restless dreams

Carnivale awoke to a blinding white light. The air felt still and stagnant, like a shawl wrapped over his shoulders. There was no breeze, no movement, and Carnivale realized he was in the Underdark. The light fell away, and he was left with the still darkness of the cave. Below him, the dry prickle of dying grass. Under his feet, nothing. Sitting on the edge of a cliff. Far below, he could hear the dull syrupy roil of the waves. They never moved as quickly as they should, down here. They hardly crashed against the rocks so much as slopped against them, before oozing back into the black mass that made up the rest of the ocean.

"I've been here before."

His words echoed, reverberating off the sluggish water below. A voice piped up next to him, airy and crystalline, and his veins flowed with ice.

"Of course you have. It was the simplest place to dispose of the carrion without too much of a walk, and return home before the morning prayer."

Carnivale glanced to his right, and became acutely aware of the fact that he was both entirely nude, and sitting next to his mother.
She was beautiful, in the same way that a gilded guillotine was beautiful- someone had made an attempt to pretty up what was in essence a device used to prune lives. Hair worn free flowing, down to the mid back, pristine white robes that were only cleaned for the express purpose of soiling them once again. Eyes the color of old wine, lips covered with a myriad of tiny white filigree tattoos. Carnivale felt very, very ugly all of a sudden.  She glanced over to him and sneered.

"My daughter was always so upset if she was late for the morning prayers, let alone the Ghouliday festivities."

Reflexively, Carnivale curled inwards, slipping back away from the edge of the cliff. He found himself entirely unable to move away from the figure next to him, only parallel to her. "That 'carrion' was made up primarily of people."

"Undesirables," his mother corrected, her voice snapping like a riding crop to the temple. Reflexively, the dramaturge flinched. "My daughter would never confuse them for people. She certainly wouldn't have gone among them, and she certainly wouldn't have wanted to mutilate herself to BECOME one of them." The words wracked Carnivale, and he pulled his knees in, closer, as close as he could. He willed himself to disappear. He could practically feel his shoulders bruising as the words crashed against them. They were trite insults- his mother was a trite woman. But they stung none the less, and Carnivale could feel his eyes pricking with moisture, his chest constricting. It was so very hard to breathe. "And she would certainly never associate with a town full of mentally diminished yokels, least of all a pack of tiefling whor-"

A boot planted itself on his mother's back, and shoved her forward. She tumbled off of the cliff, letting out a scream that made the dramaturge's throat knot like a clenched fist. The figure the boot was attached to sat on the cliff next to Carnivale. It was hard to tell just who- or what- the figure was. It wore a set of resplendent robes, thick and flowing and gorgeous. A small wind picked up, and strips of cloth and leather began to flutter to the side of the figure, dangling from their shoulders and throat and stomach, snapping gently in the breeze. The figure turned, revealing a face covered by a porcelain half-mask. Where a mouth should have been, Carnivale's eyes could not focus properly. There was a set of lips, and teeth, and if he looked any higher or lower his eyes simply slid away, unseeing.

"God above, gods below, that felt good." boomed the figure. They spoke in a jovial, bassy voice. The figure looked down, then over, and though he couldn't see it, Carnivale could tell they had winked. "Even if this is just a dream." Carnivale began to relax slightly, before he realized again he was nude. He quickly tensed again, and the figure let out another booming laugh.

"Calm down, kiddo. It isn't anything I haven't seen before." Another bassy laugh, and Carnivale slid into a gentle hunch, more dedicated to comfort than to hiding himself.

"I take it that means you're supposed to be my dad," he intoned dryly. "I can't see your face because I don't know what you look like, but I imagine you to be a happy, caring man under other circumstances."

The figure buzzed their lips in a vague parody of a scoff. "If you want to be such a damned realist about it, I suppose so. But that's not your way, darling. You were always a dreamer, metaphorically and literally." The figure reached a hand out in front of him, and for a moment Carnivale's perspective shifted. He was watching the scene from outside of a glass bottle, made up like a terrarium. Far below the waves he could see his mother, cold and lifeless, as if she was cast out of pewter. His father reached out, and tapped the thin barrier of glass, waving to him as he watched.

And then he was back on the cliffside, next to the thing calling itself his father. "So let's say that your first theory has an equal amount of credence as your second theory, which is?" The figure held out a hand, as if waiting for Carnivale to speak. "Maybe....." Carnivale sighed, and pressed his forhead to his knees gently. "Maybe you are my father. And you're alive, and we're dreaming together. Or maybe you're dead, and visiting me in my dreams as some sort of prophecy. In which case, my question is 'what do you have to tell me?'"

The figure let out third laugh, that left no echo, despite Carnivale's own words causing the whole cavern to resonate. "No prophecy, lad. Just a cordial visit, to check in on you." A note of tenderness crept into the figure's voice, and they extended a hand to clap Carnivale on the shoulder. "You certainly know how to make a dramatic exit, that's for sure. And you haven't made things easy for yourself."

"You're here to tell me that my life as a surface dwelling nobody is difficult? I already knew that." Carnivale jerked his shoulder away. He folded his arms across the tops of his knees and leaned forward, fuming slightly.

"No, you idiot. I mean the constant self-loathing you seem to have made your daily damn habit. Who exactly are you trying to punish with it? And before you say 'the person I used to be,' that person is gone. Dead. Stabbed 'tween the ribs with a silver knife."

Carnivale felt at a loss for words.

"I'm here, perhaps, to give some advice. It's no prophecy, but it's something. A proverb. You want to hear it?"

Carnivale glanced to the figure that claimed to be his father, and realized that his robes were not some opulent, resplendent affair. They were rags- colored, finely kept, but rags nonetheless. A tapestry of seamstress' scraps and torn drapes and mangled blankets, stitched together into a set of robes fit for a king of beggars. Their grin twinkled despite the darkness.

"The best revenge is living well in spite of those that've hurt you." The figure gave a pregnant pause, letting the phrase sink in, before he continued.

"That's part of why I held on, through everything. Every little pain Jiv' and your mother inflicted. Every abuse, every harm. Not letting it break me was a revenge."

"You heard how mad she was that you were living up there, on your own, away from all this." The figure nodded to the ocean, indicating who they were talking about. "If she has such a problem with you associating with yokels, be friends with them. If she has trouble with that- and she most certainly will- date one of them. When she has a problem with that, get married. Eat good food, drink nice wine, but don't do it for the glory of some rotten bint in the sky. Do it because it'll make you happy."

Carnivale didn't want to cry. He felt the tightness in his throat and chest, the heat in his cheeks, the moisture at his eyes. He didn't want to be smiling as he cried, but he was. He let out a weak laugh, that transformed into a full on fit of laughter. The figure laughed with him, and all was good. Silence descended again a few moments later.

"I.... have a question, if you really are my dad. Two, actually."

"Sure."

"Would you be proud of me? If you knew me outside of my dreams, I mean."

"Incredibly."

Carnivale sniffled, and beamed. His face soured moments later.

"And......"

Hesitation.

"Did I kill you?"

A hand snaked out of the figure's robe, offered to Carnivale. He took it. No answer came forth.

The breeze was dying, but it was still enough to catch something of interest on the figure's body- tied around the wrist.

A single, bright white ribbon, made of silk.

Carnivale woke, entirely unsure of the reason behind his tears.