The realm of mist

[Maeve]

Maeve raised her eyebrow at his question, a slight smile dancing at the corner of her lips. “Yeah, your head.” Moving to another tree absent-mindedly, Maeve realised that he wasn’t getting the full picture yet. The sorceress could sense that he knew they were having an effect on their surrounding and its multiple changes, but she also sensed that he didn’t understand how he could control these changes, yet along how to trigger them.

Her fingers now gently brushing against the leaves and flowers of a low branch next to her, Maeve searched for a way to clarify things to him but she wasn’t really sure how to formulate her explanations. She found help in the luxuriant vegetation beautifully blooming around them. “The realm is reacting to what we’re thinking, to what we want…” She brought her eyes back to his at that moment, her mind going back to how they had lured themselves here, to how they had pulled each other into this mysterious place unconsciously, both fighting against feelings and thoughts they were too afraid and too proud to acknowledge...

And following that line of denial, Maeve quickly blinked away those thoughts and forced her mind to focus on the water, the snake and the earthquake to finish her explanation. “Or fear…”

[Sinbad]

He had stopped walking after a moment, just watching her, how she walked around, so much at ease, drinking in that image which was so different from the tension and anxiety she had shown ever since this dream had begun. Apparently this world and its workings made more sense to her than it did to him, but her words sounded logical. In a strange way.

He scowled mildly, wondering what that meant. The water, the snake...he dug through his memory, coming to the unsettling conclusion that they related to things he had feared before. And inwardly cursed himself for being such as fool. He had put her into danger. Hadn´t he been talking about snakes just before that beast had appeared? And hadn´t he been thinking about that one terrible night ere the waters had started to appear out of nowehere and then rose? It seemed that whereas she was capable to create such beauty - the trees, the grass, everything they were surrounded by now, he was the one who brought the dangers. Maybe because he was not used to deal with magic by himself? Anyway, no matter what the reason, he was a danger of sorts.

"I see..." he said, summing up his thoughts and a reply to what she had told him and tried to focus on thinking nothing at all.

[Maeve]

The tone of his reply somewhat troubling her, Maeve instinctively searched his features and saw right away in his eyes what his voice was failing to mask. The dreadful feeling she knew all too well. Culpability. Although he was probably doing his best to hide it, Maeve realised she could read his inner struggle as easily as she could read black ink on a white sheet. He was blaming himself for all the deadly situations they had been put through up to now. He was holding himself responsible for it all.

Looking at him silently, the redhead felt her shoulders fall down slowly, tender compassion and simmering anger blending inside her chest. Had she been able to grasp the mechanism of the realm sooner, their carefully warned minds and imaginations never would’ve come up with so many perilous encounters which he was now blaming himself for.

Her brown eyes never leaving his, Maeve slowly walked up to him, stopping only two feet away. She was wishing for nothing more than to prove him wrong, to show him that whatever he could conjure up on his own, it wasn’t as life-threatening as he was fearing it to be. “Look up.”

[Sinbad]

His eyes had been flickering away from her for a moment, an unconscious expression of anxiety which he was hardly even aware of himself just like he didn´t fully realise that right now, in this moment, he was trying hard to not think about anything in order to avoid an even bigger mess. Of course that didn´t prove a too successful venture since thoughts of all kinds were swirling around in his head anyways, circling like some vortex around the exact void he was trying hardest not to give much thought.

As she walked up to him, it got easier for him to chase that uneasiness aware, since it was replaced with another. Once more, not for the first time in this dream, but this time apparently bereft of awkwardness from her side, she was close to him, so close that he could see every detail of her face, her eyes, her hair. Once more it occured to him how much he had missed her, was missing her. That thought wasn´t less unsettling in comparison to his earlier ones, but it helped him focus and so he held on to it, trying - as usual - to hide what he was really thinking. He narrowed his eyes slightly at her as if hesitating for a moment, then looked up as she had asked him to, seeing blue skies stretch over them.

