Flashing light, unbearable brightness. Light all around him, nothing but white, living light. He was there and not.
"Look! Come!" A woman, made of white light like crystalline sculpture come to life , he knew she was the Serpent's spirit. Bizarre yet kind eyes. She took his hands.
"Only the most wicked eat the flesh of my kind, Son of Darkness hunted me across the world. Seven times we met, and six times I bested him. The seventh he took my head with his cursed blade."
"I saw it. The jagged knife like a dragons tooth."
It was natural as a morning piss, floating in the white- whiteness and gazing into the snake spirit lady. Who doesn't do this? Perfectly lovely, easy, calm.
"You are more than you believe but you will never become what you are,"
"I always thought I'd be a horse surgeon-"
"TAMLIN! Listen, you are unaccustomed to your own kind. Your own world. You aren't drunk you aren't dreaming. I need you to see!"
Who the fuck is Tammy Lynn?
Lurch and the sensation of being hurled through a brick wall. I'm awake. Now standing on a ruined landscape, a desert? No, there's grass.. everything the color of ashes. The sun a bloody eye dripping its gauzy light into the murky sky, red like raw meat.
A ruined city, rubble and people with vacant eyes clearing rubble.
"What is this? Everything is so sad. I,, what?" Despair engulfed the young man as a sob tore at his chest. Pure, unadulterated sorrow, not feasible for the human heart to experience. There was no joyo et here, he knew somehow. What the fuck.
"This is what awaits your world should the twins take the Sun's Throne. You don't need to understand, Tamlin. But your life is onlyij just begun. Soon, you'll leave the castle. You will have help along the way."
"Lady, I just don't want to feel like this right now. I don't care about..Tamlin? I don't know her? I'm crying in a scary field with a glass lady. Rulf wake me the fuck up."poii
" Jonathan, I said you aren't dreaming. You ate my flesh. The gift of the White Serpent is prophecy. I needed to show you what is to come, should she break free.
Your mother named you Tamlin. You aren't familiar? The mortals made a ballad: Tam Lyn and Janet? Oh-" as he shook his head, choking back sobs.
"She took him. And his true love Janet won him back from the Unseelie-"
"Please, just stop"
They were back in the light almost instantly. Already, he could feel the dread and despair dissipating. "What the fuck was that?"
"That is the world you live in, after your king and his sister finish their conquest, taking the Sun circle."
"This isn't normal, I usually dream about silly things and this is not normal. What do you mean 'my mother named me Tamlin?'"
The woman had become increasingly transparent and crystalline, made of glass. She raised her hand to grip his shoulder. He noticed they were in a strangely lit forest, the sky lavender.
"Your answers will not come from me. Here you will leave me, but a part of me lives in you. You are more than you know and it is better you remain less,"
With that, she was still as stone. A figure carved from glass, hand reaching out to forever rest on an invisible shoulder.
Johnny woke fevered and retching immediately. Rolf sat on the edge of his cot, face apprehensive.