trans_9 | What dreams may come [Open, bendytimed to before GTFO plot]

Roxie moves on twisting, unsupported stone bridges and staircases. As long as she doesn't think too much about how they can be there, they're there. Some might have gone with thoughts of wings, but it's the... stylistic touch that makes her do it.

And she carries an imaginary umbrella to keep any imaginary rain off of her imaginary self.

The storm crashes around her.

Eventually, there is a blank space, and a thing. A giant birdlike creature, with a body larger than an elephant, a head like a horse, and batlike wings. Its skin is scaly and slimy. It has too strong talons.

It waits for her, at the end of a staircase, flapping once every so often to stay in place. One would think it would have to flap more but it doesn't, somehow.

It's waiting to be ridden. It has something to show her.

At the end of the staircase, Roxie pauses and bows deeply, first, and then she climbs on to the flying creature's back, positioning herself among the scales behind the head, wherever she can find good handholds.

Oh Roxie, didn't you ever hear about what happened to the cat? Curiosity is not always your friend.

The thing carries her through space, great wings beating faster and faster, until they're a horribly buzzing thrum, taking her away from all she knew, away from any places her own God has power. Dream-reality will no longer bend for her here, there are only the stars, starting to twist, and the horrible reality of her destination. Her only chance of freedom is jumping off the creature's back, but that would mean a fall into nothing.

Far, far off, she can likely start to hear the maddening, monotonous piping beyond angled space. Where she's going, thin flutes pipe mindlessly.

A certain quote by Admiral Ackbar is applicable.

She's afraid, a little, but she doesn't let that make her freeze. It's like she's looking at it from two angles—it's how she's always handled it. Those who are chosen by Shyama and can't keep fighting in every circumstance don't last very long at all.

It makes her think of a world she's visited, with gold stepped pyramids that shine in the sun and marble avenues that stretch for hundreds of miles and dead, flat plains where only ancient bones lie. She's never stayed there very long, though so many of the cross-world roads of her home pass through it that she can't help but wonder what it is or was or could have been. And sometimes, slipping from street to street to find another crack in the world, she could hear faint drums...

She kicks herself from the creature's back and down. She can handle whatever's down there. And if she can't—well, she'll cross that bridge when she comes to it.

She falls down through the void, red cloak fluttering around her.

The creature swoops down towards her to catch her in its talons, to drag her off to the court when the drums pound thoughtlessly and the pipers pipe away.

But she's caught by a giant hand. The other hand reaches slowly and ponderously and flicks the creature away, like it's naught more than a fly, but not hard enough to kill it.

When she looks up, she will see a face, looking down at her. A massive, massive being, made of the dark and the light, its skin a curtain of stars...

There is something of a god here, Roxie knows, and she shifts in the being's hand, memories of muscles in her legs and calves all tensing in her balance. She bows deeply, hands together.

And then she straightens, silent, looking up at the face.

A bow given to a god is a sign of worship. A bow given back is a mutual sign of respect. The being inclines its head once, nodding back.

This is no god, atop their mountain, sitting on their distant throne. Maybe something like one, but the glowing eyes that look at her, wise and ancient, are warm, like the light of the sun. Warm and harsh, all at once. This is a being that destroys yes, but also one that nurtures, and does both for the sake of the furtherance of life.

She is a living thing. She is to be protected.

Any god that doesn't interact with the people that serve it--that it serves--might as well be dead, Roxie's old grooves of thought go. And so she is a strange kind of comfortable here: this is no god she knows, but as a thing of the great and terrible, she recognizes the manner of its countenance.

She is a living thing, but there is something more, too. Three vortices of subtle energy center her here: at the throat, at the forehead, and at th crown of her head. Down her body, just as unseen to the vulgar eye, are the shadows of four more, drawn by her attachments to the physical world. At the center of each has been carefully implanted a tiny shard of something much more than human: carefully-formed fragments of self-creating power lensed through with the touch of the night, and the stars, and the genius and drive that can make men lunatics or saviors or both. They are the tiniest specks of great spiritual power, grafted into the girl.

"I greet you, great one," she finally says, bowing again.

It doesn't speak, merely reaches a finger down to gently touch her forehead, and then--then there is simply a flash of understanding, as it introduces itself to her.

Everything that is, occurs in a circle. This is the whisper of old mothers, grandmothers, the wise women and wise men, those that understood the nature of the world.

