A Lullaby for Gods

[Jade Harley]

Accompanying Music: On Golden Dreams. Rating for this installment: G.

2. Golden Dreams, Golden Towers.

Green eyes flutter partially open. For a moment, the world is clinical white and sunlit, a wide window allowing for a salty breeze and light to pour over the menagerie of colorful potted plants inside. A pinkish-gold sunset melts over the seashore, soft-lather waves and low-hanging Cirrostratus gently bowed into a glinting and exquisite halo of light, settling leisurely down below the horizon just before the vision dwindles into something quite different.

Outside of her bedchamber window, the god-child looks over a glittering realm of gold. Fanciful spires rise up into the ether, an air of antiquity and majesty shimmering about them. The city dons a garment of peaceful splendor and heartfelt sighs from fluttering, sky-blue streamers, only a scattering of dusky spots breaking up the citadel’s effervescent shine.

Freezing stars replace the soft covering of clouds, blank-eyed and passionless when tossed into the midst of astral murk. A glorious canopy of white and blue surrounds the round cloudland of Skaia, which sings harmoniously to the Kingdom of Light, Prospit.

Jade startles, now fully awake. Gosh, she must have fallen asleep again! Her dream self is leaning over the tower window’s ornate ledge, chin propped up on her elbows, as if this is a perfectly normal place to fall asleep in. Newsflash! It isn’t. Her subconscious is a silly goose.

The Skaian song swells, as voiceful as the ocean waves that she listens to while in her waking moments. Towers, temples, domes, cathedrals, and theaters spread out across the city below, a wondrous place that only appears in her dreams. White carapaces skitter this way and that, going about their daily business. The streets are laid in neat golden brick.

After smoothing down her lacy golden dress, which is speckled around its high neck with sequins like translucent dew, the Princess of Prospit grins. Maybe today her brother John will be awake! She ought to pay his tower a visit and check up on him— he really is such a sleepyhead.

With this mission in mind, she turns to make sure that all is as it should be in her bedroom. Her bed is in order, the cloud-dappled bed sheets tucked neatly beneath the plush mattress, and a single pillow is spread across the mattress end. Several potted plants are setting here and there, with no order or complex design to their placement. A silent breeze whisks through the room, stirring the dark curls about her shoulders into frisky wakefulness.

Satisfied with her evaluation, Jade turns and clambers out of the window, her feet catching upon the sill for but a moment before she is tumbling witlessly out of the tower. Rather than falling to her certain doom, however, her feet lightly catch up upon empty space, and— yes! The princess dips gently into flight with little care for decorum, the skirts of her golden dress rolling upwards in shimmering folds despite the absence of an air current.

She slowly drifts down until her slippers alight on the golden brick, the corners of her mouth plucking up into an easy grin as she glances up and down the glittering boulevard. It doesn’t seem as if any of the cute little carapacians are around! Maybe they are having a festival somewhere? The last time she fell asleep they were still busy setting up coloured streamers and booths, so maybe that is where they are.

Floating a small ways off of the ground, Jade wills her dreamself to shoot off down a brick-lain side street. The wind whirls through her dark hair and graces her sun-spotted cheeks— positively exhilarating! Somewhere far off, Jade thinks that she can hear dozens of little bells chiming, like the bright tinkling that oodles of scalloped seashells make when drumming against one another.

In a burst of air that sends her golden skirts and hair billowing, Jade comes across a higher-tier street level that angles precariously around the brilliantly glittering steeple of a cathedral. She pauses, sorts out the tangled mess that has become of her lacy dress— all that frilly stuff sure can get annoying! – and then looks out over the yellow citadel that gleams far below.

Above, the azure marble that is Skaia turns imperceptibly, cotton-white clouds shifting in its upper atmosphere. If she peers closely enough, Jade thinks that she can even see fireflies suspended amongst the vaporous contours of the airstream, small pulsating beacons that disappear from view with each new wandering trail of cloudstuffs.

A blaring trumpet draws her out of whatever daze that had come over her while she was viewing Skaia, and Jade turns her head to blink at a troupe of white-shelled Prospitians that trickle down the pathway past her, their carapaces glinting like precious mother of pearl.

Their beady black eyes shine with curiosity and admiration as they wander by, and Jade is able to clearly see the gilded gold instruments that they carry. The players’ clothes are an assortment of lovely sea foam green, rosy pinks, and lively blues and oranges; adorable little decorated tassels hang from their caps. The clicking rap-tap of their feet against the brick creates a sprightly rhythm, like chickenscratch and dribbling raindrops.

Clasping her hands together in delight, Jade looks further down the street to see where they are headed off to. Many colorful flags flap and flutter above hundreds of separate booths stationed along the streets; bouquets of soft pink and yellow blossoms tied together with satin ribbons are tastefully placed here and there; a cinnamon smell of roasted nuts and something like smooth vanilla wafts delightfully on the breeze.

