The sun was setting over the horizon into the sea, darkening the sky and the great lands of Endapano. Torches were lit, and the bustling market was filled with the eyes and calls of nocturnal animals. The sky was partly clear, but as the tip of the sun disappeared, a single bolt of lightning hit a crashing wave, and a small boat appeared on the horizon. In it was an unconscious young man, scruffy and wild, and bags of gold. The boat was low-slung and its prow was carved into the shape of a dragon, and as it dug into the sands of the island, the light of the moon came upon it, and the sky was clear. The boat was unnoticed by the people of Endapano, and remained still for a time, rocking lightly as the waves crashed against it.

Over the crash of distant thunder and the quite ambience of the dock life, a pure, wavering sound quavered like a dove uneasily flying upon the breeze. As the dark waves lapped the worn blanks and fishing boats bobbing uneasily in the restless ocean, a single figure dressed in a stormy blue dress idly swayed at the end of the long dock- platinum locks dancing in the salty breeze as an ebony violin rested upon a slender shoulder beneath a fair-skinned chin.

Elenoir idly swayed and spun upon the balls of her feet, slippers hissing gently against the ancient wood as she drew the white horse-hair bow across the violin strings. She exhaled cooly and smiled, murmuring inaudibly to the waves," Ah… Don't be upset…" Almost as if chiding a child- again drawing for a mysterious yet warm tune front the wooden and stringed instrument, the sound carrying crystalline across the dark waves to the little boat… All the way to the shaggy man and his boat of gold.

A new land, a new dream. That was how it had been many times in the past. Her search for the elusive door-between-worlds brought her to the farthest reaches of the northwest in hopes of a glimmer, a sign, anything that would tell her where it might be. This island called 'Endapano' was lush and verdant, like how Arri was but in a different way. The trees here were taller, wider. And everything here reminded her of a picture in a book of little people who built their houses in plants and toadstools. She had spent the first few days in the island kingdom between hours of dreaming and storytelling. When she would stop to rest, she was enthralled by the delicate music and songs with words she did not understand. The music was ethereal, yet melancholy. Like the resident people whom she came to learn as 'elves', the ballads sung bore great beauty with a deep underlying sadness. There was a time when life was not so simple as it were now and the people had endured through many hardships. Yet in spite of all their troubles, they continued to walk forward with grace and dignity. It was remarkable to someone as young as her.

The world of dreams was different here than in other cities. While Gale traversed the shifting dreamscape, it seemed the dream of this particular kingdom was more constant than most. The changes were less sudden, more subtle, and smaller. The stream of consciousness here seemed to drift more than flow. Time felt slower here. It was a curious thing to the dream-walker, having been so accustomed to the rapidly changing atmosphere of a city's collective dream. The dream of this place in particular was more uniform and consistent, a reflection of the thoughts and unconscious portions of the inhabitants. Smooth, rich colors in hues of greens and blues swirled up above like thick paint being moved through oil. Little phosphorescent flora and fauna trailed along the walls, some even taking shapes like animals found in the waking world. Glowing white stags and does ran by through the luminescent grasses, disturbing radiant insects as bright as the stars in the evening. It was peaceful. The walls of the area were high, like tall canyons enclosing the space. When she tried to climb up, she found she would slide back down no matter how high she had been seconds earlier. The sky was always just out of reach. There were exits, no discernible ways to see what lay beyond the canyon walls, if there was anything outside. It was like an enclosed piece of paradise for deer and small animals. Gale had noticed that in all of her wanderings, she had yet to see a single wolf or bear. 

It was nightfall, and she was sitting on the dock watching the storm in the distance. The crash of thunder jostled her from her momentary reverie, and she jumped a little. Surprised but not frightened, she sat up to see lightning flash out on the sea. The lightning god and his hounds must be out on a hunt, she told herself. The flashes of lightning were his arrows that were fired from his bow while the thunder was the baying of his hunting dogs. Back home thunderstorms were a rarity. Rain was not a common occurrence, and one time when a particularly strong storm hit the city, she and the younger children huddled together with their teacher as he spoke to calm them down. He had told them a story of how lightning and thunder came to be. Every now and then, the lightning god would bring out his hunting hounds to chase their prey across the sky. The shots from his great bow created flashes of light when they struck the earth, and before he would fire his dogs would howl to tell their master where their prey was going. 

