Dream .. Catcher

Oh beautiful and spacious Sky o'er blood red sands of time

Time a separate entity ticking off the eons in blissful moments

Moments in pieces littered around my feet blown about in the desert's breath

Breath so hot I feel the frore intent clear to my bones

Bones so brittle with apathy their numbness hurts my heart

My heart electrified with fractured synapses that keep screaming

Screaming for an ounce of comfort among the distant feelings

Feelings so far from my conscious thought

Thought leaving clawing finger trails across the subconscious as it dies

Dies so slowly that each gasp for breath is a throw of a lifetime

Lifetime stretched out in ribbons like chains

Chains that thread through my flesh securing me to a bottomless abyss

Abyss so deep and so wide I can never reach your hand

Hand so cold and frail that it dissolves to dust upon a whisper

Whisper of heated desire cast upon forever's shore

Shore carved deep from wave after wave of desperation

Desperation for a clear moment where I can see the Sky

Oh beautiful and spacious Sky ...


Sky help me .. Aod what have you done ... to me?

It was not Aod's fault. It was mine. I had thought .. better ... I had used my own idea. And now I was in a world of hurt. I had trapped one of those things in my dreams.

And it felt like I was going to die.

Not those moments of death filled with adrenaline and desperation for life. More like those peaceful moments where things just start falling away from you. Slowly .. they just ease away and it feels ... good. Whether it is resignation for the inevitable or simply your mind releasing endorphins to make the passage easier ... it did not matter. I was falling through an abyss of nothing ... and I was not afraid of the fall. The fall was nice. I was afraid of landing. The landing was going to suck ... that fractional moment of time when the falling ... stopped. Abruptly.

Sky help me .. had I killed it? Had I mortally wounded it? It felt like it. Every pained breath raged in my own lungs. Every torn bit of flesh registered in my pain center. Every ounce of chain could be felt dragging me downward at an ever increasing speed.

Let me make it right .. somehow.

What was I thinking? I was not thinking. Rather I was thinking that my thinking was better than Aod's. Which was basically .. not thinking. What was I thinking?

I wanted to care .. I knew I needed to care ... I knew I needed to be concerned about the end of my fall. But it was so easy to relax and just let it happen. To concentrate more on how I felt than how I was about to feel.

What have I done?

Then it hit me .. not the ground ... but a cold wave of water. The deluge bathed me and I felt my heart explode and my eyes open and I started choking on what had just been inhaled up my nose.

Through the blur of attempting focus through water I blinked .. gagging ... as I struggled up and retched on the floor. Floor .. that was rather solid. I recognized it as the floor of my Spex wagon. Feet .. legs ... shapely legs at that.

Leave it to me to notice those things at the worst .. or best ... of times.

She was beautiful .. and she held that bucket like she meant it. I tried to tell her thank you .. through the gagging and spitting ... but she turned and walked from the wagon as if it meant nothing.

I was bleeding from several torn pieces of my hide .. ragged tears as if something had been pulled through it .. despite the resistance of my skin. Or because of it ...

I just laid my forehead on the wet .. bloody floor and tried to get my breath back and find a way to return my mind to the here and now.

There were bosk to brand.