Long black hair filled Haq's sight. Everything around him gave the sensation of spinning, a blurry mass. Only the woman before him, with hair free, falling past her shoulder to touch her waist, remained clear. She faced away from him, hand reaching out to something unseen, desperation in her movements.
Haq grabbed her, hands gentle but firmness leave nothing for resistance, a sense of dread rising in him as he pulled her away from that which she wanted, needed. He closed his eyes, only to open them in a garden. Colorful flowers on a backdrop of green leaves bloomed on vines that took away sight of what lay beyond them. The dirt at his feet was gray. Seated on a bench, the woman he'd seen, with the straight hair in a shade of midnight and darkness that was soothing to the eyes, rested across his lap, gazing up at him with sad eyes.
He saw her speaking, her mouth moving, felt his own as well, but all his ears translated was the inescapable and unmistakable sound of nature. Birds. The breeze rustling leave.
Her hair was soft on his fingers, the sensation heightened as his eyes closed to darkness. There was nothing except for it, the twining of his fingers in those long strands, the comfort and fear settling on his heart like the weight of the world. It was a heaviness of despair that only grew as his lap became vacant.
He didn't dare open his eyes as he gulped in a breath, his chest tight as his expression reformed into misery. He could feel the lines of his own face, the deeply furrowed brows, the eyelids squeezed shut to prevent the tears that begged for passage, and the grimace wide on his lips, as much a sign for physical pain as it worked to show the aching of a broken heart.
Grief.
An unwanted, troubled, complicated grief.
When Haq finally gazed out again at the world around him, every associated emotion with the woman was gone, exchanged for a new pace that she failed to exist within.
"Hahaha!"
It was a child's laughter, light and inviting. Perhaps it was trying to soothe him as the remainder of the difficult emotions faded away from his mind, no longer present, but not to be forgotten.
A different head of hair rested in his hands. Rather than tangling his fingers within it like a pacifier of the soul, a way to ease discomfort and hurt, he was attempting to tie up a young girl's hair. Her back was to him, visible skin nearly as pale as the white of the roots of her hair. Rather than maintaining one color, the hair before him had a transition of white to reddish orange at the tips. It was as if she were a flame, a fire with white smoke billowing above. As he finished tying up the rest, he lightly tapped her shoulder with a finger.
"All done."
The young girl bounced up from her seat and danced around for nearly two seconds before his hard work fell apart. A sigh escaped him as she laughed, hopping up and down with glee.
"Again! Again!" she declared, sitting back down in front of him.
Starting anew from scratch, he focused his energy and attention into securing the young girl's hair, up and away from her face. When he was done, he stated so, and watched with bated breath as she jumped up. This time, the ties remained in place, though much was left to be desired by the placements.
As she darted down the hallway with two lopsided pony tails on either side of her head, he noticed a pair of shoes at the far end.
"Brother!"
It was the young girl's shout, one directed away from him, to the figure she ran toward. She leapt into their arms with wild abandon. He saw their mouth move. Everything remained too blurry, all except the girl and the dull blue of the hallway walls, and the gray floor at his feet. The brother she affectionately called to was just a shape, a figure of shadows.
Something was said, but it was as if the language itself were the problem. Their voice wasn't a sonorous resonant type like Lyruk's, but rather, it was a soft gentle voice, one that would be all too soporific at dusk, when sleep already waved a slow hand. It was pleasant to hear, but indecipherable. There wasn't a single clue as to what he was trying to tell Haq.
Just as he heard something familiar, what sounded like a name, he blinked and it was all gone. Sitting against the wall, knees cradled against her chest, was the girl, all grown up. A sense of duty, of responsibility filled him in an instant. It was compounded with a harsh frustration and grief, though neither was aimed at her, but rather the situation they'd found themselves forced to bear. With hair cascading around her face like a curtain, it obscured her expression, but it was obvious what he'd see.
Now closer to Nadia's age, the young woman's shoulders shook, and short muffled sobs reached his ears, painfully scraping at his already wounded heart. She turned her head to him, as if sensing his presence. Tears streaking lines down her face, trembling lips, and eyes that had seen something the mind could never erase, all Haq got was one short flash of her face before darkness surrounded him again.