[Maeve]

Although Maeve caught his slight hesitation, she was almost surprised at how easily he executed her curious request, trusting her whole-heartedly, no questions asked. Taking on the opportunity to drink on his features while he wasn’t looking, her eyes lingered on his face, with a longing she stubbornly refused to acknowledge…

Almost instantly, blinking away her inner emotional battles, but mostly afraid to be caught staring, at least that’s what she tried to convince herself of, Maeve went on with what she wanted to show him, that is, his very own doing in the realm which had not turned out to be dangerous, and let her eyes follow his up high. “Can you see it?” The sorceress’ gaze waltzed through the diaphanous azure spreading above their heads. Not really waiting for an answer, she kept on going. “The sky…” Her voice trailed off softly, absorbed in the calm simplicity of what almost looked like heaven to her. “…its crystalline blueness spanning the realm’s never-ending whiteness and dullness…its comforting drape swallowing up the mist and the fog…rendering the hidden boundaries of this place more endurable…more bearable…more sufferable…” For a split of second, Maeve’s mind drifted to her own agonizing prison. “Even in its smallest measurement and contribution to this mysterious, tormenting world, that small amount of blue is helping to make this dream feel…” Ever so slowly, her eyes descended back to his face, the face that had haunted all her nights. “Real…” Her gaze silently traced every single one of his features, yearning to capture the power that only they beheld upon her. “Safe...”

[Sinbad]

Sinbad would never have admitted it - and probably he would have been scolded if he had - but when she ended he noticed that even though he could grasp the essence of what Maeve wanted to tell him, had she asked him, he would barely have been able to retrace more than a couple of words.
She knew more about this place than he did, he told himself, she was the expert when it came to magic so it was just natural that she had to spell all of this out to him. To the rational part of his mind this sounded logical and that was good, because it helped stow away that little part of pride in him that had so often been the source of conflict between them both: that little bit of pride that refused listening to something that obviously was aiming at taking away his fears. Because that was what she was doing right now. Fears he would not admit he had, but that were also not directed at himself.

However, besides all this, the true reason for her words seemingly drifting from his mind so easily was another. Strange as this might have appeared to her (and for sure they would have quarreled for a bit because an explanation was easy to get wrong), it was because hardly anything of it mattered. The only thing that did matter was what she said last: Real. Safe. His mind latched on to these two words, declaring them truths, even though some strange feeling in his chest told him that they would only be true for a while. And that it was his task to make that while last.

Well aware of her stare and of the fact that he was still staring up at the sky as if something incredibly exciting was going on there, his gaze shifted to her for a short moment even though he didn´t look down, then met the skies again, even more aware now that Maeve was watching him. He then cleared his throat in the unconscious attempt to get rid of the strange feeling in his chest, failing rather miserably. "Safe sounds good..." he said, immediately calling himself a fool. There were so many things he could have said, but he had chosen the dullest over a far more burning question: How do you do this? How do you manage to live under that sort of sky?

[Maeve]

Staring at him, Maeve simply had no idea what kind of a reply she had been waiting for, simply because a part of her, the part that was proud, self-controlled, and rational, had suppressed every deep possible implications her words had truly held. Truth be told, her initial intentions had only been about wiping away the guilt that had taken over him, a guilt that had slowly triggered her own. But Maeve could feel the weight of her words now. She could almost see them, one by one, trespassing on the line of denial she and Sinbad had traced between themselves, that robust yet oh so thin boundary of protection they had silently established ever since they had become aware of what might happened if they ever crossed it.

She had crossed it just now. Unconsciously, she had. And she could feel the awkwardness settling in, along with the stubborn rebuff, and the vivid fear of giving in. Her chest was suddenly going all heavy and all crushed, a distressing sensation that the redhead knew all too well and hated, whenever it grabbed hold of her in situations like this, in situations with him. Maeve swallowed the lump in her throat and was immensely grateful for the fact that he never brought his eyes directly to hers. In fact, she couldn’t have been more thankful for the elusive, detached answer he granted her. It allowed her to follow that exact same line of evasion, which she immediately did.

