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Anyway! To mark my return, I thought I'd post the original fic I sent into a competion a while back, since it got nowhere there and I don't have to worry about publishing. Well. I say original, but those that know will find my inspirations very, very obvious.
Title: Dust
Rating/warnings: Adult concepts involved, including genocide, extinction, telepathy, invasion of self, and a whole complicated issue revolving around childbirth. But for all that ... I'd say only a PG-13, really. Nothing at all graphic, and more melancholy than pointed.
Wordcount: 5919
Summary: Earth is dead, victim of an alien expansion (I appear to like that plot. Plus, anyone remember 1st episode of Justice League?). Three survivors wander its plains. They may seem ... familiar, in their way.
Notes: If anyone has ever read a story called 'The Cay', it was a huge inspiration to me for this. I can't remember who it's by, I just remember how much it affected me.
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Dust
White dust. It stretched as far as he could see. As far as anyone could see, now. The world was drowning in it, swallowed whole by a silent, pristine sea. The whole world.
It was all that was left of his people here, that dust. Their skin, the mark of their dying thirst, shed as soon as they beheld and tasted the bounties of this world they'd discovered. They had taken everything, drained the planet dry, stolen its people, left it silent and pitiful. They were gone now. They were gone, and had left only the white dust in their wake. The dust, and him.
The dreamwraith lay still, listening to the silence and the darkness. It would not stay silent long. They had promised him that. They had told him of the ones they had left behind, the survivors, those unusable, the waste. Two, he thought, but the message they had left him with had been ... garbled. A stream of vicious images, of gleeful malice, promising pain and savagery. To leave him helpless at the hands of those who had been their victims ... they dreamed a brutal end for him, alright. He wasn't sure he really cared.
There. He could sense them now, approaching over the rubble of the city. Yes. Two. Two spirits, two powerful, weary souls, shining with tired defiance. He could see why they had managed to stand against his people. Such spirits as these could not be taken by force, not easily. But to fight must have cost them sorely. His people would not have let their defiant immunity go unpunished.
And now, through him, they could punish in return.
He could see them now, cresting the crumbled wall, pale shadows in the darkness. White, caked with the dust of his people. He couldn't see much underneath it, but it didn't matter. The appearances of these beings, these humans, meant little to him. It was enough to see that one was aged, an old man, and the other a boy. Young. So young. A child.
They had caught sight of him now, stopping frozen on the edge of the bowl of dust in which he lay. He waited, patient and resigned, feeling their emotions and thoughts rush around his presence. Feeling the shock, the fear, the readiness to fight. And then, as minutes passed and he didn't move, the wary interest, even curiosity. That surprised him, a little. He had expected hate.
They moved down towards him, the boy leading. Of course. The curiosity of a child. But there was more than that. There was fear, caution, flashing memories of the torment his people had sent, driving ancient instincts. This child had grown, so much. His spirit, so strong. So fierce. Such spirits, these two. His thirst rose within him. To drink from these spirits, to let their strength and passion flow into him ... But no! He had promised. He had promised, so long ago. It was only that it had been so long ... so long since he had been free to drink. He had been bound so long, parched.
They noticed that, as they came closer. Wary, intelligent eyes passed over him, noting the bands of dust crusted over his body where they had held him, the lighter dusting that coated all of him. He was dying of thirst, turning slowly to dust as they watched. He needed to drink. The soulwater, to live, but even water would do to exist. He wondered if they would give him enough for that, or simply leave him to face the dawn that would eventually come. They feared him. He felt that. But ... there was more. Something he couldn't understand.
The boy reached out, as if to touch him, and he shrank back. No, he whispered, sent it threading through their minds, just a surface invasion. They flinched from it, and glittering walls of rejection immediately shielded their minds. Powerful defenses. In the child, born of will and intelligence and fierce denial. In the man, born of a love and a loyalty that refused to be tainted. The old man would stand by the child to the last, their souls linked and shining together, proud and firm against him. His soul leapt at the sight, desire and thirst running rampant through him, adoration. He had to make them leave, leave him to die, before it shattered his worn resolve. But he hadn't the strength to fight them, to force them. Only to beg them.
