Dragonworld: The Drive For Power

Part 12: Dreamland

Dreamland

The rhythmic beat of the horses' hooves echoed across the grassy plain as Guardian of the Eagles and Walking with Shadows rode side-by-side, the dust swirling around their mounts. Behind them, the low murmur of the returning warriors filled the vast silence. 

The foreigner, the one they had come across in a delirious state walking alone on the prairie, was pulled on another horse, his mind seemingly gone. 

"The spirits of the ancestors walked with us today, Walking with Shadows," Guardian of the Eagles said, his gaze fixed on the distant, hazy horizon. "I felt their strength in my arm when I threw the spear."

"What did they tell you?" The man named Walking with Shadows steadied his horse, as he looked at Guardian of the Eagles riding beside him. 

"They showed me possibilities," said Guardian of the Eagles. "They showed me paths." 

"You have a gift, Guardian of the Eagles," said his companion, the feathers on his headdress fluttering in the wind. "I can't always see the paths as well as you."

"It's not a gift, rather a state of mind I have tried to foster," said Guardian of the Eagles. "I try to see what is there. It is tied to what was there, and what could be there."

"How so?" 

"They say the land remembers. That our steps do not vanish behind us." Guardian slowed his mount near a worn hillock jutting from the plain, its red rock pocked and smoothed by age. "Do you see that stone?"

Walking with Shadows nodded.

"My great-grandfather bled there. Hid from the Iron People who burned the sky with their thunder. I pass here now, and he breathes again. The land keeps his fear. And his courage."

The prairie tribes of the Forever Grass believed that with your mind, you can access other realms. Your dreams are just as real as what you experience in everyday life. They connect you to higher planes of existence.

Time for them is not a line going from the past into the future. Rather, it is cyclical, but also unshapen. All points of time are linked to all other points in time, but also space.

With dreams, you are accessing these hidden realms. You are talking to the past, and the future. The actual and the possible are both equal in this sphere.

For the people living on the plains, each landmark they passed tied them not only to the place, but also to different points of time. If centuries ago, one of their ancestors hid behind a particular rock while escaping from enemies, that rock became an embodiment of that act.

If a person passed this rock on their way somewhere, they immediately got connected to the people of long ago. And in a way, they left their own mark, which then connected them to their descendants in the future.

"What of the foreigner?" Another warrior rode up to Guardian of the Eagles, interrupting his conversation with Walking with Shadows. 

His question was on the minds of all the other riders. 

"That stranger," Walking with Shadows finally said. "Why did you not kill him?"

Guardian's eyes narrowed. "I dreamed him before he came."

"You saw his face?"

"Not his face. But the shape of his spirit. In the dream, he stood where no path had yet been cut, but the ground beneath him turned warm with memory. As if time followed him, not the other way around."

Walking with Shadows glanced toward the horizon where smoke from their camp curled into the air. "You believe he was sent?"

"No," Guardian said, voice grave. "I believe he was always coming."