smallestopener | Trust dreams. Trust your heart, and trust your story.

Ingress had a brilliant birthday. She’s eleven. Eleven is nearly grown up! It’s also the year when children in the stories she’s read come into their own. Adventures begin, schooling starts, worlds are saved… she can hardly wait to see what will happen next.

Her party earlier was such fun. Door was almost nice to Puck; Ingress had worried a little about that after she invited him. But he was very nice and charming, and Tom was nice, too, and Puck helped Ingress steal lots of roses off the cake while Havelock talked to Tom and Door, and it was brilliant.

She ate far too much icing sugar, but Tom had the peppermint potion waiting for her when the party was over. She feels much better now. And she’s eleven!

It sounds so good in her head. Eleven, eleven, eleven.

She should have asked Mary to stay the night with her, she thinks, as she tosses and turns. She’s never going to fall asleep, even with staying up past her bedtime. Tom and Door insisted she go to bed after she started yawning. They can be so silly sometimes.

She tosses one more time, and she thinks, again, how impossible it will be to go to sleep tonight. Her eyelids flutter and close. It is not long before she’s deep in dreams.

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From:

smallestopener

Ingress is in Milliways, but it’s not quite Milliways. It’s also the family room in their wing of the House of Arch with stacks of books and comfortable couches. There are board games scattered around the floor – chess, Exploding Snap cards, Snakes and Ladders (which she doesn’t even play anymore), and old toys. She laughs when she sees her dress up trunk by the fireplace. She runs to it and pulls out the tutu she always loved to wear best.

She hasn’t played dress up with tutus in a while. She shimmies into it, and it fits again! Her blue shoes glitter on her feet, and there are shiny beads around her neck. Her sword, however, remains in its scabbard attached to her belt. Some things don’t change.

From:

smallestopener

Ingress plops down onto a bale of hay in a stable. Sun shines upon her, warming her and making her sleepy. She could be in Valdemar or Ambergeldar or at Milliways. It doesn’t matter. This place stands for all places that smell of comforting horse flesh and tickly hay.

She does wonder where the horses are, but for right now, she is content to wait in this place of comfort and reassurance.

Edited Date: 2010-05-17 03:36 am (UTC)

From:

smallestopener

Out by the lake, Ingress scans the water for Mr. Julia. It’s hard to see because it’s dark. She hasn’t been out by the lake at dark before, so Tom must be close by. Or Door. Neither are. It’s quiet out here. Ominously so. She only hears the lap of water against the rocks. It’s not a good quiet, and she remembers the warnings she’s heard over the years – don’t talk to strangers, be careful, come home straight away, there are things in the dark that will take you away, take your mother, your father, your brother…

She is frightened, but Ingress, Lady of the House of Arch and soon-to-be Herald, does not let fear stop her. She lifts her head high, hefts her sword, and begins to walk towards the far-off lights in the distance, skirting the shore.

It seems a very far way to the safety of those lights.

Edited Date: 2010-05-11 12:28 am (UTC)

From:

smallestopener

Ingress runs through a forest. The trees stretch high above her head, and golden sunlight filters down through the green leaves. It’s lovely here. Lovely and cool, and she’s not frightened any longer.

She’s never been in a forest quite like this before, but she knows the path to take, threading though the pine needles and crushed leaves, her hands reaching out to touch the rough bark of trunks as she passes.

Edited Date: 2010-05-17 03:24 am (UTC)

From:

it_has_teeth

The wind stirs eddies in the water, whorls and ripples that grow deeper with time. Deeper and --

Brighter.

A fin the size of a sail breaks through the surface, sudden and swift and arrowing straight toward the shore.

Toward Ingress.

And a voice rises from the water too, cool and dry and dull as death.

(It has teeth in it.)

"Well met, little Opener, little Herald-to-be. Shall you choose, at last, to venture out for a swim?"

From:

smallestopener

Ingress never met the Master Shark, but she knew of him from shivery stories told to her.

At least that's what she seems to remember.

She only knows that no, she shall not swim with him for a long time.

"No thank you," she says, polite and quiet, and how are her toes that close to the water line?

"Not yet."

Edited Date: 2010-05-18 01:33 am (UTC)

From:

it_has_teeth

"A pity."

The vast fin that heralds the presence of ed'Rashtekaresket turns slowly away from the shoreline, beginning to circle.

"My bite would have been swift."

No ripples mark his passing.

Not this time.

From:

smallestopener

As she backs away from the robed man, a shadow looms on her left. Ingress raises her sword, gritting her teeth. Her heartbeat quickens, and even though she knows-

this is just a dream

-that she need not be scared, she's afraid.

"Go away," she calls out.

From:

ofthatantet.livejournal.com

(El Valiente - Why are you running when you have such a good weapon beside you?)

And it does.

