belated instalment of the miki shinichirou drabble effort!

[scrapped princess]

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	the opposite of lucid dreaming
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Shannon would rather watch the fire than sleep. Sleep invites dreams, which are
rarely pleasant; on the rare occasion that they are pleasant, they make the next
morning a little harder to face. Here Shannon is safe from them, and though
solitude is a luxury he doesn’t think he can enjoy any longer -- he always suspects
that Zephiris is watching, though she never shows herself -- at least that means
that he need not fear someone else’s rather less welcome scrutiny. The nights are
growing colder; Shannon keeps watch by the fire and feels warmed by something close
to certainty.

It is comforting, in the face of everything else. He remembers the terror-clouded
stare of Pacifica’s blue eyes as he drew his sword against his will, his movements
marionette-awkward; the moment when he realised that he had made yet another wrong
decision, trusted a child’s face and not his own sister’s suspicions. In the peace
of night it is easier to believe what he wants to: that all mortal minds are open
to the Peacemakers and it is not Shannon’s own personal failure; that they are out
of the Peacemakers’ reach for now; that here, by the fire, Shannon can be sure that
his thoughts are his own.

***

( On some nights it goes like this, only in fewer words, or not in words at all:

/This is the fire, which must be kept burning. Those are your sisters in the caravan,
whom you must and will and can protect. This is your mind, for now, and it is yours
to control, for now, and you are more than a pawn in this. And this is not even a game./

On most nights it is easier to believe. On some nights he almost does believe it. More
often he thinks: even when he fights for them, his body belongs to Zephiris, not him. )

***

He wakes Raquelle up two, three hours before the dawn, when it’s her turn to take over
the watch. She always wakes with both a smile and some words of thanks or encouragement.
He knows that he will be unable to tell if she has nightmares, but likes to think that
she doesn’t, anyway. Her cheerfulness is something to trust in. ( Things he can trust
in, things he cannot; the line blurs too often nowadays, and he himself is seldom on
the right side of it. )

Inside the caravan, the darkness is not the shadowed coolness of trees, but a suffocating
blanket. Shannon closes his eyes and still sees the fire, its afterimage glowing an icy
blue-green. Pacifica’s slow breathing is comfort of a different sort. Shannon listens to
its rhythm and doesn’t want to fall asleep.