All the while fighting to keep a controlled composure and attempting to ease the discomfort that was boiling up inside her chest, Maeve took a sideway step, putting a more reasonable space between them. Bringing up her gaze to the sky once more, just like him, she concentrated hard on simply commenting his statement, without adding any further uneasiness. “Aye, it does…” But her single escaping step soon turned into many as she walked back to a tree, her mind desperately looking for a way out of this, for a distraction. She just had to get away from that line between them, this sacred boundary that was almost laughing at the small weakness real and safe had betrayed in her. Her hands, restless and cornered, went fidgeting with the branches and the leaves. Only when the distance separating them was back to tolerable did she try herself on a light comment to relieve the growing tension, but what she poorly managed to come up with sounded horribly trifle to her ears. “You know you could add the sun too if you want.” She probably should have made an eye contact with him at that moment, a gesture that would have been regarded as normal in their conversation, but she avoided his gaze at all cost.

[Sinbad]

As she retreated, Sinbad found his gaze torn away with her, after her and for a moment his most urgent impuls was to step after her, follow her, even though the awkwardness between them had suddenly flared up again, quickly turning into something he could nearly grasp like something solid. Noticing that she didn´t look at him, he automatically avoided a stare, another long trained way of acting around her, this time though to not make her feel even more uncomfortable ... or so he told himself.

If anyone had been there watching them, their conversation must have either seemed dull or strange to them, or probably both, but he was painfully aware of the fact that it held so much more, yet he tried to push that thought away, wishing for a split second that he was the only conscious being in this dream, because that would have granted him to show more than he did - than he dared. But the thought was just a fleeting one, too small to take hold and if it had he would have felt ashamed of ever having thought it. It would have seemed stupid to him since every single sense of his seemingly sleeping body told him that she was as real as he was - and that the fact that he had accepted this truth almost from the beginning restrained him in the ways it did - in ways he always felt restrained around her.

But he was used to situations like that. They were complicated and simple at the same time. They offered ways out. Or away. Escape routes. And once more he chose one of those.

Only when she mentioned the sun, Sinbad noticed that there indeed was none and he looked up at the sky again to make sure. It was a bewildering sight. And a bewildering thought to think that he could change it. He wondered if he even wanted to. It seemed like a strange thing to do with him. It felt like she had suddenly weighed an immense power on his shoulders, something he felt he was too clumsy for and for a moment his mind slipped to possible scenarios of what might happen if he kept his "lucky streak" and messed with this place as amateurishly as he had. And he felt little desire to have to deal with a too hot sun or something of the like. Instead, he decided for something else.

Happy that he had found something else to think about, something that didn´t deal with awkwardness but with something material... in a way ... he averted his eyes from the sunless sky and looked down, eyes travelling to Maeve first, then to the grass he was standing on. "I think I feel safer not tempering with something that big." he said, astonished to hear a slight chuckle going with this which probably resulted from the mere absurdity of the thought of what he was even doing here. How did things of the like work? He was probably giving it too much thought but all of this seemed a whole lot like magic to him and the thought that he was trying anything into that direction seemed bewildering to put it mildly.
What was he even supposed to do? Close his eyes and think hard? He decided that this was too dangerous. Focus on something? Maybe a good idea. Even though... things had worked rather fine with the less pleasant figments of his imagination earlier.
He didn´t even notice that he had been turning around a bit, as if looking for the perfect spot to try something he didn´t really feel ready to try. The sun was too big, he had already established that. What about something smaller then. If she dared him to give it a try already so be it. He inwardly shrugged and extended a hand - a somewhat awkward gesture of someone who clearly had no idea about how to work magic of any sort and therefore retreating to clichées he had seen from her or Dim Dim. Sun.. something smaller.. he didn´t even know what to....all of a sudden he could see the grass moving. Just a bit and after what only seemed like a blink later something grew from it right by her feet. He hadn´t exactly intended that spot or what it had turned out as and cleared his throat a bit, pulling back his hand to watch his curious little creation: a sun flower.
"Well..." he said, trying to play down the gush of boyish embarassment he felt "...like that?"