Lying back down on the docks, she held out a hand to check for rain. Not a single speck so far. Should the rain begin to pour down she would rise to find shelter until it passed.

The raider remained unconscious in his boat, unfazed by the smell of the sea or the rocking of his boat. In his hand, he held tight an axe; or rather, the remains of one. The clouds covered the moon once more, and as they parted again, moonlight came upon him as a light in the darkness of the quiet night, yet he remained as he was, and it was then that the sound of a music came to him in his dreamless slumber, and that seemed to wake him. His eyelids parted, if only a little, and he could see the sky above and the moon as unclear colours of black and a white spot standing out.

He then rose as much as his weakened body could, holding onto the low sides of his boat, and stumbled onto the shore, and made his way towards the source of the sound which had seemingly enchanted him weakly despite himself. He did not, however, make it far, but rather enough to be in view of the dancing gal and his small boat, before he fell onto the sand, and the broken handle of his axe remained in his arm, and his eyes were once again shut, his mind absent, albeit not as before.

As the boat seemed to follow the violin's song- as most seems things seemed to- she moved lightly down the docks, forever balancing on the balls of her elegantly arched feet as her slender heels lifted from the slippers. As she passed some fishermen, they looked up briefly, relaxing before returning to mending their nets and gutting their catches back into the bay. This was the sort of thing young Elenoir lived for, this harmony that only sweet, skilled sound could create. She paused her song for long enough to leap down upon the cool, sea-weed strewn sand and make her way to the small, odd dragon-boat. It was primitive compared to the boats that frequented this place, and simply from gazing at it, Elenoir could tell it held no enchantment nor magic- how odd…

a scraggily young man collapsed upon the sand, Elenoir's eyebrows shot up as she broke onto a jog, holding her bow and violin's slender neck loosely in her hands. Eventually she abandoned her slippers upon the sand in order to rush the young man's side. Laying aside her precious instrument, she knelt- her legs folding beneath the stormy grey silk as she called out gently," Excuse me? Oh dear- are you alright?" She asks in a voice of what one perhaps would call a siren, naturally silken and soft. Quietly, her hands touched his shoulders as she knelt before him, leaning downward to try and find his face under the greasy mass of hair.

In the dream, the faint glows of blue and green were intruded upon by a movement in red. A red wind swirled, and took the shapes of things the girl recognized but did not understand the significance of. Then, just as she had seen while awake–a flash of lightning! It struck the ground, sending the ethereal deer and birds to scatter, leaving a red tear in the azure earth. From that tear something emerged; something that was different from the other beasts of the realm. It was blurred and unclear, but it was on all fours with the handle of a weapon protruding from its back. It had a long body, with a long neck that was more serpentine than mammal. Wherever it limped, it left behind footprints of crimson red and the earth darkened to a burnt umber where it had once trod. A peal of thunder pulled her from her slumber again. What a troubling dream… The air was heated with energy, but not a single drop had fallen onto the docks. Changes in the realm of dreams often preceded changes in the waking world, as she had come to know.

Gale stood up then knelt closer to the ground in a crouch when another flash of lightning lit up the sky in the distance. The dream-walker's eyes searched the shore and the waterfront for anything that might correlate with what she had seen in her time in the dream. Then–there out on the water, against the shore was a boat she hadn't seen before. It was smaller than a fishing boat and larger than a raft. The head of that strange narrow boat was like a dragon's–just like the injured beast in red. But if the boat was the dragon, then why was it wounded? On the winds she heard someone rushing to the shore with urgency. Watching the woman the fiery-haired girl chose to follow her too. Slipping down onto the sands she left soft prints of the soles of her boots as she hurried to see where the woman would lead. Gale stopped when she saw the woman stop before a prostrate figure on the beach. Approaching slowly she tried to see what was going on.

The flashes of lightning gave brief illumination on the two down on the sand, but what she saw left her confused. This man wasn't wounded. Or at least he wasn't bleeding from what she could tell. Perhaps the symbolism of the beast in the dream was not literal? Unsure of what to do next, she held back a few meters away from the pair standing out on the open. She would wait and see, watch and listen. That was what she had been taught, to observe and gain a complete grasp of the situation before taking action.

