#mari--an

               IT ALWAYS STARTS THE SAME. this time, though, he’s flat on his back, watching the cloudless grey sitting above ---- stagnant. there’s a howl of wind shuffling through the leaves, and yet none of them move. he can smell the apples on the trees when none are in season. 

it’s the little things always laying claim that his hometown is nothing but a small bubble of a dream, and this time marks no different. lucidity is powerful. in a blink the backdrop changes, shuffling a humble looking home an arm’s length from his feet as anders sits up to take in the haze. hazy, because the details aren’t clear; they’ve never been. the footsteps of his mother in the bedroom are phantoms, because nobody is there -- he knows, he’s checked. it’s familiarly foreign. not once has he ever considered himself comfortable.

SO WHAT DRAWS HIM BACK? curiosity, maybe, but he suspects it’s the tightness in curling fists a bit more. revisiting buried questions tends to bring out the more emotionally vulnerable sectors of the psyche. intrigue is at least enough to get him wandering forward, touching the splintering foundation of a cracked porch. 

when the twig snaps behind him outside of his control, however, he’s mortified. not as planned. very odd, out of character --- and his mind, ever the overachiever, splits immediately to the worst. are his dreams always stable? no, hell no, but never is something unexpected.

the typical toss and turn of his who-goes-there reveal comes up short in terms of threatening, but he digresses. hawke, hawke is different. not new, but different ---- and so clear. with a forward lean he can actually make out her freckles, and the thought that he genuinely could have remembered her with such concise clarity is borderline embarrassing. 

WHAT HE DOES NEXT, HE’D ADMIT EVENTUALLY, IS STUPID. thinking fast ( but not quite thoroughly ), anders brandishes a stick in her direction. there’s a bit of flair to it when it’s waved in a semi-circle, too.