[Maeve]

The awkwardness was still there, grudging her mercilessly, and Maeve had been about to move to another tree, her fingers restless about toying with the same twigs over and over again, when he replied to her miserable stale comment about the sun, somehow yanking her out of her growing and nearly annoying discomfiture. I think I feel safer not tempering with something that big. Maeve’s fingers stopped fidgeting about on the twigs. Blinking back a few times, feeling all her inner-searing awkwardness simmer down and away at the sound of those simple words, she wondered how on earth he had managed to do it. Cornered and trapped in such a strong, almost tangible tension, he seemed to always be able to come up with something that would make every trace of stress evaporate into thin air. Maeve truly admired him for that and wished she could have done the same thing just now instead of shrinking away into her shell like she always did in those kinds of situations.

Glancing at him with an almost sheepish air, her chest getting lighter again, the heaviness of the previous uneasiness floating away gradually, she felt her awkwardness being replaced by a growing curiosity. By the looks of it, it seemed he had decided to take her up on her words about the sun and now, Maeve noticed he was kind of experimenting. Raising an eyebrow at him intriguingly, she watched him as he kept glancing up to the sky and then back down to the ground, turning about as if he was looking for a specific place around him. His features were displaying an almost comical concentration and Maeve realized he was taking this quite seriously. As she cocked her head to the side, a slight puzzled frown appearing on her face, she tried to catch the glimpse of a clue that would help her understand what he was aiming at. An imperceptible smile tugging at the corner of her lips, she watched him thoughtfully pace around, amused by the sight. He reminded her of Firouz. Maeve remembered how the scientist often wandered around that way, the wheels in his head spinning like crazy, calculating and measuring on some eclectic invention. Now, as Sinbad paced in front of her, so engulfed in his thoughts, Maeve had to bite the inside of her cheek to keep herself from making a teasing remark, not wanting to interrupt his devoted focus.

She was about to cross her arms on her chest expectantly when he extended his hand, a motion that usually came from her when magic was on the line, hence that looked quite odd coming from him. He seemed to be trying to articulate what his mind was so forcefully working on. Maeve began questioning herself now. Was he really here, right now, in front of her? Was he really just standing a few feet away from her, attempting himself at doing magic? Maeve knew this was a dream, but was it possible to hallucinate in a dream?

She was about to ask him what on earth he was trying to do (patience had never been her forte) when she suddenly caught sight of a movement coming from the ground. In the blink of an eye, Sinbad’s creation burst out of the grass directly at her feet, unexpectedly and unpredictably.

She froze. Completely stunned and caught off guard. Her mouth slightly gapped opened as she stared down at the little masterpiece, astounded and bewildered. She had not seen that coming. Not at all. Truth is, she realized she hadn’t even tried to guess what he would concoct, and now, once again, she found herself mesmerized and bewitched by everything he could do. She had asked him for the sun; he had given her its blooming seed.

Already feeling the hot redness spreading to her cheeks, Maeve refused to let the embarrassement overtake her, and him in the process. Sinbad had relieved the tension between them a few moments ago, now it was only fair for him if she took care of this one.

“A sun flower...” Maeve simply had the impulse to voice his creation out loud, as if it would anchor it down in the dream somehow, making it an official piece of it, impossible to be wiped away. Then she flashed him a genuine smile, one that reached all the way to her eyes. Gosh, how long exactly had it been since she had smiled like that, so purely and sincerely, Maeve wondered.

