I had been listening to Judith’s dreams. Instead of relishing the bitter aroma of her helplessness, something caused my black heart to twist at her pain, her loneliness; gods, even at her horrifying beauty. I was unable to speak or show myself to her because of what I was. I was not worthy of her attention, even in her nightmares; I would be of no comfort, no matter how I longed to be there. I was repulsed by my own longing, but even with all my strength it would not be diminished, like a vile demon that possessed me into weakness, opening a pit of sorrow in my chest that I had never known existed.
She went to sleep each night in tears, letting the tiring ache of her soul lull her to rest. It was a dry, hollow sorrow; not the unsavory witless sorrow of a child that excited me so. Its magnetism caused me unease. It was unspoken, unlonging, surely, but drew me silently, guiltily, to her all the same like a carcass draws a vulture. I had been watching her in awe as a crude guardian angel would, both in sleeping and waking. Her resilience in the face of fear’s power was true and unexplainable. It caused cold perplexity to roil in my mind. There was no room for terror in anguish, for no monsters were more horrible than the ones held within a soul. The frights in her dreams were nothing compared to what she faced in her waking moments, the raw, bleeding sorrow the world caused her, sorrows I could not name, but only see in her dreary eyes and hear in her murmurs at night. The mystery tormented me. Here in her dark bedroom, my heart overpowered my mind. How I wished I could comfort her. My chest burned and my bones quaked with the desire for her. For her to only see me, to know of me.
Remember your oath, said the voices in my mind. Conceal yourself. Torment her, see how deep she can fall into her pain. Sate yourself with her fear, not her presence. Do you know what you are?
I could not lament over her, over anyone let alone a mortal. I couldn’t care. Dream-weavers did not mull over mortals’ feelings, they did not sympathize with them. I should be feasting on her fear, encouraging it. Why did I choke when I felt it? Why did my chest ache when I saw her cry? Why was she different from the others, why did I care?
The mighty Prince of Nightmares, tamed, weakened, by desire. Amusing, if it weren’t so pathetic.
She would fall asleep late into the night, with no tears left. I’d listen to her soft whimpering from the shadows, watch her clutch her pillow. Loneliness. She aches. And I would feel the same, the constriction in my chest, as if her unknowable pain were mine. Her nightmares stung my nostrils, alluring me as blood allures a beast, but it was as if I were ill. It brought me no joy.
One night, she moved. I watched her, unseeable, as she discoordinatedly sat up and slid out of her bed. When she rose, I rose with her from the shadows, uncertain and anticipating. Of what, I did not know. There was no breath in my lungs to grace her, no warmth in my body to comfort her as she passed me and pushed gently on her cracked-open bedroom door. Out she went, fast asleep, yet venturing steadily.
I followed her out and into her dining room. My feet made no sound, and I cast no distorted shadows from the flickering candlelight. Darker than the black around me, I stood in the entryway as she moved to the dining table.
It was a small room with rough walls and a high window that allowed gentle moonlight to pool onto the floor. The table was small and pushed into a corner, opposite of her kitchen. She was somewhat rhythmic, as if she made this trip often at night. She paused at the table and I moved slowly and carefully after her, not like how a beast prowls after its prey as I normally did, but out of intrigue, if I was capable of such benevolence.
“Tea,” she broke the dim silence. “Yes.”
She moved hesitantly into the moonlight and paused. Her posture was light, her face uncertain, as one would become on the brink of waking, as if she had been difficult on her mind. This short moment of suspension was when my body moved before my consciousness did. I strode and blocked the moonlight from her face so that the line between her brows slackened, and a soft breath flitted from her lips.
This was the closest I had been to her, and an uncomfortable heat washed through my body. I saw the details of her blotched face, her long, unkempt hair that hung in strands, some plastered to her cheeks because of her tears.
“Sugar?” She asked quietly, still dreaming. She began to shuffle. I breathed out, the first I had done since watching her, and the impulse of my heart overpowered me once more. I gingerly, quietly, reached for her, and took her hands. She became still. I had never laid hands on a mortal before. Her hands were soft and warm, save for a bit of roughness on her knuckles, and I graced my cold thumbs over them.
“I’ll let you stir it,” she told me. When she moved, I did too. We stepped in unison, she, forwards, and I, backwards, as if in the beginnings of a slow, melancholy waltz. I watched a tear, like a small diamond, free itself from her glimmering lashes and streak down her cheek. A thought flitted across my mind, overtaking my mesmerized stupor. She was quite beautiful when she cried. It wasn’t a searing, carnivorous beauty, but a cold, innocent, lovely beauty, in which I observed speechlessly. Such beauty it was; her sore face, her quivering lips and tense brow, but only which surfaced through pain. Sacred, the angels might call this beauty, but it only filled me with aching sorrow.
She shuffled again, sideways, and I followed her. Her eyes darted beneath her eyelids, as if our movement calmed her and sent her deeper into her dream. I watched her closed eyes, wondering what she saw, and I began to move. I stepped again, opposite, and she followed fluidly with an unconscious murmur. I brought her hands closer, and her fingers closed around mine, encasing them in her warmth. Something in my chest fluttered as she did. I remembered that she would not see me, she would not know me. If I was gentle, if I were quiet… if I took this time to be present, to be vulnerable to a mortal who would not scorn me or an equal who would not condemn me, then here, in this room while she dreamt, this moment was mine. She was mine.
I began to lead her, and there, we waltzed. It was slow, silent, rhythmic. I maintained my gaze on her face and I mimicked how one would rock a child to bed. To lull her, to calm her, so that since she could find no refuge in waking she would find comfort here with me even if she did not know my face, here as we moved as one. When I found a pattern and knew she would not wake, I allowed myself to relax, to relish that I could be here in my form with another soul. It filled that pit of sorrow within me. To be the embodiment of what mortals fear, to be a projection of their loathing, regardless of the power I held over them, was a very lonely throne, and something deep within me desired this. Only this, nothing else, nothing more. A grace of warmth, of companionship, without the heavy burden of bringing balance to fear and joy, to dreams and nightmares. Perhaps the love of a mortal, even this shallow, was not so horrible, so strange, as I had perceived.
After a moment she began to relax, to free herself of her nightmares. It stirred a foreign sense of warmth in my chest, and I drank in her presence.
Judith opened her eyes. Her sluggardly waking was as if she were pulling herself out of deep water, and she found herself lying in her bed.
Her hands were cold, but not clammy, as if she had touched cool glass. Her dreams began to seep from her memory, dreams that seemed very real, of a peculiar stranger who somehow didn’t frighten her.
She found herself clinging to the memory of his touch, the strange, magical sensation of longing and unspoken pain, much like hers. Even if her mind banished this memory along with her horrid nightmares, her heart might remember him, even if she only knew him in her dreams.