#redacted character

Athene had never seen a place like this before, although a part of her resonated strongly with it. The floating cages (test tubes?) guarding twin strands of red and blue, the uncanny sky or the floor with a symbol she had seen somewhere stamped everywhere. All of it was disturbing. All of it was achingly familiar.

However, nothing resonated more strongly than the plateau she was witnessing. A man and a woman having some sort of standoff and, to the side, a restrained child. She couldn't see their faces, but she didn't need to. She knew them (did she?)

The talk of transcending mortal limits was worrying, but in a distant way. Becoming as gods. Then heartbreak, so strong that even in memory it reached and dug fingers in her heart. Heartbreak that bled into rage and invited recklessness. A soul torn in two.

Athene gaped in disbelief.

The woman smiled.

It was so, so very familiar, like a book you read in childhood suddenly falling in your lap years later. You knew it, remembered it, but only in the most general of ways, the details filed off, the plot holes covered with imagination and nostalgia.

The child still hung in the air, forgotten.

The dream halted. A perfectly horrifying picture frozen in time. Athene blinked, she hadn't done that.

Then the woman looked at her. She was masked, but Athene had a feeling that, even if she weren't, she wouldn't be able to see her face. There was a distinctly distorted air around her. As if she existed and yet didn't.

She took a step towards her, breaking the picture. Athene twitched.

"I didn't expect to see a new face here," the woman commented lightly, as if talking about the weather or something equally inconsequential.

"And I didn't know the dead dreamed, so I suppose we are all learning new things." Athene retorted immediately, feeling defensive all of sudden. Alarm bells started ringing in her head.

The woman threw her head back and let out a bright laugh. "Oh my, how spirited." She cocked her head. "Tell me, little familiar, why have you come?"

Athene drew herself in offense. "I'm not a familiar!"

Another step forward.

"No… you're not. You're so much more, l̴̮͓̱̉i̵̳̥̓t̸̛̟ţ̷͍̟̑̾l̴̘̗̀̑͂e̷̖̻͆ ̶̢̞̉̃́m̵͈̠̅̿̍e̵̙̯͇͗." She smiled mysteriously. Athene's head hurt, the words lancing through her head and dissolving into static. "So what do you think?"

Immediately Athene knew what she was asking about. The man, the child, the wild impossible dreams of becoming gods.

"A waste," she responded tersely, tensing slightly as the woman advanced another step. "The rules exist for a reason."

"Ah little spark," she stopped a couple of feet away. This close Athene couldn't help but be intensely aware of the physical discrepancy between them. The woman was a giant in comparison. Her composed and regal bearing made her seem otherworldly. "You still have so much to learn."

Athene bristled but bit her tongue. Her head was pounding in a way that hadn't happened since the very first time she overused her Echo.

"You should wake up, little spark, before your fire goes out."

Athene almost snarled at that, if it was that simple then she'd have woken up as soon as she realized she had invaded a dream. (Was it a dream though?) However, even as she thought that, she could see the dream starting to dissolve, the cages, the sky, the boy and the man, one by one they disappeared, until it was just them.

She was still smiling.

"Until next time."

.

Athene woke up with a start, breath coming harshly.

"Bad dreams?" came Funana's tired voice. It had been another sleepless night for the lalafell, it seemed.

Athene opened her mouth to agree, but paused as she tried to recall it and came up empty. A feeling of dread stirred in her soul.

"I… I don't know."

Sheets rustled as Funana sat up. Even with their best efforts the room wasn't truly dark, so Athene could see the worried frown Funana threw her way. "I thought you don't forget Dreams."