Chapter 46
“We should not linger here!” protested Ash Vani tremulously. She looked around with dread.
The small threesome crossed a knot of old, broken trees.
As the natural light dwindled. They trampled through ferns, breathing in the air thick with pollen. They well knew it to flummox minds, and it weighed heavily on their lungs as they felt more jaded than perhaps they should have felt.
The wilderness was a sanctuary, not just for Merewolves but other predators that would be encouraged to hunt them if they encountered their ground scent.
“Wolves… Wolves stalk these parts — they allege they have a taste for us?!”
“And you’re an authority in zoological matters all of a sudden!?” snapped Min.
“I sensed them on my way here, captain!”.
She shuddered.
“Not very nice at all!” she quaked, looking all about her.
The weird tête-à-tête was appeased by the precipitous eruption of some whippoorwill birds that suddenly scattered in all directions, and again, silence followed quickly.
A mild perfume ensued. Moonflower. Met with invigoration and pleasure. Potent enough to be savoured. It carried happy memories in the air downwind, oozing from the horticultural zone, which meant that the lavender wheat fields were close in proximity.
They shuffled onwards as Vani quizzed Min.
“I believe that is an old wives’ tale. We are not on their menu, Leftennant! Unless you choose to believe in Wyrzels or other such tall tales!?”
“Can I ask you something, sir?”
“Do I look like a sir?” she growled, curing her mistake.
Vani shook her head.
“Ask away, permission granted.” Min knew that she would have to embitter her relationship with the young leftenant to partake in the matters at hand.
“Captain, why is it? We don’t appear to be getting any closer to our destination,” she contended standoffishly, casting her scepticism and reservations around the panorama.
“What do you mean?” countered Min. “Are you doubting me?” she mumbled through gritted teeth as she swung a stick at some dense thicket, clearing a pathway they could travel.
“Well, we do seem to be running around in circles, that’s all…like it’s not the Shae were dodging but something else,” she answered, emphasising the something else as if wishing to be let into a mystery.
“Huh! How very tetchy!” she said with a perverse smirk.
“What are you not telling me?” she was headstrong, and she did not budge.
Min mused over the matter delicately and thought it was of a far too sensitive a nature to divulge. Even if it meant the slightest chance of it being unstitched, it was a chance she was not willing to take.
She cast her a cold, sobering stare her way.
“Do you not trust me?” She demanded as the silence between them became almost deafening.
They stood in the clearing as leaves blustered about the small copse
“Mutiny, at least one of you is a… a replacement.” She announced frostily as Ash Vani’s jaw dropped to the floor in disbelief.
“What!”
“A viper…. made to look like a fluffy Civiccat,” she clarified. “And I’m presumed to accept you to my loving breast and nurture you with my milk.” She gesticulated by clutching her bosom. Vani looked back, mouth agape as Min kept on talking.
“Take me in, oh tender woman, take me in, for heaven’s sake!” she chanted in mockery.
“Cherish you…. and when, least expected, you’ll poison the well and drive a dagger into my back,”
“What!” Ash Vani was dumbstruck.
“You don’t think I!?” she said with her hand on her heart.
“Grozette delivered a warning!”
“She warned me about posthumous impostors and their ill intentions; I’ve been caught out before, but not this time!”
“Eventually, everyone will have to play their cards. Aces, Tai T’sars, and Queens… And then we shall know, but it’ll finish here” She gazed around the small copse that covered a crater that was defendable from all sides. As Giddy followed close by, a few yards adrift from the duo. she waited at a nearby shrub.
“You Bitch!!” Min looked at her as if she were a stranger.
“Ah! There it is!” remarked Min.
“Y’know what? I am so done here!” raged Vani as she scolded the captain for her ungratefulness.
“I’m leaving”, as the leftenant marched off with indignation inscribed upon her face.
“That’s it, run away… Like you ran away at the Battle of the Basilica.”
“You’ve abandoned reason for madness.” screeched
Ash Vani.
“All you see are Changelings… Changelings everywhere!!”
She looked her way but was too exasperated to speak further, as a vein in her head was almost about to burst. She was ready to have conniptions, and it was all she could do to stroll away without conceding her calm further.
“Good riddance!” remarked Min.
The Queen called out in a perfect Meese recursive accent.
After a problematic silence, urging in her maiden name, “Sx Min!?” a name few recalled her belonging to these days.
