Hello

Tuesday, March 10, 2015

3: Echo of a Dream (part one)

It's one thing to say you dreamed about something.
It's another thing entirely to experience it.
To be certain it's real.
"Hello! Are you listhening?"
“Yes yes, okay, what?” The woman turns from a stall of colorful produce with an irritated flick of shock blonde hair. Clearly dyed, clearly straightened within an inch of it’s life.
The skin visible on her face and hands is inked with the swirling blue patterns popular on her home world, the rest covered with pale green silk. Trying to beat the ever-present heat sweltering in these dusty streets is a full time job.
The street vendor is familiar in a way she shouldn't be. Tirna has never been on this world. Has never been to this market.
But whoever is running this produce stall is someone she's seen before. Orange skin, eyes like pools of moss. Tiny, neat, needle like teeth.
"I said thath's for sale, noth for playing with m'dear."
The vendor nods at the brightly colored pink melon, currently bouncing between tattooed hands.
A glance down at the fruit and she catches herself, holds it steady in one hand as she squints into the shade of an awning at the vendor. “I was just checking it. To see if it was ripe. You’ll break your teeth on half of these.” Not the nicest thing to say about someone’s produce.
Lovely hazel eyes narrow further, scanning over rows of sharp teeth. “I know you.” Not entirely a statement, not quite a question. When you spend enough time hopping between worlds people start to blur together. Species and a range of available fashionable alterations not helping matters.
"Perhapth the teeth of a Muk-toth aren't ath sharp as they should be."
Not the nicest thing to say to a potential customer.
Teeth gleam as lips draw back in what might be considered a smile.
“What did you just call me?” Bit of a temper on this one.
"I'm sorry, did you thay something?"
The melon is thunked down on the warped boards of the stall’s counter, indigo spirals rippling over tendons as Tirna grips the fruit irritably. “Look here. I am trying to give you business, I am not having the best day and I am only going to be on your world for a few measly days before I have to go traipsing off again-”
"Dayth!" is chortled merrily, the echo overlapping the woman's diatribe. The common unit of measurement here is called Farakas and is the equivalent of the length of one of Trina's birth years.
Another wave of deja vu hits the foreigner.
Has this happened before?
Tirna abruptly releases the melon, lets it roll and bumble towards the stall vendor. “You know what, I don’t need this. Keep your damn fruit.” An about-face leaves green silk fluttering in her wake as she strides away.
Teeth shine in the shrouded darkness of the vendors stall.

A new planet, a new system, the last just one more glimmer in a sea of stars.
She said she would move on, she always does. Searching.
Each new world brings it’s own quirks, fresh challenges. Here a thick mask covers most of her face, corrugated tubing reaching up, up, up into a plastic packet bobbing above her head.
For the umpteenth time today she checks the readout around her neck, eyes the width of the balloon. Not enough time, never enough time.
She had dreams again. Troubled ones. They're already behind her, a haze of emotions. Nothing specific.
A shape darts past out of the corner of her eye.
She twists to look, remembers just in time to reach up to steady the tube, keep it from kinking. It would be easier if this place looked more hostile. Smog or swarms of flies or something obvious for the mask to protect her from.
But suburbia remains essentially the same on any planet.
Daubed clay shapes form little hillocks, surrounded by plant like formations in various shades of purples, reds and browns.
There.
That building.
She can remember the stoop to get inside, the scorch marks of decorations along carved details.
Her feet take her towards it without conscious thought being involved at all. She stoops, she steps inside, blue fingertips trace the grooves of clay.
And her balloon catching on the door frame almost tears the mask of her face and jerks her back to reality.
“Damn this thing!”
There's a recessed hearth. Something glimmers in the center, out of arm's reach.
Tirna only hesitates for a moment before she’s struggling with the mask, closing valves and pulling at straps until it comes free, slides back over pale hair. She darts towards the glitter, her last breath frozen in her chest.
It's blue, smooth, translucent. A tiny spiral rests in the center.
These are known as sleeping fossils, a curious form of life which has developed it’s own natural suspended animation. Created from the unique combination of the secretions of a certain species of aquatic creature and the specific chemical makeup of a single ocean.
Neither native to this world.
Tirna has never learned this, doesn’t understand how she knows these things, every time one world leads her on to the next. Every dream takes her forwards, compulsive.
