title : Tiamat's Metamorphosis
summary : (Or : Rowan and the Great Perils of Improvisation) Shakespeare could not have put it any better himself. Every player was given their role, even her - an extra who had no business meddling with backstage affairs like Scooby-Doo. It was just bad luck that got her the most important role of all. Too bad she never bothered to memorize the script.
disclaimer : Ha ha. No. The Harry Potter series rightfully belongs to J.K. Rowling.
posted : 11/24
note i : you don't scare me! (dodges a brick thrown in my a direction) okay, okay! he scares me... just a bit. (dodges a ukulele) alright, who's giving away this crap to use against me?! let me talk people!
if by any chance you spot a spelling mistake, i'd like to say in advance... i don't have my glasses... heh heh. ow! (picks up what hit me in the head) these are sunglasses!
[ Opening Act : "From the arms of Morpheus, I awoke" ]
"All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players: they have their entrances, and one man in his time plays many parts, his acts being seven ages." -William Shakespeare
31 October, 1981 (Hallowe'en Night)
There was the distant ticking of a clock. Tick Tock. Tick Tock. It felt like a countdown, but what was it counting to? Tick Tock. Tick Tock. Between here and then, there and now, the clock ticked and tocked in a steady rythm.
She wondered what lied beyond this illusion of limited perception. The stars? A field of daisies? The sea full of iridescent sea creatures? Or just the the flat beige of her ceiling after having another "out-of-this-world" dream - her best friend's words, not hers.
But there was light. By the miraculous will of god - if He really existed - there was light and she never imagined it could burn.
A brilliant, emerald light which blinded the senses. Deep in the crevices of her mind something hissed and bucked unto slumber, and even deeper, something profound and alien poured itself into her mind like thick, warm syrup. It raged and reverberated uproars throughout her soul before settling down to a tepid, but bubbling, pool of molten liquid knowledge.
Beating alongside the clock's incessant ticking was her heart keeping perfect pace.
It took her a minute to realize her eyes were open, and another few to properly focus on the image before her. Tiny hands which wiggled and curled as she willed them to. Were these her hands? Impossible. These weren't her hands. Her hands were bigger with longer, slender fingers which danced across ivory keys. There had been a scar on her left ring finger when she tried on her best friend's mother's wedding ring, until it dawned to her that it did not fit. Both thumbnails were chipped from biting and the right middle was lightly bruised from the time she slammed the door onto it.
Her not-hands curled with just a flex of her not-fingers.
Smaller hands meant a child's hands. These were tiny, not unlike an infants' with skin lighter than she recalled, and softer than she could have imagined. This was new, she'd never dreamt of herself as an infant. It wasn't impossible, she could recall fondly the times she slept within the arms of Morpheus - dreaming as an invisible child, a magical girl, on rare occasions as a boy, and that time she rolled out of bed, believing she was drowning despite the fact she was mermaid.
She brought a not-hand to her eye, rubbing at it lightly until she felt something wet against her not-palm. That was... That's strange. She never cried when she dreamt, heck, she rarely cried when awake! She guessed there was a first time for anything, but it didn't quell the anxiety growing in her stomach in the least.
Tick Tock
Beyond these tiny false limbs were bars which limited her movement, but not her vision. A room, furniture, toys, and a woman. The latter was more important but it was strange that she noted her last. The woman, beautiful scarlet hair - like blood - splayed about like a halo with dull, glassy green orbs staring directly into her own teary pair, remained still and quiet. Her chest did not rise so she did not breathe, and with skin so white she may as well be-Oh. This woman was dead.
There was no denying the fact the death was a tragic to the living and eternal peace, or damnation, to the dead, but she had never been personally affected by the death of those dear to her. There those few and in between frie-acquaintances that had lost someone dear to them but the most someoe like her could offer was an ear and shoulder to listen and cry on, respectively. It was a strange feeling out of the league, unsure of which action was appropriate and which would set them off into another bawling fit.
She was dreaming within a child's body, looking straight into a dead woman's eyes, and all she could wonder was-
.
.
.
"Rowan, you are so loved. Mama loves you. Dada loves you. Rowan, be safe. Be strong."
.
.
.
Why did her heart ache for this empty corpse?