“Giddy. We’re resting here for an hour.
——
The sound of feet scurrying carried over the place the villagers called Scultch, a stony, gravely sand bed that drew up to a cavern mouth found in the very bowels of mount Lifrin.
A Worry of Shae soldiers stood uneasily for a while and gazed into the deep vacuum of the cavern’s mouth, hollow — dank, bleak, with their blue within blue eyes penetrating the gloom as they pressed on to greet more of their kin inside.
The unidentifiable echo of something met them, something stirring. The infrequent acoustics displaced and muddled on the entrance of the mysterious womblike interior.
Within awaited, the excavated beast re-arisen; this contradiction of nature was not of muscle and sinew, but wood and timber. A creature reanimated back to life in the very liberal usage of the word.
The Whirlygig revived and led itself out of a dark cavern on the end of a vast chain that’s links were as big as a man as the Shae swarmed it in lines of 5’s intermittently along with the shackle and hefted the masterless beast that bumbled along blindly. Into the daylight.
—–
Loki,
The one-eyed fiend presided. He wandered out into the courtyard. His Chieftains received him with suitable suavity as collectively they observed the soldiers that stood row after row, looking sombre vacant and broken as they settled, knowing full well they would be going to fight their own people daunted at the prospect of what might happen if they were ever to sew any division in the ranks.
The ogre roared, “information!”
“Sir, I determine our losses are two cohorts. With the Njuerer bureau massacred in a cowardly but wickedly cunning sneak attack.”
“You almost seem to admire it, general.”
“I’m sorry vizier, I shall be more mindful of my tongue. “
“Be sure too. Or you might find you might lose it!” scolded ki.
“Li kays men are ghosts excellency. It’s impossible to fight ghosts,”
“Why am I saddled with such buffoons!!!” He bellowed.
“Who will rid me of this tiresome little man!?”
One general said, “There is some good news, excellency?”
“We don’t know how, but some of the Banshee units have come back under k’coms commands,”
“They’re ready to go. Sir,”
——-
Boredom, boredom, boredom.
Vee sat paralysed by monotony; his enthusiasm waned along with the natural light. Meanwhile, Una struggled to get the Sleeping Centurion to do anything.
“Dar é ís dar, árí pichénheēr”, she mumbled in a melodic voice like she were crooning to herself, a nonsensical Mercian maxim the original interpretation was forgotten in time. Still, it was a quirk the mages of her order often returned to, for no plausible reason whatsoever.
“Nothing I try works. There’s no kind of trigger or interface.” She argued.
“No clue on how to communicate,” she squirmed in a less than sanguine note.
Vee sighed, as it was evident that ūna was speaking to herself
“Vee…”
“VEE!!!” she snapped
“You’re meant to be the professional in this, not me!” He said, brushing her off as his interest was wholly spent.
“Maybe some support, if you could discover it within yourself!?”
There was a silence he was savouring, watching her squirm.
“Maybe you should request it to help you,” he continued with an air of sarcasm as he sat nonchalantly absorbed, dowsing the clouds up in the sky, using his index finger as an invisible indicator. He relaxed on a comfortable bank, failing to grasp that any urgent danger was probable, as he reached for his carafe of poteen, nature bathing. He took a sip and let out a gratifying ah!
As the liquor warmed his insides,
“That homebrew you keep getting off Quti Brathren is pickling your brains vee!”
Vee turned his face away, and it was apparent he had deafened himself to her nagging.
“Is this because I said you were bat shit crazy?”
He cocked his snout with a proudful pose.
“No!!!” He replied, tutting
“Did you just Tutt at me?” She said, dis-enchantingly.
“Look, it’s quite simple. You’ll figure it out!” As he gesticulated with his finger, stabbing into the air around his head.
“Up here for thinking down there for dancing!”
She grumbled, “mister tutter, ask it to help you!” As she fixed him with a dirty look.
She found herself thinking aloud, “does not everything have influence on everything else? Does not the tall trees sway to the signing of the wind?”
“Ask it for help!”
“Hmm… Well, maybe I will!” she declared in indignation.
She turned a cursory glance toward him to see an enormous grin emblazed upon his face.
