12089/A Dream Takes Flight

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A Dream Takes Flight
Date of Scene: 20 July 2022
Location: The Dreaming
Synopsis: Dream confronts Kían in his sleep and asks him what the young, rising rhyták would have him do with Wonderland.
Cast of Characters: Dream, Kian




Dream has posed:
    It is a familiar dream for Kían.  An old dream, actually—old as in it is a dream passed down among his people since time immemorial.  From the time before they took to the air, from when his forebears huddled in aeries and had a language barely more complex than grunts and whistles.
    The dream is the same; it is a gathering of his fellows, in a great bowl of a nest that can seat a thousand of them.  The floor drops away except for a lone plinth of wood, hewn into a platform out of the living wood of the most ancient tree.  His companions are not his people.  These are ancient, hulking men and women, with sloped brows and heavy shoulders.  Their wingfeathers are black, coarse.  They look ill-suited for graceful acrobatics.
    And this time, Kían is at the center of the roost.  A place he's never stood before: The Storyteller's Perch.  Perhaps not a holy place, but a sacred one, a place where leaders make impassioned speeches and historians relay the oral traditions of their people.  To be a Teller, after all, requires repeating the oral tradition exactly as it was relayed from master to student, over thousands—tens of thousands—of years.
    A rustling of feathers can be heard behind him.  When Kían turns, a raven stares down at him.  It's immense, at least seven feet tall, and despite the blackness of the feathers there's something lacking in color to it all the same.  A gleaming chip of some glass or stone glimmers below it's breastbone, and when it turns that eye towards him Kían can behold nothing except an infinitely deep starfield that contains whirling planets, glimmering stars, and the glow of distant galaxies.
    "KÍAN T'KÁEH."  A lack of lips seems to be no inconvenience for the raven, and Kían's name rings around the roost.  "You are Called to the Perch."  Is it—speech?  The native tongue of the Akiár?  Or just a voice resonating in his skull?  The great raven gestures with one wing and points at the small stand, a small platform that's been worn down over the millennia by many feet resting on it.  "You will tell us a story, according to the customs of your people.  A new story."
    A rustling of feathers from all the gathered spectators, eyes fixed on Kian hungrily.  Is it avarice?  Hunger?  An appetite for something new to hear and enjoy?  It's hard to say.  It might be at that precise moment that Kían realizes that he is, in fact, standing in the middle of not just a gathering of his people.
    He is performing for a conspiracy of ravens.

Kian has posed:
    Kían turns slowly in place, taking it all in, feeling very on the spot both literally and figuratively.  This many birdfolk is one place is so uncommon… but they say that before the Gift of Mind, the Mindtouch was finely honed, they could gather in large groups without risking falling into sync with each other.
    Are these his kin?  His ancestors?  Kían's studies have been focused on physics ever since his powers developed, he never studied archeology or anthropology.  Obviously they haven't been a technological society since the beginning.  They developed over time, over thousands of years.
    He stares up at the great raven, eyes wide, and follows the pointing wing to the indicated spot without any actual act of will.  It's just what must be done.
    «I… I'm no teller of tales,» he begins hesitantly, automatically speaking not just his own language, but in the more ancient liturgical form that he uses for his morning prayers.  It's thicker, heavier somehow, and far more tonal, almost musical.  It's half spoken, half sung.
    To himself, he quietly whispers the opening of every prayer: "H'kýe h'ka," 'I open my soul'.
    «I don't know stories.  I only know what I have seen.  And very little has made sense to me.  Nor do I know if it would make sense to you.»  There's really nothing more than his own natural earnestness.  Dissembling is as alien to him as Earth is.  Maybe moreso.

Dream has posed:
    There's no reaction.  No grumbling.  No applause.  No cheers.  The audience gives him no feedback whatsoever.  They just stare at him with dim, hooded eyes.
    The great Raven clucks once and walks two paces, watching Kían with those infinite eyes.  A universe captured in a glance.
    «Your ancestors stared up at the blue sky and imagined a bowl of water suspended over the ground.  Your ancestors walked the night sky on beams of light and drowned in pools of moss and gold.  A story begins when a mortal sees something they can not explain.  That story is shared with others.  Then they share the story.  And in time the story becomes more than merely an idea.  It becomes part of you.»  The Raven gestures with one wing, somehow encompassing Kían, his predecessors, ancestors—the great lines of families, clans, back to the first of his people, those who would become the Akiár.
    «You have seen a story.  A story of an old man clinging to a child's dream.  Unable to give it up, give it away, or let it die.»
    The Raven steps closer and leans down.  There is no threat, no malice—but Kían is suddenly, instinctively and deeply aware that whatever is talking to him is Old.  Older than his people.  Older than history.
    «I am the Keeper of the Stories, Kían t'Káeh,» the Raven informs him.  «And you have flown through my realm and seen Wonderland.  Much hinges on the weight of your… observation.  You carry that story with you now.»
    A black wing gestures at the audience.  «I would know what of that story you would tell to your people.  I wish to know what value you have extracted from your time there.»