Please
, he sent, the lightest of touches. But their minds sang beneath it nonetheless. They reacted to him, defied him, touched him in return. The sensation was a torment and a delight to him. Please, please ... release me. Let me ... wither. Please.They looked at each other, then, the old man reaching down to lay a cautioning, supporting hand on the boy's shoulder. They spoke without speaking, understanding each other instinctively. Not in the way of his people. They could not see each other's minds. It was simply ... a soul-deep understanding of each other. The sight made him ache. He remembered having that, once. He remembered knowing someone that deeply, sharing that fully. Loving. He remembered love.
The boy turned back to him, and pity, sympathy, unfurled through his spirit. This human, this victim, looked on him with pity. It was nearly more than he could bear.
"No," the boy said, softly, in a voice cracked by pain and disuse. "We ... can't. Won't. I'm sorry."
He laughed, at that. Sorry? he whispered, humour curling up through him, a bitter despair. You ... are sorry. Why? Why are you sorry? The boy did not answer. Instead, he reached behind him, and pulled forward a bottle on a strap. A large bottle, whose contents sloshed gently with the motion. Water. He knew it, could hear it. The boy meant to give him ..?
The old man stopped him, laid a hand on his arm. "Wait," he cautioned, watching warily. "He's one of them. The games ... Are we sure?" He could not fault the suspicion. In the flashes in their minds, he saw it, saw pieces of what had been done. Of the nightmares, the games. He could understand the caution. What he could not understand was the willingness to defy it. To reach out anyway.
"It doesn't matter now," the boy answered, in his soft, cracked voice. "There's nothing left to matter. If he kills us, he kills us."
The old man looked down at him for a long minute, sadness filling him, and pride, and such a deep and aching love that the dreamwraith nearly sobbed to feel it. And then he nodded, gently, and reached down to take the bottle from the boy, smiling into his curious, surprised look.
"Me first," he rasped, and smiled. "Privilege of age." The boy blinked at him, sadness and humour warring within him, and relinquished the bottle with a faint smile of his own. Their connection leapt and shone between them, a loyalty not of blood but of soul, a deep and unyielding bond that sang a silent song to the one who witnessed it. He watched them in wonder, and yearned to feel it for himself, to taste it, to drink it. And knew he would not. Such beauty, such an echo of what he had once known and cherished, could not be despoiled. Not by him.
The old man wrapped aged hands around the bottle, uncapping it, and reached down to hold it to his lips. The water poured into him, pooling inside him, filling him again. And when the hands accidentally brushed his face and he did not strike, the boy reached out to catch some in his hands, and touch his wounds. The dry bands that crossed his limbs, where his own people had bound him. The boy ran wet, shining hands over them, and smiled when he shuddered in blind gratitude.
They helped him move, eventually, as dawn threatened. In the dust plains, he did not imagine the heat of day would be pleasant even for them. For him, of course, it would be the end. But he had gained some strength by then, from the water, from the flickering touches of their souls against him. He didn't take, didn't steal. He wouldn't. But they seemed to know. To give, as much as their waking defenses would allow. And strength flowed into him, enough for him to stand, to accept the hesitant support of their hands.
They brought him to their home. Their lair, perhaps. Buried in the earth, down beneath the drifting dust, in the rock and soil that had once given life to their world. There was water, here, in the deeper places where his people had not cared to look. A spring, bubbling from the rock, the planet doing everything it could to sustain all that was left of its life. They laid him beside it, hesitant, gentle, fearful. They did not trust him. Could not. Trust had been ripped from them long since. But they forgave him, before he ever did anything. He wondered why.
