FFM 2025 21: Dream

This one is concurrent to FFM 2025 20: Contemplation, featuring Beyari. Much angstier and more self-hate-filled than Steirdrar’s night. You have been warned.

Another PITA story to prune, what with 46 difficult-to-remove words that needed to be taken out.

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Beyari dreams of Yak-Dayn.

Like most dreams about her former mentor, it starts at the field near the Wara Order’s headquarters on Frio-Lont. It was one her favorite places to be as an apprentice, the tallest grasses easily hiding her. Whenever everything became too much for her to take, she hid in the tall grasses. Unable to see the sky through all the vegetation, surrounded by nothing but life that could not care less about her, the only sounds being the wind, the chirping of insects and her heartbeat going from too loud to quiet enough, it was easy to feel like she was hiding from everything. Like not even the Night-Lights who had selected her as an Inzin could see or find her.

Of course, Yak-Dayn could find her, both because of the bond she unthinkingly initiated with him to force someone, anyone, to take her away from the pressure of her training on Pryzia and because he knew she liked to hide in the grasses when the pressure of it all got too much.

Tonight, she is not hiding. She lies among the shorter grasses, the smell of flowers filling her nose. She is armored, the action of the day bleeding into the dream and turning the Wara Order’s tunic and cargo pants she has long since left behind into the Eskel-Zai armor that cocoons her now, her helmet resting in her arms over her abdomen.

Footsteps against the grasses herald Yak-Dayn coming into view. The Kolton frowns at her.

“Do you really think you deserve to have good things?”

Beyari’s chest tightens. The rebuke her teenage self never heard from the man she forced into an arrangement he did not want, a burden he did not deserve on top of the Curse of Misfortune his bloodline carried, clings to her like the claws of a beast. She finds herself unable to say anything in response.

“Ruin him, like you ruin everyone, Zerela. Few would blame you, least of all him. He might even invite you to continue to ruin him and say that he deserves it, that it’s part of his atonement for his role in the IR’s atrocities.”

No, Beyari wants to say. He’s doing his best to do better. He deserves better. No words come out of her mouth, her chest too tight to let her lungs get enough air for forming words.

Yak-Dayn smiles at her bitterly, his eyes filled with disapproval at Beyari’s entire existence. It would have been better if you had never been born, or if that Olrede had eaten you while it still had the chance, he has said in some previous dreams, and the sentiment is vivid in those eyes now.

“Your purpose as an Inzin is to cause ruin. You have proved that time and time again. You’re not just a flame that others burn themselves with; you chase people to burn when you inevitably get bored of waiting for more moths to come close enough to burn. Of course you flourish as a hunter, being like that. It’s one of the most socially acceptable ways to ruin others.”

Stop, Beyari wants to beg. I never wanted to hurt anyone.

“You should know by now that no one is left unhurt after getting exposed to you for long enough. You always hurt others one way or the other. Me, your family, your clan, your hunter friends, Kassia, so many of her people… even yourself.” Yak-Dayn paused, his expression turning more wicked. “I’m sure you remember what happened with that Lorrak family, how their little one will always-“

“STOOOP!” Beyari screamed, her voice far too loud in her helmet. She tried to move but her body would not respond, something far heavier than all of her armor sitting on her chest. All she could do was try to wheeze breaths in, her eyes squeezed shut as tears gathered in them. At some point, her limbs started to respond again and she pushed herself onto her side, curling up and sobbing helpless apologies into the dark room.

At some point, Beyari did not know how much later, the ringing in her ears from her screaming faded away. The sobs and trembles took longer to end.

I don’t want to hurt him. I don’t. It’s not who I am. I was supposed to be a healer, not a destroyer.

Zerela was supposed to be a healer. Beyari is a hunter, some part of her mused, her mind always giving such thoughts the voice of the reproachful Yak-Dayn of her dreams. When was the last time Beyari did not hurt someone she met multiple times at some point, even if they never knew it?

Beyari wanted to press her hands over her ears in a futile effort to silence her thoughts but that would have required her to take her helmet off.

Kassia was right. I am an absolute, irreparable mess of a person.

“Shut up,” Beyari whispered to herself, as if she was not the one thinking these thoughts, the exhaustion amplifying the negativity like it always did.

Deep breaths. She had to take deep breaths. Do one of those breathing exercises she was taught when she was in therapy. Deep breaths, then do something positive to take her mind off of the nightmare and her fears. Either tending to the plants she and QWERTY had collected over the years or creating something positive in the workspace below. Probably tend to the plants, let the smell of the blooming Fateguiders do its thing.

Yes. That she would do. The Fateguiders would calm her and she could go back to sleep sooner or later and everything would be fine again in the morning.

Beyari pushed herself to her feet, her armor heavier than it usually was on her, and hauled herself to the plant room. If QWERTY noticed her moving to its direction instead of the bathroom, ae did not call her out on it from the loungeroom.