Yowzah Oneshot Collection (3)

15

There's a Language in the Sky

lonewytch

Come inside River, I want to show you something. A world inside the both of us, Thief and I. A place where all our shadows lie, but the light is oh so glorious too. It soaks us and streams through us. All the wishes and the longing and all the deep gut grief and all the incandescent joy. All the stars you want to ever see. Ponds and rivers and streams and the heart of the wide sea of time. Everything deep inside that never sees the outside, tangles and wires, and webs and nerves and an energy that runs and turns. All the dreams of Gallifrey that haunt us, its glory as it burns, the colours working their way through our systems. There's nothing we want to keep from you.

*
He lies against her on the bed, in the room where they most like to be. The walls illuminate the room gently, pouring liquid amber over their bodies, holding them tightly. The Tardis drifts in the vortex, streaming between here and there, then and now, and they are cupped inside her in their own small world, moving in time with her.

He watches River as she stirs in her sleep, eyelids fluttering while her eyes work quickly underneath the paper thin skin. She is dreaming deeply and he wonders what is capturing her sleeping mind in that world; the tips of her fingers twitch and a soft moan escapes her lips as she shifts restlessly. The sigh of the Tardis is a soft hum that rises up through the bed, a satisfied noise, soaked in respite; it vibrates through his bones and outwards into the blood and flesh, calming him, soothing him. For once they are on the same page. Just over a month past the broken universe, past her entry into Stormcage and nights and nights have already belonged to them both. They have discovered each other in the darkness. She has become like a second skin to him. It's as easy and as wonderful as living.

*

Thief is not asleep, he simply lies, watchful, his mind oh so nearly at rest, but skimming the edge of calm like a stone over water. She is sleeping though and I stretch across her sleeping mind, pouring in the old language, splitting her dream as I swim with a lazy stroke through the waters of her mind. I pour in symbols, meanings, memories...

*

In her dream the language and the colours turn clockwise, then widdershins, something she can't quite grasp on the edge of her understanding, a taste like suns and moons on her tongue that she nearly remembers. Shapes that still her, then shake her until she is nothing but liquid forming and layering on them. A golden dripping light that drags her into its depths and streams around her. A homecoming under her own skin, thrilling her. A shuddering that rises from the roots of her as she glimpses something so much wider and bigger than herself; and then she jerks awake.

*

"Bad dream?"

He rests his hand softly on her solar plexus. She scrubs bleary eyes with her fists, and their deep greens seem to shift as she peers at him.

"Strange dream." She breathes the words out and he can almost see her exhaling her sleep into the air around them. "Something to do with the Tardis, I think. I'm having them constantly, the more time I spend here."

Her brow is creasing with frustration and he can see the dream creeping out of her, or sinking back down into her. She starts to sit up, levering herself upwards from the bed, her hair lifting from where it was spread and pooled. But he wants her warmth back down beside him so he pushes gently back against her.

"Lie next to me, tell me. Maybe I can help make some sense of it."

She collapses back, letting her own weight carry her until she lies supine again, and he snuggles into the crook of her neck, pillowing his head against her curls, to listen.