[Katya]

That night, for the first time in a long, long while, Katya dreamed.

Living trees, a labyrinthine network of white ash that called to her, formed the breathing skeleton that was the Seelie Court.

Bark so white it glimmered in the unearthly darkness. Giant, phosphorescent fungi releasing lurid spores that created an eternal, glowing haze that hung in the air like words unspoken. Silken tree limbs, vines, woven so closely together that she could not fly.

Flowers-that-were-not flowers, comprised entirely of crystallized moonbeam and various semi-precious gems, floated lightly atop the chattering waterways that led to the Shining Throne.

Everything cold, clean, nearly sterile; an adamant veneer of rigidity, of unbending power and wealth and beauty.

It cut like a knife.

The feeling was pleasure and pain and all that wasn’t what she was.

Home. 

The air itself spoke. It sang a siren song, complexities of strings, and crackly-shattering, high-pitched crystal chimes vibrating around her. Always close, promising those sweet releases of absolute power and fortune and glory. It whispered promises and the seething shadows breathed lies upon the nape of her neck.

But it wasn’t right. Something felt purely... wrong. Her heart did not beat within her breast. It lay somewhere else. Somewhere warm and chaotic and hungry. Somewhere so much more alive.

And she looked for it, her heart. It was a calm, clinical search, really. Didn’t this happen to everyone? She could have sworn that her mother and father — and oh, how long ago that was — told her that this was so. It would always turn up again, after all.

As she looked for it, in that eternal, orderly living network of smooth, flawless branches and in the mists, something changed.

The trees shifted. They changed, the white, forever-pure bark twisting and corrupting and melding together.

The mists turned to smoke, thick, black, and cloying. It encircled her body and writhed over her skin in ways not entirely unpleasant. Sterile, crystalline chimes turned to the wild wail of strings, pan pipes, throaty and wanting voices singing out in the now-velvety darkness at random.

The fungi was far more oversized, towering dozens of feet above her head. Garish and vivid in the murk, dreamblossom, nightshade, fire-chasm bloomed and grew wildly as far as the eye could see.

Don’t touch! They burn. In ways that never leave you wanting more. But that stay with you and change you. That leave you needing, not simply wanting, more. 

She touched them. An involuntary moan escaped her throat. There was pain. And she needed more. 

She could hear the haunting strains of an eternal carnival, and they celebrated always in the gloaming. A place between Real and Not Real.

A bacchanal to surpass all other bacchanals, even the ones the humans boasted of. Raw need, caprice, selfishness, intensity.

Your demands are our wishes.

Not-Home, but Home. More than Home. Here is where she originated, born of a clash of wills; one Seelie, the other Unseelie. Both beings, however, whose passions ruled their hearts and minds and souls; not their Courts. Here is where she was meant to be, had always been intended for.  

Raw power danced over her body, her wings luxuriating in the feeling and drawn up to their full, impressive span. She closed her eyes.

Unbound.

If only she could understand. This is where she came from, not there. They’d misled her; not an easy feat for beings for whom untruths bring pain. The wrong kind of pain.

If only she could understand. She would become a being of smoke and fire and blood and passion. She could hear her absent heart beating wildly, mirroring the distant drums unseen in the wild tangles of forest around her. It was nearby. So near.

If she could only understand, she could reach it. Her full... potential? Hardly. Herself, her power and her passion, unbound and unbridled by convention and by living trees of ash that held her. More than merely her potential, although that was simmering there, too — herself, wild and dangerous and petulant, insolent and capricious and genuine.

The air around her, rich with smells and sounds and tastes that enthralled every one of her senses, shimmered and pulsed in the darkness.

A vibrant thrum of thunder without sound.

-Unseelie-.

Katya awoke violently in the night, disoriented and gasping for air; not recalling where she was, but hearing gentle waves lap the shore nearby.

Clothed only in bits of petal, pearly shells, and delicate vines, she shivered; even in the warmth of the Sanctuary night.

The darkness thrummed. Thunder without sound.