Crossing the limen

I had a dream last night.

I was standing before a loom, watching a woman as she wove a great web, a red folding robe. Her small, delicate hands worked with a steady practise... over, under, loop, rest. Repeat. She worked into her emerging web the numerous struggles of men, struggles they had endured for her sake at the hands of the war god. I focus back on myself, feel where I am standing. My feet roll at the heels- my toes curl inside my boots, sensing the hardness of the floor beneath me. I know I am wearing my hunting gear, for as the movement courses up into ankles, I feel the leather sheath strapped to my skin, the heaviness of my dagger. A soft wind brushes at the base of my throat, my hair- teasing it into life, curling into the air in a solemn dance. No. Something is wrong- the woman finishes her web, and then moves to unpick it, slowly, unravelling all her work. Something doesn't feel right, and so I walk around her to stare into her face. Something is definately wrong.

The image changes, and suddenly I stand on a battlefield. I am standing within the web, watching the threads being unpicked before my eyes. The woman stands above and beyond us- I turn my eyes to watch the drama unfold, from the web's centre.

There Death stands before me: green and pale, dirty-dry, fallen in on herself with hunger, knee-swollen. Her nails are grown long on her hands, and from her nostrils the drip kept running, and off her cheeks the blood dribbled to the ground. She stood there, grinning forever, and the dust that lay gathered in heaps on her shoulders was muddy with tears. The spirits of Death, dark-coloured, and clattering their white teeth, deadly-faced, grim-glaring, bloody and unapproachable... all of them rushing forward to drink of the black blood. They would hook their claws about a dead man's body, while his soul went down to Anwnn. When the spirits had sated their senses on the blood of men's slaughter, they would throw what was left behind them and go storming back into the battle-clamour and the struggle...

I sleep alone, and so I dream.

The shadows and the darkness still scare me. Biddy would have told me, many years ago, that demons were a myth- that the Six guard our dreams, that She can't touch us as we venture over the limen between reality and illusion. My sense of reality has changed since I last saw her, and illusion has become nought but another useful weapon in my artillery. Sharpen your tongue and keep your wits cold, I used to think, and that will put food in your mouth. Survive the next turn of the suns, and maybe you will need them less.

I still don't quite understand about demons, but I'm fast learning.