Lady of the Veiled Vale

Dreams

Raiden had begun to think he might be able to slide out from under her. She hadn't moved in a while, so perhaps she was sleeping deeply enough for the delicate maneuver. He'd managed it quite nicely the past two weeks. He did not know if it was the babe she carried who gave her such tearful nights, or if it were some deeper trauma; perhaps being pulled away from everything she knew. It did give him pause for concern, but he was no mind-Healer, to be mucking about in her affairs.

   He shrugged her arm off of his slowly, and wriggled backward in preparation to slide to the floor. He'd just left her grasp when she gasped and clawed at the mattress.

   Alarmed, Raiden scooted back where he'd been and crooned the Irish lullabye he'd sung every night ('twas the only one he knew). She gradually calmed, but now he was concerned enough to attempt something foolish. It was not dangerous, but it was most definitely foolish. What he was about to attempt would put him at as much risk as it put her.

   He was going to Dream Walk into her memories. The risk to Raiden was that some of his own memories could leak through. He knew that memories of his past would scar her, as surely as reliving them would reopen his old scars.

   To an outside observer, it would look like Raiden was falling slowly into a deep sleep. In a way, he was. To enter T'sa Iva, or the Dream World, one must be asleep, or as close to it as possible.

   He knew the T'sa Unai, the Dream Paths, as well as it was possible. The mind-Healer had made him walk them, to deal with the demons (both real and imagined) that haunted him. One would think that the Path from his mind to hers would be short, since they were clasped in an embrace. Things were not always so straightforward in T'sa Iva. He must first walk his own T'sa Unai before he could reach the end of hers.

   If it had been the first time he had walked the Paths, the images he saw would have driven him back to consciousness. He had had long practice, however, and so he passed by graphic and disturbing images of beheadings and disembowelment as though it were a stroll through a dead forest: troubling, but only mildly so.

   When he reached the end of Gwinneth's T'sa Unai, a lovely young lady waited for him. She appeared to be expecting him, which was not unusual in T'sa Iva. "It took you long enough! Can't you see how much my sister is suffering?"

   A shadow crossed the girl's face as she recognized that part of it was her doing. Whether the real Samantha would have done the same was irrelevant in this place. It was enough to tell Raiden where part of his Lady's misery lay.

   "I would be most appreciative if you would tell me why she weeps," he intoned in the correct and formal address of a T'sa Ina'i, or Spirit Guide.

   This, however, was no ordinary T'sa Ina'i. "Oh, spare me your bowing and scraping! I've had enough of that in England!" Raiden hadn't noticed it on the ship, but the two girls had very different manners of speech.

   Responding to that thought, as all T'sa Ina'i will, she explained that the two girls were treated very differently. "I was sent to a British finishing school, to learn etiquette, how to run a manor, and all sorts of boring subjects." Her voice deepened into a facsimile of an Irish drawl on the last two words. It was clear that speech had been the first thing to change.

   "Aye, that it did. I always envied Gwinn her accent." The blank eyes of the T'sa Ina'i took on a dreamy and wistful cast.

   After a moment, or an eternity, she focused on him once more. "Come, walk with me." It was a command, he knew. They walked through the featureless terrain, until they came to a bonny garden in what he guessed to be Ireland. They strolled through the gates, down a winding path, and into a home in disarray. Nay, chaos would be a better word, he thought.