Nichever

Nichever (Nee-SHEH-ver)

He was the cold, sinking feeling that rose in dark places. The tingle at the back of your neck as you walked alone in the night. He was the cold that ran through your bones when you felt you were alone. He was nothing, yet he was something... Something growing. Something stirring. The world felt young, and yet, ancient. He moved through the hearts of men, chilling their blood, singing their terrors in the depths of their souls. They found him every moonless night, in the moments before a storm, and every night they spent a moment in the dark alone. He was shapeless then... Bound without form. But he was very much aware. Time was meaningless. Days and nights rolled by so fast he barely took note of their passing. He was a force of nature. He was the trembling of the hearts of men.
And then... suddenly... when it had been so long he could no longer remember the beginning... when it had been so soon that he could not believe it was the end... The men were gone. And the world was changed. And the sky was new... and the darkness was growing, growing ever stronger.

He felt his shapeless, formless power being drawn to something... something other than this darkness that was all he knew. He felt himself being twisted, turned and tightened as if something was drawing him down into a hardened shell. Movement was heavy and thick and somehow terrible. He tried to move, but felt a weight so great he could not push it from his limbs... limbs he had never had before... strange and awkward... Where was the freedom he had always known. He tried to move... he tried to run from whatever was binding him... But it was impossible to escape.

Nichever woke with a start as his mate nuzzled against him in her sleep. It was dark in the cave and he was the only one awake. Again. It was late. He knew the others were all deeply asleep. He knew his movements would disturb their rest. So as always, he lay still in the darkness, the ghosts of his nightmares fresh in his mind. He took comfort in the warmth of his mate nestled against him. She was everything to him. He had felt alone for so very long... He had never known how empty he had been without her...

Or so that was how he had felt. He was betrothed to her as soon as he was born and the clan had introduced them when they were both barely even grown. He had loved her so deeply. She was the one great warmth that had melted all of the ice from his ancient, lonely heart... Or so he felt. He was only as old as one moon's turning. But he felt... He Remembered...

He closed his eyes against the swarm of memories... that is... nightmares that threatened to flood his mind again. A deep breath in... and a slow, long breath out. He would not let those dark thoughts take his mind away from the warm, solid presence that was his beautiful Lazaerus, the dark winter princess. He held her tight against him and tried to focus on her breath, the beating of her heart...

Every night was like this one. Every night he was awake when others rested. Every night he lay alert, running from these dreams he had revisited every single night since his birth... it felt like... even before he was born. He had tried to make sense of the mad images that stirred and twisted through his sleeping mind each eve, but there was no sense to be made of them. He remembered being shapeless... formless... free...

No. He was tired of feeling tired... tired of feeling cold and alone even when he was very much anything but that. He rose with an effort of will, fighting free of deep, gripping despair that had taken him of late. He caressed his mate's neck lovingly as he parted from her side and wandered out to the main cavern of Dreamhome.

There, in the shadowed cave, glimmering from the glowing lights and sparkling jewels embedded in the cavern walls, Seramune sat alone, gazing at the oversized book he sat upon. He was often like this... awake at night when others slept. Nichever knew... because they were often the only ones awake. He moved closer to the tiny Fae before lowering his head to peer at the book. He knew he would not understand the meaning of the arcane writings on the page, but this was a way to get the quirky little fae to pay attention to him.

Seramune looked up from his book as the Imperial's enormous head neared him. He started slightly, his crests flaring tensely and his wings opening for flight... but he calmed as he saw familiar magenta eyes. He turned in place on his giant book and gazed up at his common nighttime companion. He could see that something troubled his friend. "Say it..." he encouraged.

Nichever gazed at the little fae and tried to think of a way... but he did not know how to explain. He started and stopped a dozen times, barely getting out half a word each time... But he didn't know how to put his problem to words. Seramune gazed at him perplexed. The arcane dragon before him was a grand creature, and it was hard to look him in the eyes, both of them at the same time, that is. He could see the pain, the exhausted feeling deep in the big dragon's eye all the same. He realized the difficulty Nichever was happening and so dug deep into that quiet place in his own heart where an answer always seemed to wait for him...

Nichever watched as the little fae closed his eyes for a long moment then opened his eyes and suddenly flitted up to rest on the Imperial's grand brow. Seramune laid his hands against Nichever's forehead and concentrated. His body began to glimmer with magic. He closed his eyes tightly and images assaulted his mind.

He was free... shapeless... formless. He moved without care, without rules or even guidelines. He flowed from place to place scarcely taking notice of the distance or the size of the world in which he existed. He was a shiver in the night. He was the hurry in a man's step as he neared the door to his home. He was the terrible truth that lay in the darkened woods when the men believed they were safe. He was the uncertainty of the ones wise enough to know the others were fools to believe they were safe...

Seramune drew back from Nichever with a gasp and blinked his eyes rapidly. Nichever was fortunate to have come to him. He might be one of the only dragons around who would possibly understand the great Imperial's plight. He began preparing a way to explain, and picking carefully the words and expressions he would use. As a very clever fae, he had learned to communicate with other breeds in their own "languages" so to speak.
And as he prepared himself to communicate aptly, he slid down from Nichever's brow and rested on a stone. For a moment, he was alone and cold, gazing up into a starless sky... a pair of great glowing purple eyes gazed down on him and a feeling of darkness enveloped him, washing the pain and emptiness of the world away... He was warm and safe... and he could rest... at last...

Seramune shook his head rapidly to clear the vision. Yes, he understood Nichever's condition all too well. He started slowly... carefully. He wanted to be very clear and easily understood. After all, it was a hard thing to understand, and an even harder thing to explain to another... what it meant to have been something else, and now to remember... after being born again.