She only follows, holding white-knuckled onto the bitter certainty that eventually this long game of follow-the-leader will actually take her somewhere.
She rushes back to her breathing supply, straps the mask back on hurriedly and breathes deep.
The small sleeping life remains clenched in her hand, matches exactly the dyed blue of her skin.
There's been limited success with reviving these creatures. Some never awaken, others live for only a few hours, growing, bloating, decomposing rapidly.
Very little is known about them. There's more papers and speculation than cold, hard science.
Tirna tries not to think about it. She’s always found it hard to trust the knowledge that randomly blossoms in her mind. It’s never been wrong yet, in the early days when she checked every fact, followed every bit of research. That doesn’t mean it never will be.

The collection has been mounting. She has the tooth of Chessnian, a vial of ichor from a JubJub, a rusted commemorative coin from the Orion Anomaly, bits and pieces of many more worlds, each leading one to the next.
All jumbled together, dragged from planet to planet, system to system.
She’s tried so very hard to find a meaning in the random collection, some sort of secret code, anything to tie them together.
Everything she comes up with sounds crazier than the last idea.
Maybe she is crazy, maybe that’s all this is. The driving compulsion, the press of foreign memories and knowledge, the dreams
It'd be easier if she had someone to share it with. Someone to talk this over... make a connection she's missing.
This morning she remembered something more distinct from her dreams. Something strong enough to merit pulling out her personal storage device and keying fingers over the surface.
An angle here. No. No there was a curve.
She picks colors, slides her fingers, turns the drawing, draws again.
There's a sharp ping at the base of her neck, followed by a scuttling that sets her teeth on edge.
There's something on her skin, crawling.
Drawing is immediately abandoned as she twists and slaps her hand down hard on her shoulder. “What in the-!”
Sproing!
Scuttle scuttle scuttle.
Let’s take a pause for a good long moment of horrified silence.
She watches the little skittering bug-like thing on her cabin floor open-mouthed and disgusted.
Until higher brain function once again kicks in and a heel stomps down after it. “Spawn of a Tear! The hell did you come from?!”
Sproing!
That thing sure is fast.
Silence descends, nothing more than the air handler rattling, her heart pounding.
There’s not much to search in the small space, but Tirna tears apart the available furniture trying. Covers are ripped off the bed, a seat cushion goes flying to twack into the wall, clothes are strewn everywhere.
She’s in the middle of trying to pry the mattress away from its raised platform when the first sob overtakes her. At first it’s more startling than anything else. Tirna hasn’t cried since she was first inked. A Reuleaux of her position has no need. A proud family on a proud world can’t use tears, only solutions.
She found the solution to her inking by raiding her mother’s garden for numbing flowers. She found the solution to her inheritance by limiting the competition.
When these strange dreams started and the compulsions followed she tried everything else, until the only remaining option was to follow them.
Throughout her travels she has never despaired, never given up or given in. She will find out what is at the end of this insanity and she will return home and reclaim her estates from the minders. Her fine house and her sleek mounts and what are now her lovely numbing gardens.
But there is no good solution for insanity, and the possibility is becoming more and more difficult to ignore. So Tirna folds herself over her cot and cries.
It takes some time for her to notice the tiny sounds coming from the unfolded desk. It's quiet. A soft crunch, zzzztttt, crunch zzzztttt.
The bug is considerably bigger.
And apparently eating her collection of found items.
“You leave those alone!” A wail of fury and frustration echos around the small space as she lunges towards the desk, snatches up the few remaining trinkets. The glittering blue stone and a strange red seedpod, one tiny silver ring.
Two eyes, one violet, one orange, blink at her. The creature is easily the size of a medium land mammal, something rather like a toddler. Rust red scales overlap one another as antennae twitch and shift, the bug adjusts its position to face her.
Kzzzzzztttt! rattles through the space as it begins to shift back and forth, scales rising and falling with a clattering, clicking sound.
Definitely not friendly.
Tirna lurches upright and backs away quickly, rescued items clutched to her chest. “No! Gyre take you no! I have not fallen so far that I will be menaced by products of my own madness.” Her voice is a high, stretched thing, skin flushed under her ink. “Do you know how hard I worked for these?”
The bots clicking subsides as it apparently listens, twisting the suggestion of head to one side.
Then it hops down from the desk and begins a stilted, slow stalk towards her.
Right.
