FotN '21: Dreams

She knows this dream.

It’s a cloudless, moonless night. It’s dark save for the glow of her body which illuminates only the smallest circle around her where blades of grass dance in a rolling breeze. Aquilia tips her head up and feels small as she looks into the endless void, so vast and dark and lonely that she shivers, afraid that it might reach down and pluck her up into it where she’ll be lost forever.

It’s a familiar ache, a sadness that comes from feeling disconnected and alone, and she longs to be at Kano’s side. But this is a dream, and Kano isn’t here.

Aquilia spreads her wings and hops up to fly. She stays close to the ground, knowing from experience that if she loses sight of it, she’ll be out there, floating in the nothingness until she finally wakes. The grass tickles at her feet as she glides, looking for something though she’s not sure what.

It isn’t long until Aquilia comes upon a clear crystal that towers over the flat plain, easily ten times her size. The facets of the stone catch the blue light that emanates from her, gleaming with it. She spirals around it, enjoying the way it glows and glitters. A crack catches the light, bright as the edge of a blade and shaped like a bolt of lightning that races down the side of the crystal.

Aquilia flaps in front of it curiously. She taps at it with the claws on her forefeet, and it feels both solid and somehow like it would take nothing to shatter it apart.

She pecks at the crack, and it widens. Another, and the crystal splinters into a thousand pieces that scatter into the sky like stars, glittering with her blue light. Aquilia slowly lowers herself back to the ground, looking up at the new sky, and finds that she likes it like this.