Kian has posed:
    «And I have seen a young man take up that dream, to keep it from dying,» Kían says, more sharply than he intended, «and we're going to get him back out somehow, without letting that world die.»  His mouth suddenly feels dry.  «I haven't thought much about what I learned there, but only what I have lost there, even though I have been told we'll have him back, but we don't know when and we don't know how.»
    Kían sighs heavily, and his wings sag.  «You would think I would do better with hope, but hope isn't always logical.  You should be talking to my sister, she could have made sense of that.  Gods, knowing her, she would have shoved Terry aside so she could stay instead of him.»
    He looks up, straight up, past the raven, deep into the sky.  «What I saw was that even things that don't make sense still can make a kind of sense.  What I learned was that I don't have to analyze everything down to its last detail, sometimes I need to just do and not think.  What I did… I am not necessarily proud of, but I do not regret it.  I've never struck in anger before, not with that kind of force—but that's what I was told to learn to do by my viceroy, and I have done it, and, and, and—»  Again, his mouth dries up, and it takes the birdman a moment before he can continue: «—and I can live with what I have done, much to my shock.»
    And then he straightens, spreading his wings.  «And what I know is that the story is not done being told.  My tenár is not yet home.  There's more to do… and even when he is returned to us, even then the story will not be done.»

Dream has posed:
    The Raven listens to Kían.  It's not the patience of a mortal.  It's the patience of a mountain.  Willing and able to wait a timeless epoch for the young man to say his piece.  There are murmurs from the gallery, a little shifting of weight and wings.  Kían's words carry weight.  They carry meaning.
    «Many wings can lift a heavy burden,» the Raven reminds Kían.  «A story lives and dies on the voice of mortals.  There are stories that were old when your homeworld was a burning slag of rock drifting in space.  Some stories are so old, so strong, that they take on a life of their own.  They propagate through the Dreaming, finding new dreamers and planting seeds of imagination.  A story only truly dies when no one is left to tell the story correctly.»
    «Wonderland is at a crossroads, Kían,» the Raven informs him.  «A decision must be made.  It is not merely a story anymore; it is a mortal nightmare.  Left unchecked, it will either wither and die, or outgrow its limits.  It will inevitably rupture and propagate through the Dream realm like a virus.  Not a story anymore, but a living thing that could wreak untold damage.»
    The Raven turns a slow circle, pacing on those slender legs and regarding the audience impassively.  It faces Kían once more.  «Much hinges on you.  On your tenár.  It is my responsibility to protect the dreams of uncounted billions of mortals from just this kind of threat.»
    The Raven's head twists left and right, cocking the night-sky gaze at Kían with a penetrating awareness.  Like it can see right down to his bones.  «You have disrupted Wonderland's equilibrium.  Accelerated the timeline of decay.  A mortal sustaining Wonderland is an acceptable exchange.  It will buy the story some centuries before I must reap it for the sake of the Dreaming.  Or I could remand it now.  Pull it down brick by brick, to return those dusty materials to the realms.  Wonderland as you've made it would no longer exist, but the story would in time return to the Dreaming.»
    «Tell me what you would do, Kían.  You have touched the essence of Wonderland.  You are part of this.  What is your most sincere desire?»

Kian has posed:
    «There was a time,» Kían begins slowly, picking over each word like a chef carefully selecting ingredients, «when I would have said, to be normal again, to not carry a rhy'thar, to not be a rhyták, to just be a normal Akiár with a normal life and nothing weird ever happening to me.»
    He's quiet for a long time.
    A very long time, during which the only thing he does is look down at the platform he's standing on.
    «But if I give that up now, that means giving up Terry and Gar.  That means giving up the first time my life has really been my own since my rhy'thar appeared.  The first chance I've ever had to find out who I am, rather than trying to be what my people, my teachers, my priests, my government want.»
    He still hasn't looked up.
    «Right now what I want most is to know how to get Terry back without Wonderland dying.  Even more than I want to understand who and what I am.  I have more time to figure that out, and I don't think it would do me any good if the answer was just handed to me anyway.  I want my family-by-choice whole again—but I don't want it at the cost of the death of a whole world.  There must be a way.  I was told there is a way, but not what that way is.»
    Momentarily, a look of supreme frustration comes over him, and he draws his wings in tight.  «I'd also like to know what's the qokh point of being a rhyták if this isn't something I can make happen,» he says with uncharacteristic bitterness.

Dream has posed:
    The Raven again, listens, and when Kían falls quiet, the words are let to set in the wake of his speech.  A few rustles from the audience is all that can be heard.  Then, the Raven leans its head back and croaks a command into the air that reverberates like a struck gong.  En masse, the audience departs, leaving the bowl-shaped theater somehow even darker and emptier for the lack of presence.
    «Your counsel is welcome, but your honesty is appreciated,» the Raven says.  «For that, I will grant you a boon.  This dream you will not remember, but the boon shall endure in your memory.  When the moment comes, you will understand it.»
    The Raven twists its neck, lowering it, until the beak is level with Kían's head and those two eyes are staring into his.  «Dreams become stories, and stories become dreams.  A rhyták is no different.»
    The world around them starts to fade, like a set piece with the lights dimming in sequence.  The Dreamlord holds Kían's gaze and burns those words into his memory.  The platform disappears; the Raven disappears.
    The last thing Kían sees before he jolts awake are those infinitely deep eyes and the uncounted worlds contained within them.

Kian has posed:
    Kían jerks awake violently, something he rarely does—the last time was when his kirát tried to gently let him know one of the Imperial family would be calling him soon, and, well, there's really no way to be gently told you're about to talk to an Imperial.
    "Téri tenár'h…?" he says vaguely, then groans and slams his head back into the pillow.  "Ai, qokh!!"  It's muffled, but there's not much doubt about his favorite invective.  He had hoped to at least dream of Terry, if not meet him in the dream realm, as he's been doing.
    Instead… nothing.
    Well, at least there's a little solace in not dreaming—he's no further ahead, but then, he's no further behind either.