“Oh, you!!” she announced, speechless as she thought about throwing the nearest thing at hand at him…
She sensed something like a shadow pass over her face. Something was standing behind her; disturbingly, the hairs on the back of her neck stood up with static. A look of disorientation that was imprinted on vees face followed soon after it.
Whirling around cautiously and slowly.
She laid her eyes on a young boy with pale white skin and dusty black hair. Sporting an air of aloofness as he looked up, pricking his thin, disdainful snout in their direction.
“Hello,” he said, introducing himself, and in the next breath, he announced,
“Heavy atomic weights may not be used where life is present. Please proceed with extreme and delicate caution.”
“Are you one of those?” she inquired without as much as a hello.
“Those?” asked the young boy, dismissing her off-the-cuff remark.
“A Fairie”, more ironically a Hallow than a hello, she thought as her sobriety felt a little strained.
“Au contraire… ironically, I’m a Giant”, he said, widening his eyes and using language unsuited to his physical appearance.
Shaking her head in disbelief, she continued,
“Whom? What are you then?”
“I’m not sure. I suppose you might quantify it as,”
He paused momentarily and tried to find a simple way of depicting his purpose and characterising his existence.
“. I’m a reliquary.” he replied with a deadpan expression etched upon his face.
“What for antiquities, relics?”
“You may say that! I mean, you could be right. A broken clock is right after all twice a day.”
“Are you from far away, or have you always been here?”
“The answer to this question is yes!”
“But which one is it?” pleaded ūna in confusion.
“You cannot begin to comprehend. I occupy here, but I reside in the when. In 10-dimensional space all at once.”
He paused, showing a realisation of the finite “all of space was 10-dimensional once upon a time, Y’know!” He declared as if it were commonplace knowledge.
“Now, I preside between the spaces. In what’s left? In the same way, tachyons inhabit simultaneity.
“He paused a moment and strayed back to the current thread and tugged upon it as if he was pulling at her navel.
“In answer to your question, my name is Fin. Hello, operator,”
He said with a slight inflexion, “Li Una!” He announced it as if he had just learnt her name for the first time.
“You’re mistaken…er, young sir, I am paschėlle ūna!” As
They realised. This was the sentient operating system from the Sleeping Centurion.
“So then, you’re responsible for those ghastly Nightbirds.” She said in scorn.
“You could say that you, yourself, are responsible, an autonym of your hopes and aspirations.”
“Yes, we realised it was a defence mechanism.”
“Well, I suppose we should get started! With whatever it is, we’re meant to do?!”
“Great, we have lots of work to do”. Said ūna with a renewed, upbeat outlook
.
—-
“Ooo, it’s windy. Are you sure it’s safe?” asked the littlest Ghost.
“Yes, we” Brownie looked around with an expression of annoyance imprinted on her face? As Eulin took refuge in the hood of her blue cloak.
“Ooooh,”
“What’s ooooo” mean commented Elkie, producing a passable impersonation of her with concern in her voice
“it’s just… We’re not where I intended us to be,”
“O!” conceded Elkie
“Wait here a moment… I must go and do something!” she declared ominously, as if she were talking about a restroom break before disappearing, taking herself and Eulin with her.
Elkie stood alone. Wind-lashed in the throes of the storm, hugging herself as her pashmina rustled back and forth, ringing the tiny bells in the dust cloud.
She was casting her eyes across the panorama. She felt sure she recognised her surroundings, and it was some sort of garden.
Nevertheless, it was difficult to see clearly in the tempest.
She wandered through the surge of orange dust and felt the abrasive nature rub against her skin.
Pottering around until.
She stopped before a door, a Grande Terance that stood stately. The portal into somewhere significant for her? She supposed to recognise somehow a remote memory, a stirring in her blood’s specific gravity—a childhood memory.
As it carried the impetuous urge to rap on the door.
Should she play knock, knock Ginger?
A game she was all too acquainted with?
Three rowdy, strong, and sharp knocks. Elkie waited in uneasiness. For the elliptical portal to open.
She watched.
A moment Elkie spotted two familiar eyes and her father’s countenance peering through the viewing hatch. She was overwhelmed with raw emotion. She called out with all her might, as again she suffered her heart fluttering tremulously, “FATHER!” hoping he might hear her beyond the veil over the storm’s clamour. However, he seemed oblivious. He hesitated a moment, and Elkie conveyed a few words as she glided closer.