Well.
She’s having none of that.
Tirna slams the heel of her hand hard into the door switch, turns and sprints out into the corridor.
Silence.
A bit unnerving, perhaps, but that suits Tirna just fine. Bare feet slap hard against the corrugated floor panels as she races past rows of other doors, other passengers rooms.
This isn’t the most well-appointed passenger ship she’s been on, but the woman has learned to take what she can get, the fastest transport from world to world is far preferable to the wait.
Now she wishes she had chartered her own ship, her own guards, her own doctors, damn the cost.
Too late now.
Glances back do not show a pursuing form, there's no clitter clatter of-
"Lady Tirna?"
The ships cook is small, round, and as usual, smiling. Not that what one eats on a ship like this is properly cooked. Still, someone has to deal with the necessities of organic life.
She almost bowls her over, barely managing to skid to a stop by grabbing onto a doorframe.
“Wha-oof!” The taller woman almost loses her balance, catches herself, and levels a glare. “I need the captain.” Figment or not, she refuses to deal with this clattering bug alone.
Furry brown hair creases on the round face. She's furry all over really, not that Tirna has seen her naked. But one can assume when an alien has large ears and a tail that they're probably furry all over.
The taller woman is looked over, smile turning into more of a quirked question. "Is there a problem?"
“Yes!” She’s not yet sure what kind. But she’s sure this is what problems look like. “Do you think I’m just running around here for my health?”
A brow quirks higher, and a claw points with agonizing slowness.
Eventually, "You might be."
Followed by a wide grin.
Tirna gives a wordless snarl and pushes past her. “I sincerely hope I’m not crazy just so that thing can have the chance to eat you.”
The cook peers after her, tutting under her breath.
The ship is designed in a looping fashion. An outer length of corridor swirls over the entire inner hull, providing access to the better shielded rooms within. It's something like a coiled snake around a sphere, one long gradual ascent. Various access hallways lead to the center, which manages to be a combination bridge, engineering bay and, when the going is easy, a bit of a lounge.
By the time Tirna finds the right turn off and pounds her way to it she's managed to convince herself of two things.
1: The thing isn't following her
2: The captain might not be able to help her after all
Sprawled over a map, the captain, or who she is pretty sure she remembers seeing in a captains hat anyway, that time... when she got here...
They do all blur together after awhile. Captain after captain, ship after ship...
Regardless, she's pretty sure the man sprawled on the floor, on a map, sucking on a fist sized gummy bear, is the captain.
"Yo!"
“H’Hello.” It takes her a moment to catch her breath, blow wayward strands of long hair out of her face.
He's dressed in a pink terrycloth robe with darker pink birds embroidered over the pocket. Judging from his bare feet he's not wearing much else.
"Bear?" It's offered aloft.
“N-no.” Lovely, yet another crewmember who is apparently completely unaware that a passenger arriving panting and disheveled in the cockpit might be a tip-off that something isn’t right.
She gathers herself, smoothing pale orange silk. “There is… something in my quarters. It destroyed my possessions and then came after me. Some sort of machine. I need someone, preferably more than one someone, to go back with me and discourage it.”
The bear is returned to his mouth. Several licks are taken as he listens.
She receives another pointing finger.
"Machines, are special sorts of things." A sage nod follows this, dyed pink hair flopping over one ear as he muses, "What did you say your name was?"
“Special menacing sorts of things.” She hugs her remaining trinkets more tightly, scans around the wide circular room for anyone who could be more useful. “I didn’t say, we’ve never been introduced. My name is Tirna and I don’t see what that has to do with something threatening me while I was on your ship.”
"My ship. My ship. It does have a nice ring to it doesn't it?" He pushes up from the floor, raising an eyebrow as he looks her over appreciatively.
"Names," he explains, waving the bear at her, "Tirna, names can mean all sorts of things." He nods, heedless of his own repetition.
"Does your race choose their own names or are they given?"
“My race is none of your business! My continuing custom and the favor of the authorities is what you should be worried about! I find your blithe good humor neither reassuring nor-!”
The laugh starts halfway through her speech, somewhere around the word 'authorities'.
"Ahahahahahahah!!! As if I bow to any authorities! Tirna really, you are too much! Whatever will we do with you?"
The captain climbs to his feet, chuckling as he bites a foot off of his confection.
The four open doors to the room all suddenly SLAM!