The silence lay thick and heavy between them, as outside the sun crested the horizon, and faint light bounced and danced even down where he lay, reflected and reflected again by the white dust that pervaded everything. He was adding to it, now, shedding the dust of his injuries, and a part of him mourned the loss. It was his history, that white dust. But that couldn't matter now.
He watched them in the half-light, silent and watchful, the boy crouched warily at the old man's side. So pale. Glowing, inside and out. Shining with life and death in equal measure. He hadn't expected their beauty.
Or their resignation. But when they lay down together to sleep, away from him, he saw it. Because they had to know that their defenses crumpled in sleep, and their dreaming minds bloomed and opened to the thirsty senses of his people. That his people lived on dreams. That if they slept, he could take what he wished from them. They had to know, and accepted it nonetheless.
The boy curled into the old man, laying his dusty head on the aged chest, wrapped snugly in exhausted arms. Conscious of him, but too tired to care. He watched them fall asleep, felt the leaden cloud descend over their flaring, sparkling minds. He watched them sleep, and blinked in awe as their defenses did not fail, but grew stronger. Linked by trust and love and defiant will, they remained immune, remained inviolable. They dreamed only of each other, and no foreign touch could taste those dreams.
But he could watch them. And what he saw in those dreams sowed an ache of pity and admiration deep in his soul.
In their dreams, they buried each other. With hands caked and bleeding, they scraped at the white dust, digging graves to lay each other in. In their dreams, dry-eyed and aching with loss, they brushed hair from eyes forever closed, and gently pushed the white shroud of a dead planet over still, beloved features. In their dreams, they saw their only future, and mourned each other the only way they could.
He moved to them. He had to. Had to touch, to soothe. For all that they feared him, for all that he feared them, he could not bear this silent, endless grief. He could not imagine the strength to bear it. His only loss, his greatest loss, had crippled him, delivered him to the cruel justice of his people. Their loss lived and breathed within them with a beauty that seared his soul, and drew his hands to gently trace their brows, to soothe with fingers almost returned to their natural, liquid incandescence. He remained at their side all day, and watched them dream of dying.
When they woke, it was with a flash of fear that had him recoiling, an instant understanding of threat that transformed itself into hard, glittering defiance. The boy came to his feet, slowly, coiled to strike. The man was slower still, aching and sore, but equally ready. Not knowing what to do in the face of that readiness, he settled for spreading his hands helplessly, watching as they noted the liquid shimmer beneath the faint white crust, the sparkle of dreams moving through him. He was healthier, now. Water, and the sips their waking souls had granted him. He was stronger, through them. They saw it, and distrusted it. But they did not attack.
I ... saw,
he sent, hesitant, but needing to reveal the depth of emotion, the admiration within him. I do not understand. But ... I cannot use you. I cannot taste you, unless you let me. I would not. You are ... beautiful.They stared at him for the longest time, disbelieving and wary. And then, as it settled in, amusement bloomed within them, and a strange kind of gratitude. The old man cracked a smile, rueful acceptance in his eyes. "You aliens have a strange idea of beauty," he commented lightly, and the dreamwraith sensed a sudden shattering between them, a watershed of fear. The tide of grim emotion flooded all three of them, and poured out through the tired grains of their souls, leaving them washed clean and accepting.
That was his first night among them. It was the first of many.
They welcomed him, in their way. It was hard to see why, at first. Hard to understand what could drive them to welcome even an enemy. But after a time, he saw. As the world pressed in around them, silent and empty, unchanging and lifeless, it was impossible not to. The loneliness of this world could kill. And the two of them, all that was left, alone together in a home made alien and cruel ... they were so very lonely. All the effort, everything they had fought for, narrowed down to the sight of life in each others' eyes. They were all each other had left.
And now, so was he.
Time passed without meaning on that dead world. Night and day lapped across the dust, and sank unremarked into it. Gradually, he settled into the rhythm of their world, into the routine of their nights. He learned their natures, sipped from their souls, grew to know them. Not their names, though. There were no names between them, no need for names. They were only three, alone. They knew who each other was.