“Pop… I don’t know…. if we’ll ever meet again in the next life, but I want you to know,” she started to feel overwhelmed, and her words were even harder to orate as they nearly shrivelled up in her throat.
“I know it wasn’t you. Please don’t hate yourself,” she said with lenition in her words as she searched for an explanation but failed to find it.
“Because!” she sighed.
“I love you… Take care of Mama. She’s not as tough as she lets on. I wanted you to know…. that I am at peace now…. and that I love you. I’m proud to be your daughter!”
And finally, she smiled and wept tears of pride.
The door shut momentarily and then opened again for an instance, had she got through, she marvelled but was sad to see the portal shut again.
Alone, she stood once more at the brink, ruffled by the gales as Brownie re-joined the emotional young girl and could evidently see that she had an epiphany in some ways.
And looked upon her in the storm. Underneath the dark and sandy garden scape as the counterpanes stuttered in the ebb and flow of the storm.
And just hugged her until she felt better.
In the next instance, they were here, but everything seemed eerily different.
The wind had expired, and tranquillity pervaded.
However, they were not alone in the courtyard. The scenery was late Autumn, and the air was cool and fresh. She gazed on an invisible watcher and slowly looked upon the garden; the birds gawked on as they alighted in rows on the boundary wall.
The first sight that greeted them was the sight of snow lilies that were in blossom. They were pretty and crept up the trellises and hung like ribbons from the pergolas—garlands of red and white and violet that swayed gingerly like chimes in the breeze. Elkie and Brownie were not alone but remained unnoticed by the others, and it was almost as if they were invisible to them. As if they inhabited the ordinary four dimensions and others, that meant they were transient, an afterthought, or a mathematical remainder. Elkie looked upon her mother and cheered, “Mama!”
Min looked on for a moment. It was as if she had been here before and was recapping a distant memory, one of happiness lost. Elkie said,
“Please, Mama, don’t cry, please,” in a petite voice.
As she stood by her, a little birdie on her shoulder
Seeing the distress on her face, her father moved closer to her to console her. he spoke gently. “Min, what is the matter? Please tell me, starflower!”
“I. I know you have suffered greatly,” he said as he struggled to connect with her in vain. As if she could not find her voice. Elkie watched as her mother’s temper welled up inside, and for seemingly no reason, she drew her hand back. Slapping him across his face, as he reeled back a couple of paces.
“Please NO, don’t”, cried Elkie as she turned away, upset, and covered her mouth in dismay.
“Wait a moment, Elkie!” said Brownie, halting her in her tracks
They turned around, and now they found themselves inside, staring back into the sunshine through the window of Brownie’s old room.
Min was sitting peering through the window upstairs.
They observed the scene unravel between Una & Min.
Until it was time for ūna to leave,
“I have regrets!!!” Uttered Min, giving pause and cause for ūna to stare back at her.
“Nothing is ever over. It’s not where you start. It’s where you finish!
“As she descended the spiral staircase from the higher ground into the depths of the Villa.
It was merely a short time later that Kay visited her. “I err bought you some Mek Touriah!” He Exclaimed like an awkward schoolboy as he laid the platter on a small table and turned to leave, “I’m sorry!” She professed into the open air. He glanced back with eyes that were tortured. “It’s ok, it doesn’t hurt too much.”
“No … Not for the slap!”
“I’m sorry for everything!” She said shyly, as if she were being punished. As she blushed with embarrassment.
She took a small spoonful of Mek Touriah. She sighed as she exclaimed, “oh god!!!”
“What?” asked Kay,
“This Mek Touriah, it’s awful!!!”
“Yeah, it is!!!!” Agreed, Kay, as the chemistry that was still there reignited the air, and laughter ensued through the hallowed halls of the Villa
“He always was terrible at making Mek–Touriah!”
Elkie looked at the little sprite. “This is it, where I say goodbye, isn’t it?”
The Silk Faerie, without saying a word, nodded.
“Mama father, we shall be reunited one day, but until that time occurs, I want you to know that I miss you both, n’ I wish I could be with you and that I love you.”
And on a cryptic note, she turned to the Silk Faerie and said,
“I think you must be the loneliest person!” but her remarks passed unacknowledged as if they had never been articulated in the light of day.
“This is it then! I’m fading.” She said as she looked upon herself and saw her own body become more transparent.
