Post by Quiet on Jun 9, 2020 20:41:38 GMT
Not for the first time in his life, Quiet shouted awake, his chest heaving from a night terror.
It had been a dream of two halves.
Quiet lazed around in a posh breakfast cafe that styled itself as a classic Midwestern-style diner on the upper plate. It was a chain of restaurants that tried to disguise itself as a small business; in Midgar, there really wasn't such a thing as a success independent business. Not on the upper plate, at least. It affected a casual atmosphere, an illusion broken by too-polite-and-attentive waiting staff on too small of a wage. The lights were slightly too bright, and the booths slightly too luxurious, comfortable red leather seating and tables wide enough to give even large families plenty of space.
The warrior donned a beanie and shades and wore a loose white tank top and grey jogging pants; not recognisable as the mako-eyed vigilante that terrorised Shin-Ra and the people of Midgar. He still carried his sword with him; not a hugely strange site even on the upper-plate, though some troopers had shot him looks as he walked about. It was unlikely that the average, run-of-the-mill private out of Brainwash Academy would recognise his blade and make the connection.
He toyed with the food on his plate; juicy, thick sausages, streaky bacon, lovingly-poached eggs, saucy baked beans and perfectly-crisp toast. It smelled, and tasted, delicious, but his mind was elsewhere.
In the first dream, the warrior had dreamt of millenia of darkness. Only tiny atoms of light could be seen; stars too distant to warm his body. He... no, she, no, it, had flown through space for what seemed like all of time. He, it, had devoured world after world since it first gained consciousness, and now sought union with yet another world.
Quiet's perspective shifted; a prehistoric world, alighted by a flame in the sky. It descended in a flash of fire and lightning. In the span of seconds it plummeted through the layers of the atmosphere and cracked the surface of the earth in its furious air-burst, flattening tens of millions of trees, blinding and deafening those creatures the impact did not instantly kill in the surrounding hundreds of kilometres. When the dust cleared, all that remained was the Crater, a wound on the face of the Planet, and it, she, him.
It could feel them. Them. It was hungry.
And so it crawled out of the crater and began to feast and propagate it's nature in equal measure, changing others, being changed, a divine being of transformation and consumption.
"S'everything alright, sir?" The waitress came over, smiling politely at Quiet. He glanced at her, forced himself to smile, a smile which didn't erase the weariness in his eyes.
"It was good. Just not hungry, turns out. Tired, though," He put down his knife and fork, and she took the plate.
"I'll bring you a coffee, then. On the house," she said, her gaze assessing him for a moment, and then strode away.
He lounged back against the comfort of the garish, cliche booth and sighed. Kindness made him sad these days. He didn't think there was much left to go around.
That second dream...