The raider remained on the ground, his mind dormant as it was before, unmoving like he was dead but for his chest and its rhythmic movements, which moved alongside the music of the violin even as it subsided and after, and in his dormant mind he saw the Emerald Isle, the calm sea which suddenly turned raging like a mad beast, and water everywhere. A shadow above him. A flash of white in the sky… And then all around him. And then the white was gone, and it was all black. He heard the sea and felt it, the waves moving his body as they did his boat, then he was back in the present, and it was then that the soft and delicate hands of a young woman touched him, and he heard her soft voice speak. His mind was clouded, and he rose abruptly, in a way that was almost inhuman, and he stumbled in no specific direction; not towards his boat, but not away from it either.

Then a voice came out, and it was terrifying and inhuman. A great roar as that of a great bear, and it shook even the air around him. His eyes were wild, almost like the beast itself, and for a moment he seemed tenfold stronger, and it wasn't clear whether the sound came from his mouth. The sound was so terrible that even the animals of the market panicked briefly, and that even the fish in the sea swam away in fear. Then he faced the girl as it subsided and his eyes were human again and he reclaimed his former strength, or weakness, perhaps.

And, just as before, he once more collapsed onto the sand at the violinist's feet… And the broken axe was still in his fist; he clung onto it like a child would his favourite toy.

Elenoir rocked back upon her heels as the man surges to his feet, uttering a loud cry that caused her to flinch and protectively hunch over herself. Squeezing her light green eyes shut she covered her ears until the sound faded in full. Slowly, slowly she lifted her hands from her ears and opened her bright eyes, gazing at his now kneeling form. Hesitantly, slowly, she moved back to her feet, wet sand caking the fine fabric of her dress as she slowly stood and made her way to him, hesitantly extending a hand- allowing her slender fingers to delicately hover above his hands clutching the broken axe handle.

taking a small breath, as if gathering her courage, she leans over him, platinum-blonde hair creating a small veil as she gazes down at the shaggy man with a mixture of worry and curiousity," Sir…?" she tried again in that sweet, hypnotic voice, blinking slowly,"[timesnewroman] You're safe now, please- don't be afraid now." Elenoir soothes him quietly, slowly retracting her hand as she knelt beside him, leaning over him ever so slightly. Unsure of what to say, what to do.

While the woman exchanged words after the man was awake, the low rumble of the gathering storm clouds overhead reverberated. Instead of the flash that normally would follow, a new sound loud and deafening started as the heavens poured forth rain. Like thousands of grains of sand falling from on high, the shower filled the silence that had been between the lightning and thunder. Petrichor and moisture filled the girl's lungs as she held up her hand to catch the falling drops. It was a summer shower, quick and sudden like the rolling thunderheads. Gale stood for a while, looking up as the rain pelted down her face. Her clothes were getting wet, but the tears from the skies were warm. Taking out the silver and jet shield from her burlap bag, she balanced it atop her head as a makeshift shelter from the rain. Holding onto the edges with both hands, her boots left lumpy shapes in the wet sand as she trod towards the two. The soft squelch of feet in the clay-like consistency of the beach would inform the two of her arrival as she tilted her upturned rain-shield to allow the water to slide off.

Curiously, she stood now a few feet away. With her hair and clothes soaked and boots covered in clumps of sand, the dream-walker spoke in a quiet voice. "The rains are coming down stronger. The Lightning God's hounds are still baying while they follow their retreating master. It would be dangerous for us to stay here while the rain falls, lest a stray arrow from the god's bow strike the ground."

Elenoir looked up as the ginger haired child approaches. An odd feeling passing through her as she gazes at the young woman then back at the unconscious bear of a man. Chewing the bottom of her cherry lip, she pushed several damp locks back from her face, moving to cradle the man. His smell was pungent as if he hadn't truly taken a bath before but for when he was pelted by the elements- not to mention he looked as if he hadn't seen a pair of scissors in his life based upon his wild mane. Nonetheless, the young woman slowly lifted him with all her might, bare feet sinking into the wet sand- her entire body ached, she wasn't strong enough for this sort of thing. Not to mention she was vaguely afraid that if she slipped up she would fall and break her precious violin. Nonetheless… He needed help.

" Help me- Lift him-" As she addresses the young woman, a bell upon her neck tinkles lightly, that with the hypnotic lilt of her voice… Obviously whenever she spoke to an individual directly it created a siren-like hypnosis, no wonder the young woman only spoke sparingly, despirte that beautiful, lyrical voice. Her words with the enchanting magical notes seemed to offer no excuse, no allowance for little Gale to back away… If she chose, of course.