Sunlight seeped through her edges, giving herself a radiant ethereal quality in the morning sun that she observed through her own hand and wrist as similarly as a thin piece of cloth. She attempted to shield her eyes from the morning sun but found herself bleached out by it like she was almost part of it.
“Is this troubling to you?” asked the Silk Faerie as she took a moment to appraise her companion’s feelings.
Elkie nodded as a finality took hold of her.
“Everyone asks what’s it like, Y’know. being dead!” She said with ambivalence.
“The act of dying is one of the acts of life!” she said, quoting a distant forefather whose identity escaped her.
“We’re all dying, but we’re also all living too,” answered Elkie.
“I understand now,” announced Elkie in a moment of clarity only understood between the two of them.
“I know now!”
Brownie’s face softened.
“Tell it to me then,” retorted the Silk Faerie, detracting her from her creeping emancipation as the wind rumpled her jet-black hair.
“O’ ok!” she said in a frail voice.
Uncomfortably she formed her mouth to start an inspired stream of dialogue but found herself stopping herself, and again she reset her mouth. No sound ushered forth until her face rounded with a resounding appearance of satisfaction typical for the sharp young girl, who was wiser than she often showed.
“it’s hard to traverse the maze of time, getting from there to here. N’ now my time is finally near!” she said, striking a confident pose, unaware of how ridiculous she appeared. She looked down at her feet. She could see the ground through herself and the last of the primsies on the red camomile lawn as the ground seemed up and the sky down, but also the right way up simultaneously.
“Now—we are all built from the same stuff, the mountains, the mighty oceans that crash upon the distant shores. We are all composed of the same materials forged from the heart of the stars—making journeys along infinite pathways.
All of us, everyone… this vessel is in some ways, is, just cloth, threads…. interwoven that fill empty spaces that are vibrating so very slowly in ten dimensions—making music of their own.
So, time. In some ways, it is a contradiction, a non-conformist- of the fourth dimension.
A way of compartmentalising the journey from the IS and the IS NOT and transformation of all that’s in between.
Details.
The minutia of our lives, like names, etcetera, are only loosely me! since they arrived after me, and I had no choice in their origin.
We are… energy. Or a desire… To be—in our own space.
Furthermore, I include Love in that equation.”
She hesitated a moment as if she was settling on a fundamental truth of impermanence.
“You can become absorbed into a certain kind of sadness!” She declared it as an arbitrary fact before applying it to herself.
“This horror that has befallen, this calamity, does not belong to me, and I Disown it.
I was before these things, and I will be hereafter.
Yeva’s words of existing before history ever was.
They make sense to me now.
I have the power because I have an impression of what I am meant to be.
And just by remembering…I am … returning home.
With Leer.
Life is a reunion.
We shall meet again in magnificent dreams, in between the spaces.
A journey. a wish… and I will return to it like a tear in the rain falling into the calm green oceans.”
The little sprite then simply nodded and said,
“So, remember it,”
And then, in a distinct humanistic way, the Brownie simply just smiled and virtually melted into the light in the room, a shapeless silhouette in the sunshine “wish fulfilled.”
As the littlest Ghost faded and remained for the duration of three breaths but then was finally gone.
And only the warmth of the sun remained and the quiet calmness and feeling of spent energy.
And then, with a blink, the little sprite. She was somewhere else? She heard the familiar voice of Li Kay say.
“So, you see, you’re going to report back to the ministry as normal; things are fine, everything is going according to plan!”
She saw Bieber walking away, but Kay called her back and looked at him. “Beiba, if it’s anything at all, I always cared about you. You stay safe!” Bieber glanced back and left.
Slowly, Brownie crept unseen as she lovingly took out the pristine silk handkerchief and placed it on the spot. She had witnessed it before. Knowing that she was invisible.
Kay now stood forlornly and alone. There was silence, and even the aurora had passed. The skies were a washed-out grey with a tint of blue. He stood for a moment, and then something seemed to solicit his attention. There was a gust of wind, and the wind chimes rattled.
Sleight of hand, a twist of fate or just quantum entanglement.
Now the silk handkerchief had moved itself and was where it was supposed to be temporally in time and space.
His gaze was drawn to the small piece of cloth he saw it lying on the ground. He picked up the fabric. He seemed to recognise it and pressed it to his cheek. He was emotional? He swept his eyes.
