"Dreams Outside of Time" Log Date: 11/16/02 Log Cast: Oriolle, Doreel Log Intro: Though it has caused much conflict within Lostholt, the ancient elf Doreel has been captured and wrapstuffed, and brought into Holt environs by the former chieftess of Willowholt, Rillwhisper, who has made it her quest to keep the mad Shaper from endangering the Holt with his magic until such time as Leetah, Ynderra, and whatever other healers they may wish to bring to give them aid can restore something like sanity to Doreel's fractured mind. But there is another who has been brought into Lostholt along with Doreel, a maiden Rillwhisper and her companions found raving in the grip of vines that embraced her like a lovemate, and who seemed convinced that she herself was one of Doreel's own trees... and now, both Shaper and maiden have been secured away within wrapstuff cocoons until the healers can mend them both. Rillwhisper guards them, and for the most part it is a quiet duty, for Leetah and Ynderra have striven to keep Doreel subdued -- though it takes every ounce of healing magic they can muster. But wrapstuff does not, as Preservers oft maintain, stop think-do magic... and Doreel is not the only one with power. The mind of Oriolle, even fractured, has a fledgling strength. And even though half her being is stuffed full with a soul who howls its protest at what the Firstborn has done to the elf it has been forced to inhabit, the rest of her craves her Shaper's gentle touch... and goes looking. For the wrapstuff does not stop dreaming... and nor does it stop the sending of one the healers have not been wrapping close and tight in sleep.... ---------- They must surely be in the Grove again. Inside the wrapstuff there is no time, no interruption to the swirl of thoughts that chase one another back and forth across their brain, like fragments of glittering sunlight that dazzle them and draw attention to follow them as they flit by before fading again into green Dreaming darkness. One of them protests this, for the timeless quiet smells of danger to her... and she can remember exerting herself, howling for help, flashes of other faces and hands seizing her-- Except it wasn't her, was it, that the hands took out of the vines?-- The vines. The other wants them, and within the timeless dark of the wrapstuff it seems to her that naturally the vines must be there. They must, because all is peace and she is Dreaming, exactly as the Shaper willed it for her. She is-- Memory. She is on wolf-back and Pacer is riding his own wolf-friend beside her, the two running pell-mell in the wake of a buck she is _determined_ will be theirs-- Memory. She is tiny, and the world is silent to her ears, but she can feel the vibrations each time her little hand smacks the head of her mother's drum. Over and over, happily, she whacks it just to feel the hide thrum against her palm-- Memory. Her roots are sunk deep, her branches lifted high, and her awareness alive with the glow of the Shaper's power-- Except she can't find him. He isn't in the timeless dark... and should he not be here, if this is his Grove? They pause within the wrapstuff, the one growling a soundless complaint, the other feeling a thirst like leaves for lifegiving rain. Pausing, they blur together within the dark... and as memories and dreams spill into one another, uncertainty rises up. Are they two? Is she one? And _what_ is she? She knows of only one who can answer that question for her. But her roots are sunk deep and a tree does not move; she waits for her Shaper to come to her. But perhaps he would come, if she calls. To let him know she needs him to tell her -- _are_ those roots she's sunk into the earth of her Dreaming? Or delicate feet bare upon the grass? The Dream blurs-- And plaintively, weakly, she uncurls a tendril of sending in search. Inside the wrapstuff there is no time, no interruption to the contemplation of thoughts, the silent solemn permanence of Mother and Child seen deep within the mirror of a waveless pool. To run with memory and thought is to court danger, to become wild lovers with despair. Better instead to rest, to watch the pool, to -not- remember. There is solace in seeing the two moons wax and wane, their reflections always in the pool. Otherwise there is -- Memory. Happiness, Tasheya with him, watching Niriah play in the water. The girl laughs, looking up at her parents, the ripples of laughter and sunlight reflected in -- Memory. Destruction, despair, and fury turning to fire and ash, the hateful gaze of the Large Ones facing him across the pool. Tendrils grow with explosive speed, outracing the fire that consumes them to wrap around the Large Ones and draw them down into the quiet earth. All is reflected in -- Memory. Quiet. Calm. The Grove returned to normal, puttering around to make things ready for everyone when they ... they will return. won't they? Listen. Listen. Listen. There is someone there, an echo of a whisper of a mind. His head turns, and he listens. Is there someone there? Not Tasheya, in her golden-haired loveliness; not Niriah with hair like