Shaking her head slightly, as if she still couldn't believe what was lying at her feet, she slowly got down to the flower’s level and ran a finger along its soft golden petals. Tenderly amused, she chuckled. Then she raised her eyes up to his once again, only this time, she wasn’t blushing; she was smirking. “Clever boy…”

Then, Maeve was suddenly overwhelmed by a strong feeling of admiration toward him. It came from out of nowhere, catching her completely off guard. At that precise moment, Maeve was so proud of him, so content with the culpability that he had just been able to fight off and overcome, that she could probably have walked right up to him and kissed him. She knew just how much he was blaming himself for their previous life-threatening situations, which she thought were as much her fault as his, and she was beyond admiration at how easily he had overstepped his guilt and fear to try something out again, jumping headfirst into trying to control the mechanism of the realm to get what he wanted, sort of. Maeve only wished she would be able to do the same with her life someday…

Shrugging off her maze of thoughts, which were dangerously leading her away, Maeve got up to her feet again and leered playfully. “Who could’ve thought Sinbad the Sailor had a thing for gardening.” She just smiled at him, both mischievously and whole-heartedly at the same time, something she hadn’t done for far too long.

[Sinbad]

He didn´t realize and if he had he would never have admitted it, but he had been watching her reaction to his little experiment so closely that he had been holding his breath involuntarily. He hadn´t expected the sunflower which probably meant that he didn´t have much of an idea of how this weird place really worked. It was all strange and mysterious to him. Nothing one could grasp and properly work with. One couldn´t grasp magic or at least, he couldn´t and that made him both curious and cautious. But for now at least curiosity had the upper hand, banning any thought of what could happen if.. from his mind. And somewhere, somehow he knew that she was the reason for his disappearing uncertainties.

Her remark came off as smug to him, teasing and he felt some strange relief at that. That was what Maeve was like, what she was supposed to be like but it was apparently something he couldn´t count on here any more. He had seen quite some things in her eyes that had not been there before, quite some emotions and sadness and other things that he could not properly place and that he didn´t quite know to handle because it seemed unlike her. But her smirk, her teasing remark that was what he could handle, it was what he was used to and what made him feel at ease ... even though he would have sworn he could feel his ears go red.

"Well, I´m multitalented it seems" he gave back flashing her a boyish grin that was not free of the slight embarassment he felt even though he thought it was.

[Maeve]

It was amazing really, Maeve thought, how good they were at this, switching from tones to tones in a conversation, handling words so guardedly and taking upon every possible escape routes that were offered to them, concealing and disguising everything they did or said with such careful devotion. It was an art. A second nature. The avoiding-the-inevitable-at-all-cost silent mantra that had always been there between them, and probably always would be.

Even if she had expected something along the lines of smugish self-satisfaction, Maeve still chuckled at his predictable good humoured words, wrinkling her nose and playing along. “That explains so much.” She couldn’t help but notice his reddened ears at the same time, betraying his boyish embarrassment for the whole situation, an embarrassment she found herself having difficulty wrapping her mind around. After everything she had witnessed over the passed few months, how could he, the all-time heroic seducer, be blushing about a little sunflower?

Rhetorical question she quickly brushed off…

“Although-” she went on, consumed as usual with the never-dying need to somehow contradict him, “-I can think of one or two fields in which you could use some practice.” There was no way she would wholly acknowledge his multitalented condition, even if it was indeed true that he was good at everything. A playful smile hanging from the corner of her lips, she cocked her head to the side and let her eyes wander aimlessly on their forest-like surroundings, faking thorough thinking.

[Sinbad]

"Ha!" Sinbad gave a chuckle that sounded somewhere on the border of amusement and challenge. "Such as?"

Of course he knew he was far from perfect and there were a lot of things he knew he wasn´t good at, but at this moment he felt rather teasing - that and he was actually rather curious about what her reply would be.

[Maeve]

Fidelity.