Before him now was a table and mirror. Similar to a vanity, only of a larger style, the mirror nearly the size of the table it sat above, he couldn't quite see himself in the reflection. Standing rather than sitting, he straightened out the shoulders of his uniform, the colors a dark gray and darker blue.
A woman stepped into the room after lightly knocking on the doorframe. As he turned to see her, a beautiful lady with a gentle smile and long white-blond hair that cascaded in wavy sections over her shoulders. The ends of her ears, visible through the strands, came to a point. She wore a golden gown, the color matching her eyes. Something in him called her mother. His mother.
Haq knew, deep down, that he'd been created into existence from the minds of two men, knew them as his fathers, and had never considered what it may be like to have a parent known as a mother. Dreams were fickle things at times, showing what didn't make sense as much as delving into the subconscious mind, discovering both thoughts and desires, fears and curiosities, not considering only reality.
Perhaps, though never pondering such a thing, Haq wondered if he had secretly somehow wanted a mother, even without knowing it himself. It wasn't as though he disliked having two fathers. It just seemed like a different sort of experience. Maybe, it was no different than having one parent or two, of the same gender or not.
All he knew, was that this woman, his mother in this dream, was such a peaceful and sweet presence. He feared he'd miss it once he woke.
"Are you ready?" she asked, her voice as calming as her demeanor.
"I am," he replied, taking her offered hand, letting her lead him into a new space, a room with a lone black table in the center.
She let go of his hand, gesturing for him to walk forward. Each step was loud in his ears, his heart pounding as he recognized that there were two separate items sitting atop the table. As he drew nearer, he wanted to laugh as much as cry.
"It's time you used these," his mother spoke from behind him, a smile in her tone.
His hands reached out, picking one up in each hand. The dagger he currently had was one simple and practical. However, this one, differed not just in material and color, but in design. The blade was a dark gray, while the handle was a deep shade of blue woven together with black.
In his other hand was something much larger. He lifted it up higher, admiring the details, a grin rising on his face. The body of it was made entirely of some type of extremely durable wood, the grain visible and surface smooth. It was covered in dark markings, lines burned into the sides but not the top.
The way it fit into his hands was surreal, almost enlightening.
Haq's eyes opened slowly, peering out at a work of darkness, dotted by small beads of light. He blinked. There was a strange ache in his back. Rather than one mass of dull pain, it was concentrated in lines, some hurting more than others.
Sitting up, he spotted Lyruk sitting next to the fire. He spared Haq a glance, but offered no words. Grateful, Haq slowly rose to his feet, and once standing, he rolled his shoulders around and attempted to stretch the ache from his body before wandering off.
Though it wasn't a nightly encounter with strangeness, to Haq, such dreams were normal, if occasionally repeated. Though, as he considered these, fresh in his mind, he paused. It was the first he'd had of a mother, but not even the fourth he'd had of those weapons. A strange sensation still rested in his hands, as if they were suddenly too empty now, without the dream placing something within them. For every night they spent in the Canyon, he'd been seeing a crossbow in the distance, a dagger beside it, unable to reach them. This was the first he'd been able to grab them, to hold them.
Maybe it was a sign that he was getting closer to them, would soon be able to touch them in reality.
He stared up at the stars in the night sky, at the reflected light of the star showing the surface of the moon of Elpidius. Everything, all at once, sensationalized vastness and weighed heavily, like some kind of crushing foreboding for the future.
It was possible that his dreams had spawned thoughts of worry, of grief and pain, due to the contents within them. And yet, as the was reminded of their plans, ones that would come to fruition in roughly a week, was he supposed to feel optimistic? For all they knew, they were walking right to their own deaths in the Valley.
The Goddess of Life had already killed two people more powerful than themselves. Both of his parents had warned him to stay away from her, from the overgrown cemetery of flowers, and the Valley in which everything bad seemed to originate from.
He shook his head, mostly at himself. At once, he wondered what he'd been waiting for, truly, in order to spark action. The end of the world? An expiration date on his own life? He'd had three-hundred years and more to move. To act. To speak.
To ask.
What had he been doing all this time?
Was he to live with the regret, even now?
He sighed.
Returning to camp, he sat beside Lyruk on one of the large dead logs they'd rolled over. In the silence, the fire smaller with majority of it now ash, they let the quiet crackle and sounds of the canyon speak for themselves.
In the peaceful polite chatter of nature, two sat staring into flames, their minds on different turbulent paths.