Dream and Reality (//Dunc- and me)

[Enkidu]

Nishi had always viewed the act of waking up as a kind of pre-rebirthing, a second conception – life germinated within you from the inside before spiralling out – the sole nuclei of your conscious expanding to fill the headspace of your skull before rushing at your neck, trailing electric arcs down your spinal column into the drains of your feet, prickling into your soles, causing you toes to circumflex around weary, rusted joints; shaking the leaden-ness loose as you start to earth yourself, grounded in reality anew, feeling vital and fully formed. As for control, flesh would come first, creeping and vital, the faint ruffle of fabric on shoulder, then the eyes – that lurch of perspective as you stagger from a blind world to one much, much bigger than what you in the hesitance of an irrepressible blink. The strange, alien sensitivity of your own tongue and teeth would follow, then your hearing; creeping up from the horizon of the unknown as fog on a spring morning. Returning to consciousness was meant to feel like love; your mind’s refreshing reward from the body for all the hours you have squandered at rest. As you blink the sleep-dust from your eyes, you are unconquerable –renewed beyond the clutches all lines, wrinkles and cankers, as if age was only a patina that could be polished away if you rub at your face.
Nishi couldn’t comprehend the social convention of a geriatric mortality, especially hers; old age to her was not a symptom of death, but proof of its evasion. Age dilation had been unusually forgiving to the Chrysanthemum, and had kept her features sprightly without the aid of cosmetics, if oddly bleached before soulless glow of chemical lights. Her mother had once, many decades past, rubbed at Nishi’s cheekbones with her slimline thumbs and told her she had the air of The Poetess. Her child self had skitted away from Mama’s eyes, embarrassed by her adult lie and fearful of having her idol’s appearance blurred before her dreams with any taint of herself. It seemed absurd, still seems absurd, is absurd. She wasn’t perfect, she knew it, and the thought of her imparting her imperfection on the divine ruptured her solace with faith. She didn’t want to be arrogant. She didn’t want to lie about who she was, so she screwed up her eyes and whispered herself to sleep at night praying that her mother would cease struggling to build a shrine out of her, and would awake one morning as a stranger. When her mother left, Nishi was sure Yuyu was smiling somewhere. She smiled back.
Yet one may see a glimmer of the ancient saint still in her octogenarian self. Experience, anguish and a steady corruption of empathy into apathy had sharpened her eyes with the cynical cut of a human predator. She was thin, but broad-shouldered, the slight squatness of her jaw drawing the eyes to her mouth, even in silence. Even in sleep. Her lips frowned at rest, as if the factory had forged her to be angry. You know that it’s unlikely that she can dream through the artificially induced hibernation of the escape pod, but it doesn’t stop her eyelashes from the infrequent, rustling twitch. Rapid eye movement; discomfort, perhaps? The still Chrysanthemum winces imperceptibly as you strap her into the restraints, tight enough to keep the circulation trickling, but firm enough to pin her down without hope of throwing them free. If she struggles, and you expect she will, they’ll tighten on her, enough to beat the breath from her lungs.

When Nishi wakes up from this sleep, however, the refreshment nature demands eludes her. Consciousness granted but conscience denied.
The rasp of metal against her neck.

She wakes, groggy, instinctively reaching up an arm to rub at her eyes only for her pupils to star with alarm as the gentle, expected pressure of the palm of her hands failed her, her limbs dangling loosely from her shoulders, strapped indefensibly to the back of the chair. A cough, loud and open mouthed as she hacks air, snorting herself back to lucidity with a rush of stale oxygen. For a second, her lidded pupils skitter around in their faintly sagging, fatigued sockets as life flushes between her teeth. Slowly, stoically, she curls the fingers on her manacled right hand flush against the base of her thumb, and checks her pulse, breathing it down into a slow, conscious rhythm. She stares around at the blackened space beyond before gently, hesitantly, raising her dilated, moonstone eyes into the oblivion beyond. She struggles once against her restraints, curving and arcing, before relaxing again. A wry, empty smile splays her cut lips, as if there was some joke only she could detect.

She fixes the Order agent with a neutral, statuesque hale stare of a leopard completely at rest. She looked like she could remain their all her life, all aims fulfilled, all boxes ticked.

“My name is ‘Screw You’; it’s short, and easy to remember”. The Chrysanthemum speaks, her voice dissonantly gentle, the rolling tones of her Cambridge dialect strangely complimentary to the blight-coloured bruise coating her left temple.
“If you like, you can untie my hands..." she gestures, as far as the restraints will permit. "...and I’ll write it down for you. Then I’ll wring your neck.”

“…Do you have any more questions, Order, or should I just keep sitting here amusing myself in a puddle of my own pee? Not that I mind, of course: in comparison to this place, it practically smells of Cologne. More pee for me.”

---

THE SYNDIC LEAGUES
(A co-operative of Rheinland's outlawed trade unions, determined to take the underworld for themselves.)

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