M.D.

Even in your role, nothing more than an observer, it’s disorienting. The dreamer, Loom, remains the focal point of it all, a beacon of distress thrumming heavy where they’ve curled in on themself. It washes over you in waves, a sickening sense that something isn’t right, that something bad is going to happen. You long to reach out and comfort them, but that is not your place here. Not tonight.

Thankfully, you needn’t. The approximation of a bronzeblood-- Tavros? -- is at their side, panic leeching from his form. It’s frantic, words that aren’t words but have meaning all the same pouring from his lips as the first crack of bone and flesh rending penetrates the stillness of the room.

What follows is nothing short of sickening. You can feel it through the leylines weaving the fabric of this dream. Where they curl against your skin comes licks of fear, of pain, of something that wants out. Their body tears like the shell of a morbid cocoon, the maw down their front pried open by fingers and eyes and shoulders. Something wants out, something that for the first time in a long time is almost familiar to you-- No. Someone who is familiar to you.

Your hands, or lack thereof, grasp tightly round the images you’ve been made to see, tearing them away like a cheap magician’s trick. All at once you find yourself sat upright in bed, spine ramrod before your eyes even open. It feels as though your pusher is attempting to leap from your chest. Even so, you force your breathing calm, red rimmed eyes pinned to a fixed point in the middle distance.

They drop, suddenly, to the white knuckle grip you have on the blanket. The joints of your fingers creak as you force them flat once more.

‘What a sorry way to live,’ you’d said barely a day prior. ‘To be unable to rely on ones own memory.’ You want to spit the words from your mouth just so they’ll leave you be. They sit like acid on the back of your tongue even now.

Never since your beloved’s return have you been more aware of the hollow in your chest. You don’t know what it is you’ve been made to bear witness, only that you should. It’s like an itch deep in your bones, a wrongness that turns your stomach and tightens your jaw. Never more than now have you cursed your mortal flesh, for all that it prevents you from reaching inside and tearing out what ails or it’s closest substitute.

Careful movements have you removed from the bed without further disturbance. Fading eyes look upon your lover, your balm, in all their sleeping softness. It’s not enough to simply have them here. You know this, as you tuck the blankets more closely round their form. Not in the long term. Not forever. It’s not enough to simply know that you are in love. But it’s all you have, so for the time being? It’s all you need.