24-Kit
Indigo sky stretches awake as dawn creeps along my dream’s horizon.
I reach for the single star left, only to be confined by a thread of wire. It coils around my wrists like cuffs, coated in glimmering ruby dust that stains my skin.
“Still afraid of the dark?” a voice teases behind me.
Somnium stands beneath the wilting willow, his brushed waves shifting as he moves. I let out a breath, lowering my swelling wrists.
“I’m not afraid.”
He steps closer, a tilt to his head. I try to look away, but he lifts my chin with one finger.
“Tell me, little mortal,” he murmurs, “are you living, or merely not dying?”
“I want out.”
“You refuse to pay me for what I have already given,” he says, his expression tightening to a sneer.
It lands like a blow to the face. My bonds flare as I reach for his throat, sending a shock through me as though I’ve been shot by a stun gun.
“I give you all that I have,” I scream, guttural and bloody.
“You speak as though I personally forced you to this fate.” Somnium circles me, his faded leather boots whispering across the grass like the turn of a page. “Our souls were cut from the same cloth. We were always meant to find our way to one another. This is how.”
Somnium takes my bleeding wrists and traces the glimmering scarlet wire with gentle strokes.
“Through centuries, across vessels, into whatever lives we have been shoved. We begin blank. Empty. It does not take much for the spark to awaken. A name in a story, or line in a poem. A myth whispered by someone who does not know what they are invoking. I have spent ages nudging creatives. Artists, poets and musicians; pushing them through whispers in sleep in order to create something that lasts beyond their short mortal existences.”
My breath fogs at the biting chill. I dig my toes into the earth in an attempt to anchor myself to something tangible as he drones on.
“There were operas once; grand tragedies played in candlelit halls, but time swallowed them. Pages burned, and languages died with each passing empire.” His voice drops, the air tightening like a noose. “Now it is you and I who will drag my story back to life.”
My stomach drops, the earth tilting under my feet. The scent of mossed stone rises as though we’ve slipped underground. Dread winds my stomach like the crank of a music box.
“That’s impossible.” A brittle, broken laugh escapes me. “Absolute bullocks.”
“Impossible is simply limited belief, my vessel,” he says, his voice cracking like ice. His eyes harden, all pretense of gentleness gone. “You would be wise to remember that.”