He went scavenging with the boy, moving from cache to cache of food in the ruins, watching the crouched, leaping figure dart ahead of him. There were no threats left on this world to be wary of, but the silence pressed and weighed so heavily that caution came naturally. He learned to see the logic of choice, the slanted paths of the child's thoughts. A natural, sideways intelligence, sparkling and humourous. The boy laughed at him, sometimes, in his head. He watched the lumbering grace of the dreamwraith's form, and laughed silently.
The old man did not. He had had longer to understood brutality, longer before it came to understand how different things might have been. He didn't hate the wraith, didn't begrudge him his life. But he remembered, and was cautious in his dealings, hesitant with his confidences. That, though, could be forgiven.
He watched their dreams, every night, watched the gentle mourning that shaped their lives, the endless knowledge of the future. He watched them live and die, over and over, the love ever present and singing between them. He watched them bury each other in their dreams, and it was only when those dreams changed that he knew he had been accepted.
When they dug a dream grave for him.
He lived with them for time without meaning, in those ruins, and never noticed its passing. But as they grew more comfortable with each other, as their world shifted to include him, he began to sense another measure of time. A yearning, building within them. A fierce and powerful need, that grew in strength as time slipped away from them. The need to move.
As humans, needing food as well as water, limited by bodies that could not endure nearly as much as those of his people, they were tied to the ruined settlement, to the food and water that remained there. To move, they would need to be far faster than they were, to cover all the distance between settlements in a single night. It was impossible. They could not do it, and they were resigned to that. But, oh, how they wanted it. He didn't quite understand why, but they needed to move, to see what was left of their world, to find if anything remained to them in some far off place. They needed to escape, even if only to another dead part of this dead world. They yearned for it.
It was a yearning he thought he might be able to fulfill. He was stronger, now. Nearly as strong as he had once been. Water poured clean through him, marred only by the thinnest skin of white, because he could not take enough to truly fill him. He could not take the soulwater, save the little sips they granted him, the sympathetic touches of their souls, the dreams that sparked and danced within him. But he was stronger despite it. Strong enough, maybe, to carry them through the night. To carry them out into the world.
He asked them, one morning as they lay down to sleep, if they wanted him to. If they would let him repay even this much of what he owed them. A dream, for his life. To his people, the debt would be equal, because dreams were life. To them, maybe not. But their hearts leapt at the offer, joy and excitement and gratitude that answered him without them ever having to say a word. They did not speak, much. He nodded, and smiled for them. It was settled.
The next night, they left the hole in the earth that had been their home. As much of a home as they could have, ever again. But they didn't mind, the wanderlust was so strong within them, and he only cared that he was with them. He needed them, it was true, but more than that. He ... cared, for them. And his soul lifted with their joy as surely as theirs did.
He carried them out across the moonlit plains of dust, cradled them against his great figure as they were swallowed by the monochrome silence that had become their world. Three ghosts, glowing in the white darkness, so fast, so silent. Three hunters, on a course aimed by the old man's memory, driven by the boy's fierce desire, carried by his alien strength. The last journey, endless and doomed. And wonderful.
Night after night, the world unfurled around them, white and empty, hauntingly beautiful. It's silence echoed through their souls, a mournful ringing that would have swallowed them, save that it broke against the vibrant walls of their companionship. Together, they did not fear the emptiness. But alone ... the silence waited, ever patient. It followed them, all across the plains of dust, so deep and sonorous, so much a part of their world, that they almost missed the break in it.
A sound, a roaring. A rhythmic crash and swash. A thunderous, inexorable beat. In his arms, they leapt to attention, quivering with anticipation. He didn't understand, couldn't see. Only feel, the surging rush of excitement, the resonance of memory, the singing soul of joy. They touched him, caught each others' hands across his chest, hugged him between them as the roar grew louder, as it pulsed through them. They held him close in a passion of memory, and it flowed through him until he was all but incandescent. And then, cresting a dust-dune, he saw it. And he understood.