Maeve blinked back, freezing on the spot at his question, completely destabilized and caught off guard by her own thoughts. Unable to have a reaction of any kind except for the colours that probably drained form her face, she couldn’t believe the answer she had almost blurted out. What on earth was wrong with her?! How could such a thought even cross her mind?!

She had no right to think such a thing, none at all. It was delusional, preposterous, presumptuous and infuriating, that such a thought had managed to slip through her inner defenses. And above all things, Maeve didn’t even know whether she should feel furious at herself or at him.

Uncomfortably feeling betrayed by her own heart, staring back at him blankly with a certain crimson beginning to flush her cheeks, her mind was racing like crazy to come up with something to erase the uneasiness and edginess that was quickly claiming her again. Her obstinacy to constantly gainsay and challenge him had turned against her this time and Maeve felt like turning around and run. The cornering feeling in her chest was simply unbearable.

How many seconds had passed? Two or three at the most, but it felt like hours to Maeve. She had to say something. He was waiting for an answer. Of course he was. She had literally challenged him into asking for one.

“Huh…” Breaking their eye contact abruptly, she turned once again to the trees around them, blurting out “...the staying-out-trouble field?” Damn it, it sounded like a question, as if she was looking for his approval. She ran a nervous hand in her hair, hoping that it would appear natural a thing to do as she quickly went on “I mean, you’re attracted to trouble like a moth to a flame! It’s gonna be the end of you someday.”

When her eyes somehow managed to find his again, she forced a small smile, hoping, praying, that he would simply buy the act and not notice how nervous she had gotten over the whole matter.

[Sinbad]

Her reply was ... odd, to put it mildly and for a moment, Sinbad´s face showed the very same expression of utter confusion and bewilderment that it had shown once, in moments that her behaviour had seemed weird to him. He knew perfectly well that he wasn´t the smartest fish in the sea when it came to reading between the lines, but his gut feeling told him that whatever the meaning of what she had just said was, was absolutely not what she had wanted to say. He could tell, because he knew that way of fidgeting around. It happened when she was trying to cover something up, but what confused him most was the extent of it and that threw him off guard, too, extending her anxiety to him.

"Right..." he said, his voice somewhat trailing and giving away some confusion, his brows slightly furrowed "I...guess that´s an occupational hazard." The last word toned up a bit, so it sounded a bit like a question, not unlike what she had said and definitely with just as little intention of letting it sound that way.

[Maeve]

Letting out an almost baffled chuckle, Maeve couldn’t help but roll her eyes at his answer, typical of his alpha male cocky behaviour. Occupational hazard! Was he really expecting her to believe that if he had the choice between living the normal peaceful life of a sailor and living that of a praised famous adventurer who had girls falling at his feet at every port, he wouldn’t choose the latter? Why couldn’t he just admit that he liked getting himself into trouble particularly because of the part where he was getting out of it, appearing like the daring, brave and heroic sailor the legends and stories were giving so much credit to?

Maeve shook her head, partly because she couldn’t understand him, and mostly because she couldn’t understand where her sudden aggressiveness came from. Why did she all of a sudden feel the need to lash out at him, even though she perfectly knew that living the normal and peaceful life of a sailor was indeed what he preferred? Why was she suddenly so mad at him? Because he was at the origin of the thought that had triggered her previous delusional uneasiness, Maeve figured, but she knew better. If there was anyone to blame for the fidelity issue that was bothering her so much, it was her and no one else.

Gosh, she wouldn’t mind it at all if another creature came crashing down on them right this moment! In fact she almost found herself wishing for it to happen.

Crossing her arms on her chest, her reply came through slightly gritted teeth. “Well maybe you should revise your occupations then.” There she was again, hinting at what was so bugging her when she should be trying to change the subject and bug him with something less compromising for her sake. But no, no! She just had to keep bringing them over the edge of a fight! Her stubbornness was driving her nuts now! Why couldn’t she just drop the damn subject?!

And wasn’t it about time for them to be interrupted again? Such wishful thinking…