Chapter 263: Shared Dreams
"My darling," Nyrielle said, momentarily stunned by the sight of Ashlynn before her. When Ashlynn arrived in the Vale of Mists, she had nothing, and everything she now owned had been given to her by Nyrielle since her arrival, including her jewelry.
But the Ashlynn before her now wore refined strings of pearls around her neck and delicate pearl studs adorned her ears. The dress she wore, rather than the earthy greens and browns, was a deep ocean blue that hugged her narrow waist before offering up a stunning view of her bosom with a neckline cut low enough to be considered scandalous in places like Lothian March.
"You look beautiful," Nyrielle said, reaching out to trace a finger along her lover’s cheek, marveling at the intricate curls Ashlynn’s hair had been styled in, adorned with strings of pearls dangling from elaborate hair pins. The entire ensemble gave her the appearance of a goddess of the sea, stepping onto land among the press and crowds of lesser beings.
"How does it feel like you’re really you," Ashlynn whispered, closing her eyes and feeling the echoing pulse of Nyrielle’s heartbeat in the other woman’s touch. Memories flashed through her minds of a burned and scarred Nyrielle on the edge of death but as real as it had felt when the Nyrielle in her vision took every last drop of blood from her body, it hadn’t felt as... present as the woman in front of her.
"Every other vision has been a hollow imitation," Ashlynn said softly, still struggling to believe that Nyrielle was truly before her. "But this... This all feels real."
"Because it really is me, my darling Ashlynn," Nyrielle said, wrapping her arms around the younger woman’s slender waist and pulling her close. "Once before, you touched a dream, a memory of mine. You entered a place you could never have appeared in a time long ago and..."
"And we danced the night away," Ashlynn whispered, her brows furrowing as she tried to recall more details about the strange dream. She had only the vaguest memories of a dream of dancing with Nyrielle at an extravagant Eldritch ball.
At the time, she had been desperate to find a way to survive after a fallen Tuscan dragged her beneath the ice of a frozen lake. She’d used sorcery to place herself in a state of false death where her heart barely beat and her lungs could sustain her for several minutes off a single breath of air. In that state, she’d fallen into a dream unlike any she’d ever experienced before.
She remembered that the dream felt far too vivid and real to be an ordinary dream, but the chaotic and terrifying events she woke to afterward left her mind scattered and her memories of the dream hazy at best. By the time Nyrielle had arrived to rescue her, Heila and the Frost Walker Hauke from the abomination of melded ancestral blood golems, Ashlynn had almost completely forgotten the strange dream she experienced while trapped under the ice.
Nyrielle, however, seemed to remember the event in far more detail. The banquet Ashlynn appeared at had occurred over two centuries ago, long before the death of Nyrielle’s parents. For Nyrielle, it should have been a joyous moment of reliving a memory of days before her parents fell to Lothian savagery, but it had instead transformed into something even more precious - a dream where she danced with Ashlynn while her parents and grandsire watched with approving eyes.
"It seems that our dreams have touched each other yet again," Nyrielle said, blinking back tears as she recalled their last shared dream and looking away from Ashlynn for a moment to look around the seaside city.