Whatever progress she’s made at quieting her heartbeat is immediately undone.
“I-”
He takes a step towards her, eyes shifting from a soft brown to a mixture of violet and orange.
“Oh tear it.” The blue stone and it’s sleeping cargo are thrown viciously at his horrid frosted-pink head.
Tirna abandons the pod and the ring to clatter on the floor, throws herself towards the console and starts hitting as many large red important-looking buttons as she can.
One might be an alarm.
A distress call.
A door switch.
Something exciting enough to keep him busy.
"Robots don't dream," is whispered in her ear as arms wrap around her waist. "But you do. So strange, dreams. I must admit, they're often more interesting than reality."
A pause. "But nothing is like Gyre Space."
Tirna freezes at the embrace, the voice. Her hands braced against the console of flickering lights and controls, the whistle of her own breath louder than everything else.
Offworlders think her race wears the ink for decoration. For beauty, for some intricate cultural imperative for coming of age.
They are, of course, mistaken.
As everything else, the ink is merely a solution.
“Riv.” The name is a quiet request.
The blue ripples and shifts and rises from her skin in a smooth wave of movement.
Tendrils swiftly gain weight and substance, rip the arms from around her waist and slam the man back into the bulkhead as if he were nothing more than a limp ragdoll.
CRASH!!!
She turns to find a satisfying crumpled heap of pink terrycloth, a form gasping for breath, blood streaming from a nasty head wound. The captain coughs, reaches into the robe with one hand.
“Sorry, Riv.” And she sounds it.
There are some solutions you hope to never have to use, and are best not left open to public scrutiny. The Pairing is, unfortunately for the captain, one of those sorts of things.
There is no further communication as a streak of blue shoots out of her sleeve and slams into the prone man, drags his arm away from the robe.
His arm snaps sideways, tugged by the unusual substance pouring from her skin. Moments later he reaches with his other hand.
Tirna doesn’t look particularly worried anymore, just horribly, achingly tired. A hand scrubs across her face, swirls of blue are now tendrils waving up from her skin. A second arm is dragged away, concealed weapon fished out and set gently beside her on the console.
She doesn’t need to see what Riv is doing, there is an innate confidence here, an understanding. It will protect her, as it always has the head of her line. Her coming of age was not the inking, but years after, when she proved herself worthy of the pairing.
Proved herself worthy of returning the assurance of protection.
One of those safeties is in silence, and they both know how to ensure that.
“Don’t make it too messy, Riv.”
A swirl of blue twines around the man’s neck and squeezes, a cool, shifting pressure.
Fingertips slide up, pull uselessly at the coils as his eyes widen, feet begin kicking, possible retort smothered by gasping. It’s like trying to grab mist, or a particularly slippery weasel. Incredibly ineffective.
It’s important not to just crush the windpipe, though Riv certainly could, that’s been known to raise eyebrows, attract questions. The general consensus is that those that stumble across or force the secret of the pairing should be disposed of in the least suspicious way possible.
It takes longer this way, but it’s better overall, really.
She waits until he stops kicking, waits a carefully instructed space of her own breaths to make sure it’s done.
“Thank you Riv.” Gyre is it frustrating that she even had to ask for help. Risk exposure. Her cousins would be all over her if she were home. They will be if they find out about this.
Tirna leaves the body with an agitated swirl of silks, moves quickly around the common area to gather the fallen trinkets.
“What next, do you think?” It isn’t as if she expects it to say anything back, inkkin never do. Though usually Riv is more responsive than this, a personality as strong as her own, thoughts communicated in pulses and surges against her joined skin, tendrils tugging her along. She feels none of that now, runs a finger down a misty swirl of blue and wonders at the dull reactions
There's a scritching at one of the doors.
Well that answers one question.
Not that way.
She heads straight for the opposite door.
Clap.
Clap.
Clap.
"A nice clean kill."
She spins from fiddling with the door pad, frantically searching out the voice.
The captain is sitting upright again, nibbling on that same gummy bear.
Where she left him.
Dead.
"What else can it do?"
“What are you?!” Shouted right back. She is entirely uninterested in chit-chat. Completely and utterly done with whatever this is. Besides which, Riv should have noticed him first, should have drawn her attention before the clapping and the nibbling had a chance to. Something is wrong. Everything is wrong.
Silver walls all abruptly turn red with green polka dots.
