Dream walker

I woke inside the dream.

Not drifting into it, not slowly slipping, but waking. As if I had opened my eyes in another world, one that was already watching me back. Awareness didn't dawn gently. It struck like lightning through the spine. One second I was nowhere, the next I was here, and here was not mine.

The room pulsed around me.

Not just seemed to pulse, was pulsing. Breathing. The walls were alive. Velvet, blood-red and veined with dark gold, they curved inward like the ribs of a sleeping beast. Not architecture. Anatomy. The place felt like it had teeth.

The air was thick, too warm, too close, perfumed with something not made for human lungs. Not flowers. No sweetness. It was darker than that. Older. It clung to my skin like sweat in a fever dream.

Sandalwood. Wet stone. Iron.

And underneath it all, her.

Sarassis.

I didn't see her at first. I felt her. A gravitational pull, an aching pressure behind my eyes. Her presence gathered in my chest before my eyes even found her. My skin prickled. My stomach clenched. The hairs on my arms rose in quiet reverence or fear, maybe both.

But this time, she was not alone.

There were three.

Sarassis sat in the center, half-throned, half-reclined on a thing that defied shape. It wasn't a chair. It wasn't a bed. It was alive, maybe. Bone and velvet and breath. Her legs were bare, crossed at the knee, one draped over the side like she was bored with the shape of gods. Her tail flicked lazily. Her eyes, golden, heavy-lidded, ancient, watched me like a cat watches a candle flame: curious, hungry.

To her right stood the one I had seen before.

The sister with skin pale as moonlight on snow, her lips stained with something dark, berry or blood, it was hard to tell. She didn't look at me directly. Her eyes stayed downcast, but I felt her gaze. Felt it in the way one feels being followed in a mirror. Every breath she didn't take was loud in my ears. Every movement silent as snowfall and just as cold.

The third was unfamiliar.

Darker in every sense. Skin the shade of copper at twilight, hair coiled tight and heavy with obsidian beads that whispered secrets each time she moved. Her eyes were smoke. Her mouth a closed gate. But when she opened it to speak, oh, God.

Not words. Not a language I knew. Her tongue moved in sounds that curled and slithered through the air, wet and soft and sharp all at once. I didn't hear them with my ears, I felt them. In my chest. In my belly. Between my thighs.

My knees buckled.

I stepped back, trembling. I think I whispered something. A plea. A protest. My own name, maybe, as if it could shield me. The sound felt small. Unfamiliar. Like it belonged to someone else. Someone watching me drown from behind the glass.

They heard it anyway.

Sarassis tilted her head, eyes narrowing with interest. Her tail coiled, tense now. She leaned forward. Not much. Just enough to make the air shudder.

The third woman stepped forward, slow. Silent. Then circled behind me like smoke winding through cracks in stone. Her breath ghosted against my neck, warm, wet. Her whisper returned, sliding into my skull, lighting fire behind my eyes. I couldn't understand it. But my body did.

My skin sang.

She never touched me. Not truly. But I felt her, impossibly, gliding over my nightdress. A phantom weight at my waist. The brush of fingers beneath my breasts. The soft, invisible stroke of heat along my spine. My breath came faster. Shallow. My thighs ached.

I said no.

I think I did.

But even as I backed away, even as my mind screamed to turn, to run, I felt my body betraying me. Breathless. Wanting. My heartbeat low and hungry. Something primal stirred beneath the shame.

The pale sister moved in front of me, quiet as a prayer, terrible as a storm. Her hands were cold when they found my thighs, reverent in their exploration. She didn't speak. She didn't need to. Her eyes spoke volumes, about surrender, about sacrifice, about the price of being seen.

I trembled.

Still, Sarassis had not spoken.

But her gaze owned me. Her golden eyes devoured me. I couldn't look away. Didn't want to. My mouth opened, words forming, drowning in breath. My voice failed me, not because it was taken, but because I didn't know what to say. Because part of me no longer wanted to speak at all.

She smiled.

That smile, small, cruel, holy, was the last thing I saw before the floor vanished beneath me. Before the velvet walls stretched wide like a mouth unhinged. Before I fell.

Not down.

In.

And somewhere above me, beyond me, through me, I heard her whisper.

"Finally."