Dreamers' Prayer--Chapter 2/?

[Tomorrow]

AN: This is sort of a flashback chapter, skimming the surface of the past?but there is much more to be revealed? and it?s pretty graphic.

Recap of facts from previous chapters that are important to know for this one:

1) The stars are the mothers of Pegasi.
2) The stars live in a palace of fire fountains.
3) The empress star (Odin?s mother) is the only luminary left breeding Pegasi.

Okay, now on with the chapter!

Disclaimer: I don?t own Gundam Wing.




Her hands clutched the folds of her fiery gown, infernal eyes clenched as sparse, fleeting images of her young Pegasus flickered through her mind, impelling the flames of her somatic hearth to swell and so rest her head against the fountain?s edge in that premonitory weariness. Molten tresses spilled along her shoulders and down her neck as she bit her bottom lip, forcing herself to be strong against the hellion visions she espied: The clop of his hooves on the blanched earth. The desperate flap of his wings as he took to flight, finding advantage in the battleground of the sky. His blood as the Nightmare tore through the Horseman?s feathers, hurling the wounded stallion to the ground below the combat?s height.

The demon?s shriek resounded with the throw, the pounding of its scraggily wings reversing the current of the wind to hasten the victim?s plummet. The monster drooling as the stench of blood and sweat wafted across its nostrils, swabbing its muzzle with a carnal tongue before floating down to feast upon its kill.

With a quivering breath, she pulled herself from her throne at the inner-sanctum, staggering as her burnished steps dragged her toward the sanctuary?s brim, where that font?s lucent waters fell to the world beneath it and so lent the land a dispers?d, fragile gleam? Hands trembling. Stomach churning at the gore she witnessed.

The body of her recent son? impaled. Limbs swept by a stale, sepulchral breeze, body dangling over one of the radiant woodland?s gallows?it?s sterling leaves tangled in his mane and woven into his severed tail. His eyes concealed by the charred, broken bough that leaned upon his neck? it too most likely disjointed from the sheer force of the skewering. Red? deep and warm as it dribbled from his mouth and wrapped his body in a crimson rope.

Death sadistically lynched him. For it mangled the last few coughs of blood from the Horseman?s throat, before that vital cord dripped steadily to the ground and wound itself in a slain puddle.

Another Pegasus murdered in the shadows. Another one of her sons dead.

The starry queen sank to her knees as she turned her face away from the carnage, hand grasping at her abdomen as the sobs wracked her body in that dismal revelation. White-hot tears singed her cheeks, leaving black streaks along her face as she let her grief consume her. Let the losses of her many children haunt her with their distorted, mutilated faces and flesh. Suffocate her already dying inferno to the mere glint of candlelight. Her body was fading, dim against the shimmering streams that flowed beside her, casting their sheen upon her face to grant her substance from the fingertips of encroaching nullity. Weak? but still light? Still baying the darkness.

And she realized that this new Pegasus she bore? Would be her last.

Crawling back to her throne for one more birthing, groaning as she felt the child kick within her womb and stab her cervix with his sacred horn, she spread her legs to pacify the foal and ready her body for the pain, arching her back as she hissed into the chamber?s reticence: ?This world hath damned me to misery, to split mine loins for kith that thank me not for my pain or wretched love. Offering me but a single stallion that did beg for motherly compassion and entreat mine love for him? Oh Dearest Odin. Thee I still remember, and it is thy essence which I carry deep within myself. For now I resurrect thine dormant remains and open my legs for a child made practically from thee, and thusly thy true son. Let him, mine last babe, benefit from thy learned wisdom and know the love thee hath once craved.?

In wrenching pain she screamed, her body hot and inundated by exerted fire as her skin melted between her thighs, in patches of runny wax that lathered the baby?s head and stifled his wailing with the tallow that dripped into his mouth, choking him with her pained, labored convulsions. She shuddered as she felt him leave her canal, watched him writhe in an instinctive attempt the cut the umbilical cord with his antler?still smeared in his mother?s sodden skin, making the blade slick and dull.

Her breath was shallow, body motionless as she listened to the crying of her son? Felt her glow begin to fade as he slowly opened his eyes to the fatigued calling of his name: ?Heero?? Which in ancient tongue meant hope? Her last hope for this forsaken, bitter world that came to be. The sobriety of mankind plagued the Realm with corrupted warlords and incarnate, reprobate fears; distorted aspirations to avarice and beauty to chaotic decadence. It was turning an expanse of dreams? into objective reality.

With his birth? A day? a time of redemption when light may once more reign over darkness, as it had in epochs past and was destined by the prophecy? When she was born: first offspring of the Dual Creators, raped later by that father and impregnated with her incestuously lurid kin.

She had populated this land with light at one time, in the coital shadow of absence and perverted precedents, and had continued to breed for millennia. But even she would become the darkness she loathed, succumb to the chill of obscurity that now extinguished her fire. Darkness is by definition the absence of light, and therefore whenever a child conceived in radiance finds death, the opposite advances in its vacancy.

Darkness consumes. Light satiates its appetite.

Beautiful blue eyes her boy had, deep as the celestial skies where these stars resided, she noted sleepily. Expressive like her lovely Odin?s and listless with his love for her warmth and parental touch, sparkling with an innocence his earlier brothers could never realize. And as she felt her limbs turn to ash and smoldering cinders in that irrevocable moment, felt herself sink into the void that now beckoned for her return to genesis?s anonymity, she saw Heero reach out his hand to hers. A smile on his little face. The queen sighing as her body crumbled to maternal dust with the brushing of his fingers against her brazen skin.

