A Thousand Windows
Beginning by @f3nix
From the Little Ararat’s peak, Vartan "tiger's eye" observed his hometown, Yerevan. In the ample pocket of his tunic, well sheltered from the harsh wind, his squat fingers played with two graceful jade discs, while his steed, foaming with fatigue, seemed suddenly reinvigorated at the sight of home after months of traveling. If it had not been an animal, it would seem that he was moved. In Vartan's eyes, the only veil was that of travel fatigue.
Armenian merchant of precious stones, merchant son of merchants, he did not care how dangerous the journey was, nor how many moons had rotated above the long caravan: his mind was a precision balance that incessantly weighed and estimated without respite Indian emeralds, Burmese rubies, Pakistani aquamarines. This was Vartan's life since the cradle: he made a profit, and he did it surprisingly well.
A brisk early March night, something unexpected happened to him: he had a dream. Being an unusual experience for him, he awoke to throw in a far corner of the room the brocaded bedspread, upset and wet with sweat despite dawn’s breeze. In his family no one used to dream, there was no space for these frivolities. If he reflected well, maybe a couple of times he had dreamed of carving a gem or making a good deal, but he never came across those surreal dreams like a sand mirage in the ocean. After that episode, dreams began to visit him more and more frequently, as the unstoppable progression of pot-bellied drops in an August downpour. Frankly, it was a very unfortunate situation for Vartan, who was soon forced to invent every kind of wild night escapade to justify the increasingly evident dark circles under his eyes.
Then one day, while he was dreaming, the unthinkable happened: he suddenly perceived that he was in the dream. That first experience of dreamlike lucidity did not last long, nothing but an imperceptible beating of wings of awareness before the rules of the dream came back to swallow him and to dictate the story, relegating him to a mere spectator. Night after night, he began to acknowledge the laws that governed that world and how to bend them to his creative power. Thin and rarefied realms could become dense with colors, shapes, and perfumes. The Escheresque geometries of dancing fractals disobeyed space and time. Gradually, Vartan learned to attribute a new meaning and content to the term comprehension. For every new dream he was immersed in, the breath of those universes and his soul were united in one single essence longer and longer. In those dreams, Vartan traveled in the folds of reality, learned the language of angels and played dodges with them in the heart of perennial storms of unknown planets.
Soon, what was happening in Vartan's soul could not remain hidden to the eyes of the family, his friends, and the entire city of Yerevan.
The Dream of Life
Ending by @raj808's
Vartan stared at his hands. Glimmers of lucid light streamed from each finger as he waved them in front of his face. Sparks traced patterns against the starless sky as the waves of lake Sevan pulsed through indigo to azure; a somnolent heartbeat in the quiet night.
He listened. Just at the edge of hearing wings were beating to the sea's rhythm.
Suddenly, he felt his stomach lurch. The celestial flow of the river of dreams building inside, threatening to pull him into a maelstrom of images and wash him away.
Vartan waved one hand in front of his face until it came into focus. The other dove into his pocket to grasp something hard and gritty, as real as anything could be in this sea of associations. His squat fingers played with the jade discs, just as he had a thousand times. That familiar click of stone on stone and the slide of their smooth edge rooted him firm in the soil.
The murmuring wind fell still with the approach of Diniana the singing eagle. Her wings flowed over him, a smell of the breath of grass after a sun-shower. Silvering feathers rustled along outstretched wings, shading him in protection. Her wordless song healed and soothed. The spirit of spring alighted and looked at Vartan with an inquiring eye.
The cart rattled down the road that led away from Yerevan. Alin watched from the back of the wagon, gripping the cold metal of the cage like the fire of her rage could burn these bars away.
“My child is dying” she screamed at the empty night.
The babe lay still in her arms, deathly quiet against her as she tried to coax him to the breast. She could feel her sons labored breaths and that tiny heart beating in stuttering fits.
A slow full moon rose in the east illuminating the pale strip of broken stone. The scar on the loam of this once great land. The Roman slaver Cassius glanced back at her scream and cracked the whip.
“Good. I have no market for the brat.”
Vartan watched the land wheel and dip. Little Ararat’s peak seemed to burst from the earth, an angry pimple on the green face of the sacred fields. He pulled the jade discs from his pockets and slid his palm across their edge. Blood welled in his cupped hands, purple veins pulsed in his arms as lucent mana splashed the starless sky. He held his arms aloft as the heavens responded with a column of light, brilliant white engulfed them both as his life force poured from his wounds into the feathered back of Diniana.
"We are one now."
We are one
We are one
We are one.
Diniana’s voice echoed through him. Or was it part of him? Vartan dived through the up-welling thermals and banked over the insubstantial roofs and spires of Yerevan. They shimmered in rainbow patterns of refracting light, blurring is if through a veil of smoke.
"Look through my eyes Vartan, we are one now."
Look through my eyes
Look through my eyes
Look through my eyes.
The city pulsed from the smokescreen. Color’s merging to solid stone and the dream of people winding through the city streets. He turned to the south, a shimmering road appeared in his vision, straight as a furrow in the spring earth. A lone cart was crawling along the road. A sable smoky tail wound away from the cart. The essence of death’s presence.
Vartan flexed his wings and plummeted like a lightening bolt.
Alin heaved a breath through her sobs as she stroked her son's hair.
Just one chance for life please god. I will do anything, promise anything if you let him live. Bring my husband back and my life before bondage. Please god, please, please, please.
Please god
Please god
Chance for life.
Alin looked up to the sky. The voice of her husband echoing through her mind. The faint outline of an eagle plummeted out of the heavens growing larger with each beat of her heart. A wind ripped through the cage, howling a hurricane as the wagon rattled and her chains broke. The bars of the cage snapped apart as the wagon slowed and she staggered out onto the sharp stones of the road.
Squirming like a worm in the sun, the slaver Cassius rolled in the dust clutching a jade disc buried in his chest. A black tail of smoke seemed to wind its way past the face of the moon.
Her son gurgled in her arms as she looked down at two brown eyes twinkling.
The end.
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