A Court of Tears and Starlight

The Awakening

All around me the matter hums with power. It surges and recedes and surges and recedes again. There is no time. Only warmth and light and the sense of waiting.

Something is coming and I am to greet it.

I can feel it. Like two hands are placed up against the surging of the power. They touch but don't mingle and then retreat.

Then there is nothing but the building of tension. I can feel it rise until it slams against me. Shaking me violently. Then nothing. A break in the line. I feel it coming again, this time with hardened intent, and it slams once more upon me.

I feel myself splitting, if cracks can form is a place with no walls.

The power is ebbing, leaking out from my seams. I'm not sure if it is sealing me in or shutting them out.

CRACK.

It hits me again and everything shatters. I shatter. The walls break and yet I am still here. I feel myself trying to bleed out with the power that is now dissipating but one strong relentless tether yanks me back.

Then there is nothing for a while.

Tug. Tug. Tug.

Something is pulling at me. Dragging me forth through the thick liquid that surrounds me. I can't hold back. It carries me forth like a leaf swept away in the eddies of the stream. I travel onwards unaware of where I am or where I have been.

FEYRE.

It screams at me, strange words with no meaning, that call to me, demanding that I heed them.

I feel myself infused with a warmth and longing I cannot describe. It pulls at me with a strange nostalgia. I know it yet at the same time I don't.

It hooks me and draws me forth. I am powerless against it. I feel myself swim through layers of matter, the pressure ever building. I am suffocating, trapped, pressed down and pulled up until I break the surface.

My eyes snap open and find two giant orbs of violet floating above me. As they swim into focus I notice they are in the face of the most beautiful man that I have ever seen. He has been cut from the substance of the night and the very stars.

Hello Beautiful.

Shock surges through me at the foreign voice inside my head. My walls slam up against the intruder and then a scream of agony rips from me. My skin tears apart again in a thousand places, burning me with a searing fire. Only this time, unlike the last, it does not stop. Back and forth and back and forth the light blasts and the fire burns.

I feel myself convulse where I lay and then blackness slams into me.

________________________

RHYSAND

I look down in shock as two of the most beautiful eyes I've ever seen opened up wide and stared back at me.

Hello Beautiful.

I grin at her as I project the words into her now conscious mind. A second later I feel as through I am hit with an iron fist as a formidable surge of power throws me violently away from her and against the bedside wall.

I slam into the wall with a sickening thud as my head cracks against it. Before I can speak or think or do anything she starts to scream and writher in agony. Bright strobe like flashes of light ensue and as I rise from the floor my heart stops dead in my chest.

Feyre is screaming upon the bed. With every flash of light she ... Shifts uncontrollably back and forth between forms.

As she flickers between forms my breath is taken away by the terrifying beauty of her shift-form.