***

'...Mir andente vid solferre, meia falchent cal aldavia aqui.'
'...And with the palette of the moon, mark dreams with brilliant fervor.'

***

Her lips had within it the ethereal taste of wine, aged against the soft flavors of cider and mint. It had the sweetness of ripened grapes that served as essence for the chalice. Its smell the fragrance of a blooming field, its image the listless breeze that caress the lea as grass tumbles like waves, the tide that sweeps at the shoal and perforates the bay with its thunder.

The memory tasted bitter to his tongue, yet it was music to his ears, and a flowering bed to his eyes.

"Aeryn," he murmured her name…once in sleep, once in blackened twilight.

The name sounded like the singing lute of a dismal dirge and more yet, the blithe flute that told of midnight fairies and unlit gloom. It was a hymn sung by the pixies at day and the nymphs at night that echoed their joyful notes about the mighty host of a mountain and the shivering head of its peak.

Sweat broke from under his brow as the dream caught on the current of a nightmare and suddenly, poor Consciousness pulled at his murmuring soul and John awoke, his blue eyes shimmering at the maelstrom of a sickened sea. A painful swallow followed his sharp intake of tired breath and he was robbed of the pearls that had somewhat laced his memory, replaced, instead, by thorned thickets that bore no fruit due to their sterility.

Sunshine…

Quickly, with the shadows dancing this merry caper about the walls, exuding the slight smell of melancholy as Moya glided through the spiritless void, he caught sight of his trousers and in the way that sleepless animals do, slithered like a sloth to where the hall lay. What little light flickered as if in doubt, muttering their noises as if the night held little nourishment for their phantoms. With silent feet, he treaded the halls; the coolness of pulsing life celestial to the skin. His complacent reflection followed him as the hound does to his master and torpidly roused the ghosts about the offing.

As dusky resin cast their doleful sails and spread their oars to drift about Moya's living arches, John Crichton, his eyes flashing their myriad quality of misguided terror and broken slumber, humbly entered the Mess Hall.

"Crichton, what are you doing here?"

The second sleep slipped from under him and stole away like a brigand, taking with it the tinkling bell of repose, the drowned knell of the tower.

"A-Aeryn?" he whispered dumbly, watching her with the eyes of one whimpering mortal at the sight of an untouchable fruit. "What are you doing awake?"

"I'd like to ask you the same question."

As the sigh of air escaped from the chamber beyond and touched her pallid cheek, Crichton fancied that the room had submitted to the wiles of their goddess, feeding her the puissance of its inner polish.

The light had somewhat restrained their reaches from the dark and had instead, alighted unto her face and breathed existence to that immovable beauty. Resplendent black hair fell from off the crown of her head in brilliant respite and her Cimmerian eyes gave life to the valiant jaw.

She watched him, taking in his indolent stance and the way his legs were rooted to the floor like an oak's immense appendage.

"I had a…a dream," Crichton admitted, resuming his haggard walk, his eyes emanciated, sunken from the toils of opening a rustic gate. But his hunched self was defensive in balance and bore little in the sight of clues.

Aeryn knew him to be a brave man, though frail, but by that carriage that hung like a broken trophy about his shoulders, she doubted the nonchalant manner by which he dismissed the subject.

Surely, the dream was an enigma.

"Hmph." Aeryn slipped sideways to allow him space at the table and, without much thought to the wants of his feeble mind, handed him a glass of sparkling water. "Same here."

The admission was enough to raise Crichton's head and he sorely missed the fleeting look of horror on her face. Their aggrieved state was heightened all the more by the proverbial breathing of the living ship. To their open ears, Moya's strength, her lustrous efficacy, was a cadence of unrewarded toil and the silent hum of her soul wrapped them against the shade of its pith.

Then, from Aeryn's silent raiment peeked the spokes of humor and she chuckled to conspire against the malaise of their reveries. "Dreams that keep us awake...For how long have you had them, Crichton?"

She was not one to open a conversation so casually nor was she one to throw words upon the wind for it to carry to Crichton's ears. There was a hint of wonder in her voice, the core of unmistakable curiosity encircled by the undercurrent of palpable tenderness.

"Not long," Crichton said, grasping the glass like a talisman and bringing it to his mouth. Sweet bliss washed his scorched throat and he was thankful that the Sebacean yielded to give him another one. "The dren of it all," he muttered. "I can't believe that I came down here for a warm glass of milk to get me to sleep. I get this instead."

"It's better than nothing," came her voice, the tone of it reminding him of children's laughter as it echoed through an ephemeral garden and cried out the joyance from their virtuous souls. "What did you dream of?"

Then, with the laughter came a sob as the child fell and scraped her knee. Fear perched with sharp talons on the boughs of her unsullied tree and suddenly, she could not find the source to voice out her predicament.

There was no hesitation on Crichton's part and the words sprouted from his mouth like a fountain, spraying its silvery chortle to rid of the pestilence inside.