The sea crashed onto the beach beneath them, pounding its angry, passionate fists against the dust, roaring in challenge to the silent world. It stretched out before them, a dark, gleaming expanse, wild and vivid, the last living thing in the world.
He loved it. Instantly. Absolutely. But his feeling was nothing next to theirs.
The boy leapt from his arms, racing down to greet the beast. He ran light as a spirit over the white beach, leaping in fierce abandon into its embrace. And as he did, he made a sound the dreamwraith had not heard before, not out loud. The sound of human laughter.
The old man was slower in his descent, more dignified, but no less joyful. Allowing himself to be eased gently to the beach, he moved stiffly to a small hillock, watching the leaping, shivering figure of the boy with a quiet, intense happiness. The wraith followed him, drawn to that feeling, beaming silently. He wondered if this was what it would have been like, had his child ever been born. This joy. Was this what they might have known, had he had the strength, the dreams to give her when she needed it?
But that did not matter now.
Suddenly, spontaneously, the boy stood up in the water, and they stared at him. He was ... different, all at once. The wild kiss of the sea had washed away the pall of dust that draped him, pounded it mercilessly from his skin, his hair, his limbs. Without its weight, without the clouding veil of its disguise, the dreamwraith suddenly realised what a human child was meant to look like. Standing tall and lean, dark, dark hair, vivid eyes, shining with excitement, with life. For an instant, standing there, it was as if his people had never touched this place, these people. It was as if the planet had never died.
Beside him, something changed in the old man. A clutching surge in his chest, a paroxysm of love so fierce that it froze the man's heart in his chest for a long, endless instant. The old man smiled, deeply and truly, his soul flaring and deepening, a beacon of farewell. He smiled.
And never stopped.
Instinctively, the wraith reached down, to grasp that fleeing soul, all the dreams about to be lost. To see them wasted, to let them go ... But something stopped him, something impossible to explain. The old man didn't want it, he knew that, had felt the surety in the time they had spent beside each other. But more than that ... the dust plains stretched behind them, wrapped around them, the dust of countless souls, countless dead dreams. And he had promised, so long ago. Promised her. To only take what was given. Not to take unbidden ...
The boy knew, bare instants after it happened. He felt the loss, felt the sudden emptiness where once there had been a presence, and understood instantly what it meant. He came up to them, a stumbling race from the sea, breath harsh and gasping as he stopped before them. As he looked down on all that was left of his friend, of all that he had loved.
The dreamwraith stood back. It was not his place, to be part of this goodbye. So he stood back, and watched as the boy knelt in front of the body. Watched him as he stared, traced every familiar line of those features with his eyes, watched him commit this last sight forever to his memory. He watched too, as the boy reached forward, achingly hesitant, to trace a shaking hand with infinite tenderness over the slack face. To close the bright, blank eyes for the last time. There were no tears. No cries. No outward sign of grief. But the light in his soul dimmed, the brilliance of the bond between them lost forever, beyond retrieval. All that had carried him through the torments that destroyed his people, all that beauty, gone.
An ache settled in the chest of boy and watcher alike, never to be removed. They were lessened.
What came next gave strength to that ache, a bitter tinge of irony. There was power to dreams. The wraith knew this, lived by it. It was the nature of his people. But sometimes he forgot how much sway they held over other beings as well. In this moment, they held power over the boy. For the sea was right there, bright and wild and alive, the perfect final resting place of such a spirit as they had lost. But instinctively, their eyes turned inward, to the silent, white plains. To the dreams of dying, and the future they had seen there.
He helped the boy scrape out a grave, helped him lay the old man in it, and looked away as the boy touched the old man's face once more, traced the familiar wrinkles, brushed the dust and hair from over his eyes. He granted the boy that moment, and afterwards helped him pull the shroud of their world over their lost one.
