw her to the ground and savage her, when they seize her body and flee, leaving nothing but a trail of gore than ends, impossibly, in the middle of an open street, he goes mad.
///
He stands in a fashionable Paris salon, feeling terribly out of place in his trench coat and shabby suit...
-----
Ariadne pulled back to catch her metaphorical breath. Dreams could whiplash hard enough to shake her sense of reality, years of scattered joys and despairs condensed to a purity of emotion she rarely encountered in waking life. Cobb had loved Mallorie Cobb to the bottom of his soul. Losing her had been like losing half of himself.
Clearly they had reunited at some point, only for history to repeat itself with greater finality. No wonder Cobb dreamed of her.
But while that told Ariadne about Cobb's past, his dream revealed nothing about his present or his future plans.
Perhaps Arthur would be more informative. She slid into the edges of his mind, a silent, unnoticed observer.
-----
Arthur throws the phone onto the motel bed in boiling frustration and quickly repressed fear.
"Damn it," he says, glad that Dom isn't here and he doesn't have to be the reasonable one for a few minutes.
Fuck Eames, it's been nearly a month and not one word; what is Arthur supposed to think? He knows the bastard isn't dead -- he knows people who know people, and reputation and favors get him pretty much anywhere he needs to go, sooner or later -- and Eames is alive and sitting pretty and not following the plan.
Fuck him.
Arthur is going to kneecap him in St. Louis. With silver bullets. See how he likes that.
///
And oh, he does like that taste. There is something about pistachio ice cream he absolutely cannot resist, which is baffling because he loathes nuts in general. Then again, he likes amaretto and marzipan, and hazelnut flavor in his coffee, so perhaps it's a general oddness.
Arthur licks the last residue from the cheap plastic spoon and watches Mal and Dom dance to imaginary music down by the water's edge. The moon is waning gibbous in the sky, and they are as far from modern artificial lights as they can get.
He reaches down to smooth Philippa's hair where she naps on a flannel picnic blanket, worn out from building sandcastles and chasing James through the shallow waves.
Philippa likes pistachio ice cream too, but Arthur thinks she only says that to flatter him.
///
"You flatter me," he says, his gun a reassuring weight in his hands, aimed at the blond stranger's chest. "I know your reputation. The younger vampires call you Death."
"You can call me Edward," the blond man says with an empty-eyed smile. "I have a proposition for you."
"I'm listening," Arthur says, without changing his aim.
///
He changes his aim and drops the ragged woman holding the towheaded toddler like a living shield. The bullets pass within half an inch of the boy's head, but Arthur knows his aim is true.
The little girl screams. Arthur whirls to see her dash across the warehouse, the half-shifted werewolf in belated pursuit, distracted for that key second by Arthur's unexpected move.
Arthur drops him too, two shots to the chest, one to the head, and then another to each spot to make sure. He turns back to his first target. The woman is on the ground, wheezing -- lung shot, then. Her right hand is still wrapped around the toddler's arm and her left is groping for her fallen knife.
Arthur steps on her wrist and shoots her between the eyes. Blood and bone spray over the concrete floor beneath her head, which bounces slightly from the force of impact.
Arthur scoops up the toddler, wondering absently why the boy isn't crying, why he's reaching for the pooling blood in curiosity instead of pulling back in fear. He pulls out his cell phone and calls the police.
///
"The police, the police, what can the police do!" Mal says, anger drawing her skin tight against the elegant bones of her skull. "This is no business for mortals. Peter Lebrun is my problem. I will solve him myself."
"Your problems are my problems," Dom says, stroking his hands along her bare arms.
"Our problems," Arthur corrects. "I still think it's worth giving them a heads-up that the children may be in danger. Their attention may make Lebrun reconsider whether they're cost-effective targets, and if nothing else, it will make Marie and Miles sleep easier and stop nagging you so often."
Mal laughs, a brilliant, coruscating sound like a rain of flowers and precious jewels. "Ah, my Arthur, always the clever one. You are right. I will call tomorrow night."
///
Tomorrow night they meet with Jean-Claude.
There are ten thousand ways this could go wrong. It's Arthur's job to think of them and plan around them all. He hates planning around unknowns -- he doesn't know who'll be there, he doesn't know what powers they have, he doesn't know nearly enough about Jean-Claude himself, no matter what he knows secondhand from listening to Dom and Mal reminisce or from brushing their edges of their dreams.
Arthur aches, remembering better days. Dom's been a shade of himself since Mal died. Arthur would be too, if he didn't have to keep Dom together. Mal was the best of them both. God, he misses her.
He misses the feel of her teeth slicing into the skin over his collarbone or pricking his wrist like kitten claws. He misses the paradoxical warmth of her power, fire springing to life from the chill of death. He misses the taste of her blood when they reaffirmed his status as her human servant. He misses the light in her eyes when she laughed. He misses her mind in his, tiptoeing playfully through his innermost thoughts. He almost thinks he can still feel her, a cool and shining presence hovering at the edges of his mind, changed by death until her touch is like a stranger's...