"You."

"Me?" she asked, incredulous. "By Hezmana, why me?" She afforded herself a laugh that echoed its joy against the deprecating quality of the night shift.

It was a meaningful look that he bestowed upon her. Its bow hung solid and taut; the arrow fled from its cavern in a flurry of truth and the strings of detached harps played their distant melody. Affection was a subtle note when he voiced, "Well, babe, I don't know." And from then on, they did know though neither dared to put it to coherency.

"And you?" he queried sarcastically. "What's keeping you from snoozing?"

"I told you already." There was silence but the coaxing look on Crichton's face tempted the Muse in her to voice the abstraction. "A dream."

"And…?"

She was silent, the phlegmatic fingers of fear caressing her eyes and supressing the urge to let go of a rotting corpse. "And nothing."

"Alright. What did you dream of then?"

"I don't know where you find all this energy Crichton, Erpling- I mean, Earthling that you are, but if you really have to ask…" She squeezed her eyes shut and once they opened, the windows of her soul revealed the unfinished traces of a maze and the cloaked menace who walked its corridors like the Minotaur, a terror whose sheath was the glint of death's sickle. "Frell it all. I dreamt about you."

Crichton choked down the next unsympathetic ramble about their relationship and instead, took time to study the curve of her cheek, the elegant arch of her neck as she hunched over an unfinished glass of water, the way her hair fell about her face like a waterfall down the sharpness of rocks hewn from epochs upon epochs. His gaze was an eagle's watchful eye and Aeryn, glancing sideways to catch the semblance of wonder on his face, could only reveal a smile that washed fear's fist in a deluge of ardor.

"What are you looking at?"

"You." A soft smile touched his lips.

"Don't you flatter yourself Crichton. Just because I dreamed about you, it doesn't mean…" She was startled when he raised a tender finger and brought it to her lips, silencing the hazard of her roughened tongue.

"I can't help but be flattered," he whispered, the glimmer of a joke bright against the dimness of the room.

She rolled her eyes. "Humans," she muttered. "You're so easily swayed."

Yet his finger had not left its place and her breath was warm against the coldness of his palm.

Carefully, as the breezes brush at the tranquil surface of a lake, he touched her face, carving into his flawed memory the perfection of it as he brushed past her lips, and lined her jaw with the touch of his hand. The softness of her cheeks sculpted a form of treasured history and wrote with a quill of fire to imprint upon his mind the silk from the best merchants of a darkened past. The elusive inertness of her lips muttered their muted strains as his thumb traced against them and once more added to the inadequate vivacity of his image. The ivory cliff presented its laconic fall as he silently stirred her brows in a transient caress.

He delicately entangled his fingers in her hair and wondered at the intricate net of a woven loom that shone like the blighted black of space. The eyes they upheld stared at him and gently, as the tide reclaims its water to join the open sea, he withdrew his hand.

It was a moment shared in mutual silence and even as she dropped her gaze to sip from her drink, he studied her and wondered at the rich embodiment of charm and aptitude that literally flowed from her golden tresses.

She was first to divert from the immutable bond when she stood from her place, her leathers screeching their protest. Just as she silently came around him, he took her hand and she paused, her gaze benevolent and bright. Her lips bent like the crescent moon and she tenderly kissed his forehead.

"I'll see you in the morning, Crichton."

"Sweet dreams, Sunshine," Crichton said.

Just as she recalled her soft touch from his brow, he smoothly pulled her to him and cradled her face in both his hands. He caressed the strands of pilgrim hairs as they paid homage at the altar of her dark, Athenian beauty that served predator for his warmth and returned her insightful deed with one of his own.

"I'll see you in the morning," he whispered to her, like the dear god of the heavens who pursues his beloved with the hushed tones of the upcoming dawn.

The clandestine world of their eyes created a soft message that spoke of untamed love and as each stared into the storybook of their souls, they recanted the horrible stalk of fear. A smile that had laid its kind fingers upon Aeryn's lips touched John's own and they partook in that voiceless secret of the lover's hoarse throat.

She bent lower to taste the fruit of his vine, to reach the sweet persimmons that had ripened to greet the dawn of harvest but just as rain were to touch the the leaf's tilted edge, she slid away to seek the darkness beyond.

She cleared her throat and said, "I have to get some rest." It was a said in a low susurration and within it was the taint of perplexity. "I'll, ah... I'll see you in the morning."

Aeryn pulled away from him and retreated to the hall that by now was cold with the absence of sentience.

And once more, Moya seemed to look upon Crichton with a mother's fervor as she accompanied his walk back to his quarters.

***

'Salvantresi'
-translated from the Macadoric

...Heed the great laughter of the child
And touch their skies of stars so mild
Breathe the air of sweet innocence
Then bring the youth luminescence

The beauty then will talk to you
With lips like gold and tongue so true
Thus you shall see the mind within
A mind so deep and free of sin...

***

-The End-