In All My Dreams I Drown

[priordivergence]

I'm dreaming again. I know this in an abstract way that comes from repetition. This isn't the first time I've had nightmares of my time in Dauntless training. Sometimes I dream that I have to spar against Peter, only he's stolen all of my clothing again and so I have to fight naked or not at all. Those dreams are frustrating and abstract. The worse dreams are the ones of memories, when I watch my friends and family die.

Then there are the dreams of my fear landscape. The scenarios repeat and repeat until I wake myself up. Ironically, it's harder to separate myself from the fear when I'm dreaming than it is under serum. When I'm under a serum, I have a clear memory of being put under. When I'm dreaming, I lose myself in the liminal space between being awake and then being plunged into my own deepest fears,

Tonight my fears blend together. I'm on a rocky outcropping in the ocean, dragging myself up by my knuckles as I'm battered by waves. Overhead, I can hear crows squalling, waiting to eat me whole.

If I stay on the rocks, I will drown. If I climb them, they will come.

There's no point in escaping this by waking up because I will dream it tomorrow night too.

Comments

[propertool]

The birds above look ready to pluck an eye out. The waves below look fit to turn a body into a bag of pudding. The salt in the air is sharp. It's only by chance that I hear her, struggling, at the bottom of the piece of rock sitting in the middle of the sea around me. Tris Prior.

"Tris!" Can I make it down to her? I can't leave her there. This is the Fade. This is a nightmare. But nightmares can still do their damage, she's still suffering down there. Not in body, but in mind.

"Can you hear me? It's Dorian!"

I can only pray that she does. The deep rumbling of the water whirling and crashing against the rock is deafening, the inaudible parts of the sound still felt, pounding against my chest. The sea is powerful and hurling itself against her back.