Up ahead, beneath a tree, there's a spark of flame, and the shadow does what shadows do when the light comes. (While the light is strong, anyway.) It goes away.

The spark becomes a flame; becomes a campfire, here on the verge of the woods, in the comfort of a pine. Outside it, the shadows puddle. Gather. Inside is a woman in a white jacket, the hood turned up to hide her face and hair. Her hands are brown.

"Come a little closer," she calls out from the fireside.

"Come and see."

From:

smallestopener

Ingress frowns, hesitating before she steps-

But in dreams, you don't need to walk. Sometimes you fly.

Of a sudden, Ingress is there, beside the fire, gazing upon the woman. She seems familiar.

(Maybe it's the eyes. They're hazel, vivid in a dark face when she looks up. Her face is framed with thin dark braids.)

"See what?"

The shadows encroach, but Ingress waves her hand at them, waving them away. They pool and regroup, but are held at bay.

For now.

From:

ofthatantet.livejournal.com

There's a couple of candles burning near the blue-jeaned knees of the woman in white; a deck of cards, with a string of them laid out. The Rose; the Parrot; the Soldier. The Earth.

"Your future." The woman smiles. "Do you like riddles?"

From:

smallestopener

"I like a Riddle," she laughs, and she remembers the man in the robe who sounded like Tom, but was not him at all.

He couldn't have been.

She sits down and points to one of the cards. "The Parrot is nice."

From:

ofthatantet.livejournal.com

"The riddle for the Parrot is, daca la pata y empiézame a platicar." Her accent is pretty good. She tips back her hood now, and slides down the zipper of her jacket a little. It's warm now, as the fire settles in and rolls up its sleeves. "It means, sit down and have a chat with me."

With the light on her face she looks younger.

From:

smallestopener

"I can understand ratspeak. And that of pigeons."

Ingress watches the flames. She thinks she can see a turtle within, deep in the heart of the fire.

"And I am sitting down and having a chat with you."

From:

aj_crawley

In dreams, things don't have to make sense.

Here in the stable, with the good warm sun glowing in the hay, and the lazy dust motes glowing in the good warm sun, everything seems peaceful. It isn't silent, but it's quiet; no sound at all save for the soft whickering of the horses and the rustle of hay. The animals seem at peace.

But up in the loft, against the bright halo of the window, something else is moving.

Shadows.

From:

ofthatantet.livejournal.com

"They're good cards," the woman agrees solemnly. "But it's easy when you start with the answer. How about this one?" She picks up the deck and shuffles it, her hands lightning fast; she flicks a card out, seemingly at and random, and holds it up facing herself. The back is a grey-scale checker.

"La cobija de los pobres. I am the shelter of the poor."

From:

smallestopener

Ingress looks up. Shadows happen in barns. She isn't frightened of them. Not when everything is so warm and nice and lovely.

She stands, and then rises up on her tiptoes to better see.

From:

smallestopener

Ingress nods.

"People fall through the cracks," she says. "Your hands move very quickly."

From:

a-fell.livejournal.com

And now indistinct voices float down to her, though it isn't as though they're making any effort to conceal themselves. The sound is clearly the simple rise and fall of conversation, punctuated by the occasional soft clink of glassware.

On her toes, she can see that there are two figures silhouetted against the golden light seeping through the cracks between boards.

From:

ofthatantet.livejournal.com

The woman pauses, and smiles slyly as she gives into the impulse to show off. She lays the card she drew facedown on the ground, half-covering the World, and cuts the deck; the card she turns up now is La Mano. A lineless hand. "So do my eyes."

(This is the hand of a criminal.)

"Do you know the answer to the riddle?"

From:

smallestopener

Ingress frowns, puzzling out what the question might be. Then she shakes her head.

When she looks up, her face is closed, wary.

"You're not the Sphinx, are you?"

From:

creator_raven

The flutter of eyelashes against her cheek might catch her attention.

That and the huge, slightly misshapen, brightly colored butterflies that are fluttering out of the fireplace and swirling around her.

Dancing.

Then they explode, soundless and bright, in a shower of glitter.

And soot.

Raven picks himself up out of the mess, nose wrinkling as he sneezes.

His coat is white.

"It is, I think, almost old home week, yes?"

He reaches forward, cupping Ingress' chin in one hand.

"Try not to forget."

Some things really don't change.

Except when they do.

From:

smallestopener

"Hi! Who's up there?"

She wobbles on her tiptoes and stretches as high as she can, but she can't tell who the people are. Where's the ladder? Isn't there supposed to be a ladder?

She hears the clinks. Ooh, maybe they have milkshakes.

Whoever they are.

From:

ofthatantet.livejournal.com

That makes her laugh. "No," she says. She turns over the card. She leaves it paired with The World, though.

It's The Sun.

"I told you before. I'm Rosie. Rosie Real."