The wind blew her remains away. And she was gone? Heero left to himself on the floor of the barren sanctum, wriggling his toes and clapping his hands together in a futile attempt to turn himself onto his stomach, so that he could crawl over to the place in which his mother for his delivery had lain. Revel in her lingering warmth and ashen soul. But he started to cry when he only succeeded in rubbing his skin raw against the stone tiles.

One of the Star?s siblings heard the baby?s wails from her illuminant spring, rising from her bath to investigate the din. And upon entering that forsaken chamber, she saw the Pegasus lying in a mess of regal wax and cinder. His tiny fist was full of the former queen?s ashes, which he stuck into his mouth for a slobbery, surrogate kiss. Sneezing as a few of the particles landed on his nose.

?The empress?? she whimpered while staring at the remains on Heero?s lips. ?She?s dead??

The blazing woman swayed with shock, her hand on her luminous breast as she stood over the child and narrowed her eyes at his inadvertent culpability. Her other hand grasped her dress as she shook from incinerate hatred. From the sight of this feigned, treasonous baby that claimed her sovereign?s light.

?She died because of thee,? the star spat at the infant Pegasus violently, falling to her knees and slapping him with enough force that he flipped onto his stomach and bashed his chin against the marble floor?her scorch?d hand branded on his face. ?Thee took all her strength, having to purge thine begging body from he?self. She couldn?t maintain her light.?

She grabbed the shrieking Heero by his ankle, his small hands grabbing at her wrist as she walked to the edge of the sanctuary and held his battered form over the railing, breaking the bone she grabbed with a flip of her wrist.

?Traitor.?

And she released him.

Watched him plummet to the bowels of the dark landscape. Sneered as she saw a burst of light and feathers surround his newborn flesh in a resplendent, occult spell of survival?shrouding himself in scintillant rings and crackling, evanescent glimmers that burned the sky. His white mane was tossed in the air that whisked passed him in his descent, unable to manage his transformed wings or utilize the current as his navigator? His frightened whinny the last sound she heard as he spiraled to the ground.

But then came a tug on the colt?s tail and a nudge under his rear; the bracing of his wings as an aged stallion galloped across that midnight plane beside him. The elder's hooves thrashed along the transient air, scorching prints and friction sparks across the blue? Steadying the infant?s flight with a sturdy body and acquired skill. The stallion's translucent feathers embraced the foal as he carried them both to the earth. Odin?s equestrian ghost nuzzling the child, gazing upon his son nostalgically as he surveyed the toppled colt with silence? Before turning away and dissipating into that twilight with but a saddened whisper.

?I?m always here.?

And Heero was alone. Left crying in his refurbished human state.

He became target of the Nightmare that stalked the shadow, still hungry after gnawing on the bones of its own spawn and craving fairer flesh.

It circled the abandoned Pegasus, claws bared as it monitored the area for a guardian pentangle to claim the babe. Fangs glistening as it ran its salivary tongue along their cusps, coating them in dangling bridles of spit that momentarily restrained the demon?s appetite for discretion? And launched itself.

Getting a venomous barb heaved through its neck. Instantly killing it. Spattering Heero in black blood.

The unnoticed serpent-woman emerged from her hovel in the passing shadow to look upon the infant she?d saved, from the husband that had only moments ago devoured their own offspring and left an empty, grieving void in her maternal breast. The need for a baby?s dependence was mirrored in her hardened face, those etched lines beneath her gravelly eyes and glazed vision blinding her to adversity. Her feminine urge to coddle and protect the newly born surpassed her innate, relentless nature. Blurring the enmity of light and darkness in her searching stare.

She raised her brow slightly when she heard the pale child?s laugh, when he touched her scaled skin with negligent warmth. And as he cooed against her muted growls, tickling her belly with his breath, she couldn?t help but let her eyes soften and take the baby in her arms, holding his willing mouth up to her breast to nurse.

The Nightmare turned from her mate?s repulsive corpse, hissing at his twitching body as she slapped him with her scabby tail and severed the male?s head, slithering deeper in that darkness?clutching this replacement child against her as she sought the refuge of her nest. To continue his rearing.

She raised him as her own. Taught him to hunt and skulk and fight with cruelty and stealth? Until the time she died, gutted by her husband?s brother. For she used herself as a diversion so that Heero could escape the wrath. And he watched the paradigm of Vengeance as he flew away? Saw her eyes roll back and blood coat the ground in demented sable. Just a massacre of splashed black and leveling gray.

And his prevailing light.

Damned from heaven. Regurgitated by hell.

[Akasha]

Wow. I love the desricptive words in your story. It's...magical.

Love it.

[Morrighan]

Oh wow. I am so impressed by this! I feel so sorry for Heero... *sniffles*

I totally love the way this is written! Can't wait to see more!!

[Tomorrow]

I should be posting the next chapter some time this week. I know it's been a few months, but I hope that's not too much of a problem. Also, because of the time gap, I plan to put a short summary of previous events to refresh the memory. Sorry this took me so long, and I hope the coming chapter is worth your wait--at least 3-4 members of our beloved gundam gang are being introduced in the pending chapter.



~Tomorrow