Wait.
///
Someone is in his head.
Someone is in his head, and she isn't Mal.
Someone is going to die.
---------------
Arthur's power rose like a dark wave and swallowed Ariadne whole.
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End Part Six
continue to part 7
back to part 5
---------------------------------------------
In regard to Dom's dream: I have decided that one reason Benjamin Franklin was perpetually undersupplied with secretaries in France is that his best secretary was first distracted by marriage and family, then absorbed by a mad quest to track down and/or avenge his abducted wife. Dom did retain the presence of mind to send his daughter to his family in America after Yorktown and the peace treaty, since he realized it would be wrong to drag her into contact with vampires, but he wasn't much use as a father after Mal vanished.
In regard to Arthur's dreams: Patience is a virtue. *grin*
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Weregild, part 6
---------------------------------------------
Every person dreamed uniquely, if only because every person carried a different collection of memories and preoccupations down into sleep, to be rearranged over and over like a demented jigsaw puzzle with infinite possible solutions.
On a more practical level, Ariadne had found that dreams tended to fall into four broad categories: replays of events that held emotional significance to a dreamer; mangled fragments of a dreamer's recent life; embodiments of a dreamer's current worries; and scrambled flights of fancy with no obvious source in anything from waking life. The second and third type were most useful. Memory dreams tended to be obscure unless she knew the dreamer well, and the fourth type -- the utterly batshit dreams, as she sometimes called them -- were worthless to anyone but a fantasy writer seeking new story ideas.
Tonight, Cobb was dreaming in slightly skewed memories. Ariadne settled herself on the outskirts of his mind and watched.
-----
He stands in a fashionable Paris salon, feeling terribly out of place in his jeans and t-shirt. Everyone must be staring at him, murmuring about naïve colonials. He has no idea how Dr. Franklin ignores the constant stares and whispers.
And then he looks across the room and sees Her, looking at him. Her hair curls softly around her face, stray tendrils escaping the elaborate styling; her eyebrows are a rich brown, and he thinks her hair would share that color, free of its dusting of powder. Her eyes are a grayish blue, like skies that promise coming rain after a drought. Her hands, when she moves them, are both delicate and strong.
He wouldn't mind if she stared and whispered. She can do anything she wants.
Suddenly they're standing side by side, and she smiles and offers her hand. "Mallorie Deschain," she says, when he asks her name. "You are Dominic Cobb, secretary to the estimable Dr. Franklin. You are very brave, to have come across the ocean knowing the English would hang you if they should catch your ship."
Her accent caresses each word like honey.
She is ten years older than he is, at least. She is beautiful. She is rich. She is perfect.
He has no idea what she sees in him, why she lets him marry her, why she carries his child.
When the vampires kill her, when they throw her to the ground and savage her, when they seize her body and flee, leaving nothing but a trail of gore than ends, impossibly, in the middle of an open street, he goes mad.
///
He stands in a fashionable Paris salon, feeling terribly out of place in his trench coat and shabby suit...
-----
Ariadne pulled back to catch her metaphorical breath. Dreams could whiplash hard enough to shake her sense of reality, years of scattered joys and despairs condensed to a purity of emotion she rarely encountered in waking life. Cobb had loved Mallorie Cobb to the bottom of his soul. Losing her had been like losing half of himself.
Clearly they had reunited at some point, only for history to repeat itself with greater finality. No wonder Cobb dreamed of her.
But while that told Ariadne about Cobb's past, his dream revealed nothing about his present or his future plans.
Perhaps Arthur would be more informative. She slid into the edges of his mind, a silent, unnoticed observer.
-----
Arthur throws the phone onto the motel bed in boiling frustration and quickly repressed fear.
"Damn it," he says, glad that Dom isn't here and he doesn't have to be the reasonable one for a few minutes.
Fuck Eames, it's been nearly a month and not one word; what is Arthur supposed to think? He knows the bastard isn't dead -- he knows people who know people, and reputation and favors get him pretty much anywhere he needs to go, sooner or later -- and Eames is alive and sitting pretty and not following the plan.
Fuck him.
Arthur is going to kneecap him in St. Louis. With silver bullets. See how he likes that.
///
And oh, he does like that taste. There is something about pistachio ice cream he absolutely cannot resist, which is baffling because he loathes nuts in general. Then again, he likes amaretto and marzipan, and hazelnut flavor in his coffee, so perhaps it's a general oddness.
Arthur licks the last residue from the cheap plastic spoon and watches Mal and Dom dance to imaginary music down by the water's edge. The moon is waning gibbous in the sky, and they are as far from modern artificial lights as they can get.
He reaches down to smooth Philippa's hair where she naps on a flannel picnic blanket, worn out from building sandcastles and chasing James through the shallow waves.
Philippa likes pistachio ice cream too, but Arthur thinks she only says that to flatter him.
