symbolism

She stared down her brother in law after being firmly tucked into the bed that belonged to her beloved. He looked disappointed and saddened in her, as he placed a hand on her shoulder. Not a few hours ago, she had been having a similar staredown with her lover as he removed her from the bedroom where she had kept all those dark secrets. Here, it was the same stuff. Disappointment.

“Hermana...”

“I know, brother, I know...” She sighed, trying to avoid the gaze of his three eyes.

“I wish you would have told us.”

“I… couldn’t. Anya was going through so much, and I know I shouldn’t excuse the fits but she wasn’t in her right mind, and-”

“Shh. We are taking care of that, you know this.”

“I know, brother… I know she’s doing better. I didn’t want to go and set her back to square one.”

“You could have told me. I wouldn’t have told her if you didn’t want me to.”

“I was scared. I was scared and I wasn’t thinking straight because… because I was having nightmares. I *couldn’t* sleep. And I kept seeing things, because I wasn’t sleeping, and hearing things, and… ugh.”

“So you let it escalate to a drinking problem, and hurting yourself.”

“...Yeah. It shut the voices up and it made the hallucinations go away and… well… I was so depressed after everything, still am, that the weed wasn’t helping on its own anymore. Just keeping the panic attacks away. And it made me numb… so numb that I had to remind myself I was still alive. I was beyond wanting to kill myself… I just couldn’t feel anything anymore. Now that I’m here and you’re doing all this, it all sounds so stupid...”

“Oh, hermana… if you had been having trouble sleeping, you should have asked.”

“Like I said, I wasn’t thinking… I’m so tired.”

“Shh. Lay back.” His hand moved from her shoulder to her forehead as he gently nudged her against the pillows. “You’ll feel better soon.”

It was a supernatural sense of calm that washed over her as she watched his third eye glow orange, like a sunset. It delicately lowered her into the depths of blessed sleep.


The dream she had that night was the first she could remember vividly in a very, very long time.

She was lost in a sea of black tar and acid and bog water, barely able to keep herself afloat over the sluggish, heavy tide. Bats flew overhead in a sky strewn with stormclouds and stained red with the dim light of a waxing lunar eclipse, occasionally swooping down to snatch the mosquitoes that had freshly grown fat on her blood. The trees in the dense mire twisted around as if they were made of dozens of cobras coiled into knots, and in their knotholes she was watched by hundreds of glowing, yellow, catlike eyes.

Try as she might, no matter how much she slogged, she never went forward. She itched from the bugs. She felt creatures in the mire latch onto the exposed parts of the body. And the bats swooped overhead without a care, thankful mostly for the meals that she attracted. She began to despair as the bog pulled her deeper, deeper into its murky depths. Blissful dark washed over her eyes and suffocated her lungs as finally her head went under. Surely this was the end.

A sharp tug into the air brought her mind back to itself, as she was dragged forward, finally forward through the oily marsh by the nape of the neck and the back of the shirt. She was pulled up onto a grassy knoll in the middle of the trees, a dry patch in the midst of the darkness.

When she turned to see her saviors, she had to squint to avoid harming her already-sensitive eyes. Before her were two radiant, glowing wolves made of sunlight contained within framework of fine gold. The wolf on the left was frankly massive. When its paws moved along the ground, they nearly created earthquakes. Its eyes were carved from lapis and its golden frame looked almost like stitchwork. To the right stood its more lithe, swift partner. This one stood proud and unmoving before her, and its frame was formed of the finest filigree.

The two wolves howled, and the bog between them began to split apart. From it, raised a pathway made of aether and stardust, spanning far along into the distance. She rose to her feet and began to follow it, seeing no reason why she should either stay put or drown even more in the marsh below her.

The walk was long and strange. The further along the path she went, the more things distorted, the brighter they became. The trees fell away into serpents, who danced along the reflective surface of the slowly clearing water in time with the bats above, who now shone with starlight in the brilliant light of a full moon. Hundreds of yellow eyes formed from shapeless darkness into black cats made from galaxies and nebulas, who joined her along the shining path.

When the path finally ended, she stood in a vast field underneath a moon five times the size of the real one, bordered by mountains unimaginably tall and surrounded by singing howls in the wind.

She awoke gently, without much of a start.

When she awoke, she was standing up.

When she awoke, she was in the Umbra, staring down a woman in elegant flowing robes. This woman carried with her a large clay jar filled with the whispers of the enigmatic and the hopes and dreams of the world. She looked as an amalgamation of all the friendly faces that she knew.

“Hello, my child.”