The boy seemed lighter in his arms after that, as they left the old man to rest and moved on, tracing the line of the coast. They didn't want to leave the sea, not now, when the silence of the dust pressed so eagerly on their diminished defenses. Their companionship was ... different. Flawed. Insufficient. They needed the noise, the raw life, for they had little left of their own.
They moved. Running, drinking, eating. Sleeping. Dreaming. They drifted on, and the dust drank the night, the day, the sea, swallowed it all into silence. They were two fierce, full beings in a hollow, hungry world.
The boy changed, in that time. He reached that stage between child and adult, halfway fulfilled. But his eyes had aged long since, and his soul did not grow brighter, nor deeper. He gave of it freely, now. Insistently. Desperately. He poured it away with a kind of angry happiness, a wry despair, and there was nothing the dreamwraith could do save accept it. Cherish it, for everything it was worth, everything it might have been, and dig a grave in his dreams.
For every drop the boy gave him, for every minute dimming of his spirit, the wraith grew brighter. He was bigger, now, fuller, and there was no skin of dust to hide the fierce glow of dreams within him, the tiny stars within the liquid shimmering of his form. He was radiant, a fleeting star across the plains, cradling the wasting form of the boy in his arms. And even as he mourned his own strength, mourned the cost of it, the boy looked on him with increasing awe. There was wonder in his eyes now, as they travelled, and a rich, desperate love threaded through his spirit.
The dreamwraith didn't want it. Not like this. Not when he could give nothing back. Humans did not live on dreams. His soul could not feed the boy's, not the way the old man's had. He could pour his soul into that ancient young spirit for eternity, and never lift the pain that lived there. He could dream a thousand dreams for him, try to give him everything he had ever given her, with no-one to give either of them more. Just like with her, it would never be enough.
And just like her, it seemed the boy didn't care. He loved him nonetheless, treasured his presence as if it could heal the wounds he carried, gave to him freely as if he mattered. As she had given to him, the only one who could, their promise firm between them. To take only from each other. To give only to each other. Everything. Anything. All their dreams, all their life, for each other. Even dying, even trying and failing to give every drop of herself to the new life cradled within her, she had striven to give him something back, to give her love to him, to keep him from following her on the spiraling path to drought as everything they had was given over to trying to bring life to their child.
They had failed. Their dreams hadn't been enough. Her dreams, all spent, her life drowned in dust. And his, almost followed, saved only by the dying rush of her love. Their child, lost, as they had been warned he would be. The dreams of only two of their kind was never going to be enough to support a new life, their promise to each other the final seal on the fate of their child. He had been punished for that blindness, for that promise, the justice of a dying people swift and merciless. He had been cast adrift, thirsty and dying, on an empty planet, the last of her dreams falling from his dry form into the dust. Left to suffer the hate of a people drained dry to assuage his people's thirst, left to taste the gratitude of those he would have spared at the cost of a child's life. But at the time, he hadn't cared what his fate was to be.
He did now.
Now, he cradled another child in his arms. Now, he held close another fading life, another life his dreams could not save. His soul torn in two, the grief pounding through him, he held the boy as gently as he knew how, cradled him against the silence of their lives, carried him blindly over all that remained of everything either of them had ever cared about. He held his dying child, and cursed the light that shone like a star inside him.
It came to an end, eventually. It had to. Nothing in him, nothing he had left, could stave off that inevitable failing. The boy had nothing left, all his dreams of dying, all his words like dust. He had nothing left, and all he wanted was the peace he had seen, for one fleeting moment, in the still face of his friend. And it was not in the wraith to deny him. Not this. Not the one thing he might still give his child. All the judgements of his people be damned, there could be no question of holding him back. He would let his child die in peace, even if it cost him everything.