By the time she makes it down to the main street level behind the carapace band, most all of the crowd’s attention has turned to her. She supposes that it might be a bit weird for them, since they apparently regard her as some kind of godlike figure in all of their songs and lore. But, Jade is only curious, and it can’t really do any harm to just take a quick look around, right?

Wrong. They start to literally shower her with gifts and other frivolous things before her feet even hit the actual pavement, and soon enough Jade is fairly certain that she is about to be forced to swim through flower petals to make it down the remainder of the street. It’s awfully nice, and the trembling butterflies that settle in her hair are an artful touch, but to be honest Jade would much rather just have a few honey-glazed almonds!

“I’m very sorry,” she exclaims in the general direction of the trumpeteers from earlier, who have begun to merrily announce her arrival on the next street as hordes of carapacians carry her along as if by the oceans current. “But I only just fell asleep! Maybe we could take a quick breather?”

She is reverently given a plush white towel, the kind you would only find in super nice hotel bathrooms, like a chateau on a crystal clear lake or something crazy like that, as well as a plethora of options amongst bottled spring water. “That’s not what I meant!”

Telepathic cheers of joy and jubilant claw clicks rain down from the terraces above as the sea of carapacians flows down the street, the pavement and surrounding walls fit to burst from the influx of celebrators. Somewhere along the way, a laurel of periwinkle blue flowers is placed atop Jade’s head.

“Oof!” Jade says when she is dropped unceremoniously on the palace steps. Crowds of carapacians undulate around her as she rises to her feet, buoyant in both spirit and step. The golden dreamer looks at them with pursed lips and suspicion lingering in her eyes, but finds that she can’t really stay mad at them when they’re so cheerful about her being awake and aware!

“You guys are really great, but could someone please explain to me why I am here?” she asks, hands on her hips. Then, balloons are streaming gaily down from some fixed point in the sky, mountains of confetti and flowers, some with the thorny stems still attached, settling along the golden staircase. The trumpets begin to warble out a distinctly regal tune. Jade turns, and—

Greetings, hero of Space, the White Queen says politely, her hands folded neatly in front of her, the joints and claws clear and distinctive from the rest of her eggshell white carapace. I apologize for not decreeing a realm-wide holiday for this momentous day sooner.

“Huh?” Jade asks, her brows cinching close together, still trying to comb an entire meadow’s worth of flowers out of her tangled curls. “What momentous day?”

There is an odd hesitating stammer in her mind for a moment from the surrounding crowd, not quite loud enough to be totally acknowledged, but the dreamer still turns to face the Queen fully.

The chess-piece sovereign blinks once at her, eyes a glassy obsidian. Why, your birthday, of course.

With a sudden, lurching start, Jade awakens from an unanticipated nap. Her face is pressed awkwardly onto her desk, and when she pulls back from it a reddened glare is imprinted sorely into her cheek. The green marker that has been clutched loosely in her hand hits the metal table with a sharp clatter.

Rubbing a flummoxed hand over her mouth and nose, Jade squints blearily down at the paper that is sitting on the desk before her. It takes several moments and the fumbling application of her glasses for her eyes to focus properly, but she is eventually able to read what she has written thus far:

…you see, when i go to sleep, in my dreams i wake up on the moon of a planet called prospit. by now you must know about this place! i have lived there in my dreams most of my life and i made so many friends there over the years. and you were there too! but you were asleep. the fact that you are awake now i think means all my friends are in trouble. you are awake because it is your job to help them. we will both help them!

but ummm..... i know these things because while i was on the moon, whenever it passed through skaia i could see lots of things in the clouds. the past, the future, stuff about our friends, and stuff about you! now that you are awake, and apparently at the center of skaia (??? WOW!!!) you should be able to see stuff in the clouds too. maybe you already have!

”Hmm,” Jade says, her lips turning downwards as her face takes on a thoughtful expression. Her eyes eagerly scan the page, a coiled and dim emotion encircling the pupil, and she dabs in a few more smiley faces with jittering fingers as her mind attempts to put what she would like to convey into the proper words. They light up once more hardly a moment later, sprightly green dancing behind the rounded lenses of her glasses as she presses the blunt end of the marker against the paper with renewed vigor.

She scribbles like this, hunched over the page and desk and utterly immersed in her work, until the morning light sifts inwards through her window as seawater does through thoughtless grains of sand. As the light of day smooths over her face with all the gentleness of a soft sea breeze, Jade Harley turns attentively towards it, a smile blooming upon her lips.

This wonderful new day will be welcomed graciously by the pebbled jungle paths of her island. Why not her?