#ruimre

He tries to speak, to say something, anything, to scream— And yet no noise leaves his throat. The feeling of a finger against his lips stops his attempts as whoever is beyond the blindfold speaks instead. He can't quite make the words out, but his own voice is unmistakable.

The voice belonging to the hands back then was different, but here it was his. In the past his voice was a wailing cacophony until he could scream no more, but here he could not force a single sound past trembling lips.

Fingers dig under his ribs to soundless agonized gasps, voice whispering things he still can't make out against his ear. As a slender hand slips fully between his ribs, the white hot reminder of pain only imagined blinds him with white instead of the black of a blindfold.

Slowly the pain in his body fades, watering eyes trying to focus on the form of a serpent with stained glass wings rising out of the nothing. It has many names; many things it has been, will be, and is, but the name Ruimre knows is the Dogma. The being which blessed him with the ability to know the truth of this world; to exist is to believe in everything, and everything exists because you believe. All things are an aspect of the Dogma, though many get lost along the way following the aspects instead of the whole.

Relief washes over him seeing the unclear face of the God he knows before collapsing into a heap, watching from a third person view as Dogma approaches the collapsed form of his body. Blood slowly seeps from the wounds in his sides, the World Snake makes a path around it, through it, to coil around his helpless corpse.

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The jade wakes with a start on top of his work space, the CD player he'd been repairing still in pieces as he springs upright from being leaned perhaps a little too hard into his chairs arm. Ah. That would explain the dream well enough... Any touch to the ribs even awake was enough to make him recoil.

Checking the time Ruimre laughs under his breath. On his day off by now he's usually at the church— Perhaps the Dogma had come to fetch its lagging sheep. A cute idea, though he would hope— Believe that it had intervened to stop his pain instead.

Throwing a long glance into the only remaining mirror still half covered by cloth the voice that tormented him in the dream stared back with tired eyes through the cracked glass. The monster had long consumed the person who has their fingers on his bones, but it didn't spare him the fear one day the creature could come back.

It'll be alright, he tells himself, You have no fangs nor claws to bite anymore. It cannot harm anyone as long as you follow the rules. You must believe this, or your world will become undone.