Images still flicker across the surface:

You see yourself, your face turned up willingly toward the face of death.

His great grey wings, closing.

People screaming, crushed, drowning in darkness.

Mau flinging himself at Locaha, tiny and insignificant, battering himself against those closed wings, ineffectual, but fighting, always fighting.

[...looking back to the kneeling figure]

Mau?

His voice is still only a murmur, but it sounds more focused. "Yes?"

Is this the bad dream you're having?

"Yes."

[...]

What can I do to help?

"I don't know. I can't think... it's dark."

...Then you need light. Is there a way to make things brighter in here?

"There's probably something."

If you look around, you'll find the kindling on the other side of the fire, and lamp oil and torches on one of the shelves.

[gathering those all up and setting about lighting up the room some more.]

The room lights up, bright as day. The lantern light is now perfectly steady, and the torchlight dances lively and warm over the walls. You can see everything in the room now -- the items lined up neatly on the shelves, all manner of strange and ordinary thing. Knives, silver fish, hats, teeth, glass stars, musket balls, dried flowers, bowls of liquid and sand, feathers...

[...picking up a dried flower.]

You are struck by the fear that you are going to kill yourself and Mau won't be able to do anything about it. This may be a bit disorienting.

[...drops it.]

...Mau?

"Yes?"

...Are you that afraid of my dying?

"Of your desire to die."

I see...

[places a hand on his shoulder]

He leans into that.

How else can I help?

"You can change things... change the dream."

[nods]

Do I have to go elsewhere to do so?

"No. You can do it here... I'm sorry, I can't show you. But the ingredients are all around you."

I see...

[...takes a look at the feathers.]

They are made of steel, and if you pick one up you will experience a wave of fear -- fear that even now, his Nation will die, invaded and overwhelmed by one of the great European empires.

If you survey the shelves, you'll find, in addition to the items listed already: silver apples, little gold dolphins, broken grey branches, a curve of iron, a blue hermit crab, a bloody black gamepiece, a tangle of blue, yellow and light green threads, a smooth grey stone, an alaki, a ball of clay, a blooming Selenia in a little vase of water and a white handkerchief...

Edited 2012-08-27 07:47 pm (UTC)