Harmaelinn looked upwards to the morning sky. She traced the streaks of color with the eyes, as if she were reading something there. As though the night had left some fleeting message for her before being banished away by the rising sun.

The peryton blinked. Once, then twice again. She attempted to blink the weariness away, but to no avail. Her eyelids were heavy and reluctant. In an attempt to suppress her fatigue, Harmaelinn raised a wing and rubbed her eyes with them.

She lay there for a while, unmoving like a flower sitting in wait for the sun before opening its petals to a new day. Her blue body tucked into a gathering of flora. The plants around her were bioluminescent at night, and as the sun came they were slowly starting to lose their gentle glow. Harm considered them for a while, lowering her head to touch one of the last softly shining bulbs with her nose in thought.

It had been another night of dreams. The sort of dreams that were deep and encompassing, yet ephemeral and abstract in substance. The night had left her with a heavy feeling in her chest that she couldn't quite place her hoof on. It was as thought her heart had been filled to the brim. As thought it were full of love and warmth. As thought it had been a heart that had lived a fill and wondrous life in the world of dreams and now… Now that she had awoken, it felt as though some unspeakable part of her had been separated away. She could reason to herself that it had been just a dream. After all, she clearly remembered going to rest in this thicket the previous evening. She remembered all the days that came before last night. And the dream itself she had no recollection of. Harm couldn't describe to you the events that took place within her mind. By all reasonable accounts, it wasn't rea.

Why, then, did she have such a sense of inexplicable loss? She felt as though she were mourning for something that never really existed. Like something had been taken away that she never really had in the first place.

She felt fractured. Incomplete.

The peryton closed her eyes and exhaled, long and slow. And then she rose.

Harmaelinn had been having these dreams for countless nights, now, for as long as she could remember. It wasn't every night. Some nights she could dream of nothing. She would wake feeling as though no time at all had passed between the moment that slumber took her. And then some nights she would have inexplicable dreams whereupon the next morning she would wake without being able to describe anything that she had dreamt, yet she would be overtaken by this feeling of deep loss. Of hollowness.

It had become a way of life.

The peryton shifted her wings on her back Then she turned and preened her wing feathers, then her tailfeathers. It was a slow and methodical routine. A quiet and peaceful one that she undertook in the comfort of her thicket as the morning light grew. Shadows fled, the last remnants of the night disappearing, and the soft luminescence around her faded as the sunlight grew bright and warm. Her morning ritual complete, Harmaelinn turned her head towards the rising sun. She closed her eyes and tipped her nose up ever so slightly towards the sky, feeling the warmth of day washing over her. Washing the feeling of loss from her heart.

--

The following night, she had found it difficult for sleep to take her. Harmaelinn spent much of the evening awake, moving quietly and fluidly through the gently glowing foliage in which she had made her home. She found their glow, reminiscent both of her pelt and of the starry sky that it resembled, a sort of comfort. A nighttime breeze gently lulled the luminescent flowers back and forth, like creatures dancing to an unheard song. The peryton seemed to move to the twilight tune, her movements soft and ethereal. She felt at one with the world around her. And only when she finally felt at peace did the realm of sleep seem to open its arms to her.

Harm found that she could grasp that night's dreams more than any before. While no images came to her mind, she found her heart willed with warmth and her mind filled with a distant, calming voice.

"What do you believe in?"

'I… I don't know.' She found herself responding without speaking. Still, the voice in her dreams continued.

"In life?" The voice felt familiar, but she couldn't identify it.

'Yes. I believe in the life I am living.'

"In purpose?"

Purpose? In what purpose? That she herself had a purpose? In life having a purpose?

'I don't know.'

"You do," the voice reassured. "You do know."

Some deep part of her mind seemed to realize, then, that the voice was her own. With that realization, the dream seemed to be slipping away. It was like the feeling of waking, where the world of sleep slowly faded. Where trying to hold on to it only made the dream slip farther and farther away. Before she woke, Harm heard her voice speaking one last time.

"Find her. She will help you see."

The sun was already up when she woke. The soft glow of the flowers around her had already begun to fade in the bright light of the morning. The sky was clear and full of the colors of dawn. Harmaelinn remained where she lay for a long time, that morning. She remained tucked into a warm ball of fur, committing her dreams to memory. As if she had to hold on to what she remembered as hard as she could before it all faded away. Why was her own voice speaking to her in her sleep? Surely there was some part of her that was trying to tell her something, like one part of her mind trying to inform the other of some obvious truth that was in front of her face yet failed to be seen.

The peryton squinted up towards the sky, repeating the words one last time to herself.

'Find her. She will help you see.'


( WC: 1048 )