Eislyn dreams; of a long, winding road into the north, where the north is a bruise-coloured stormcloud. Of a palace of peacock feathers and glass, in which the Monarch of Dreams takes her elbow and walks her through glittering, empty rooms of tear-jerking beauty, talking kindly to her. Eislyn can hear none of the words at all, nodding along anxiously, but the arm through her own is reassuring. The Monarch's perpetually indistinct face holds, she thinks, a smile for her; they reach a dark door of wood, slick and eaten with damp, blooming with fungi and greened with moss.
"What is it, in the north?" Eislyn asks, knowing she will receive no answer, knowing she must grasp the door and open it, leave this safe place.
The Monarch presses a slim hand to Eislyn's sternum, and Eislyn draws a quick breath; although the palace is warm, the lungful she draws is winter-cold, and bites at the weakness in her lungs. The watering of her eyes hides the Monarch's disappearance.
One arm wrapped around her familiar internal ache, Eislyn opens the door.
Eislyn dreams of trees, which are somehow also a labyrinth, and also the walls of one of the tiny coffee-drinking shops of the city beside the desert, all those years ago. Other patrons sprout from the root-rugous floor as green shoots or the white buds of mushrooms; growing into place, blooming, quietly taking coffee together, then wilting and rotting into the rich green mulch.
"This is not your sleep to dream in, paladin," says the flower-crowned figure seated in a sumptuous chair of lilies. They are composed of elegance in every part; a long throat, neat fingers around their cup, lithe arms, a trim waist. Like some trick of perspective, it seems impossible, however, to look at them entire, to ever see their whole.
"Your pardon." Eislyn bows low. "I mean no harm; I travel into the north, and it seems something is there ahead of me."
"What is it that sleeps no more, and dies no more, and does something that is both together and endlessly wakes?" the fae says. "What is the poison?"
"I would help, as I can," Eislyn says, and the fae is standing in front of her, suddenly; around them is an endless tumble of stained linen, fever-sweat-stained, hazy. Neat fingers part Eislyn's shirt, press into the torn hollow of her chest.
She shudders as fingertips press roughly around within, before withdrawing.
"What is the poison?" the fae says, and spits into its other palm. It holds both hands up before her face.
The glittering dust of gold sparks in the light, within the runnel of spit. And also on the pads of its two fingers, on the other hand.
Eislyn shudders awake.
