Section Author: 'Yui-chan'

It moved along quickly, as all dreams do, the colors and patterns joining in a dance of celestial artistry, creating between them a world of unreality and bald truth. Absorbed in the fluidic motion that was her purpose for existence, the immortal who sat before the weave passed long moments before raising her eyes from the tuck and weave of her hands to behold the finished product that flowed into the ether beyond the loom. What she saw there made her freeze, the shuttle sliding to a stop in the middle of the strands as the DreamWeaver stared in shock at the face of the tapestry-dream she was creating. Darkness. In the midst of a thousand bright colors, a stain of faded greys and blacks sat upon the dream, the ominous Black Strand at its center. An icy chill of foreboding went through the creature of eternity as she reached out to touch the dreadful fragment, feeling the rending tension that remained despite her best efforts to loosen her weave. The DreamWeaver stared at the dark dream, the color draining from her face as she whispered, "It is not my work..."

On the floor by her feet, the child idly played with the skein of thread from which she drew, fingering the reds and greens and golds of the strands in an idle attempt to untangle them. At her words, he raised his dark gaze to her and blinked innocent eyes at the stain. Frowning, he turned his gaze back to the threads in his hands and raised them for his mother to see. "Mommy, the bad one's all tangled with this pretty one. Can you untangle it?"

She wrenched her eyes from the puzzling sight of her own work altered and looked at the boy with a worried frown. "I can't, sweetlings. I wish I could... but I can't..."

*******

She stood on the parapet of a high tower, whipped by the winds and rain of a violent storm. Around her, the darkness was lit by the constant strobe of sizzling lightning bolts, though no thunder rumbled through the chaos. In fact, she could hear nothing, only feel the sting of the shards of rain against her skin and feel the lash of her unbound hair across her cheeks. Alone there, she shivered against the seeping cold of the water soaking her cloak.

'Fool.' The sound surprised her, and she turned with a start to find herself staring at her own face. In the darkness, the icy blue of the eyes that stared back at her shined like a beacon. She felt the cold seep deeper. 'You've lost me. You've freed me.'

She opened her mouth to speak, but no sound came out. She tried to raise her hand to this other self, but she could not move. Ebon...

Helpless, she could only watch in worry as the darksoul shard of her own being stepped forward and reached out a hand to her. Time slowed, straining forward as the pale fingers closed the last inch towards her cheek... and then the hand was not hers. A man stood before her, swallowing her in his infinite, black eyes as he caressed her soft skin. Aegon... Yet not Aegon. She stared, paralyzed, at her lover's face and body, his smooth, tanned skin bare to the cool night breeze that eased through their bedchamber. The firelight flickered on the angles of his cheekbones as he leaned forward to touch his lips gently to hers. It was all so familiar except that his skin was cold and his warm blue eyes were so terribly black. She quaked in a mixture of longing and fear as his hand trailed down her cheek to her neck, memories of the thousand other times her love had warmed her with the comforting gesture flashing through her thoughts.

Free to move, again, she reached her own hand up to the stubble-roughened cheek of this man, torn by the familiar mixed with the unfamiliar. Aegon was never this cold, this empty, yet foolish hope prompted her to whisper, 'Love...'

The word might as well have been the final arcane syllable of Chain Lightning for the effect it had on this phantom of her soulmate. With a jerk and an angry snarl, he wrapped his hands around her neck and squeezed the breath from her throat. Her eyes went wide from the shock, and she gripped his wrists in desperation, struggling to draw breath through the clamp of his grip.

'Kiree na kodomo.' (5) The gravelly voice drove a spike through her heart, and she stared in terror at the dark face of the man before her. Enshrouded in a cowl that covered the features of his face with shadows, suddenly, he looked nothing like Aegon or anyone else she knew. His skin was lined and pocked, harsh angles and a sharp nose topped by black eyes and the hint of long, red hair. A fearful shudder rocked her, and she stopped struggling, captured by the depth of nothingness in those eyes.

The room around them faded into a place just as empty as the soul she saw in the man's gaze, and she sobbed silently. This, she knew. This was a place she had been before. She fought futilely against what was to come...

'One.' The voice closed around her heart like a vise, stopping it cold. Unable to move, unable to breathe, she could feel the cold seeping into her core, into her soul. Without motion, she struggled, fighting to hold onto a light that was quickly extinguishing, a warmth that was fading to nothing under the onslaught of pitch black. 'We are One.'

*******

The Master watched her face as she dreamed, a thoughtful look upon his creased face. She was everything he had hoped for and more, a delicious mix of power and vulnerability, light and darkness. Her beauty made her appear almost fragile as she stirred in tormented sleep, yet what he saw in the dream he gave her was a strong, stubborn will, forged in the tragedies of the past and tempered in the white light of a love that was both her shield and her weakness. Even more, he touched a magnificent pocket of the coldest dark within her, a delicious irony in one so very luminous. The triumph was agony. The anticipation, torture.

"Bring her." His hoarse voice punctured the clatter of the storm around them as he faded like a shadow exposed to light, leaving the ragged man alone in the violent downpour.

The Slave stared at the woman laying unconscious on the rough ground, still wondering at the shock of recognition, trying to reconcile the pale, rain-drenched form before him with the all-too-fresh images from his dream. The storm... we helped each other against the storm. What does it mean?

Carefully, he lifted her limp form into his arms, tucking her sodden cloak around her before he began to trudge back towards the looming stones of the castle. All the while, he watched her face and wondered...