Tiiiicck Tooooo-
Time to wake up now.
She did not wake up - why did she not wake up? To be more specific, she did not wake up as her real self, she woke as her dream self instead. Was she still asleep? Why was she still asleep, her alarm should have sound by now. Did the light go out or something? That was the first sign that something was not right.
Her eyes were beginning to burn and her throat beginning to itch. Even as a grown woman, she never loved the dark and doubted she ever would. There were just some fears one never grew out of.
(Unofficially, this was the second time she received a warning but she was stupid enough to brush of the first. Hindsight is 20/20 after all.)
There was the barest of sliver of light coming from across, hardly enough to illuminate the whole room, and if it weren't for that trickle of light, she would've continued thinking she was asleep. Or awake. Beyond that, hushed voices that held no meaning in particular. She wondered for a moment about their identities and what they symbolized within the dream before pushing that idea aside.
Raising the tiny not-hand, she wondered with a dreamy sigh leaving lips, her not-fingertips barely casting a shadow against the light, of her purpose - within the dream, of course. As well as the disappearance of the tocktocktick.
There had to be more than seeing dead people and being tantalized by the promise of escaping obscurity, all while being a baby.
(There was something important about that woman - a song, a movie, a book, the television. She had seen her somewhere and she was really important.)
At her best, her brain could conjure a variety of images at once but this was pretty tame, not to mention boring. She didn't know how long she waited within the barely lit room. Minutes? Hours? Days? She was going to fall back to sleep at this rate. If you fall asleep in the reality, you awake in your dreams. If you fall asleep in your dreams, you awake in reality. Which begs the question, which is reality? And which is your dreams?
The not-child groaned quietly, the sound coming out like whine, tempted to facepalm. Philosophical thinking was the last thing she needed. At this rate she'll drive herself insane before boredom sets in and kil-
.
.
.
"Sing me the song", I rolled my eyes at his demand, knowing he wouldn't be able to see it. "What's the magic word?" I teased and laughed as he pouted. "Yes? Ouch! Who taught you to be so violent?!" He rubbed his arm where I had slapped him.
Above us, twinkling stars were sprinkled across the dark void as the last of sunlight bade us good night. Beneath us, the evergreen grass darkened and cooled to a comfortable degree.
Until everything turned red.
"We need to get out of here!" He shouted, dragging me along as we ran through the inferno. "Wait... Wai...t... Pleas-Stop! I can't-! I can't brea-!" My eyes felt dry and wet, a paradox blurring my sight turning it into a collage of warm colors. Breathing was a chore, the air poisoning and burning my lungs and I knew for a fact that he was suffering too.
There was a crack above me.
The screaming of a boy.
And the scent of barbecue.
.
.
.
Oh. Oh. Boredom can't kill her because she was already dead - or was she?
Her hands - dancing across ivory keys, a rambunctious melody filled the air - turned a blistering red and black, but the image itself was a bizarre, distorted echo compared to these baby hands. It ate her. The fire, painfully and slowly, ate her away and turned her into an ashen corpse. Yet by some miracle or another she was alive and as a child? How? And why? The not-child released a strange amalgation of a sob and a laugh at her own redundancy.
Though dream like the situation had been at the beginning, she wasn't stupid, her brain was merely trying to rationalize her situation while denying the truth.
Olivia Sterling was dead.
(Somewhere in the back of her mind, a tickticktocking began. She laughed.)
[ End of Opening Act ]
- Preview : Act I -
She traced the cursive writing of the letter, her fingers looping over the ink spelling out her name.
note ii : so! that happened. what do you think of my prologue? there are a few things i'd like to say in advance, for starters, i've only watched the movies and my knowledge concerning the books are in bits and pieces. (i.e. i can only name up to six horcruxes at the top of my head - and that's including Harry.) i am quite aware of my faulty memory and i am sort of relying that in this story as this tells the story of a self-insert who only had a certain amount of knowledge concerning the Potterverse and the butterflies she creates through those actions. hence the subtitle.
questions :
this may be a bit early, but what impression has my character left you with in regards to her housing?
which house do you hope for her to be in?
anything you look forward to in this story?
Review whether you're a guest or an author.