His stuttering voice simply said, “Elkie.”
It was as if he were looking for someone perhaps hiding behind the counterpanes or just inside the perimeter, someone or something that was good at hiding, “please stranger, don’t run off!” He called out, but it was as if he was talking to no one. He was coddling the handkerchief.
—–
Meanwhile, in the present.
Initially, the cuirassiers appeared. They plunged like gradual falling pollen from the sky out of craft from older days. Vimanas broadened like immense castles in the sky. Severing the cloud-line, a great invisible foot that stamped them out as if it was quelling a small fire.
They were scarcely comprehensible, like something out of the bleakest dream.
The substance of nightmares.
A shadow deliberately intruded upon the slopes and vales of the leafy borough of Mārin. It rang a silent klaxon that was heeded by the remaining wildlife, which appeared to be making a hurried exodus away from these parts as the birds of the sky flew about in squadrons collecting their kin into a diaspora leaving as soon as it was ably possible.
The eyes on the ground. The scouting parties that hid in the hillsides looked in trepidation as some wondered if the aberration was of long-forgotten technology. Did they dare to admit it was archaic magic? Could they maintain it being anything else?
Was it their impending doom?
Slowly and inexorably, an army trickled down in drop ships free falling. Their numbers increasing until they were pretty substantial. Then they marched forward as they turned their consideration to the village and patrolled towards the peripheries with designs on the promenade.
With intentions to sabotage the power supply as well as neutralising the village’s freshwater supply. As they headed towards the tesla tower.
What a vulgar display of might.
Above them, in the lower altitudes, swooped fearsome instruments roughly paralleling humanoid females but having components from biology. They appeared to have a dearth of skin pigmentation and wore habits of the blackest hue of pitch. Furies, some called them, but they were better recognised as Banshees in these parts.
However, this was not the most disturbing part.
Alas…
The most unpleasant part was the army assembling were their own kin, their cousins from Mercia, sent to destroy them.
This was no longer a matter of governance. They could not flee and scatter this time? This was a matter of annihilation, perverse and diabolical.
The automatons were undoubtedly fearsome. They came with a cryptic note from antiquity.
It was penned long ago that preeminent men poured their resources and brilliance into innovations in the time before records, which some people of sincerity deemed unethical. Some were argued to be ponderous. But Some were repugnant and decadent. One proposition was the existence of a harmonic frequency that could induce matter to shatter like glass—a kind of dark music. Colloquially perceived as the music of Hy–Byzantia, it was the music they forbade. On the accounts of its pure destructive capabilities.
They say the discovery. A sound that could kill someone from a distance measured in cubits. But conjecture did not end there. Urban myth, wartime disinformation, or scare tactics. It was well understood that the voice of the Banshees were the recorded screams from the desperate torments of tortured souls, their petrifying screams of anguish. Some asserted it was a vulgar madness.
Which They recorded and skilfully installed it into their machines, in perverse irony.
The automatons themselves. Were thought of as intense or austere. Manufactured of alloy and tailored to look almost alive.
Esmie remarked.
A Banshee might do something which resembled a normal action; it might produce a sound analogous with Martian distress or perform a gesture analogous with Martian supplication, and that made the ignorant observer jump to conclusions. That the Banshees had a spark of self-awareness? In the end, though, furies couldn’t do any of the things that really distinguished a living being.
The final note from antiquity was a cautionary testimony to leave well alone such knowledge.
A black cloud appeared from the shadow. It began moving unnaturally like a swarm of something alien and cold, only wanting to accomplish its orders as it drifted slowly into Mārin village as if it were invading the picturesque township, blotting out everything worth seeing, tattooing everything. Like a noisome pestilence blanketing the land until it was all black and spawning its dysthymia as it engulfed everything.
Darkness
Somewhere in time
Emrys contemplated what he had perceived. He began folding his consciousness back in on itself as he returned to being a dim sphere of light no bigger than a firefly as he almost squashed himself down to complete zeroness. It was then Emrys had the notion again, a faraway echo of almost incoherentness as the Brownie stood before the peculiar vessel that housed him and spoke softly, “Emrys,”
He replied, “yes!” And “is it almost time, …….something wonderful!”
“Yes, indeed something wonderful”, replied the little sprite, almost beyond verbal and non-verbal communication as they shared something beyond the dreaming.