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Neuvillette dreams.
The dreams are not vivid but like blobs of unearthly colors. Colors he cannot name but he feels they are so familiar. In his dreams, he hears the rush of waves, his body small and naked encircled by these bubbling viridescent waters. A voice calls him in his dreams.
A name he has long since forgotten, in a language extinct that only the water god who brought him forth, knew how to speak.
Warm hands lift him from the water and caress his cheeks. A breeze dries his skin and his mouth tastes drops of sweet rain. He dreams of sunny days out in a grassy field, surrounded by flowers of blue like the god's eyes. She speaks of many things and great things, and she tells him one day, she will bring him there, over these grassy hills towards a place so bright to live with her. The young dragon soon finds shoes for his feet, clothes for his body, his scales hidden from sight, his hair and horns neatly tidied.
The god holds his hand as they walk into the city, welcomed by smiling faces alike.
"If you walk far, far enough with humanity, one day, you will grow to love them like I do." So the god says as she touches his silver-white head. "One day, you too will have a family to call your own, and to love."
The young dragon listens, learning and loving as he grows, going everywhere the god goes. The people love their beloved god, and the young dragon too. Till the day, the god ceases to speak and no longer her voice comforts the dragon she held so dear.
Neuvillette dreams.
Dreams where hazy clouds of happiness turn into storms and rain, where he could not swim in a sea of black. Neither water nor air could he breathe, and despair fills his lungs instead.
"Useless dragon," he heard the water god cry, and she weeps in a shell of nothingness, "Useless dragon, what have you done? Did I not do enough to give you love. Why must you destroy us?"
"Focalors." He persists, wanting to reason with the god in his dream, "Focalors!" His screams at her are all swallowed by the sea's shadows as she turns smaller and smaller, till her pale hair and body are nothing more than froth and foam.
The dragon claws at nothing, anguished and distressed, trying to find his way ahead in the blackness, the water seeping into his eyes and his senses. He tastes blood and realizes it is his for he has too, injured his own body with his claws.
There is no where he could go as the water smothered him, laughing in his ears how absolutely pathetic he is.
Neuvillette wakes up.
Outside the windows of his rooms in the Palais Mermonia, a dreadful rain thunders, lashes of water splaying into the room and wetting the carpet beneath. There is a chill in his heart and he feels his cheeks.
They are damp. Had he cried?
His heart hangs heavy, troubled and sorrowful. The Duke who is sleeping by his side rouses as well, his hand warm and assuring moving to stroke down Neuvillette's back.
"Did you dream again?" Wriothesley is aware. Very much aware of Neuvillette's nightmares. He pulls Neuvillette close, tucking the Iudex against the broad warmth of his body. But Wriothesley never asks what these dreams are about though he has seen so much on many a night, and had held down Neuvillette's flailing wrists, those hands full of dangerous claws that could rip a man's throat into shreds.
"The same dream." Neuvillette replies, his voice pitching low and soft. He looks at his wrists and sighs in relief there are no marks. He sits up now, his hair falling in lengths about his shoulders, curling in waves on the bed.
Wriothesley's arms loop around Neuvillette's hips, and he too, leans up, fingers tracing up and down the Iudex's shoulders before just holding him close, noticing that the rain outside has petered down to a slow drizzle.
"There is nothing you need to fear, Monsieur." Wriothesley murmurs, turning away from the windows to pull Neuvillette into his lap. Neuvillette's expression seems remorseful, he opens his mouth to say something but the words turn into exhalation instead.
Wriothesley covers that mouth with a kiss, and if he could kiss the dread into exile, he would but such are just wishes and whims, like a lover blowing on the wound of his love, bidding all that real and imaginary pain away.
Thus, below the waters, Wriothesley has worked all that he could; all the prophecies he could read, all the scholars he could speak with, all the hands he could employ, to build all he could with his human hands, and fend against the terror that rides inside Neuvillette's heart.