///
"You flatter me," he says, his gun a reassuring weight in his hands, aimed at the blond stranger's chest. "I know your reputation. The younger vampires call you Death."
"You can call me Edward," the blond man says with an empty-eyed smile. "I have a proposition for you."
"I'm listening," Arthur says, without changing his aim.
///
He changes his aim and drops the ragged woman holding the towheaded toddler like a living shield. The bullets pass within half an inch of the boy's head, but Arthur knows his aim is true.
The little girl screams. Arthur whirls to see her dash across the warehouse, the half-shifted werewolf in belated pursuit, distracted for that key second by Arthur's unexpected move.
Arthur drops him too, two shots to the chest, one to the head, and then another to each spot to make sure. He turns back to his first target. The woman is on the ground, wheezing -- lung shot, then. Her right hand is still wrapped around the toddler's arm and her left is groping for her fallen knife.
Arthur steps on her wrist and shoots her between the eyes. Blood and bone spray over the concrete floor beneath her head, which bounces slightly from the force of impact.
Arthur scoops up the toddler, wondering absently why the boy isn't crying, why he's reaching for the pooling blood in curiosity instead of pulling back in fear. He pulls out his cell phone and calls the police.
///
"The police, the police, what can the police do!" Mal says, anger drawing her skin tight against the elegant bones of her skull. "This is no business for mortals. Peter Lebrun is my problem. I will solve him myself."
"Your problems are my problems," Dom says, stroking his hands along her bare arms.
"Our problems," Arthur corrects. "I still think it's worth giving them a heads-up that the children may be in danger. Their attention may make Lebrun reconsider whether they're cost-effective targets, and if nothing else, it will make Marie and Miles sleep easier and stop nagging you so often."
Mal laughs, a brilliant, coruscating sound like a rain of flowers and precious jewels. "Ah, my Arthur, always the clever one. You are right. I will call tomorrow night."
///
Tomorrow night they meet with Jean-Claude.
There are ten thousand ways this could go wrong. It's Arthur's job to think of them and plan around them all. He hates planning around unknowns -- he doesn't know who'll be there, he doesn't know what powers they have, he doesn't know nearly enough about Jean-Claude himself, no matter what he knows secondhand from listening to Dom and Mal reminisce or from brushing their edges of their dreams.
Arthur aches, remembering better days. Dom's been a shade of himself since Mal died. Arthur would be too, if he didn't have to keep Dom together. Mal was the best of them both. God, he misses her.
He misses the feel of her teeth slicing into the skin over his collarbone or pricking his wrist like kitten claws. He misses the paradoxical warmth of her power, fire springing to life from the chill of death. He misses the taste of her blood when they reaffirmed his status as her human servant. He misses the light in her eyes when she laughed. He misses her mind in his, tiptoeing playfully through his innermost thoughts. He almost thinks he can still feel her, a cool and shining presence hovering at the edges of his mind, changed by death until her touch is like a stranger's...
Wait.
///
Someone is in his head.
Someone is in his head, and she isn't Mal.
Someone is going to die.
---------------
Arthur's power rose like a dark wave and swallowed Ariadne whole.
---------------------------------------------
End Part Six
continue to part 7
back to part 5
---------------------------------------------
In regard to Dom's dream: I have decided that one reason Benjamin Franklin was perpetually undersupplied with secretaries in France is that his best secretary was first distracted by marriage and family, then absorbed by a mad quest to track down and/or avenge his abducted wife. Dom did retain the presence of mind to send his daughter to his family in America after Yorktown and the peace treaty, since he realized it would be wrong to drag her into contact with vampires, but he wasn't much use as a father after Mal vanished.
In regard to Arthur's dreams: Patience is a virtue. *grin*
(no subject)
Date: 2011-07-01 03:31 am (UTC)*claps* I can't wait for the next bit!
(no subject)
Date: 2011-07-01 06:19 am (UTC)Also, Mal was a dreamwalker too?
No, but Arthur was her human servant for a couple years, so they could share dreams the standard way. (Which is such an odd thing to type! As if there is any normal way to share dreams. *silly*) I will see if I can insert a line to make that more clear.
Arthur is dreaming in free-association fragments -- grabbing a small idea from each "scene" and spinning off in a new direction. That's a pattern I am familiar with from my own dreams, though his individual scenes are more coherent and reality-based than mine usually are.
More tomorrow, with a bit of luck!
(no subject)
Date: 2011-06-30 07:38 pm (UTC)it's been nearly a month and not word one
one word? XD
(no subject)
Date: 2011-07-01 02:09 am (UTC)Aside from Dom & Mal (and Marie & Miles, technically), there are no romantic relationships in the story yet. Should I start putting an "eventual pairings will probably be..." notice at the top of new parts? There are at least two romances that I have plans to develop over the course of the story.
"I haven't heard word one," is an idiomatic expression, sometimes used for emphasis instead of the standard "I haven't heard one word" construction. I'll change it, though; there's no point being confusing when I don't have to be. :-)