Circles and cycles--Man is born, man tills the earth and hunts and lives off the land. The air is in his breath, water is in his blood, heat is in his body, his body is made of earth--and they knew this because when man dies, he goes back into the earth.

In the earliest times, they knew how to bend Energy alone, the light and life of all things. But that knowledge was lost in the earliest days of the world, before this creature even took form on the earth.

Man learned a rudimentary form of bending energy, from the sky bison, from the dragons, from the moon and the sea, from the badger moles--and they taught others, and those people taught others still. They basked in the light of the sun, and of the moon, they dug their toes into the earth, they stood atop mountains and felt the winds.

Then there was disorder. Chaos. The balance was broken. The people of the world become divided in their identity, because of their gifts. They forgot that it was all the same energy, used in different ways. And the problem with power is some people in the world want more of it, they destroy rather than create, destroy nature, their fellow man, even destroy the sacred balance between mankind and the spirits.

It is the spirit of all that is, the spirit of the fabric of life created by the light, and the open air, and the ancient seas, and the green earth, and the people walking across it. It could not watch over the world from a distance, so It took form to live among them. It could not show preference for any one group of people, so it became something that was all people, one that could manipulate the Earth, and the Winds, and the Fire that burned deep within the earth and inside each person, and the wide, crashing seas and roaring rivers.

It lived and died in a cycle as well, born into a new nation each time. Roxie will see more than a thousand faces flash by. Men and woman, with all manner of appearances and affects.

The vision hits her—

Roxie lets out a soft sigh as she's overwhelmed by it, letting the expanse of knowledge pour through her. She doesn't try to analyze it, just lets herself soak it up intuitively...

It takes her long, long moments to recover from it, and she has nearly fallen, limp on her feet.

She bows again before she straightens, trying to firm herself.

One of her hands raises, and darkness cloaks around her, and to the sides. Not to hide away—no, to—

Dots of light form against the shroud of darkness, and expand, turning into webs of worlds against the darkness. And as Roxie sinks herself into the scene, it becomes more than just a projection—it starts to envelop her and the god, in sight and emotion and half-intuited thought—

Subtle presences weave themselves across the worlds. They are like gods—great and terrible ones, for each spans eternities unto itself, and fractal sub-gods all the way down. Some span every world, and some only some, but all are so vast as to be nearly incomprehensible.

The worlds stay alive in a rough but living cycle: for every world that dies, another is born with life, and the over-gods slowly move to and fro, moving like tides with the cycles of ages.

And then something happens: one of the worlds simply vanishes, pulled out of the cycle. And then another, and another—

To stop the spread of whatever is happening, the over-gods slice the entire region out of the continuum. Countless lives and thoughts are forever lost to the greater existence.

And then—

A passage is forced open from the inside, and another world is claimed.

One of the over-gods investigates: a young one, a thing of passion and hope and madness and individuality. He reports back what he finds, and is disbelieved.

The infection spreads to more worlds, and the dream-god despairs. What he has seen is a species—a thing—that would conquer all free thought.

In secret, he chips away parts of himself and crafts warriors.

A Protector of Life? And she is one of its chosen warriors?

It's—

The vision changes. Legions, plated in bone-white armor, moving in lockstep. They are alive—they are vigorously alive—but it is not the same kind of life anyone else understands. They move and think and act as one, and the closest any ever come to dissent against the whole are in ripples and eddies and temporary confusions in the local traceries of thought, until the consciousness of the great combined hyper-mind focuses enough to change that.

There is discontent. The living unliving, taking over life--this cannot be allowed to happen. Free will is life.

Defense of such things is dangerous, and those that do it are to be respected. The great spirit-being lifts her up slowly, and there is a gentle kiss pressed to the crown of her head, that prickles with starlight, from this creature of balance.

All life is precious, and she is life, therefore, she is precious, but she is also respected for what she protects.

Her eyes close as her head is kissed. Subtle energies churn within her at the touch.

It feels almost like...

Coming home, somehow. More comfortable than Shyama's chill depths or white-hot eyes.

For what feels like a long, long time, she soaks in the feeling.

The moment is ruined by the screeching of birds in the ether. The bird-thing is back, and it brought friends.

The spirit-being's brow furrows and a massive hand swats at the cloud of birds that swarms in, sending them scattering. The other hand clutches Roxie to its chest protectively.

