belated instalment of the miki shinichirou drabble effort! [scrapped princess] ------------------------------ the opposite of lucid dreaming ------------------------------ Shannon would rather watch the fire than sleep. Sleep invites dreams, which are rarely pleasant; on the rare occasion that they are pleasant, they make the next morning a little harder to face. Here Shannon is safe from them, and though solitude is a luxury he doesn’t think he can enjoy any longer -- he always suspects that Zephiris is watching, though she never shows herself -- at least that means that he need not fear someone else’s rather less welcome scrutiny. The nights are growing colder; Shannon keeps watch by the fire and feels warmed by something close to certainty. It is comforting, in the face of everything else. He remembers the terror-clouded stare of Pacifica’s blue eyes as he drew his sword against his will, his movements marionette-awkward; the moment when he realised that he had made yet another wrong decision, trusted a child’s face and not his own sister’s suspicions. In the peace of night it is easier to believe what he wants to: that all mortal minds are open to the Peacemakers and it is not Shannon’s own personal failure; that they are out of the Peacemakers’ reach for now; that here, by the fire, Shannon can be sure that his thoughts are his own. *** ( On some nights it goes like this, only in fewer words, or not in words at all: /This is the fire, which must be kept burning. Those are your sisters in the caravan, whom you must and will and can protect. This is your mind, for now, and it is yours to control, for now, and you are more than a pawn in this. And this is not even a game./ On most nights it is easier to believe. On some nights he almost does believe it. More often he thinks: even when he fights for them, his body belongs to Zephiris, not him. ) *** He wakes Raquelle up two, three hours before the dawn, when it’s her turn to take over the watch. She always wakes with both a smile and some words of thanks or encouragement. He knows that he will be unable to tell if she has nightmares, but likes to think that she doesn’t, anyway. Her cheerfulness is something to trust in. ( Things he can trust in, things he cannot; the line blurs too often nowadays, and he himself is seldom on the right side of it. ) Inside the caravan, the darkness is not the shadowed coolness of trees, but a suffocating blanket. Shannon closes his eyes and still sees the fire, its afterimage glowing an icy blue-green. Pacifica’s slow breathing is comfort of a different sort. Shannon listens to its rhythm and doesn’t want to fall asleep.