flame. One of the trees talking, perhaps; they do that sometimes, though the Helpers never hear them and their voices are slow and measured. And this voice _is_ a slow one, rising and falling in fragments of whispers barely gleaned; what comes through, though, is loneliness and confusion. And familiarity, perhaps. A remnant of a previous memory, a shadow of a slender form responding blissfully to shaping's touch. But the form is indistinct, and so are the words that finally whisper forth: ** _He_ will tell us... yes... heal us... me... tell us what... tell me what I am? ** Is he asleep? He must be, for all is silence, darkness. But what is this voice? The trees ... they -do- talk, if you listen, and if you are patient and quiet and if you wait. In his long wait for the return of ... of ... he must shy away from the thought. But he has been patient, and listened to the speech of the trees. The helpers would not, of course, hear the trees; they are too busy with their duties. That is as it should be. But the trees have never spoken to him in his sleep. Still ... It must be a very unsettled tree, to not know what it is. And he is who he is, Shaper, Treefriend, the patient one who tends the Grove until they return. And it would not do to have an upset tree in the Grove. So asleep, in his dream (or is he? he must be, for it is dark) he replies, gentle and kind: ** You are ... a tree. Do you not feel your roots in the earth? Do you not feel the sun upon your leaves? Do you not feel the rain upon your trunk? ** His voice! Joy blossoms up within her, for she wasn't sure she would reach him. Her consciousness stretches out though, the better to reach the radiant sunlight that is his magic, curling towards it like a shy young vine. ** We... I... remember... other things... ** Dismay. Memory of being taken out of the vines. And for a moment the presence of the Tree falters, a wolf-shaped shadow falling across it... a shadow darker than the peaceful, lulling green oblivion. Memory. If there is a curse to bring down upon the heads of, of, of WHOEVER there might be to bring down a curse upon, it would be of memory. Memory only hurts, tears, wounds. That is why he seeks his memories as little as possible, letting them become as lushly overgrown as the stones beneath the Grove. But this tree ... poor thing. ** How can you remember other things? You are a tree. Trees remember ... These , these are momentary, fleeting. Tend you they may, but it is nothing. Nothing. ** Nothing. It must be nothing. But doubt creeps in. There were wolves ... wolves running. And others ... Others. They should not have been ... Memory. A curse. He cannot banish it. ** Tree, ** comes the uncertain whisper, oddly layered, oddly dual. There is a chiming sweetness to it, but there is also a husky growl, the two blurring into one another and sometimes joining as one. But as the reminders roll over her, her sense of Self stabilizes. So do does the delicate shape of a Tree somewhere within the Grove, not tall but leaf-crowned and lovely, solidify. ** Elisel, ** she decides then. That is the name that goes with this form, and her voice slows to a Tree's proper slowness... airy as the wind within her branches, rich as the earth that holds her fast. ** I am... Elisel... you are... You are... ** A pause. A shimmer, then, along the shape of the Tree. A delicate face, green as summer, wreathed with vines that do not hide the bemusement in her liquid eyes or the clearer, cleaner voice that calls unsurely, ** ... Doreel? ** ** ** The face is enough to jar him slightly askance, his mind to draw back. His name causes him pause. Trees do not Name him that. Only Others ... ** ** **-NO!!-** The Sending link surges wide open before snapping, a sudden and desperate attempt to barricade against the Others who would take Elisel-who-Returned away from him. Unseen by you or he, the tree around the two of you bursts into frenzied growth, root, branch, and tendril ripping through earth and sky to block 'the Others'. Then even the sense of his rage is gone, sudden and absolute, like a branch being pruned away. Power surges -- and she senses it, her body writhing within the wrapstuff that holds her even as the Dreamform tree bends and glows in the sunburst of magic. Somewhere within her, a Wolfrider whirls, snarling, all hackles raised and every instinct screaming to retreat, to den-hide, to run as fast as feet can carry her-- But she doesn't _have_ feet, she has roots, she is a Tree, she remembers, he _said_ so, her Shaper, her Maker-- The sunburst dies, and the Tree's Dreamform shatters in the explosion, roots pulled from the earth of her awareness, leaves spinning and exploding into dizzying fragments of light. Aureole. Oriolle. Elisel. Thicket. Pieces of Selves whirl, hurled by the power and the pain behind it, old, deep, fierce pain-- Darkness. And she crumples within the darkness, blurring, weeping in the timeless dark for pain that is not her own and yet shoots through her all the same as potent as shaping fire. ** D-Doreel? ** And there is nothing else, within the dark. [End log.]