It was the sea that showed them how, in the end. The sea and the light of dreams within him. Flowing over the dust, wrapped in the roar of their only companion, the light raced ahead of them to trace a white path across the waves. A shining road of dust, washed by tides, knifing out to an island cradled in the passionate grip of the sea. The dreamwraith paused on the crest of the beach, staring in awe out to this quiet, welcoming sight. The boy turned in his arms, his fading eyes following the wraith's, and he quivered in feeble excitement. He knew, as the wraith did, that this was right. This was the place, the planet's last gift to them, to the last of her dying children. This was where it ended.
They stepped out, the pair of them, onto the path. The dreamwraith moved slowly, one deliberate step at a time, the rushing water kissing his shining feet in gratitude as he walked. In his arms, the boy smiled down at it, a strange love in his face, his eyes shining with a light that was not the wraith's. A light all his own, his soul singing softly in a kind of mourning joy.
The wraith stopped suddenly, holding him close in convulsive desperation, leaning down to press a shining, liquid kiss to the child's forehead as he had once seen the old man do. The boy looked up at him, uncomprehending, and the wraith had no answer to that silent question, save to open his own soul to that trembling song, and let it quietly urge the boy on. It was a nonsense, his singing, echoed fragments of all the songs he had once learned in the hopes of whispering them to his own child, lost snatches of ancient lullabies that meant nothing now, but the boy laughed a little, and curled into him, his soul playfully echoing them. The love surged so powerfully through the wraith that it almost shattered him.
They reached the island at last, him and the boy. They stepped into its white sanctuary, the dust of dead dreams somehow changed by the touch of the sea, the whisper of living winds, until it almost seemed to sing in its own echo of them. The night smiled down at them, the silence held eternally at bay behind the waves. Yes. This was right. He could feel it.
He laid the boy down at the summit of that tiny sanctuary, knelt to rest him on the soft pillow of dust. The boy smiled at him, reaching up to catch his hand, his eyes laughing silently as his fingers curled through the dreams and made them glow. Soulsick, the wraith caught that small hand gently, and held it close for a moment before laying it back down over the boy's chest. The child blinked at him, trying to understand, but he was too tired now to protest. His song was deepening, his soul at last flaring in the beacon of farewell the wraith remembered from other partings. The thought made him tremble.
They stayed like that for a long time, the boy staring silently up at him, wonder and tired love, and the wraith kneeling beside him. The boy closed his eyes, eventually, as if he could no longer bear the fierce and grieving glow of his companion. Maybe he couldn't. The dreamwraith didn't care, stroking liquid fingers over his brow, shedding himself to clean the dust from young features for the last time. His soul dripped gently over the boy's face, carrying shining dreams down to join the dust that cradled his head, and despite himself the wraith smiled at the sight. It seemed suddenly fitting, that the victim of his people's thirst should drink the last of him, should take his dreams with him into the dust.
The boy faded, so quickly. So eagerly. The wraith could feel him reaching as he went, his soul outstretched to something his companion couldn't see, couldn't sense. Someone, maybe. An old friend, reaching back to carrying his family forward into the final dream, beyond what any enemy could touch. A dream of dying, that no foreign soul could taste. Somewhere, the old man looked at them, and at last gave a smile that he could share, that he could be a part of. The wraith smiled blindly back, and cradled his only child as, finally, he slept.
He buried him, as he had the old man, there on that island, his own soul deepening and flaring as he did so. He buried the boy, the last of his family. And then, slowly, aching and joyful, he went down to the edge of the island, to the boundary where the sea touched the dust, where life touched death. He went down to the beach, and sat to watch the sun rise for the first time. A thing none of his people had ever done, but he was not truly one of them now. It was right. It was fitting.
As the light of dawn touched his soul as it had touched no other of his people, he raised his eyes to the white sky, felt his soul reach out into the last of all dreams, felt smiling hands reach back for him, and laughed. Silent and happy.
At last, in the white dust of Earth, a dreamwraith sat, to dream of dying.