"Don't you mean-" he climbs to his feet, dark purple line blossoming like a choker around his neck. "Where are we?"
A disco ball drops down from the ceiling, sends spinning bits of colored light twirling through the room.
“Riv.” Barely a whisper, but the steel door at her back is ripped from its hinges, shoved out into the hall by the dark twisting substance rising from her skin like smoke from a sulfur pool.
“If I’m going insane, this is certainly not what I expected madness to be like.”
The pink haired, berobed captain grins and tosses the gummy bear to her.
"Oh you're not insane yet! I'm just testing you. See if you'll be a good fit, all that. You know..."
He sticks his tongue sideways out of his mouth, pondering for a moment.
"An initiation of sorts!"
“I’m not.” Tirna responds without hesitation, Riv swats aside the hunk of gelatin before it comes close to reaching her.
“I decline.”
"Too late for that I'm afraid." His form shimmers and shifts, pink darkening into orange as he becomes the woman from the fruit stall, eyes pools of green like moss.
"I've already goth you."
She holds onto rationality by her fingernails, keening sense of wrong wrong wrong echoing in her head.
“Perhaps you’re a figment of my fracturing mind and I am currently ripping through this ship tearing my hair out and cutting down anyone that gets in my way. I’ve seen Cresians go crazy before. We do it very effectively. Particularly paired.”
This perks her interest as she shifts to a new form. Something rust colored, furry, and wearing blue boots. "Oh!? Fascinating. What happens?!"
Or,” Tirna ignores the question, ignores everything, closes her eyes on the distraction of colors and fluid formshifting. “Or you’re real, and you’ve been following me. And you’re impossible. Which makes you gyre.”
"Haha! You're a smart one! I knew you'd be a good choice. Well. The little piece of me that's been camping in your brain knew anyway."
The voice comes closer, though still some feet away. "We're actually in one of your dreams right now. Which is why I can do what I'm doing. Though some of this I can do normally. If I wanted to. If I made a domain. Though really domains are so stuffy and boring. Borrrrrriiinggggg. What's the fun in doing everything and anything you want to do all by yourself?"
"Other people. That's where the fun is." She gets a poke to the sternum.
Riv should have stopped that.
That’s a solid mark in the column of ‘probably crazy’.
The pressure disappears with a thwack of blue. Tirna doesn’t open her eyes, so far there’s been more useful information gathered while they’re closed.
“If this is a dream, then wake me up.”
"It'll take a little while before I'm ready to do that. I didn't expect your Riv. So powerful!"
Something sniffs in her vicinity. "Are you feeling it yet?"
“Feeling what?” Another drift of the ink creature solidifies to slice towards the voice.
Now that it’s been mentioned though, there is something. The insistent pounding of wrong at the edge of her consciousness has faded. She should be more alarmed by that. She’s not. She should be making contingency plans, parsing whether this being is lying, whether they’re not. What that would mean for her next move.
It doesn’t seem quite as pressing as it should.
“What did you do?”
"Slipped a little cocktail into your bloodstream."
"Unless I'm lying. Though I never lie. Unless I do." A feather tickles over Tirna's face.
She doesn’t bother to remove it.
If this is a dream, it hardly matters.
If it isn’t, she should get away, but get away where? How dangerous is this person, how dangerous is she in comparison. So many unknown variables.
If she’s crazy…
That’s someone else’s problem now.
“What do you want?”
"Oho! You're interested now are you?" A nuzzling form closes the distance between them, snuggles up against her. Whatever it is it's shorter, and furry, and definitely tickling as it presses it's face against her collarbone. "Tirna. Tirrrrrrrrnaaaa. Are there more names in you?"
“No one touches me.” It’s neither a complaint nor a threat. Only bland truth. She stands perfectly still, the mist of blue seeping through the weave of her long robe, curling out from the lines of her face.
"I'm touching you. Riv touches you. Do you love Riv? Do you think I could remove it?"
“I would advise against it.” It’s hard to think, slow, irritating even as irritation fades.
“Let me go.”
"Do you want to wake up still?"
“Yes.” Stick to the solid ideas, the obvious points.
"Are you sure?"
“Solutions are not found by dreaming.” 
The sensation is unusual and familiar all at once. A sucking, swishing sort of twisting that throws her into vertigo.

*****

No comments:

Post a Comment