Hooked talons swing in far too close, but then--then the birds scatter as quickly as they came.

The storm is coming, crawling towards them. Bright eyes widen and the great being turns its head towards her and opens its massive mouth, which glows like a open doorway with a light beyond it, holding the hand with her up to it. It pauses right at its mouth, giving her the choice to walk in, so that she's not afraid.

It's a way of escape. It's nothing to fear.

She'd prefer to fight, but—this isn't the place for her. If they were material, maybe she'd have a chance. (A little one.)

"Thank you," she says, and jumps forward into the glow of the god-thing's mouth.

The mouth closes, but a wisp of smoke gets in.

But hands pull her down. Hands attached to arms in all different colors of clothing, red and black, white and blue, yellow and orange, green and brown. They're pulling her away from the thing, helping her fall, and obscuring her from view. She'll see flashes of faces, like she was shown before, people forming and disappearing after helping her.

Eventually, she falls the last of the way, through the past lives and into the past of the present life, into a little courtyard, in a temple on the side of a mountain, but air cushions her fall. There is the bright mist of old, happy memory here, meant to keep the shadows at bay.

The first thing that's visible from the angle she's landed at are boots. Brown boots, and as she looks up, she'll see a tiny, little bald boy, with bright, grey eyes, the one that cushioned her landing.

"Hi!" he says, crouching down next to her. "Do you wanna play hide n' seek?"

Roxie goes limp as she falls. She's been smacked around enough—pavements, walls, cars—to know that she's better off just letting herself go with the movement.

And the hands... her eyes stay open and her lips slide apart as she's pulled down, trying to match all the faces to ones burned into her memory. She doesn't really try to think about any of it—this isn't the time, and she's ready to react if she has to.

And then—

a fall—

and—

a boy?

It takes long, precious moments for her mind to slide back into a peace-time mode, leaving her looking at him only half-comprehendingly.

"... only if I get to hide," she finally says.

The boy reaches out a small hand, and helps her up.

"We always have to hide," he says, and there's uncertainty for a moment, as if this fact is new. He's sure it was different before. But it's only there for a moment, before the sun breaks through the clouds again.

"I'm really good at it! I know all the best places, but you have to squish yourself up to fit in them, and it's not good to get caught by the older monks because they get upset, I think because you can see the tops of all their heads and they don't have hair anymore..."

A shadow falls over them both, as dark clouds start to roil overhead and ash starts to drift down through the air.

"We have to go play right now," he says, looking up at the roiling clouds starting to block out the sun with widening eyes, sounding a bit more intense than someone with such an open face should sound, tugging her along.

Roxie slides up along the boy's help. It's almost disorienting to be getting up from a fall without her head ringing and spine and shoulders complaining. Her hood is fallen open, hair a bit mussed by the puff of air that cushioned her way down.

And his enthusiasm leaves her a little behind. She was never a very energetic child, never a social sort. And he seems to certainly be—

Oh.

"Lead on," she says, trying to keep up with him without losing grip on her acceleration.

He runs, and drags her along in his wake. The air has less resistance around them both, making it easier for them both to run faster. They reach a sort of walkway with an overhang and a lattice structure.

Aang hops up effortless to a ledge and reaches down to help Roxie up.

"Hurry! We have to hide really fast or we'll get tagged, and you don't want to get tagged."

Roxie ignores Aang's hand and grabs the ledge, pulling herself up fast enough that she has to scrabble almost on all fours a moment, still moving, to regain her footing.

"How fast can you go?" she says. There's an earthiness to her voice that wasn't there a moment ago, though—and she's changing, cloak rippling back along her as it melds into her. Still scrabbling in the half-hybrid form a moment, and then—

The red wolf (http://i38.tinypic.com/whze61.jpg) that bounds forward is young, but vigorous and healthy.

"Really fast!" Aang says, running along the ledge with sure feet, the wind carrying him along, looking back to make sure Roxie can keep up. The black clouds are following them, whipping in under the arch even though the winds are trying to blow them away.

"Hey, if we had more time to play, would you let me ride you?"

What? It's a very good question. Normally, he'd just jump right on, but he figures it's polite to ask when you can--

There's a small doorway at the end of the walkway, hidden in the branches of the trees laces through the temple roofs.

"Never mind! Through here! Through here!"

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